The Promised One: Promises Fulfilled | Isaiah 11:1
A Baby Will Come: Prophecies of The Coming King • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Broken Line: Did God’s Plan Fail?
The Broken Line: Did God’s Plan Fail?
The Old Testament is made up of a series of promises. For 1000 years, God spoke through prophets and covenants to his people. His first covenant promise, which we discussed in our first sermon of this series, was the Adamic Covenant he made with Adam and Eve in the Garden. God continued to make covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, promise to bless his people, to give them land, a future, hope, and ultimately freedom from sin and death through a coming king.
He began speaking through covenants from the beginning, and through prophets like Moses who wrote the Torah, Genesis - Deuteronomy in 1400 B.C.
For the next 1000 years he would speak through various men, prophets who would tell his story to his people. The story of a coming king.
One of the greatest of these promises we find in the Davidic Covenant, the covenant God gave to David in 2 Samuel 7.
Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies,
the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.”
And Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you.”
But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan,
“Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord: Would you build me a house to dwell in?
I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling.
In all places where I have moved with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” ’
Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel.
And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.
And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly,
from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men,
but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.
And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’ ”
In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
Let’s look at the promises of God:
1. God reminded David that it was he who took him out of the pasture and made him king. (v. 8-9)
2. God stated that it would be HE not David who appointed a place for Israel (v. 10)
3. He then stated "Yahweh also declares to you that Yahweh will make a house for you...I will raise up one of your seed after you, who will come forth from your own body and I will establish his kingdom." (v. 11-12)
4. God then promised, "And your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever, your throne shall be established forever."
This is confirmed in Psalm 89:36-37
His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.” Selah
God thus promised to create an eternal kingdom with David on its throne.
And yet, the throne of David would soon be vacated by God as his descendants would be overtaken by Nebuchadnezzar and sent into exile. Then by 400 B.C., with the writing of Micah, God would be silent.
For the next 400 years, there would be no utterance from God.
In that time, David’s throne would become empty. Alexander the Great’s conquest would leave another king on the throne, a Greek King who would one day be filled by the days of Jesus not by a man of David’s line, but of the Levites, a Hasmonean named Herod the Great.
So the question that the Jews were asking was this: Did God’s rescue plan fail?
That brings us to the promise we find in Isaiah 11:1, 10
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.
The promise we are looking at today is the promise that God gave to Israel that the root of Jesse, a descendant of David would be on the throne of Israel.
The answer to that question is found in the New Testament. In the New Testament, we find the beginning of the story of God’s great rescue of all mankind.
In fact, Jesus and Paul affirm this fact with Paul saying in
For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.
And Jesus told the Pharisees in
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,
Jesus: The New David
Jesus: The New David
So God makes a promise, a promise that David’s Throne, Israel’s Throne would be filled by a descendant of David. The New Testament begins in the first book of the Canon with the answer to “Has God Failed?”
In Matthew 1:1-17 we find that Matthew, the writer who wrote to a Hebrew audience, begins with a genealogy of Jesus. Now, let’s be honest, genealogies are boring. And the Genealogy of Jesus is no different. But if you notice something in v. 17. a passage that is often overlooked as merely a interesting quirk has incredible significance.
In v. 17, Matthew says this:
So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.
Now why is this significant? Well for you and me it’s not. But for a first century Jew hearing this story for the first time, this would have been amazing!
Why, because a Hebrew would have noticed that the repetition of the number 14 3 times. Now there’s great significance in numbers in Hebrew. They hold great symbolic meaning. And one of those is the number 3. Many numbers in the Hebrew language tend to have a deeper meaning.
Three, shelosh[f.], sheloshah [m.] means harmony, new life, and completeness.
The number three appears in the Bible 467 times, fewer than the number seven, but more than most of the other symbolically important numbers. Three often means something complete and good.
Thus we find three sets of 14 to symbolize the completeness of the time.
The other important number is 14. This number, which is twice the number 7, the number of perfection. But more significantly when referring to Messiah the number 14 is the Number of David. If you were to turn David’s name to numbers in Hebrew it would add up to 14.
Thus Matthew is making a statement about the fact that this Baby was the New David.
Luke is even more explicit as he recalls the angelic proclamation to Mary in Luke 1:31-33
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
Thus Jesus fulfills God’s Promise to David that his throne would be forever filled by one of his descendants.
