The Axe and its Wielder

Isaiah 11:1-10

Introduction

Continuing with our series through the book of Isaiah

As we’ve been talking through this idea of the City of God standing in stark contrast to the City of Man, hopefully one of the things that you’ve seen thus far is that one of the biggest differences between these two cities are who their leaders are

The City of God is led by Christ

And the City of Man has been led by fallen human beings

Not all human leaders are bad, but no one is perfectly loving and perfectly righteous and has all dominion over heaven and earth other than Jesus Christ

So as we continue to think through this theme of the City of God, never lose sight of what makes the City of God…the City of God: God

Today, we’re going to see this stark contrast between God and corrupt human leaders even more clearly

Intro

What is the definition of power?

Is power being physically strong?

Is power having control over other people?

Is power the ability to hurt other people?

What is power?

Well, let’s backtrack. Go ahead and turn all the way back to chapter 10

Assyria

Look down at verse 5. Who is this section written to? It’s written to Assyria

Is Assyria in Israel?

But wait…I thought Isaiah was a prophet for Israel?

He is. All of Isaiah’s prophesies are for Israel, but not all of them are to Israel

What do I mean by this? The reason why a prophesy against Assyria is still for Israel is because Assyria is going to be the nation that God uses to destroy Israel and take the Israelites into captivity

Babylon ultimately takes over the Southern Kingdom of Judah, but Assyria takes over the Northern Kingdom of Israel

Go ahead and look down at verse 5 Isaiah 10:5–10 “Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few; for he says: “Are not my commanders all kings? Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,”

So basically what this passage is saying is: Hey. I, God, am sending Assyria against my people whom I am very angry with

But the king of Assyria won’t understand that I’m using him—that he’s just a tool. He just simply wants to destroy Israel, and when he does, he’ll boast that his gods are stronger than me

But what is God going to do in response? Look down at verse 12

In response, God pronounces judgement over Assyria for their evil, their arrogance, and their blasphemy

He says He’s going to strike them down with a sickness before burning them down completely

Later on in the book of Isaiah, we’re going to see God literally strike down the armies of Assyria with a sickness

And then even after that, Assyria eventually falls to Babylon

But God isn’t just a God of destruction, He’s also a God of redemption.

Jesus

Go ahead and look at ch. 11 v. 1 Isaiah 11:1–5 “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, 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 his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; 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.”

So in the place of fallen Assyria come a better kingdom, and that is the kingdom of God

And here we can see the arrogance and the wickedness of the human kingdom of Assyria contrasted against the humility and Godliness of the City of God

Notice too that Isaiah continues with this theme of the City of God being seemingly small and insignificant

What comes from the stump of Jesse? A little branch, a little fruit tree

Notice too that there’s this theme of trees that runs throughout this narrative

In chapter 10 verse 15, we see that God compares Assyria to an axe that chops down the tree of Israel

And in its place sprouts a grand forest

But what does verse 16 say: the Lord is going to burn down that forest. And look at verse 17 Isaiah 10:17–19 “The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day. The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land the Lord will destroy, both soul and body, and it will be as when a sick man wastes away. The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down.”

And then look at verse 34 Isaiah 10:34 “He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon will fall by the Majestic One.”

And then look at how chapter 11 starts Isaiah 11:1 “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”

So what rises from the ashes of this arrogant nation? A stump that grows into a tree: the Kingdom of God

And who is this branch? The King. Not an arrogant or wicked king like the king of Assyria. What will this new king be like? Go ahead and look down at verse 4

Give justice to the poor

Make fair decisions for the exploited

Bring all creation and all nature under his authority

Destroy the wicked

Rule with righteousness and faithfulness

And here we see an idea that most of you are probably familiar with, but I wanted to take some time to meditate on it, and that idea is this: Jesus uses his power for good, not evil

Power

See, with reading this passage, a question might come to our minds: how much power does God give us, and what is the nature of the power God gives us

In the case of our passage today, we see God, at some level, uses the Assyrians to accomplish his plans

Look at Isaiah 10:15 “Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? As if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!”

What God is saying is that when the Assyrians boast about how much more powerful they are than Israel, it’s like an axe boasting about how sharp it is. But would the axe have any power if it weren’t for the one wielding it?

So again, we see God, at some level, uses the Assyrians to accomplish his plans

And yet, the Assyrians are still held responsible and are liable to judgement

So how could God, on one hand, wield the axe — but on the other hand, judge them for being wielded?

