Messianic message of Hope in chapter 11 as we look to the reading of God’s Word, though if you please join with me in prayer.
Father of all mercies, let us stand in awe of you this day. Help us by your spirit to put your words into our hearts, write them upon our minds. Let your Word come to us in the fullness of its power. Help us to receive it in love with attentive and reverent and teachable minds, and through your word, Lord God, that you would allow us to taste the flavor of eternal life which you have given to us through your Son, our Savior, Jesus, in whose name we now pray. Amen.
Isaiah 11 Beginning in verse 1, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his root shall bear fruit, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness shall be the belt of his loins as Americans, we like new starts under new management. New and improved are selling features for us in many other places in the world that would not be seen as a good thing.
But not so for us. When times are tough or challenging, we often upgrade for something new. New job, new spouses, new cars, new churches, thinking, no doubt things will be better if I can start over somewhere else or with someone different.
Question is, where does that idea come from now? It certainly fits our generally optimistic culture, then. We have a desire for something new, something different that’s a part of being American. The new and the novel, at least, of other countries see us. But it also fits with our tendency to not sit in hard places for very long now.
There may be times to move on, to be sure, but I’m just simply asking the question is why is that often the first response? I think in part, we don’t know what to do with our failures or our feelings of powerlessness. They either change our circumstances, our worst moments, or some of our worst traits. A change of surroundings can make us feel like something has improved, even if we keep taking ourselves with us wherever we go. The Lord alone has the ability to truly Bring us to a new start in his son Jesus.
And we must look to him to find our true and our living hope. This is true for us. It was true for the nation of Israel. Like the rest of the prophets, Isaiah, he brings his message forward mostly in dark tones of coming judgment and gloom. But there are amazing bright spots that stand out.
Chapter 11 is one of those. As he’s writing the Assyrians, the empire is reaping havoc with the northern kingdom of Israel. The nation of Israel was split in two after the reign of Solomon. Israel in the north and Judah in the south. And during his lifetime, Isaiah would see the northern kingdom carried away by the Assyrians.
And the southern kingdom of Judah, where he ministered in Jerusalem, would be under severe threat.
The news is bleak and Isaiah tells us the Assyrians will come. They’ll come and they will clear cut the land of Israel. There will be nothing but a land of stumps. And right on the heels of this judgment comes a promise of hope, of a new and a fresh beginning. And the Lord reminds his people that he not only has a future plan, but he has the power to carry it out.
Well, looking at this plan, into the darkness of this bad news comes some light of hope. He begins and says, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Jesse is King David’s father. It’s a poetic way of referring to the Davidic royal line, but it also highlights a more humble beginning. This giant tree got knocked down to its stump, to its root ball, its humble beginnings.
But all is not lost, for he goes on, he says, a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. Hope is given that a new king is going to come and he’s going to set things right. He’s going to bear fruit. And there has been a deep and lasting failure from the royal line of David to this point. Failure upon failure to rule righteously.
The northern kingdom is about to be chopped down to the ground by the Assyrians and it’ll never rise again. The mighty empire of the Assyrians will then be chopped down to the ground by the Babylonians to never rise again. The Babylonians will be chopped down to the ground by the Persians to never rise again. And on it goes, a perpetual tale of human woe. Now we’ve all seen old stumps in the ground and they are a sad reminder to us of the majestic tree that once stood there.
Ordinarily, most trees do not grow back from a cut off stump. But Isaiah is speaking of something that’s not ordinary here in this place of destruction, of this hopelessness comes the promise of a future king that will change all that. Here a cut stump will grow. This image he used all the way back in chapter four, he talked about a glorious branch coming to Israel. And there it was, an image of God’s saving work for his people.
And then in chapter six, the stump was a symbol of the faithful remnant. And to make sure that we understand this more than simply one more failure of David’s line, this king is described in, in terms that only the Messiah could fulfill life coming forth out of something that looks dead. And in verse two, he goes on, he says, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The Spirit rests on him. And then there’s this permanent resting and sixfold gifts added to it.
So a sevenfold strength of the Spirit altogether showing this divine fullness that the Messiah alone would possess. Seven is highly symbolic number in Scripture. And it speaks of completeness, of. Of spiritual perfection, fullness. And this is going to be the Messiah, this new Davidic king.
With wisdom and understanding, he will make good and right decisions, and with his counsel and might has the ability to accomplish those decisions. There will be one who will come on the Spirit of the Lord, who will dwell in a complete and a pure way. And in this verse we see the Precursor of Isaiah 61 that Jesus claimed for himself in the synagogue. We read that in Luke 4, Jesus sits down and he reads from the scroll of Isaiah. And, and he says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Jesus is claiming that the Spirit is resting on him permanently to do this very mission that Isaiah speaks of here. And Then later in 61 of Jesus, John the Baptist was told, he on whom the Spirit descends and remains, it is he who will baptize in the Holy Spirit. And Paul in his letter to the Colossians in chapter two, he said, in Jesus the whole fullness of the Deity dwells bodily.
