Advent in Isaiah: Far From Home (Isaiah 11:1-10)

Advent: Coming Home for Christmas

The Advent season is upon us. We begin a new series for Advent. Coming home for Christmas. Some of you are probably thinking, “I didn’t know we weren’t home”. Others are wondering about Advent itself. For many of us, Advent has been just the lead up to Christmas. And all that means are more songs, more lights, more peppermint, more decorations. But there’s more to Advent than this. Advent is simply a Latin word that means coming or arrival. It’s the beginning of the Church’s year, the first Sunday on our calendar, where the Church slows down and leans forward in expectation. Advent is a season that teaches us how to wait — but not the anxious kind of waiting we do in lines or traffic. Advent is the waiting of people who know Someone is coming. It is the season where we prepare our hearts for the celebration of Christ’s first coming at Bethlehem and, at the same time, lift our eyes toward His second coming when He will make all things new. Advent is the Church’s way of saying, “The world is not as it should be… but the King is coming.”

So this Advent, we’re Coming home for Christmas. Think of it as a journey. But we’re going to start our journey in a strange place. The Prophet Isaiah is going to point the Advent spotlight on a stump. A tree stump. Not a gorgeous Christmas tree like the one in our welcome area. Not a Hallmark tree. A stump. Rough. Scarred. Lifeless. There’s nothing cute about a stump. It’s not pretty. Nobody takes Christmas card photos in front of a stump. Kids don’t gather around it for story time. You don’t drive home from the nursery with a stump strapped to the roof of your car. Stumps are yard sores. Annoyances. Anyone ever tried to remove a stump from their yard? Not fun. You have to mow around it. You can’t play tag football around it without trying to not trip over it. It’s in the way.

It used to be a tree, but those days are gone. It’s done. And now, nobody wants it. Some of those stumps have been in the yard for years. A stump is what’s left when something strong and living has been cut down. And after enough time, that stump just sits there —a reminder of what used to be, what should have been, what could have been.

And Isaiah begins this advent with the audacity to say: “That. Start right there. Look at the stump.” Because the Advent story doesn’t begin at the North Pole. It starts at the stump — Israel’s stump, David’s stump, your stump, mine — the place where all our pretending has been cut down to size.

The Stump

Here’s where Isaiah starts:

Isaiah 11:1 “A shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse.

That just odd. Weird really. Not exactly the December vibe we were hoping for. Isaiah doesn’t speak these words into a peaceful December evening. Isaiah 11 is born out of geopolitical terror. When Isaiah steps onto the scene, the northern kingdom of Israel has just been crushed by the Assyrian war machine. And “war machine” isn’t a metaphor. Assyria invented terror as a military strategy — siege warfare, forced deportations, cultural erasure, public brutality. They didn’t just defeat nations. They erased them.

Samaria, the northern kingdom’s capital, fell in 722 BC. Its people were dragged off in chains, scattered across the empire, absorbed into foreign lands, their identity shredded. This is what the world saw when they looked at Assyria: a monster devouring everything in its path. And Isaiah is preaching to Judah — the southern kingdom — who is next in line on Assyria’s hit list. Imagine being a parent in Jerusalem hearing rumors about whole cities flattened. Imagine hearing about cousins and family in Samaria who never came home. Imagine seeing the smoke on the horizon and knowing the empire responsible is marching closer every year.

That’s the backdrop of Isaiah 11. The family tree that began with King David — actually, David’s father Jesse— is being cut down because they had forgotten its God, tells Judah the truth: “Your tree is coming down.” “The axe is already at the root.” “You will be a stump.”

Israel’s home didn’t fall in one night. It unraveled through generations — kings who strayed, hearts that wandered, people who forgot the God who brought them out of Egypt. And finally the axe fell. The house of David became a stump. Isaiah’s audience knew the sound of axes. They’d watched the northern kingdom fall. They’d heard the rumors: “You’re next.” You’re nothing but a stump. The stump for Israel, then, is a symbol of their exile. Their homelessness. That stump says, “you’re far from home.”

