Isaiah 10:1-10 – Advent 2022

Isaiah eleven, one through to ten.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of JC, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and 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, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what is high see, or the side disputes by what is hear's hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and the side with equity for the meek and of the head.

And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips, he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamp, and the lopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze.

Their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the horse.

The nursing child shall play over the all of the cobra, and the winged child shall put his hand on the other's den.

They shall not art or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters covers the sea.

In that day, the root of JC, who shall stand as a signal for the people of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

Amen.

Welcome to you.

If you joined us while we were singing, my name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at City.

We're going to be looking at that passage that G Day read for us from the book of Isaiah, or Isaiah, uh chapter uh 11.

And so if you want to pull that up on your phone, or if you've got a hard copy, if you need a Bible, you can grab one from down the front.

If you're looking at it online, we're in the English standard version.

Um, that's gonna be the one that's gonna be closest to follow along with.

Uh little uh little complaint uh as I begin, little or public service announcement.

Um my complaint is this it's not Christmas.

It's not Christmas.

Uh as soon as Halloween is over, it's immediately into you know Jingle Bell Rock.

And uh and what's Santi bringing you uh here in uh here in Dublin and your lists and where you're where are you going, what are you doing?

It's not Christmas.

Christmas lasts for 12 days, it starts on the 25th of December.

It's not Christmas, it's Advent.

Advent.

We miss Advent.

Advent's important, yeah.

Everything is kind of instantaneous.

Like you we we sit there of an evening and and Philip attempts to me and goes, oh, could you order, uh, could you order this thing for for Christmas?

And like within 30 seconds it's ordered on Amazon Prime and it'll arrive.

Everything's kind of so instantaneous, and we instantly move from Halloween to Christmas, and we miss this season, this season of Advent, because Advent's about waiting, and and we don't really know how to do that, and we don't really want to sit and wait, but we need to.

Advent's about longing and and being okay with feeling longing, feeling a sense of yearning, feeling a sense that actually everything is not as it should be, as Nicole was was praying.

You know our world is not as it should be.

In fact, it's interesting that Christmas songs and Christmas carols often talk about longing, yearning, uh the kind of overlap between uh between joy and sorrow and things not quite being the way they the way they should be.

Uh things aren't uh always just tinsel and fairy lights.

And so in in the kind of Christmas carols of the church, you've got uh just really moving songs like O come O come Emmanuel, you know, O come O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lowly exile here until the Son of God appears.

And then it turns in the refrain, rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel uh uh shall come to thee, O Israel.

Or joy to the world, really upbeat, kind of driving Christmas Carol.

Uh it's probably on the repertoire uh later this evening.

But even then it says, No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.

He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

There's an awareness of actually the world's not as it should be.

That part of the reason why Emmanuel needed to come to earth is to is to allow his blessings to flow and to reverse the curse.

Uh modern songs as well uh pick up on it.

Uh so you've got John Lennon's Your Merry Christmas, War is Over.

Um I'm not gonna not gonna sing it.

Um or stop the cavalry.

People recognize that as a Christmas song.

Um probably I could probably do this.

Uh, but it's the it's the John Lewis, it's a John or Jonah Lewis.

Uh it's the hey Mr.

Churchill comes on over here to say we're doing splendidly.

Yeah, right?

So it's a first world, it's a song about the first world war and about conflict and war that has happened on down the ages.

He says, I've been fighting this war for for centuries.

So the verse, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna kind of uh sing it, but hey Mr.

Churchill comes on over here to say we're doing splendidly, but it's very cold out here in the snow, marching to and from the enemy.

Oh, I say it's tough and I've had enough.

Can you stop the cavalry?

You recognize it now?

Oh, that's a Christmas one.

Yeah, I get it now.

I guess the most famous one of all is the uh is the band-aid one.

Do they know it's Christmas?

Uh, but say a prayer.

Pray for the other ones.

At Christmas time, it's hard when you're having fun.

There's a world outside your window, it's a world of dread and fear where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears.

And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom.

And you got Bono ripping out, well, thank God it's them instead of you.

Why?

Why is Advent a season where you have this overlap?

Where there's warm fields and chestnuts roasting by an open fire, and uh and you beautiful lights all strewn across the the city, and a weird Viking ship in the liffy, but happy Christmas from Dublin, apparently.

Um, and yet there's still just an awareness of the world not being as it as it should be.