And this one to come, he’s going to live in reverence and submission to Yahweh. Verse 3. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord that has been missing from God’s people of reverence that consumes them. Their kings have failed to lead in the ways of the Lord. Their priests have failed to lead in the ways of the Lord.
And they have failed to walk in the ways of the Lord to be consumed with a reverence for God.
There have been new starts, new kings, new novelties, new gods, but it’s the same old people. How will anything be different for them? For that matter, how will anything be different for us?
This is a human condition. We can sure feel like our lives have been cut down to the stump with no real life. But God’s plan and purpose for his people includes a Messiah who will not fail because in him God has shown his power. Isaiah goes on to describe the Spirit empowered king. He says he shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear and go, wait a minute, isn’t that how we judge, how we discern by our eyes and our ears?
Well, isn’t that just what we missed? Because of that, we don’t have the power to go beyond what we see and what we hear. We can’t really get to the heart of the matter because we cannot discern the heart. We are often left when somebody comes before us with something with a he said, she said, like, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.
I don’t know who’s telling the truth.
One writer observed, absolute justice demands absolute knowledge. Absolute justice demands absolute knowledge. This coming king will go deeper than we can go. No human tribunal can get to the heart. It’s one of the great frustrations that we have.
We’re limited. We can’t see into a matter. We have a hard time seeing our own heart, let alone anybody else. But not so this coming king, he does not have our limitations. He has a discernment that goes beyond the externals.
And Isaiah goes on, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, decide with equity for the meek of the earth. This king will be impartial. The rich and powerful will not get a pass. The rice of the very least will will be upheld. And what this tells us is that the work of the Messiah is not just a privatized salvation.
Part of his plan includes social concerns, concerns for the poor and the needy, for those who have been oppressed, for those who don’t have the wealth to move things along.
And this king has the power to carry out this kind of justice. And he goes on, in verse four, it says, he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. With the breath of his lips, he shall kill the wicked. This image of a divine warrior king, it’s a little bit strange. It’s through his righteous words that he will judge and strike the wicked.
His judgments are true. His words are never empty, but they’re filled with power and might. He goes on. Verse 5. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.
He’s clothed girded in righteousness. This powerful warrior king is dressed for battle with righteousness and faithfulness. Not really the image that we’re used to thinking about. For a warrior. We think of big arms with big weapons.
Think about it. In the last two decades, we have been flooded with superhero movies of all kinds. Each one has a particular power or ability. Thor and his hammer. Superman and his strength.
Wonder Woman and her athletic prowess and bullet stopping bracelets. The list goes on. We have Iron man, we have Batman. We have Spider Man. We have Black Widow, Sailor Moon, the Avengers, the Fantastic four, X Men, Aquaman.
On it goes.
Cosplay has even become a part of mainstream culture in many places. We dress like our heroes, and we want heroes who can physically get it done. We want to see the bad guy get thrown down to the ground and get what’s coming to them. We want to see a punch so hard that it lands them into a building and it collapses on them. Ever stopped to wonder why?
Why this is. Why are we so fascinated with these kinds of movies and these kinds of stories?
Why? Because our world is broken. We’re broken. Our society’s broken. We want someone to fix things.
Someone who can grab a tornado and hurl it off before it destroys the whole town. Someone who can actually haul all the street thugs to jail and to make our town safe again. Someone who can prevent the spread of a deadly pathogen before it kills tens of thousands. Not only that, we want them to be beautiful and dazzling.
Because we’re not.
We often feel like that old stomp with no growth, no vitality, no power.
We end up trying to create our own reality, to define who we want to be. Because of it. We demand the right now to be whatever we want to be. If we’re not happy, then we need to change our lives. A new spouse, a new relationship.
Buy more stuff. Cosmetic surgery. And it’s not working at any level.
Ever wonder why we become such a victim culture? Oh, and definitely keep this in mind. This is both a right and a left issue. Very much so.
We identify as the downtrodden and the oppressed, usually from the other side. And we can wear it like a badge of honor. Why? Because we don’t have the power to fix anything. So we’re trying to compensate by demanding power be given to us because we’re the victim.
It’s easy to do. It’s okay if I do something as the victim against you because I’m the one who’s being oppressed.
Our whole council culture comes out of this. And again, this is a right and left issue because one group of power gets power and they want to do it to the other group and they get power and they want to do it to the other group.
I want to take power in order to get my way to crush the opposition.
I’m going to define who I am, because who I am is not somebody I want. So I’m going to redo it. It’s why some segments of the church have taken on the punch people in the mouth kind of attitude.
