Sing A New Song

The beauty of this chapter will be enhanced by at once recognising the identity of the Lord’s servant. In the previous chapter the Holy Spirit left open the question of the identity of the ‘righteous man from the east’. This time there is no doubt. Matthew in his Gospel specifies the Lord Jesus Christ to be God’s chosen servant, God’s elect in whom His soul delights. It is the Lord Jesus in His mediator role who is endued with Holy Spirit strength to bring salvation to the Gentiles.

Christ’s tender care

In this passage we read both of the Lord’s successful deliverance of His people and His tender care towards them who are bruised and troubled. Our Lord Jesus in His humanity was fortified and upheld by Jehovah God. In turn He fortifies and upholds His church. Christ was strengthened in His work and His people will not be broken despite the great number of enemies ranged against them. Isaiah is describing the Messiah’s success to encourage the Old Testament Jews. The Messiah will come, fitted and supported to fulfil God’s covenant purpose of grace and salvation, not only for the elect among the Jews but throughout the whole world.

An earnest of things to come

God reminds His people He created the heavens and the earth. The wonder of the created universe is a token, a guarantee of greater glory to come. Jehovah pledges to furnish His servant with help to secure the deliverance of all His covenant people. The Lord Jesus humbled Himself to fulfil His Father’s will for the Bride upon whom divine love rested from eternity. The Messiah would bring gospel light to the Gentiles. He would open men’s eyes to spiritual truth and deliver them out of captivity.

Christ our covenant

The Lord Jesus, together with His Father and the Holy Ghost, is a party to the covenant of grace. John Gill says Christ is ‘the representative of his people in it; the surety, Mediator, messenger, and ratifier of it; the great blessing in it; the sum and substance of it; all the blessings and promises of it are in him, and as such he is “given”. Gill continues, ‘it is of God’s free grace that he was appointed and intrusted with all this in eternity, and was sent in time to confirm and secure it for “the people”; given him of his Father, redeemed by him and to whom the Spirit applies the blessings and promises of the covenant; even the elect of God, both among Jews and Gentiles’.

A new song

These blessed people for whom the Lord Jesus is covenant, and for whom He died, receive eternal salvation but they are also predestined to experience and enjoy the privileges of new life and conversion in this world. They have a song placed in their heart. It is a new song, a song of gospel truth. The redeemed of the Lord sing praises to God who justifies sinners. They sing in worship of a Saviour who died and rose again. They sing of righteousness, redemption and rest. It is the new song of the new covenant for a people raised to newness of life and daily renewed in the inward man.

A gospel melody

It is also the new song of preachers sent to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth, who rejoice in fruit for their labour and ‘give glory unto the LORD, and declare his praise in the islands’. By this song the Lord goes ‘forth as a mighty man’, overthrowing kingdoms and gathering His church. God’s elect are sinners who are led out of blindness, made to walk in new paths, see in new ways and delight to honour the Lord in all their hymns of praise.

A message to comfort

Here, again, we see the wonderful clarity of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Christ’s victories and gospel success. These revelations came that God’s people in the Old Testament might be comforted in their personal pilgrimage and encouraged during the nation’s Babylon captivity. The old prophecies had been fulfilled now ‘new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them’ that the remnant people of Isaiah’s day might be strengthened and the faithful amongst the Jews sustained. In every age the Lord is at work and in every generation the Spirit of God watches over His flock protecting and comforting His own.

A solemn end

Isaiah ends the chapter with a very solemn and serious declaration. There would be those who would see the Messiah, hear His gospel and wonder at His miracles but they would not be saved. The scribes and Pharisees, for example, would witness the fulness of the revelation of Jesus Christ and observe His perfect holy life yet despite marvelling they would not hearken and they could not believe. Such is the deadness of the natural man. ‘Who among you will give ear to this? who will hearken and hear for the time to come?’ May the Lord grant us mercy and grace to hear.

Amen