Worship on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany
10:00 am January 18, 2026
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Fionna McCrostie Welcoming Elder: Shirley Simpson
Children’s time presenter: Vivian Houg Reader: Gina Kottke
We gather to worship God
Music prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship
Call to worship:
L: O Lord, open our lips,
P: And our mouths shall declare your praise.
L: O Lord, open our eyes,
P: So that we may behold your presence.
L: O Lord, open our ears,
P: So that we may hear your call to follow.
L: O Lord, open our hearts,
P: So that we may offer you worship in love and joy.
Opening praise: Holy Spirit, you are welcome here
Prayers of approach and confession
God, our Creator and Redeemer, your faithfulness endures forever.
You offer us new life in Christ Jesus and call us to follow him.
You challenge us to bring life and hope to the world you love.
In you we find strength and courage to face every challenge.
And so we offer our praise and gratitude to you, O God, with Christ and the Spirit, one God, now and always.
Assured of your loving-kindness we confess to you our sins.
Faithful God, you sent Jesus Christ to seek and save the lost yet it’s hard to recognize when we have lost our way.
We judge too quickly, we cultivate and enjoy being upset, we gossip, and we make weak choices.
We seek the next new thing instead of your gift of new life.
We follow the trends of our culture rather than Jesus’ example.
Wash over us with your cleansing Spirit, and renew our commitment to follow your purposes revealed in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Response: Glory, glory hallelujah
Assurance of God’s pardon
Let us rejoice, for God has put a new song in our mouths! Trust in God’s enduring love and mercy, washing over us every day. Know that forgiveness is yours through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Musical offering: Arise, shine; for your light has come. (Dayspring Singers)
We listen for the voice of God
Song: Jesus we are gathered (514)
Children’s time: Show and Tell
Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer (535)
Song: Teach me, God, to wonder (704: vss 1-3)
Scripture readings: Isaiah 49-1-7 & John 1:29-42
Response: Behold the lamb of God
Message: Wonderfully Made Disciples
Who is this mysterious Servant in Isaiah 49? What’s this talk about being arrows in waiting, and how do we all fit into the picture as faithful people today?
Let me take you back, way back, to a scene that still hurts to imagine. A people crushed by grief. Jerusalem, their heart-city, is in ruins. The temple, where they once felt closest to God, was nothing but rubble and ash. The land? Desolate, silent, like it forgot how to grow anything green. And the real gut-punch: most folks alive right then had never even seen home. They were born in exile, raised on stories of Zion like old family photos that had faded so much you could barely make out the faces. A few gray-haired grandparents might whisper about the day, seventy years earlier, when soldiers dragged them away as little kids. But for everyone else? Home was a myth. A song their parents sang when they were sad.
Then, miracle of miracles, God does what God does: He flips empires like pages in a book. Cyrus the Great became king of Persia. He was beloved and wanted a kingdom with religious freedom. He issued the Cyrus Cylinder. It freed all the exiled from all the nations and allowed anyone who wished to return to their homes. The guy who just steamrolled Babylon issues a decree: “Go home, Hebrews. You’re free.” The people have been in another land for 70 years. As God told them to, the married had families and made careers. Most decided to stay. Only a remnant returned. This was the first wave. A handful. That’s it. But free.
And into this half-return, this lingering ache, the prophet speaks. We’re deep in Isaiah’s “Book of Comfort”, chapters 40 to 55, long, beautiful poems where hope keeps sneaking through the cracks in the tears. The spotlight falls on Zion’s sorrow… and on God’s chosen Servant, the one who will somehow bring glory right smack in the middle of the mess.
This is the second of the four servant songs. This one is written from the servants’ point of view. The servant is portrayed as a prophet of the Lord, specially equipped to restore the nation of Israel. Taken together, the servant songs present a picture of someone whose success will not come by political might or military action but by becoming a light to the nations.
But what’s odd about these passages is that the Servant mentioned here is called “Israel” and yet is and isn’t. It’s a little odd, but Jewish theologians often suggested that this must be a “perfect” or “ideal” version of Israel. The figure is messianic. Some have suggested that the servant is Isaiah the prophet, some claim it’s Cyrus the Great. Christians generally tend to notice that this servant suffers hardship. 500 years before Jesus, this text says that the Servant will be “pierced for our transgressions”, glorifies God, will have a “mission to all nations”, is given a divine calling and anointing, that he fulfills all the promises of Isaiah’s first 48 chapters, is nevertheless “scorned and rejected” and yet brings salvation even when it seems he has done all his work in vain. And he will make a new covenant.
In other words Christians tend to believe that the Servant called “Israel” here is actually Jesus. Of course this is usually because Luke quotes these verses and attributes them to Jesus (Luke 2:32). So does Simeon who blesses baby Jesus at the dedication service. Also so does Paul in Second Corinthians 6:2 who uses the same language of the arrow in the quiver awaiting use. It’s also in Matthew 28 at the Great Commission and John 8.