Why do we make this connection?

Why do why do we do this?

Well, because we perceive the ongoing injustice, and we don't just want to kind of paper over it, we experience it.

Again, as Nicole was praying, we experience it in our in our own lives.

You know, last Christmas gave you my heart.

It's a song about heartbreak, right?

And and just amazing hair.

Um, but it's a song about a broken heart.

Um we're longing for there to be light in the darkness.

Maybe also there's a just kind of a a little bit of guilt.

There's a little bit of guilt that motivates perhaps the uh the band-aid song.

You know, we're all having fun, but there's a world outside your window.

There's maybe also a guilt that says, you know, we don't we don't always contribute to the advancement of the light that sometimes uh in other people's we we deepen the darkness.

That we're not always the rescuer, that sometimes we're the perpetrator as well.

And and there's a brokenness in us that needs to be fixed, and there's a brokenness that we contribute to to the people around us and and to society that that we can't quite deal with.

And so, what do people do?

Well, people look to leaders, experts.

We lobby politicians for change, or we make New Year's resolutions because we're going to change us, and they last for about 47 minutes.

And then we cycle back around again, and Advent comes back around, and we start the yearning and the longing again.

The Christian answer to the yearning and the longing of uh of Advent is that true hope and lasting justice and permanent global transformation cannot come from within our system, within our human system.

The someone must come from outside.

The light shines on people, Isaiah says in Isaiah 11.

On them a light has shined.

Not that it's come from within, so that they've shined their internal light, but on them something has come from outside in order to change things.

And Isaiah, all the way through his uh his book, his prophecies, uh, looks to this uh this king, this messiah, which means anointed, king, God's anointed.

That's where the word Christ comes from.

This servant who would come and who would make all things new, and then at the end of his book, he has this expansive vision of of what the renewal of all things might look like.

But he gives us a sense of it here in in Isaiah 11.

And so we're just gonna look at two things this morning.

We're gonna we're gonna look at this messiah, this this king, and then also his kingdom, because it really is remarkable.

Well, first of all, let's let's consider this uh this king.

Uh a few things to to note here.

The first is that this king comes when all hope seems to be lost.

So verse one of Isaiah 11, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

So what's the image?

The image is of this uh of this felled tree stump uh that you might see in a uh in a forest.

So it's still connected to the ground, but it's uh its structure has been completely torn down, and what begins to grow Isaiah sees is just this this new first budding of new life, of new growth, this this shoot that comes out of this fell stump.

This passage comes uh off the back of a couple of chapters of God pronouncing uh pronouncing judgment, first of all, on his people, on Israel, for their uh for their faithless faithlessness, for the injustice that had taken root in their society, for their pride in refusing to uh to turn to him and to trust him.

And so God says, Well, I'm going to I'm gonna send Assyria and I'm gonna wield Assyria like an axe, this ancient power, and I'm gonna wield Assyria like an axe, and its blade is going to hit the stump of Israel, and I'm gonna chop down the whole structure of that society.

And that's what happened uh in about uh 722 uh BC.

Assyria came and carried off the vast majority of uh of the people of Israel.

That axe fell, that judgment came.

And yet, even in the midst of that judgment, that darkness, God offers hope.

He offers a a glimpse of renewal.

Because that's how our that's how our God works.

God often acts uh in the context of deepening darkness.

He he offers a a glimpse of hope, he offers his rescue then when it seems that all hope was failing.

Why does he why does he operate like that?

Why does he act like that?

Well, when all hope is gone and he acts, there can be no confusion over who it is that's doing the rescuing.

Maybe in your own story, actually, God's coming to act in your life came when you were at your lowest.

And it seemed that the the darkness was profoundly deep.

And it seemed that all hope was uh was lost or certainly slipping away fast.

And that's when God reached you, and so that you could be under no illusions who it was was doing the rescuing.

God comes, this king comes when all hope seems to be lost.

Second thing about this king is that he comes to fulfill God's promises.

Uh, I'm sure you all have your letters to Santa written and sent off, and uh and you send them off uh up the chimney or wherever you uh wherever you put them, and you and you hope for the best.

You hope that uh that what you have wished for will come true.

Uh when I was a child, that didn't happen.

And I need to get this off my off my chest.

Uh, because uh for for years um I would write to Santa and I would ask him for a Mr.

Frosty ice cream maker.

