Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Pray
The fruit of Jesse?
v1 -9
Pray
It’s the latest BBC nature documentary and the camera pans across the great tree tops of a great forrest..
Tress great in number, height, spread and strength.
A forrest like the world has never known.
The forrest is the Assyrian Nation. of 800BC or so.
The mighty forest has outgrown it’s own lands and it has turned on a smaller weaker forests all around.
But one particular surrounding forrest is of interest in this documentary.
A forrest that used to be the pride of the earth itslef,
but turned it’s back on the forrest ranger and tried to go their own ways.
This now smaller and weaker forrest is Judah.
But the Great forrest has underestimated the rejected Forrest Ranger of Judah.
Speaking of Assyria in Isa 10v15
Assyria (as we know from History) will also fall.
isa 10 18
The great forrests destiny is determined in the prophesies of Isaiah, never to grow again.
The ranger (God in case you’re not following the imagery) has laid it to waste.
But they appear to have devastated the smaller weaker Forrest of Judah before it went.
That forrest too has been cut to the ground, burnt and poisoned in the these prophesies.
And so we watch our TV screens, we see what’s left of these 2 formerly great forests,
We search across the wasteland in dramatic David Attenborough style filmography,
drones sweeping across, filming, searching for life.
Anything other than weeds or thorns,
Nothing.
Assyria is gone,
Their rejection and attack on the forrest of the forrest ranger has become their downfall.
But Judah is also gone,
Their rejection of the ranger themselves has been their downfall.
wait.....
and the camera rolls round, it slows and zooms in on a chopped and burnt stump, right in the heart of the original forrest...
11v1
ISa 11
Isn’t it an extraordinary picture of God’s great love for His people.
God calls Israel to be His people,
yet they reject him.
They bring judgment and punishment on themselves,
at the hand of God,
so that they might face extinction.
Or so it seems,
so that there is nothing left,
other than to rely on and hope for a Messiah,
A shoot from Jesses stump,
Jesus,
A helpless baby,
Born into a royal line, yes, but one that had been so tarnished and abliterated in history that at the time Jesus was born no-one would recognise him as a king.
That’s proabbly why Isaiah uses Jesse’s stump (the father of King David),
rather than David’s stump
- to emphasis that he is of humble origin,
before the kingly reign of David and then the son’s of David.
And perhaps also to seperate the Ultimate messiah as equal to (or greater than) King David.
In the missery of sin and rebelion, judgement and destruction,
a shoot springs up into a baren wasteland of humanity.
Jesus is born.
No wonder the angels said they had good news!
No wonder we say ‘Happy Christmas’,
For good and happy is the brith of the shoot of Jesse’s stump,
The only hope in all the world is here.
And look, he’s not just another king in the line of David,
This time he is the one!
The Holy Spirirt will give him all wisdom, understanding, consel, power, knowledge and fear of the Lord.
And look, he wont be dependant on human limitations for his justice and life.
3-
Forget eyes and ears to determin righteousness, goodness, justice for all.
Jesus is righteousness!
He is the standard by which he brings justice and goodness to the earth.
He doesn’t need to see and hear to decide, he is the living embodiment of righteousness,
So now,
now we see the Messiah is here,
Now the good news is here,
Now righteousness itslef walks the earth to bring all things to justice,
Now in his great might he will destroy and slay the wicked.
PAUSE.
But aren’t we the wicked?
Wont he slay us?
Its a fair question for the remnant to ask at the time of Isaiah, and for us to ask today.
Is this really good news?
That Jesus will come as righteousness and judge the world as it deserves?
I think it is.
The people waiting in the OT for a Messiah are not perfect people.
They are people who know they need rescueing!
That’s why they are waiting for a messiah!
A saviour!
Someone to make them right with God again.
Someone who will know their heart IS for God,
even when their actions so often let them down.
People who have seen the deforestation of humanity and cry out to God,
please save us, forgive us.
Who cry, bring justice on the world and deliver me for I know you care.
And care he does.
Jesus, will restore his people,
all those who ‘desire the Messiah’,
not those who ‘deserve the Messiah’,
Not least because ‘Deserve the Messiah doesn’t rhyme’, but also becasue no-one deserves the Messiah.
.
But they must “desire the MEssiah’
Even though they don’t ‘deserve to preserve’.
(It’s Christmas - we need some poems don’t we).
ANd so, now we know we can be saved,
That Jesus is the only hope in this fallen forrest of a world,
That Jesus is empowered with all things good by the Spirirt of God,
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