What God Can Do with a Group of Servant Survivors

Last week’s scripture reading and sermon text ended with these words, The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered” (Isaiah 56:8). Those who are to be gathered to God’s holy mountain will include foreigners and eunuchs. They are to be joined with the joyful SERVANTS in God’s house of prayer (56:6-7. In addition to Rick’s excellent sermon on God who tears down walls that separate people, my thoughts jumped to the ending of Isaiah’s message where we see a parade of peoples who fulfill God’s promise. All nations and tongues are brought to God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 66:18-20). I was struck by the fact that God sent SURVIVORS to declare his glory and bring nations to Jerusalem in one of the weirdest parades in scripture.

What are we to make of this text that concludes the oracles of this majestic prophet? Regarding the current war in Israel, we could hope and pray that they would hear this message (65:25). In the story of the early church in Acts we see remarkable fulfillments in all those nations from which dispersed Jewish pilgrims came to Pentecost. We marvel at the message about God’s holy servant Jesus (Acts 3:13, 26). We note that the first foreigner converted to the Lord is a eunuch from Ethiopia (Acts 8:26-39). And those scattered by persecution against the church in Jerusalem are those sent to the nations (Acts 8:1-3; 13:1-3).

We marvel at that history of the early church. But that was then and there; what about us here and now? The story of the Storrs Road church recorded on the display downstairs was not just a collection of interesting incidents in our 50 years. It disclosed what kind of church we are. Our ministry story disclosed that we are a Servant Survivor church. Is it possible that we can still be used by God in the way he used those servant survivors in Isaiah? How is our story to continue? Let us examine the qualities of those people back then, so that we may be like them in our future.

—Tom Yoakum