Isaiah 56:6-7 “And to foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant–these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.”

The kind of service that God’s people offer him is not dull, boring drudgery. It isn’t the go-through-the-motions kind of work of someone who is just trying to make a living or get the job done. This service is special, and we have a couple of reasons why this is true here.

First, the word translated “serve” doesn’t speak of ordinary service. The word refers to a type of service which is special because of whom you are serving. The task itself might not be any different than that of other people, but it takes on a unique honor and importance because of the one served.

For example, we don’t generally consider cooks to have a distinguished position. It’s not considered glamorous. I also have a relative who used to cook for a living, but he did his cooking at the White House in Washington D.C. His job was considered very prestigious, all because of the person he served.

Janitors may clean buildings all over the world. Salesmen may make thousands and millions of calls on people’s homes every day. Teachers may teach the 3 “r’s” to their students in many different languages in many different schools. But the work which you and I do to maintain our church buildings, call on our neighbor’s homes with the Gospel, and teach the faith to our children comes with a special honor and privilege. We have the honor of serving the one and only God, the maker of all things, and the Savior of all the world with our service.

The other special thing about this service is the force behind it. Isaiah speaks of “foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him.” Service to God is a labor of love. What else could it be when we know how he has first served and first loved us? Professor Siegbert Becker once wrote, “It is impossible to see ourselves as sinners deserving eternal damnation in hell and then to come to the conviction that the suffering and dying Christ has procured full and free forgiveness for us by taking our guilt upon himself and by giving his own righteousness to us as a free gift of his love, it is impossible to come to that conviction without coming to love him who gave himself into death that we might have everlasting life….To know him is to love him is more applicable to our Savior than to anyone else.” As the Lord gathers people, he turns them into people who serve him–a service of honor and a service of love.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this service for the people who lived in Isaiah’s day was the fact that it would come from foreigners. The prophet saw it coming from people like you and me, who are not Jews. No one at that time would have thought we could be God’s kind of people because we belong to the wrong race. We have the wrong family background. But the Lord has graciously made us his own and gathered us to serve him.

The privilege of being the people God has brought to himself and invited into his house of prayer gives dignity to all the ways in which we serve and worship him.