Uh it was one of those things where you got ice cubes and you put it in the snowman, and the snowman grind up the ice, and uh, and then you squirted the flavoring on it, and you got like a you got like a snow cone.

And year after year after year, I would write to Santa Claus and say, please could I have a Mr.

Frosty ice cream maker?

And year after year after year, Santa Claus thought that it would make too much mess.

And so my wishes, my yearnings, my longings went unfulfilled.

Until I was 21 years old, my mom bought it for me as a joke.

But anyway, I'm over it.

Did it make a mess?

It did actually.

Yeah, it didn't make a mess.

Um but it was worth it.

It was so worth it.

Um still in my roof's face at home, actually.

If you ever want to come around and have a Mr.

Frosty snow cone, I'm so glad that God is not like Santa.

He comes to fulfill his promises, he hasn't forgotten about what he's promised.

And it's here in this reference to this guy called Jesse, you know, who's who's Jesse.

Jesse's David's daddy, David the king.

And so when Isaiah references Jesse, we're supposed to be thinking of David, his son, and the promise made to David that a king from his line would always eternally sit on his throne.

God made that promise to him.

You can read it in the second book of Samuel, 2 Samuel chapter 7.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

That's when God comes to David and said, You want to build me a house?

Don't worry about that.

I don't need a house to live in.

I'm gonna build you a house.

And I'm gonna establish your lineage forever.

But now the the axe has fallen.

The kings in Jerusalem have been carried off.

So has God forgotten his promises?

Has he thought uh like my like my mom that you know it would all make too much mess, and you know, I'm not gonna bother doing that?

No.

He is assuring us through the prophet Isaiah that God has not forgotten his promises, that this shoot, this new life, this new thing that God is doing will fulfill the promise made to David.

God promised that David's line would rule eternally.

And Isaiah is saying, God will make good on his promises, so do not lose hope.

That is something that that we need, isn't it?

In this advent waiting and this overlap of the of the ages, when we have our own longings and it looks like God isn't making good on his promises, that actually what we do is we look back to God's past faithfulness and we uh we with faith try and project that forward and say, well, actually, if God was, if if God, when all hope was lost, brought about his promises here, then is it reasonable for me to assume that he'll now forget me?

Or is it reasonable to assume that that he is continually faithful?

And yes, he works on a different time frame than I do, but he'll still make good to his promises.

And that's what he's doing through this through this king who's coming.

But there's more about Jesse.

The king that comes from Jesse also, and stay with me here, also precedes Jesse.

The king that comes from Jesse also precedes Jesse, because he's not just a shoot, he's a root.

You see a hint of that in chapter one, but or in sorry, in verse one, but it comes a little bit clearer in uh in verse 10, right at the end of the reading, where it says, In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal for the peoples.

Of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

And so we begin at the start with a shoot is springing forth, but this shoot is also a root.

The metaphor is getting uh complicated, it's getting mixed slightly.

Why?

Well, it's supposed to be uh hinting at us that this king is no ordinary king.

He's not just coming from David's loins, from David's line.

He's also preceding David and giving rise to that line in the same way that a root gives rise to the to the structure of the the tree.

The king that that gives hope does not have a normal human lineage.

He comes from miraculous origins.

He's the shoot of Jesse and Jesse's root, do you see?

And so we're gonna we're supposed to be thinking, oh, this is something new, this is something different, something, someone is coming from outside of the system in order to change our world.

And where does his power come from?

Where does this king derive his power?

Is it from his uh his charisma or his political savvy?

No, it comes from the endowment of the spirit.

That's what we read in verse 2.

Let me remind you of it.

Have a look at it if you've got it up on your phone or you have it in front of you in your Bible.

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.

Uh, just to be uh kind of slightly pernickety for a second, I can uh make a point about this.

There's either there's either seven references to the spirit here, or there's three.

Um, so it's either, so first, so first one, the spirit of the Lord, number one, shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of knowledge, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord, right?

Because it's the spirit of both of those things.

So it's either seven references to the spirit, or the first one is like a headline and then colon, and then you've got the spirit of wisdom and understanding, spirit of counsel and might, spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Why am I bringing that up?

Either way, seven or or three is supposed to communicate a perfect and permanent endowment of God's spirit.

So three would be akin to Isaiah's vision of the Angel shouting holy, holy, holy.

