Isaiah 11:1-10
A stump speaks of what has been. A long time ago an acorn lay in the ground. It was buried under the leaves and other debris of the forest. It disappeared from sight until one day a tiny shoot came up out of the ground. It managed not to be stepped on or eaten. It grew into a sapling and then into a small tree. Year after year it survived droughts, fire and the cut of an ax. Year after year it grew. Families sat under its shade to have picnics. Children played in its branches. Birds built their nests among its leaves. Squirrels gathered nuts and stored them in their homes in the tree. It grew into a mighty tree, the tallest and grandest of them all, proud and majestic. Babies who came with their family to rest under the tree returned with their lovers and then with their children and later their grandchildren. Generation after generation came to this tree.
And then one day it was hit by lightening or a severe storm knocked it down or men came to cut it down and now all that is left is a stump in the ground. A stump that was once mighty but now is nothing. Itās too hard to take it out of the ground so it sits, doing nothing.
Year after year the stump sits. It receives the sun of summer, the fallen leaves of autumn, the snows of winter and in spring when the trees around it bud with new leaves, there is nothing that comes from the stump. Nothing. Nothing but fungus and moss, indicating the lack of life in this once great tree. Memories of the great tree fade as generation after generation sees nothing but the stump.
Until one year, one spring, a shoot comes out of the side of the stump and there is hope.
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
This passage from Isaiah is a message of hope. To the original hearers of Isaiah, this was a much longed for message of hope. It had been almost three hundred years since Israel had been at the peak of its power with Kings David and Solomon. Three hundred years is a long time. (It is easy for me to dismiss this length of time – until I put it into a modern context. This means that if Isaiah were writing today, David and Solomon had been kings in 1700.) Ten generations had lived since then and remembered how Israel had once been a great nation under David and Solomon. The stump in the ground that had once been the grand tree of the Kingdom of Israel had shown no signs of life in that time. There had been brief spurts of hope when a king would follow God and Israel would experience revival, but then that would fade away and the stump would sit there, reminding Israel what it had once been but was no more.
So when Isaiah prophesied that
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
ten generations of despair lifted their eyes toward hope in the future. Granted, it would be another 700 years before that hope would be realized in the birth of Jesus, but probably not even Isaiah figured it would take that much time for this prophecy to be fulfilled.
We are fortunate and blessed to be living in a time when we can look back on the fulfillment of this prophecy.
Advent is the four weeks in the church calendar preceding Christmas, a time when we focus on the birth and anticipated second coming of Jesus. As we begin this Advent season, letās take a look at the hope Isaiah brings in this passage.
First, hope comes in the form of righteous judgement.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on himā
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORDā
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
Righteous judgement. How often do we experience that? Tellquelle said that the judiciary in Morocco is one of the most corrupt segments of Moroccan government. Who you know matters more than your guilt or innocence. How much money you can pay to the judge as a bribe matters more than the merits of your case.
Even when judges are honest, they make mistakes because they have difficulty uncovering the truth in a case. If the lawyer of the guilty person is more skilled than the lawyer of the prosecution, guilt will not be punished. Sometimes a guilty person will not be punished because they escape through a technicality in the law. Sometimes innocent people are convicted. The judicial system in any country is an imperfect one. Judges, just like the rest of us, make mistakes from time to time.
But hope comes because Jesus is a righteous judge.
I would guess that most of us have never been before a judge, accused of some crime and waiting to see how the judge will determine our guilt or innocence and then if we are guilty, determine our punishment. But I would also guess that most of us have been accused of doing something wrong by a parent or teacher or maybe a friend or an employer.
If we are falsely accused, we hope that our innocence will be uncovered. If we are guilty, we hope that the judge will miss the evidence that points to us and declare us innocent.
With the coming of the Messiah, who we know to be Jesus, how will we be judged? Jesus came once as the suffering servant who died for our sins to offer us eternal life. He will return as the triumphant king who will establish his kingdom and act as judge of all humanity. How will we be judged?
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on himā
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
Jesus has the Spirit of wisdom, he has the capacity to make a right judgement in all things. His wisdom allows him to see what is true and what is false. There will be no lie that can pass by Jesus. No deceit will be successful. No tricky argument that tries to evade the truth will win the case.
Jesus has the Spirit of understanding, the ability to see to the heart of a situation. When judgement is expressed we might say, āBur Jesus, you just donāt understand my circumstances, the pressures I experienced, the situation I was in.ā But Jesus will see clearly. He will cut through the fog and understand exactly what situation we faced and how we dealt with it.
Jesus has
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
A judge might reach the point of understanding but then not know what to do. āI donāt know. Iāve never faced this situation before. This is a new one for me.ā But Jesus will know exactly what plan to make and because he has the Spirit of power he will be able to carry out whatever plan of action he chooses.
Jesus has
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORDā
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
Jesus has the spiritual qualities to make good judgements. As one of the three persons in the Trinity, he knows better than any other judge the criteria for true judgement. The law given so judges know how to rule came from God. A good judge knows our position in relation to God. Jesus has the spiritual position to be the perfect judge.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
A human judge hears the evidence and must weigh the evidence to try to uncover what is true. Jesus will know the truth without having to hear the arguments, see the evidence or speak to the witnesses. Jesus will know the truth. You will stand there before him and you will be known, completely known, nothing hidden, nothing smoothed over, nothing disguised. Does that comfort you?
Next week we will look at Malachi 2 where Malachi asks the question,
But who can endure the day of his coming?
When Jesus judges, he knows the truth about you.
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
One of my fears is that before I leave Morocco, I will injure someone with my car. I have had two or three close calls, where someone has suddenly stepped out into traffic as I passed by. There are times when I am driving with the sun in my face and I cannot see very well and then someone jumps off the curb and rushes across the road. I donāt want to have to live with the knowledge that I injured someone.
