TOO SMALL! TOO SMALL!

"Indeed He says, 'It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6, NKJV)

SALVATION is an exceedingly large thing. What God has determined in Christ is momentous. What He offers in Him is extensive. While many tritely say Jesus would have come into the world "even if I was the only one," such a notion reflects neither the nature of God nor the disclosure of His mind. Nowhere is salvation so represented. Consistently it is declared to be "for the whole world," and that it is!

FROM the time of Abraham, the Lord restricted His dealings to a single body of people – Abraham's fleshly offspring. To them belonged "the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises," together with "the fathers" (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and the lineage of the coming Savior (Rom 9:4-5). When the Savior would come into the world, He would "come unto His own" people, in fulfillment of the ancient promises.

YET, because of the extensive nature of salvation, the prophets unveiled it would not be confined to the Jews. In one of the most insightful views of Scripture, the Spirit affirmed through Isaiah that giving "the tribes of Jacob" to Jesus was "too small a thing." The greatness of His vicarious atonement required a greater gift than that! His hard temptations, exposure to the powers of darkness, and obedience to the death of the cross compelled more of a reward than that! Even though the "tribes of Jacob" had been cultured to receive the Savior, they were "too small" to duly honor the glorious sacrifice He would make. The Lord would also make His Lamb a "light for the Gentiles," that He might bring God's salvation "to the ends of the earth" (NIV).

IN my judgment, the modern church could do with a much larger vision of "so great a salvation" as is found in Christ Jesus (Heb 2:3). There is far too much unenlightened talk about Christ coming into the world and dying for sin. I am afraid many view it as a sort of quick fix to the human condition. But it is anything but that! Before Christ came into the world – in fact, before there was a world – a determination was made that He would have to die. That is why He is called "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8). In His redemptive capacity of "a Lamb without blemish and without spot," Jesus was "foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet 1:19-20).

IN that regard, the magnitude of our Lord's sacrifice, and the willingness with which He embraced the purpose of God, provoked the Divine utterance: "It is too small a thing for you to be My Servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept" (NIV). If that is true of a nation cultured by Deity for the coming Messiah, it is much more true of the organizations conceived and perpetrated by men – to say nothing of a solitary individual.

BOTH those who view their "church" as spiritually elite, and those who imagine Christ would have died for them even if they were the only one requiring it, make the atonement a small thing, indeed. But it is NOT small. This is a large salvation, extending as far as the curse, and reaching to the extremities of human guilt. Once this is perceived, men will throw themselves more fully into the work of the Lord. Let us have done with thoughtless and faddish sayings. They are uncomely, and ought not be found in our mouths.

– Given O. Blakely