Well, we have to ask ourselves what exactly God is doing. Is He overriding the Assyrians’ free will only to then judge them for what He made them do? I don’t think that’s what he’s doing here

I think what He’s doing is this: God is handing the Assyrians over to the Devil and withdrawing His protection from the Israelites. He’s not overriding their free will, He’s not the one doing the evil, but He is allowing it for the sake of justice

We see this happen all the time in the Bible

God allows the devil to attack Job and his family

Paul tells the Corinthians to hand unrepentant sinners over to Satan so that they might repent

The Holy Spirit is taken from king Saul and is replaced by a demonic spirit to torment him

God allows a lying spirit to attack king Ahab

God hands Judas Iscariot over to Satan so that he might betray Jesus

And these are just a handful of examples

So we can actually see from this that when the king of Assyria boasts about how his gods are stronger than the God of Israel, on the surface, he isn’t wrong

By allowing Assyria to defeat Israel, God is essentially allowing them to humiliate him before the watching world

Back then, if a nation defeated another nation in war, it was a sign that the victorious nation’s god was stronger than the defeated nation’s god

So by giving His people over to the Assyrians, we see that God is willing to suffer the humiliation of defeat because He will not allow injustice to go unpunished

God is aware of the evil in this world. Sometimes He steps in to stop it, and sometimes He allows it to continue

But the evil He allows to continue He allows to continue. Nothing is out of His control

Jesus has brought the City of God down to earth, but it is not fully here yet.

One day it will come fully, and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb

The calf and the lion will lie down together.

All evil will cease under the perfect authority of Jesus

But until that day comes, we wait and we hope in a God that we believe has complete control over the things that go on in this world

And this is a hopeful message to us today. God is in control, and he has called us to be a people that spread His message of love, hope, and peace

The State of the World

Listen, we need to hold onto this message, because the world can be pretty messed up sometimes

Depression rates are skyrocketing, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are more unsettled than ever before

And why is that? I think it’s due to the weight of injustice and the pressure to fix it

Think about it this way. Your parents when they were your age were only aware of local tragedies (newspaper, friends, parents, local news for 30 minutes)

Today, you are inundated with every major tragedy around the world from just strolling on your phone for 30 minutes

And even if you don’t have a phone, everybody that does is constantly talking about every messed up thing in the world

You were not meant to shoulder the burden of that much tragedy. It’s debilitating and it is not good for you, yet it is unavoidable

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Pastor who covertly fought against the Nazis in WWII

And in a work titled “After 10 years,” he reflects on how Hitler and the Nazis and WWII has impacted his mind and spirt

And he had this to say: We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men

What is he saying? He’s saying that living in Nazi Germany has been like being drenched in many storms. He’s become suspicious of his fellow man, he’s less inclined to speak truthfully and openly, and he’s become cynical to the world around him

Does this resonate with any of you?

Do you find yourself quicker to judge someone who takes a different view than you?

Do you find it much more nerve wracking to speak the truth in love?

Do you find yourself becoming so overwhelmed by the evil around you that you just kind of shut down and become cynical?

Well, what’s his solution? We don’t need geniuses who can fix things, we don’t need people who are more eager to fight. What we need is plain, honest, and straightforward men

In other words, the solution is to do what you can by living as a citizen of the City of God

A Pleasing Aroma

There’s this great book I had to read for school called The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb, and it’s an examination of how we as Christians should view power

And in it, he makes the observation that when we as Christians see people abusing power, our response often is to reject the concept of power altogether because how could power be good if we see it being abused in this way?

But in response, he actually encourages Christians not to reject power, but to embrace it

He says this: In Christ, we come to receive the kind of power God offers: the power of the cross. This is a power known through death and resurrection—moving through our weakness to a new kind of strength—strength in abiding in, submitting to, and resting in Christ alone.

Let me ask you a question: what exactly is power? If you had to define it, what would you define power as?

Well, I actually like their definition of power: “Power is the capacity to affect reality. God has given us the capacity for good—to glorify him and bless the world”

Everywhere Jesus went, he was using his power to affect good change (casting out demons, healing the sick, loving sinners and gently calling them to repentance)

We have been called to do the same thing

If you’re wondering if you are using the power given to you by Christ to affect good change in the world, consider this question: If we are pierced, what do we bleed? Do we bleed forgiveness, love, and grace? Or anger, hatred, and domination?

2 Corinthians 2:15 “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,”