But if I do injure someone and we go to court, who will be judged to be guilty? Who will have to pay? The poor Moroccan or the rich American?
When God judges the world, who will receive the brunt of his judgement, the rich Western World or the poor Third World? What I found interesting is that in this verse we are told that God will judge the needy and he will dispense justice to the poor.
The poor are abused by the rich and powerful. This is true. But it is also true that the poor are as capable of deceit as the rich. Lies are told to get money from the rich. Deceit is used to win favor. Greed does not belong just to the rich. The poor are just as capable as the rich of being greedy.
God will judge the needy as he will also judge the rich. The justice of Jesus will be pure and without bias.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
We celebrate the hope of Jesus in this period of Advent because Jesus is the judge who will judge with righteousness.
Are you ready to be judged? What defense will you offer as you stand before Jesus who sees right through you; who sees the truth that you even try to hide from yourself?
I said that we have hope because Jesus is a righteous judge. After listening to this first part of the sermon, perhaps you do not think this offers us much hope. If Jesus knows every part of us, what hope do we have?
Hold on and let me come back to this.
What awaits you after the judgement that is coming?
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viperās nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah offers us hope because of the world that awaits us after the judgement that is to come. It is a world of peace, without fear or apprehension.
I love the Woody Allen line , The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep. Isaiah talks about the wolf and the lamb, but the idea is the same. In this world, lions and calves or wolves and lambs donāt get along well with each other. We live in a world where lions and wolves kill and eat calves and lambs. In contrast, in the world Isaiah holds before us, predator and prey will lie together in peace and security.
Part of the curse in Genesis when sin entered the world was that the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman would be enemies. Here that curse from Genesis 3:15 is reversed and
8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viperās nest.
The world Isaiah holds before us is a world where we can rest, relax and be at peace without worry or concern.
In this world we have to be on our guard. If we are in the wrong place at the wrong time, someone may come and rob us. If we leave our house or apartment unlocked someone will come and take what is ours. When it rains and rains and rains, the waters rise and invade our homes. Earthquakes and tsunamis destroy life and property.
If we stop working, we donāt have money to spend and we go hungry and lose our home. If we donāt make repairs to our home it begins to fall apart. In this world things break down and we have to expend energy to make repairs.
On the relational side, if we donāt put energy into our relationships, they break down as well. Friends with whom we do not communicate fade away so that we no longer know where they live or how to get into contact with them. A marriage in which the partners do not work to keep close to each other becomes more and more distant until it ends in divorce, official or unofficial.
And in our spiritual relationship we have to expend effort. If we do not take time to be with God on a regular, daily basis, we drift away and find that God who used to be so intimate with us is now distant and unknowable.
I tell you that I am tired of living in a world where I have to work so hard. To be a Christian in this world is to constantly swim upstream, against the current. As soon as I relax and begin to drift, I find myself moving away from God. To live as a Christian in this world means that I have to work and work and work to stay close to God. A relationship with God is not natural to this world. It does not happen without my effort.
I long to be in a world where I can relax and float with the current of the stream and move naturally toward a deeper knowledge of and experience with God.
I want to be able to lie down with the lion and not worry about being mauled. I want to sleep peacefully next to a nest of poisonous snakes and not worry about being bitten.
The world to come is a world I very much want to enjoy and the knowledge that this is the world awaiting me is of great encouragement to me.
Isaiah tells us that hope comes in the form of a righteous judge and in the form of a world that will come in which the natural order will work for us, not against us.
But the principle hope that encourages us and helps us to persevere is found in the one who was before and who comes after.
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious.
The messianic king Isaiah describes is both the shoot that will come up from the stump of Jesse and the root of Jesse who will stand as a banner for the peoples.
Jesse was the father of David the great king of Israel. How can the messianic king be both the root that produced David and the shoot that came up long after David died? How could the messianic king come before and after David?
In Luke 1:32, the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear a son.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David
In using these two images, Isaiah prophesied of Jesus, God in the flesh, who was from the beginning, who preceded all that was created, through whom all was created.
I asked earlier what hope can we have if Jesus, the righteous judge, will look at us and see deeply, clearly, completely who we are and how we have lived our lives. I was talking with some friends this last week and a woman said she hoped we would not have memories of earth when we are in heaven. As we talked about this, she explained that she did not like all the things she had done in this life and did not want to remember them for eternity.
I donāt think she is unique. Most of us have probably thought this way. I am very much embarrassed by the way I have lived my life. I have done things that I am very much ashamed of.
When I stand in front of Jesus, what hope do I have when he will know me so completely?
My only hope will be that he loves me and that when he died on the cross, he died for me. My only hope will be that he will look at me, judge me, find me unacceptable because of my sin and then extend his arms, reveling the scars in his hands and on his side. He will welcome me and call me to come to him, hug me, hold me and tell me that he paid for my sins with his blood.
That is why I have hope.
We live in a world that is steadily decaying. We live in a world where energy and effort are required to live in a way that pleases God. We live in a world that would make any rational person who observes this world despair because this world is leading to decay and destruction.
But a Christian, a true child of God, can walk with hope through this world that is heading toward destruction because a world awaits us where there will be healing and wholeness rather than death and decay. A true child of God can walk with hope through this world because Jesus is the righteous judge who loves us and sacrificed himself for us. We will be judged to be unfit for heaven but accepted because Jesus will announce that he has paid the price for our admission to heaven.
Because we have hope we can persevere. The sorrows of this world may be beating you down. The pressures of this world may be pulling you under the water. This Advent we are reminded of the hope that allows us not only to persevere but to persevere with joy, with a song in our heart.
Without hope the heart would break. Praise be to Jesus for being our hope.