But this isn’t just Judah’s obituary. This is our story. Long before Assyria, long before Jerusalem’s smoke, long before Isaiah, humanity lost its first and truest home. We walked ourselves out of Eden. We chose exile. And the distance between God and humanity has marked every moment since. You and I were born in that exile… Every symptom we carry is a sign of exile: The sin we keep running back to. The guilt that won’t shut up. The pain we didn’t choose. The fear we can’t shake. The performance expectations that keeps us awake. It’s a world where nothing fits quite right. Our hearts are aching for something we cannot name. And Isaiah nods and says, “Yep. That’s not your imagination. That ache is the memory of a home you lost. Exile is real. That ‘exile’ is a lifeless stump.”

A Shoot

But the stump — the cut-down place — is never the last word with God. Isaiah shows us the stump, but that stump is all part of a promise. In fact, Isaiah speaks a promise that is absolutely absurd:

Isaiah 11:1 Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse.

A shoot is a new, living sprout that grows out of something that looks dead — like a stump, root, or fallen tree. It’s the tiny green growth that pushes its way through old wood. If you’ve ever cut down a tree and left the stump, you may have seen this: months later, a little green sprig pushes out of the side — fragile, unexpected, but very alive. Isaiah’s promise is that there is a sprout that is coming. And that living sprout isn’t coming from Israel. It’s not coming from military victory. It’s not coming from your best life now. It’s not coming from all the trappings of success. It’s coming from a stump… the lifeless, unlovely, dead stump. A stump that signifies homelessness and exile.

That shoot is just the beginning. All 10 verses here are pure promise.

Isaiah 11:2–10 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him...His delight will be in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees ...he will judge the poor righteously and execute justice for the oppressed of the land. The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat..An infant will play beside the cobra’s pit, and a toddler will put his hand into a snake’s den. The nations will look to him for guidance, and his resting place will be glorious.

He will. They will. The nations will… over and over and over… promise, promise, promise. And all of this starts with the stump… the dead thing. The unlovely thing. There is the promise of a Person who is going to make everything right.

And that shoot isn’t going to come from Israel’s strength. There will be no heroic moment. Human possibility or potential can’t do this. The Shoot, Jesus Himself, is pure gift. This is all promise.. And that promise lands in Bethlehem. That’s life from the stump. Right where life should be impossible… God plants Himself.

That’s Christmas. Jesus doesn’t drop a pin on a spiritual map and say, “Meet Me here.” Not going to knock the religious journies that we hear about and see, although most of them are about trying to earn God’s favor. But there’s nothing about Jesus that does that. Nothing. Jesus doesn’t require us to walk 5000 miles to get to where he is. Or 5000 feet. Jesus comes to where we are at. Jesus comes all the way into our exile — into the cold, into the disappointment, into the danger, into the darkness, into the manger. The God who made galaxies is born in a feed trough surrounded by the sounds and smells of animals.

Talk about far from home. He doesn’t just sympathize with exiles. He becomes the Exile —pushed to the margins, misunderstood, rejected, condemned, crucified outside the city gate. And in His death Jesus does the impossible: He gives you His life. He gives you himself. Jesus is the Way home. Home is not a place. Home is a Person. Home is Jesus. And Jesus has come for you. Advent is not “New and Improved You Season.” Advent is the arrival of Christ for sinners who can’t fix themselves.

Jesus locates Himself for you in actual places: In the preached Word. In water that has His Name wrapped around it. In bread and wine that don’t just symbolize something — they give something. They give Him. This is the Shoot of Jesse, growing where no one expected life. And it’s all FOR YOU.

A Divine Warrior FOR YOU

Sitting in the middle of all these promises is a promise unlike the rest:

Isaiah 11:5 “Righteousness will be a belt around his hips; faithfulness will be a belt around his waist.”

That’s the imagery of not just a branch or a green growth. That’s the image of a warrior. This isn’t some weak branch, but a green, living branch that wears His gifts for His people… His righteousness and His faithfulness. He wears this belt because this is who He is FOR YOU. The righteousness you don’t have, the righteousness you lacked leading to you being a stump in the first place… he’s has His righteousness FOR YOU. That faithfulness you do not have, Jesus has. And he’s using that righteousness… that perfection needed to be right with God… he uses that to bring you home. It’s FOR YOU.