It’s okay to do that because I’m just getting mine.
Well, it’s not working. It’s not working anywhere in our society. It wasn’t working in Isaiah’s day. And the very thing that people thought they needed was just more of the same, but an updated, newer model of someone who could get it done. And through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord comes and says, this status quo is not going to work.
You don’t need a flawed superhero that’s a little more powerful than you. You need a righteous messiah with the power to save you from your sin, to save you from death. We need a moral hero, one who can save us from our immorality. And that’s exactly what we have in Jesus, the plan and the power of God on display in this righteous and faithful king. He does what is right.
He is dependable and true. He is the Word made flesh. He is the one that Revelation speaks of, the sword coming forth from his mouth. His truth is power.
The Lord takes what is completely cut down, completely worthless. And from it he brings forth salvation.
The superpower that Jesus came with is his humility and his meekness. He laid everything else down. It’s his submissiveness to the will of the Father. Now that will not make a very good avenger movie, but it will make a perfect Savior in the Lord and only in the Lord. If our failure is not final, he can take stumps and make them bring forth life.
What part of your life seems dead to you right now? What part of your life have you long given up hope that it will be any different or sins in your life that you need a righteous king to come and subdue because you haven’t been able to get a handle on it from the very beginning? The Lord has set forth his plan into Action and His power alone can see it through. This is a great redemptive plan that he has, and it includes the church. We are now to bring upon the earth the Lord’s work.
His spirit rests on us to do his will. We truly have a new beginning, even if we stay right where he has placed us so that we can be those who bring change right where we’ve been planted, not fleeing to something else, but taking his words of truth right where he has put us. We enter in in his sevenfold strength to do whatever is in front of us in the manner and the spirit of Christ.
So regardless of what we do, we do that as followers of Jesus.
If you’re a Christian business owner, the fish and The Little John 3:16 Sign in your shop doesn’t make that a Christian business. He your integrity, you’re following Jesus, you’re walking faithfully in righteousness. Do.
If you’re going to keep the sign, do that too.
The sign isn’t enough like the bumper stickers, you know that let everybody know you’re a Christian. I don’t think most of us drive well enough for that kind of advertisement for God, Whatever it is. If you’re a mechanic, if you’re a builder, if you’re a plumber, you do that to the glory of God in faithfulness and righteousness. You show up, you charge for the hours you work. If you’re a teacher, you have this wonderful opportunity to show the love of Christ to these students.
How many people look back with incredible memories of a teacher who loved them really well, made tremendous difference in their life. That’s a gift of God. And every occupation has that, that we are to be a Christian whatever by doing the thing that God has skilled us in and trained us in in a manner of worthy of Christ, that we put on his righteousness, his wisdom, his counsel, that those come to define who we are because we are in Him. We have been united to Christ and it is his power at work in us in the world that is bringing about the advancement of his kingdom.
You don’t have to have something different and like, oh, if my job was only better or different, I’d be able to. No, you have a job or you get to take the wonderful attributes of Christ into the world that he has put you in, working faithfully unto him, in whatever it is that he has called you to do, using those opportunities to show the plan and the power of God and truly in him, we do have a new beginning. We’re not stuck with who we were, but he is transforming us something amazing and beautiful. No superhero movie is going to compare with what we are yet to be in Christ Jesus at our glorification.
And we get a foretaste of that now, and we get to step into that.
So, so much better than a Marvel or DC movie is the reality of Jesus working through you with your gifts to bring about this cosmic redemption into the world. His equity, his justice, his mercy, his love displayed through us. And it is terrifying at the same time because we’re terrible at it. And God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise. And so the good news is, is that he will accomplish it in us, not because of us, but because he’s so great.
And he will bring about his purposes through you.
Because of the promises that he has made to bring life and restoration through the stump of Jesse, our righteous branch has risen up.
And this righteous branch has taken upon himself the sins of the world. He has conquered our sin. He has conquered death. And it is complete. And brothers and sisters, at this Advent, as we look and celebrate Christmas and all that it has meant for us, we too then are walking in his footsteps to do the work of our King as his faithful subjects.
Pray with me. Father Almighty, we do thank you and praise you, Lord, in you and in you alone, our failures are not final. You have given to us indeed a new beginning in Christ Jesus. Father, we thank you that you have included us in your plan. Lord, how you have reached through the ages with your message of truth and power.
Father, you have conquered us. You have subdued us. And we just say thank you. And Father, we pray that you would, through us, reflect the brilliance and the radiance of Christ to the world around us. We bless you for the salvation that we have received in him.
And Lord, may it also be according to your purposes in your will to bring forth the truth of Christ through the lips of your people. And this we will pray and ask in his name. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.