Like most of the prophecies of the Old Testament, they are fulfilled partially within the Hebrew Bible themselves, Fuller still through Jesus and then completely when Jesus “comes again”. Which means while Jesus is the Servant, so is Israel. Or maybe the other way, while Israel is the Servant, so is Jesus but more fully.
The servant cries,
“Before you were born God had a plan
Listen to me, you islands;
hear this, you distant nations:
Before I was born the Lord called me;
from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.
He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
and concealed me in his quiver.”
The servant calls to all the Nations, but for a time was hidden away like an arrow in a quiver, waiting its appointed time and use.
And here’s the wonder of it: the same God who formed and named His Servant in the womb knows you that intimately too. As the psalmist bursts into praise: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:14). You weren’t thrown together by chance; you were knit together with awe-inspiring care, hidden perhaps for a season, but crafted for glory.
In verse 3 he proclaims that God’s glory will shine through this servant.. It reads, “You are my servant, in whom I will display my splendor.”
Next in verse 4 is a bit of a downer because the Servant will see much of his work as fruitless. Much like the prophet Jeremiah is told by God to preach and yet also told that no one will listen when he does, the Servant too feels the sorrow of rejection. It says,
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
and my reward is with my God.”
By the next verse the servant is said to return, not just the tiny remnant of Israel back to the homeland but all of it. It says,
“he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am[a] honored in the eyes of the Lord
and my God has been my strength – “
And then this verse gives one of the most amazing verses I think, in the entire bible.
To a people just returning home, just getting back, just starting to build their gates, to make tents where their homes will someday be, to rebuild their place of worship, to spend time on themselves, God says,
“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.”
There isn’t enough glory to God in just returning Israel. The servant will call not just Israel back but much greater than that… all nations.
And so God says,
“I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
7 This is what the Lord says—
the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel—
to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation,
to the servant of rulers:
Kings will see you and stand up,
princes will see and bow down,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
Conclusion
So here we are, Dayspring, not in ancient ruins, not waiting for a Persian decree, but right here in Edmonton, in 2026, with our own lingering aches. Maybe your “exile” is the quiet disappointment of prayers that seem unanswered, relationships that stay broken, efforts at work or in ministry that feel like pouring water into cracked jars. Maybe it’s the bigger ache: watching the world spin further from light, wondering if the gospel still has traction in a city that feels more scattered than gathered.
Listen: God looked at a tiny remnant picking through rubble and said, “Restoring Israel? That’s too small a thing.” If rebuilding one nation was too small for His Servant, then surely our small, tidy dreams, my comfortable faith, our cozy congregation, even our personal breakthroughs—are too small for Him, too.
Believe this: Your life, hidden in the quiver or feeling fruitless right now, is part of something explosively bigger. The same God who called His Servant from the womb calls you. The same Servant who felt labor in vain entrusted Himself to the Father, and resurrection followed. Jesus didn’t stop at saving Israel; He became the light that reaches Edmonton, Alberta, and every dark corner of the earth.
So here’s the charge: Stop settling for “small enough.” Entrust your apparent vain labours to the Lord’s hand, your family struggles, your quiet faithfulness, and your fears about the future. Then rise and carry the light. Speak a word of truth that pierces like a sword. Show up for the neighbour who’s never seen “home” in any real way. Give, pray, go, because the mission isn’t too small; it’s cosmic. Salvation to the ends of the earth starts in this room, with people who believe God’s plans are never limited by our ruins. Amen.
Song: The clay-stained hands of love (296)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
Prayers of thanksgiving and intercession
God of purpose and promise, we open our hearts to you in prayer, trusting in your mercy to bear the burdens we carry.
We thank you for the work and witness of your Church, bringing your Good News into many lives and situations throughout the earth.
Today we pray for the unity of the church and that where we are divided you will unite us, where our witness has grown weak you will strengthen us where we are in error, you will correct us.
We pray for congregations that are in ecumenical shared ministries, and feeling the renewal of your Spirit.
(Hold a few seconds of silence.)
Guide them with your grace.
We thank you for the healing that comes from your hand, O God, in times of reconciliation when your forgiving love is at work, and in times when pain is eased and grief is comforted.
Today we pray for those whose emotions are raw, for those whose bodies are weakened and for any whose minds are troubled in any way.
(Hold a few seconds of silence.)
Give them hope for new life with you.
We lift to you people around the world who work for justice and unity to prevail in the midst of division:
in nations where conflict has broken out or repression rules,
in places facing poverty, famine or destruction from disaster,
and anywhere racial and ethnic disparities weaken common life.
(Hold a few seconds of silence.)
Send your justice to bring relief and your peace to help understanding prevail.
As the followers of Jesus, give us the courage to unite not only in prayer but also in action for the needs of this world. Strengthen us to work together, despite our differences, so others may see what it means to follow you in Christ’s name.
Song: Brother, sister, let me serve you (635: vss1-5)
Sending out with God’s blessing
Go with strength and humility, for you are servants of our Saviour who walks with you. And may the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the friendship of the Holy Spirit bless and sustain you, now and always. Amen.
Response: God to enfold you
Music postlude
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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2026) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.
Video recordings of the Sunday Worship messages can be found here on our YouTube Channel.