Isaiah 10:33-11:2

33 Behold, the Lord God of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the great in height will be hewn down, and the lofty will be brought low. 34 He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon will fall by the Majestic One.

11 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 2 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.

Target Date: Sunday, 24 March 2024

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

34 – axe - בַּרְזֶֶל barzel, bar-zel’; perh. from the root of 1269; iron (as cutting); by extens. an iron implement:— (ax) head, iron.

This is not just an axe, it is an iron axe, the strongest implement known.

2 – rest - נוּחַ nûwach, noo’-akh; a prim. root; to rest, i.e. settle down; used in a great variety of applications, lit. and fig., intr., tran. and caus. (to dwell, stay, let fall, place, let alone, withdraw, give comfort, etc.):— cease, be confederate, lay, let down, (be) quiet, remain, (cause to, be at, give, have, make to) rest, set down. comp. 3241. with בְּ or עַל: to settle down (:: נסע) Gn 8:4 Ex 10:14 Jos 3:13, רוּחַ Nu 11:25f 2S 21:10 2K 2:15 Is 7:19 11:2

Used in both senses of coming to rest and to repose.

Sermon Text:

There are sometimes when we read the Scriptures, and we feel a little of how insignificant we are, how great God is.

Unfortunately, there are, too often, more times when we don’t come away with the appropriate understanding of the majesty of the God we serve through Jesus Christ.

It is too easy for us to approach the word of the Unexplainable God, whose most foolish thought is wiser than the combined wisdom of all people, in an inappropriate way.

We might go to the Scriptures seeking to defend our understanding rather than seeking to understand God’s truth He has revealed.

That happens a lot when we get into theological arguments with others.

We gather each and any verse that seems to agree with our opinion.

There are, indeed, some times when this is entirely appropriate;

The men who wrote our confession, no doubt, scoured the Scripture not only for supporting verses but verses that challenged their beliefs.

And there is call for good understanding of the Bible when dealing with heresies that deny the true faith.

But we need to be careful if that becomes the dominant time we spend in the Scriptures;

We cannot ALWAYS be battling others;

Sometimes, even most often, we need to allow God to feed our spirits through His word.

To bring us to His word the way He chooses to bring us, not simply the way we choose to come with the agenda we set for ourselves.

I think if we do come with our own agenda to the Scriptures, we might miss passages like the one we are considering today.

It is a little unusual because it straddles a chapter division, but we must remember the chapters and verses were not in the text of Scripture, but are added much later to help us locate and reference certain statements.

The men who made these divisions did, for the most part, make wise and natural choices, but I think they missed it here.

You may remember from last week that for the greatest part of chapter 10, Isaiah was talking about how God was using the Assyrians to carry out His judgment, but He would judge them in their turn because their deeds were evil as well.

If you look back up to verse 32, Isaiah has been describing the invasion route of Assyria into Israel and Judah, and he comes to this:

This very day he will halt at Nob; he will shake his fist at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

Many commentators, as well as the men who made the chapter divisions, thought these next two verses 33-34 were meant to describe God’s miraculous victory over Assyria during their siege of Jerusalem.

And, I will confess, it bothered me a lot that I didn’t see it that way.

What I see is between verse 32 and 33, there is what we might call a shift of the camera.

In verse 32, we see the Assyrian army surrounding Jerusalem, threatening complete destruction to them.

But then in verse 33, we back out and see the view of what God had wrought with the weapon of the Assyrians in His hands.

Israel and Judah were leveled, the greatest among them, the most exalted, cut off completely, like a forest that has been clear-cut.

I have 3 good reasons I will not bore you with today, but I am also pleased to tell you all that in reading some commentaries on this passage, John Calvin reads it the same way (and for the same reasons).

So with that setting in mind, let’s take a look at what we find in this powerful passage.

Behold, the Lord God of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power…

He begins this verse with the powerful interjection Behold!

Personally, when we find this word at the front of a sentence like this, I would probably use an exclamation point to write it out.

Look! Open your eyes! See what is happening! Pay attention!

The word is really common – used almost 2000 times in the Old Testament alone.

But when it is put into this leading position, it has a much more urgent meaning.

Less like “Look at that puppy”, or even “Look! A puppy!”

And more like “Look! You’re about to run over a puppy!”

Look! The Sovereign Lord, Yahweh of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrible violence…

That is what he is saying.

The Sovereign God, who has been offended and forgotten by His people, will use the terrible Assyrian (and later Babylonian) armies to bring His destruction on them.

You may not have used the term “lop the boughs” recently.

It means to cut the top and branches out of a tree.

Except in this setting, it is much more terribly violent.

It brings up the picture of God swinging this great axe, made of iron we find out in verse 34, and as He swings it, it passes through the trees as if they were paper.

They offer no real resistance; they don’t even require a second swing.

Every swing of the axe violently and immediately leaves nothing but stumps.

Back when I was a kid, my dad let me use a tool called a “sling blade” to chop some tall grass.

If you’ve seen it, it is a blade that is very sharp at the end of a long handle.

You sling it back and forth, and it just passes through the grass with every swing.

