What does First B Jackson teach about light to the nations?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on light to the nations starts with Isaiah 42 and 49, two of Isaiah's servant songs written roughly seven hundred years before Christ. Pastor Ray McDaniel has taught through both passages showing how they describe a servant called from the womb, hidden like a polished arrow in God's quiver, whose voice would not be wasted but would hit its mark. That servant, Ray argues, finds his full meaning in Jesus. Where Israel was called to be a light to the nations and repeatedly fell into the darkness of those nations instead, Jesus fulfilled the calling perfectly, becoming not just a covenant to Israel but a light to the Gentiles, to the coastlands at the farthest reaches of the earth.
The teaching traces this Gentile-facing purpose beyond Isaiah into the Psalms. Ray walked through Psalm 67, Psalm 96, and Psalm 117 to show that the outward mission toward all nations runs through the whole of Scripture, not just the prophets. Israel's original calling, going back to Genesis 12, was to live by God's law in a way that drew people toward him rather than away. Jesus is the one who actually accomplishes that, the ideal Israel, the one who wrestles with God and submits where the nation repeatedly did not.
The teaching does not let that mission stay abstract. Ray pressed on what it looks like to walk that path when it leads somewhere frightening. He connected the servant's cry in Isaiah 49 that he had labored in vain and spent his strength for nothing to Jesus in Gethsemane, face down, asking that the cup pass from him, and then to the cry of dereliction at the ninth hour on the cross. The suffering was real. But in both places Jesus kept entrusting himself to the Father. That pattern, continuing to trust the one who judges rightly even when the situation looks untenable, is held out as the example believers who carry this same light are called to follow.
Taught from Isaiah 49:1-13 · Isaiah 42:1-9 · Acts 13 · Psalm 67 · Hebrews 5:7
The passage taught · 1 Peter 2
1 Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking,
2 as newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, that with it you may grow,
3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious:
4 coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- June 23, 2024 A Polished Shaft Hidden in His Quiver A Wyoming pastor traces Isaiah's servant songs through Scripture, showing how Christ fulfilled Israel's calling to be a light to all nations, even through suffering.
- June 23, 2024 A Light to the Gentiles Ray McDaniel walks through Isaiah 49 to show how God's servant, Jesus, became a light to all nations and why trusting God through suffering leads to certain hope.
- December 9, 2018 A Light to the Gentiles Ray walks First Baptist Jackson through Isaiah 49, showing how God called Jesus as a servant and light to all nations, and how that calling extends to the church today.