Uh it's not just that they uh they like to repeat themselves, it's like God is superlatively holy, you know, good, better, best, holy, holy, holy.

So three references of the spirit might be a perfect, superlative endowment, and seven, obviously, in the uh in the uh mind of uh uh the Bible is this idea of perfection.

Here's here's the point.

In the Old Testament, uh people were endowed by the Spirit of God uh temporarily for a particular role, so the kings were anointed uh for the time of their kingship and endowed with the spirit or a prophet was was kind of overtaken and empowered by the spirit for a time, for a time of their for their of their prophecy.

But Namaziah is looking to uh to a person and to a time when the spirit of God will permanently dwell upon and endow and uh and provid this king, never to be removed, of superlative measure, not given as a ration, but a but a full measure of God's empowering.

And so you get all of these descriptors heaped up of wisdom and understanding, that is enabling right judgment, of counsel and might.

These are words that come from the idea of kind of uh strategy uh in warfare and strength of arms, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.

Now, the the Lord here is the qualifier for knowledge, so it's the knowledge of the Lord and fear of the Lord, and so it's a it's a king who who would express right worship, who would follow God.

And this is particularly important because you read the kings of the Old Testament, some of them are pretty crap when it comes to worship, they worship false gods, but this king who's coming will know God truly and follow him rightly.

What's more, this king who who comes, there is no there's no ego, there's no pomp.

He does not clothe himself in ermine and thurman, he does not robe himself in finery.

No, what does he clothe himself in?

Verse 5: Righteousness.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, the faithfulness and faithfulness, the belt of his loins.

You see, you see dictators and worldly leaders coming out with all of the medals on their chest, many of them unearned.

This king does not come with medals, with military uniform or with uh or with regal crime, but with right judgment, with holiness, with perfect integrity.

And it is from there that he rules.

It is out of this spiritual endowment that he exercises his rule over all things.

And what is his rule like?

Well, it is good and it is just.

Verse 3 talks about uh how he shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear.

That is, he's not he's not given to flattery, nor is he given to bribery and corruption.

He has an unwavering commitment to justice that allows him to penetrate to the heart of the matter.

And what's more, verse 4, a little rhyme there, is that he subverts the expectations of the world.

With righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

One of the ways that the Old Testament often talks about the true and pure worship of God is for regard to the uh to the orphan and to the to the poor person, to the alien, and to the widow.

And here this king comes.

And he doesn't he doesn't look at those who are on the margins of society and say, that must be because God has condemned you, that you've done something wrong.

In fact, he would come to the rich and say, you guys are the ones that need to be careful, that you're not just getting all of the uh all of the riches now in this life and forgetting the God who made you.

We see that, don't we, in the in the gospels?

How this how this king elevates the state of the of the lowly and the marginalized, how outsiders become insiders.

How those who are poor and poor in spirit, how they find themselves blessed.

Or in Mary's song in Luke 2 in the min in the Magnificat, she talks in in just beautiful terms about this subversion, about how the uh how the the rich have been sent away with nothing.

It's the poor that uh that go away full.

How God regards those of lowly estate, and that's what this king comes to do.

This king comes to rule uh not with flattery or pride or corruption, but with an unwavering commitment to justice, and in particular with regard to the poor and to the lowly.

In his kingdom, might does not make right.

No, it is when we recognize our need, our own poverty, that this king comes to lift us up.

But there is also a warning, is there not in verse four?

His judgment comes, his judgment is swift and it is final.

He lifts no sword against the wicked, he speaks.

Yeah, that image at the end of verse 4, the breath of his lips shall kill the wicked.

What power, what authority does this king wield?

He is beautiful and terrifying.

He speaks and they are brought to naught.

That is the king.

Now, what of his kingdom?

Secondly.

What sort of world does this king rule over?

Well, we get images of it in verses uh six through to nine.

Let's just refresh our minds.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them, the cow and the bear shall graze their young shall lie down together, the lion shall eat straw like an ox, the nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den, and they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

What sort of rule?

Well, it is a place of unfathomable cosmic peace, sworn enemies now live in harmony.

In the in the kind of the first the first application to the first hearers in Isaiah, I think that they probably would have heard these images of uh of wolf and bear and lion in terms of the nations around them, probably.

Uh, because that's how Daniel pictures the nations around in those kind of uh in those predatory animalistic terms.

And and so what Isaiah is saying to the first here is that this is a uh this is a global political peace.