If you swing it fast, it slices right through the grass with no resistance at all.

That is the picture here, except it is the Sovereign, all-powerful God of all creation swinging a great axe and felling great trees with each swing.

We see a similar thing in Revelation 14:14-19:

Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” 16 So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped. 17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

Except God isn’t talking about trees here; He’s talking about lopping off entire cities, villages, and families with the wrathful violence of His judgment.

This week I saw perhaps the most ridiculous video of some of the biggest heretics of our day.

They were each declaring to their victims, I mean followers, that God doesn’t exercise CONTROL on the earth, that He requires OUR PERMISSION in prayer to act here.

Only the absolutely blind or the willfully evil could see what Isaiah says here in this passage and think that God doesn’t have control.

He is SOVEREIGN.

And it is a terrible thing to see when the Lord Almighty bares His holy arm (Isaiah 52:10).

Hebrews 10:30-31 - For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

At the end of verse 34, we are reminded why God is doing this.

The great clear-cutting of Israel, so that only a Remnant remains, is done by the “Majestic One”.

He does it for His own glory.

Friends, if you don’t like God acting to establish and proclaim His own glory, get over it.

He is worthy of all glory, all praise.

He ALONE is worthy.

There is no higher calling or purpose that the glory of God.

And you can have no higher purpose than glorifying Him; I don’t care what else you think you might need to do.

There is only One who will live and rule forever, and it isn’t you.

Yes, we are forbidden from glorifying ourselves (although we are often tempted to do it anyway).

But that is because our Lord, the Sovereign God of hosts, is the only one who is worthy of that kind of glory.

I hope you feel small, even perhaps insignificant, in comparison to our great God.

Not enough people do.

They challenge God, shake their fists at Him.

They think they can defeat the idea of God by their cleverness or their logical systems.

How does God react to all their schemes and plans?

He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. 5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 6 “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” - Psalm 2:4-6

Then chapter 11 begins with the promise: a shoot from the stump of Jesse.

God has clear-cut His people, more than decimating them until only the stumps of families are left.

He has left only the stumps – yes.

But think about it this way – He has left the stumps.

He could have wiped them out entirely, beginning again with His faithful servant Isaiah like He did with Noah and, later, with Abram.

But He didn’t wipe them all out; there was grace and mercy even in His wrath and judgment.

We must never forget that.

Even when people are reaping the painful and humiliating penalty for their sin, we must STILL offer them the grace and mercy of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Even if they have rejected the offer of the gospel through Jesus Christ in the past, their current affliction may very well be God’s gracious lopping of their pride so they can come to Him.

Not everyone who comes to Christ comes to Him easily, raised in church, learning the Bible from a young age.

That is certainly the way I pray for your loved ones to come, though.

But some come to Jesus Christ violently, forcibly separated from their sin, suffering the consequences of their lives.

They come to Him because they have literally nothing left on earth.

Their lives, led by them into greater and greater sin, have crashed into the ground and left a giant crater where they landed.

For some, the separation from their sin or addiction hurts them more than being separated from a hand or an eye.

And these are the ones I pray our church, each of you, will embrace when God brings them into your path as you discover more and more why the gospel is truly “good news”.

Because the gospel is all about what God has done through one man – Jesus Christ – and what He accomplished for you if you will repent and believe.

Which brings us to the last verse we will look at today.

The most surprising word to the people listening to Isaiah preach this?

“Him”

Isaiah has been talking this entire time about armies and nations and tribes and families.

The Sovereign Lord cutting down whole forests of people who have rejected and abandoned Him.

So when Isaiah talks about a “shoot from the stump of Jesse”, the natural thing for everyone to think is that God is promising a new line of blessing for Israel, a new family or tribe.

But then he says “Him”.

Him.

Not a family line – a single man.

Not a group or a partnership – Him.

Every promise God has made to the Remnant, every promise of salvation and redemption, finds its entire completion in ONE MAN.

He doesn’t use the term “Messiah” here, but that’s who he is talking about it.

Even the non-Christian and pre-Christian rabbis recognize this is the description of the Messiah.

We won’t go far into the description today, but I do want to look at the first thing Isaiah says about Him: The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him.

Not the spirit of a prophet.

The Spirit of the Lord – The Holy Spirit – will rest upon Him, will settle down upon Him.

Matthew 3:16 - And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him

I don’t think this one incident is ALL Isaiah meant, but I DO think the prophecy of Isaiah is what Matthew is referring to.

The Holy Spirit is not normally visible, being like the wind so that you see His effects but not His source or destination.

But in this case, at this moment, the Spirit can be seen, and He comes to rest upon the Messiah of God.

Next week, if the Lord is willing, I plan to move into the rest of chapter 11 to look at what this man is like on whom the Spirit of God rests.

That is surprising also, so I will give you something to consider this week:

Up until this verse, we have been told about the wrath and judgment of God, the terrible anger of God.

And so what will the man be like upon whom that Spirit of God rests?

Will He be the One who completes the righteous judgment of the world when He comes?

Or will He be something only God could send?