But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,
waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
Jesus came to be the perfect David and to fulfill God’s promise. Unlike David Jesus was not marred by adultery and murder. Unlike David, Jesus was perfecgly faithful to God. He came as the good king, the good shepherd over his people.
Kingship is something we don’t really understand in our day. We hear in history that the kings of old were often deified, proclaimed as gods after their deaths.
That’s because kings were literally the human representative of god to peolpe on earth. WHen kings spoke, they spoke with the authority of heaven. They were the mouthpieces of the gods. They embodied the divine.
David too, was to be a representative for God to the people of Israel, but he failed in many ways. But Jesus never did. He came and never sinned, he lived a perfect lifeand he alone is the only king worthy of being called King of kings and Lord of lords.
But that’s not the only Covenant Jesus fulfilled.
Luke alludes to this, because he states that Jesus is not only on the throne of Jesse, but also on the throne of the House of Jacob.
Jesus also fulfills God’s promise to Abraham.
Jesus: The Perfect Jacob
Jesus: The Perfect Jacob
Jesus is also the perfect Jacob. Jacob of course is the grandson of Abraham, the sone of Isaac, and the child of promise who received God’s blessing upon his children, the twelve tribes of Israel. But the story of the Old Testament is the story of Abraham’s descendants inability to be faithful and thus break their part in the covenant.
In the covenant God states:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
But there was another promise made to Israel, the name God gave Jacob through Moses. This covenant called the Mosaic covenant was a covenant between God and Israel that Israel would be his people, that they would be a Holy nation of priests to God and that he would defend them from their enemies. But there was a condition: “[I]f you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then. . . .” (Exod. 24:7).
Like the promise to David, the promise to Israel seemed to be lost. The people lived under foreign rule, their land belonged to another because of their sins.
But Jesus came to be the perfect Israel, and redeem Israel. That’s why you see in the life of Jesus so much parallel in his life to the life of Israel. These are details that would stand out to a Hebrew.
The Massacre of the innocence in Matthew 2:16-18 when Herod murdered the firstborn sons of Bethlehem was parallel to Pharaoh’s murder of the firstborn sons of Israel in Exodus.
The Children of Israel journeyed to Egypt to escape certain death at the hands of famine, and Jesus and His family fled into Egypt to escape certain death at the hands of King Herod.
(Matthew 2:13-18)
The Israelites were baptized in the Red Sea as they fled from the Egyptian army and in the Jordan River as they passed into the promised Land in Exodus 14:10-13, and Joshua 3-4, and Messiah was baptized by John the Baptist at the start of His earthly ministry. (Matthew 3:13-17)
The Jewish Nation wandered in the wilderness for 40 years on their way to the Promised Land.(Exodus 16:1-17:7) and Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, being tempted by Satan, before He began His earthly ministry. (Matthew 4:1-11)
Moses went up a mountain (Mt. Sinai) to get the Ten Commandments from God. (Exodus 19:1-23:33, 33)
Jesus delivered His most famous sermon from a mountain (the Mount of Olives), during which He pronounced the ten blessings known as The Beatitudes. (Matthew chapters 5 through 7)
Moses begged God to see him face to face as a man sees a man but God said he couldn’t see him and live, but regardless after Moses came down from the Mountain after getting the Ten Commandments, His face was shining with the Glory of God. (Exodus 34:29-35)
When Jesus went up on the Mount of Transfiguration, His disciples saw the shekinah glory of God glowing on his face, and he revealed himself in all of his heavenly splendor. Like Moses, his face shone like the sun. (Matthew 17:2)
Jesus came not only to fulfill God’s promise to David, but he also fulfilled His promise to Israel. Jesus fulfilled perfectly the tests that Israel failed.
He perfectly obeyed God’s voice and keep His covenant so that the True Israel, the Church made up of those Hebrews believers and Gentile believers who put their faith in Messiah.
The church has not replaced Israel, but Gentile believers have become a part of Israel in this sense—it is believers in the Jewish Messiah who are true Israel, whether they be Jew or Gentile.
So Jesus came to fulfill all the promises of God. Or as Paul put it:
For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.
Will you join me in uttering “our Amen to God for His Glory” this morning.
As we head towards Christmas, our invitation today is going to be different. Instead of softly playing music, if you will look to the screen or in your handout you will find a responsive reading. Today, we are going to affirm together these truths we found in our message. The truth that Jesus is the True Root of Jesse and the True Israel. Would you join me in this and then join me as we close in our song of benediction and prayer?