… ⁹ and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy; as it is written, “Therefore I will give praise to You among the Gentiles, and I will sing to Your name.” ¹⁰ Again he says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people.” ¹¹ And again, “Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise Him.” ¹² Again Isaiah says, “There shall come the root of Jesse, and He who arises to rule over the Gentiles, in Him shall the Gentiles hope.”

For non-Jewish (i.e. Gentile) believers today, it’s easy to forget that our salvation is rooted in the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the three great patriarchs of the Jewish people). As worded in the original and enduring promise to Abraham, God would give him a land (Palestine), a progeny (a huge number of descendants) and a blessing (see Gen 12:1-3). And that blessing God specifically detailed out to include “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3), not just his descendants. That’s us today, who believe!

This promise was not just a dusty set of words occurring too early in the biblical record to retain effective meaning for Bible-believing people today. No, this promise to all the families of the earth recurs throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, threaded unmistakably in many diverse passages.

When King David reflected on military victories over enemy nations and even being rescued from the pathetic hand of Saul, he said, “Therefore I will give praise to You among the Gentiles” (Paul quotes this from 2 Samuel 22:50). The apostle further quotes from the song of Moses, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people” (Deut 32:43). From the Psalms, Paul further demonstrates the pervasiveness of this inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s purposes: “Praise the Lord all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise Him” (Ps 117:1). Finally, Paul draws on the writings of the prophets with a rendition of Isaiah 11:10: there is hope for the Gentiles through the root of Jesse, namely a descendant of David.

God’s desire has always been to retrieve the lost image bearers from their fallen situation. The plan was to use a single man, Abraham, and work through his descendants. But the ultimate beneficiaries were not only the Jews, his descendants, but all people. The apostle uses these passages to show that Christ’s servanthood extended not only to the Jews but to all people, and we cannot help but praise God for what He has done through Christ (which we will see in verse 13). Theologically, though, God’s plan fits together perfectly. He desires for His image bearers to live a life of service and dedication to others, just like Christ; this finds practical expression in how we serve one another in our Christian fellowship, even when we disagree.

Lord, help me demonstrate the life of Christ to others through my serving.