That actually the the wolf of of Babylon and the uh the the lion of Egypt, they'll no come, they'll no longer come and ravage the the lamb of God's people.

They will lie down together.

But of course, we see with uh with eyes that look forward to a different day, to a day of restoration and renewal of the entire cosmos, and what an image it gives of this universal peace.

We have also the image of the snake and the child, and I don't think that that's accidental.

I mean, obviously, in one level, you kind of get the image.

You don't want you don't want to take your uh your child and uh and say there's a there's a cobra's den, go go see if it wants to come out to play.

Um that's that's not a conversation that you that you have, and so it's obviously a very potent idea of well, if they can do that, then what peace has has come.

But it's not accidental that those two images are used, because you're supposed to be thinking back, you're supposed to be thinking back to to Eden and to a reversal of the curse, where there is no longer enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

That God is making all things new.

This picture in verses six to nine is a picture of Eden restored, of God and his people brought back together, of his people brought back home, never to be afraid again, never to live in darkness and fear and doubt and dread again.

And it's a promise not just for not just for them, not just for ethnic Israel, but it's a promise for all of the nations.

That is where Isaiah concludes in this part of the reading.

In that day, the root of the uh the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal for who?

For the peoples.

Of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

The coming of Jesus across the horizon of human history is the great banner to the world that God is drawing men and women from all walks of life, from every tribe and tongue and nation, from every culture and ethnicity, calling them to come to him to find rest in him, to know eternal hope now, because of him.

When will this happen?

When will this kingdom be realized?

At that event, we we look to two comings.

We look back to Jesus' first coming as a baby, and we look forward to his second coming when he will come again to restore all things.

And in the meantime, we live in this overlap of the ages where the kingdom of the kingdom of God has come now with the first coming of Jesus, but it is not yet fully realized.

Now Jesus has come, the shoot from the stump of Jesse has come to save people from sin's tyranny.

This king came not to restore all things through force of arms, but through outstretched arms.

That's what I said is going on in the context, and that's how our God works.

The axe of uh of Assyria was laid to Israel until this tender shoot of hope sprung forth.

And that's how God worked in Jesus' life.

In Jesus' death, the axe of God's judgment against all of our sin would fall again on Jesus in order to bring about the tender shoot of salvation and hope for each of us.

On the cross, wrath and mercy meet.

The cry of abandonment is the cry that brings us home.

And from that judgment springs a shoot of life.

The resurrection is the promise that all of the things that we look to will come true.

That one day all that is wrong and sad will come undone.

A day when the curse will finally be reversed.

And Isaiah is right at the end of verse 10, his resting place is glorious.

Because the Lord Jesus does not languish in a grave in Israel, but sits reposed upon a throne.

He is the eternal king on David's throne.

And if the promises of the past came true, do not die.

His future promises.

The one who came as Mary's son will come again.

And so another more modern Christmas hymn says, O Savior of our fallen race, the world shall see your radiant face.

For you who came to us before will come again and all restore.

Let songs of praise your name adorn, O Christ Redeemer, Virgin Born, whom with the Father we adore and Holy Spirit evermore.

So what do we do this Advent season?

As we wait, as we look, as we long, as we feel the disconnect, as we feel those yearnings of the curse.

What do we do?

We join him.

We join him in the renewal of all things.

Christ extends his rule, verse 9.

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Why is there an overlap at all between Jesus' first coming and his second?

Because the kingdom is advancing.

Because the kingdom is going forth.

The knowledge of the Lord is extending.

We are evidence of that.

You are evidence of that.

The Christ's rule by his glorious and true word is going out.

And so we do not sit in passive waiting, but we actively look, pray, speak, and participate in that renewal, stirred and motivated by an unassailable hope.

The acts of death, the acts of judgment will never fall again at the root of God's people.

He will return to restore all things.

And so we plead with those not yet part of that kingdom to come and see what wondrous things he has done.

That come, you weary soul, come, broken hearted one, come who feels the yearning and longing of the not rightness of this world and see the king who comes to all restore, who comes to make his blessings flow, for as the curse is found.

That all of the yearnings and longings that the Christmas song sing of are answered in the coming of Jesus and will be fully answered in his coming again.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

So we go to Bethlehem at this time.

We behold the shoot of Jesse would hang upon a bitter tree.

You and I might find ourselves rooted in him eternally.