That Warrior, that branch, A shoot has sprung from the stump. His name is Jesus. He has come to bring you home. He has come to build what cannot be shaken. He has come to be your life, your peace, your rest. The shoot grows into the world exactly where the world is most ruined — not in Jerusalem’s palace, but in Bethlehem’s stable. A manger. A feeding trough. A back alley birth. A cold night, a frightened teenage girl, a forgotten carpenter, and God Himself wrapped in human skin. Talk about far from home.

The One who dwelt in glory now lies where animals eat. The Eternal Word cries like a newborn. The Holy One breathes the air of exile. Why? FOR YOU. He’s doing it FOR YOU. The only way that we can ever experience home is for Jesus to enter the homelessness Himself. He suffers everything that makes us spiritual wanderers. He ultimately ends up on a cross and bears the curse that made us homeless in the first place. On the cross, Jesus is as far from his home as anyone can be… and he does it to become our home.

Jesus isn’t just showing us the way home. If there’s any myth to bust this morning it’s this one. I don’t know how many times I hear “Jesus shows us the way this”, “Jesus shows us the way that”. That’s the Christianity of possibility. But Jesus didn’t come to make everything possible for us. He came to do, to be, to accomplish for us. To be what we cannot be on our behalf. Jesus isn’t just showing us the way home. Jesus IS home. He left His home to become home FOR US.

The Jesse Tree in San Benito

And as we stand here in Advent — people longing for home, people who know what a stump feels like — I want you to picture something you’ve probably seen in more and more Christian homes this season: a Jesse Tree. It’s a simple thing. A bare tree. Sometimes just branches in a vase. Sometimes it’s literally a stump with a few twigs sticking out. And each day of Advent, a child hangs an ornament… stories of God’s promises… stories of sinners and saints and failures and kings… The Jesse Tree is an Advent confession that God grows salvation out of stumps.

Every ornament is a testimony that God brings life where no life should be. And every time a child hangs an ornament, they are proclaiming Isaiah 11 to the world:

Isaiah 11:1 A shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

Life out of death. A home out of exile. You see, this isn’t just a children’s project. That’s our story. That’s San Benito’s story. That’s The Table’s story. We are a Jesse Tree congregation — a community planted by God in a world of stumps, a place where Christ, the Shoot, is growing something new. And God placed you here —in this mission outpost called The Table in this city we love, among neighbors who feel cut down, among families worn thin, among people living in exile they don’t know how to name —to raise the signal Isaiah promised:

Isaiah 11:10 On that day the root of Jesse will stand as a signal for the peoples. The nations will look to him for guidance, and his resting place will be glorious.

That day arrived with Jesus. And it continues with us. Jesus stands as a signal. Not a signal of our brand. Not a signal of how great we are. Not a signal of how successful we are or how successful we think we can make you. We can’t. The signal is Jesus. The branch. The shoot. The Divine Warrior. The home we all long for.

Jesus is our home. One of the best things I’ve heard one of you say about our Christmas lights that have been hung outside around the exterior of our building:

“The church looks like it’s lived in.”

That’s our Advent invitation. The church is a home, not because we have made it a home, but because Jesus lives here. Jesus is our home. Home is not far away. Home is here, where Jesus comes to dwell among His people. This is Advent in San Benito. This is mission in San Benito. This is the joy of being a Jesse Tree people—a people who know what it is to be cut down and who have been given a home in Christ. This world — busy, broken, beautiful, exhausting — is not our home. But our home has come to us.

Let’s Pray

The Table

You don’t just hear this homecoming. You eat it. You drink it. You receive it. What Isaiah saw from a distance, the Table places into your hands. Jesus says, right here, right now, that I am home for you. Come and be at rest and find your home in me. This is not symbolic nostalgia. This is not a ritual about a memory. This is the true Body and true Blood of the true King — the Shoot from Jesse, the Divine Warrior who is your righteousness and faithfulness FOR YOU. In His body and in His blood.

Benediction