Lion Lamb Transformational

Jab 1

Transformers - Who has seen these movies?

transitive verb

1a: to change in composition or structure

b: to change the outward form or appearance of

c: to change in character or condition

What are things in nature that we see TRANSFORM.......Caterpillars, Chicks, Tadpole to frog, Babies,

Jab2

Transform

transitive verb

1a: to change in composition or structure

b: to change the outward form or appearance of

c: to change in character or condition

What are things in nature that we see TRANSFORM.......Caterpillars, Chicks, Tadpole to frog, Babies, adults

Jab 3

After some time, all cells eventually shrivel and die.

the cells that line your stomach can renew as fast as every two days, since they're often in contact with digestive acid. Cells that make up your skin are replaced every two to three weeks. As the main protection against the environment, your skin needs to be in top shape.

Red blood cells, meanwhile, last for about four months. White blood cells, the main players in fighting infections, can last from a few days to a little over a week. In contrast, your fat cells live a fairly long time — an average age of 10 years. The bones in your body also regenerate about every 10 years.

Right Hook

transitive verb

1a: to change in composition or structure

b: to change the outward form or appearance of

c: to change in character or condition

Transformation......have you ever stopped to ask what does a transformed church look like? I have been in prayer alot about vision for Melwood asking God to give me his eyes.....we have been talking about vision for Melwood in our board meeting last week.

What are things in nature that we see TRANSFORM.......Caterpillars, Chicks, Tadpole to frog, Babies,

Right Hook

I stopped and I wondered what does God envision for his church globally, and how that effects us at Melwood.

Isaiah is written Prophetic language and that meansThe writer uses metaphors as to his method of communication. The reason for this is because sometimes what is being communicatedIt Is from the heavenly realm, And eternal realm And it can be difficult to Make The eternal tangible sometimes.

We know metaphors such as He wasA ravenous wolf at dinner tonight! We aren't saying that someone transformed into a wolf from a person. We are making the comparison of how a person can be hungry enough To eat like a wolf.

So what we are getting to look at together is language that Isaiah used to describe something that hasn’t been seen since the beginning of creation, but also something that will be in the new creation of heaven when ever that time comes.

Explanation

Isaiah 11:1 ESV

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

Isaiah 11:1–5 ESV

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.

Isaiah 11:

In the first 11 chapters of Isaiah it has been a message of judgement and Isaiah has a pattern of communicating with Judgement and then hope....there has been very little hope in the first 11 chapters, but here is the first glimmer of hope

- Assyria was to be an ax in God’s hand reducing Israel to “briers and thorns”; the forest was to be burned “through the wrath of the Lord of hosts” (9:19). In the end, it is the Assyrian ax that is broken or, better, returned to him who hewed it; the final scene is one of Assyria reduced to “thorns and briers in one day” (10:17), its “thickets” cleared away by the ax of the Lord (10:34).

In this section we see a description of a promise.....the hope that Isaiah is giving to the people of Israel. This is a picture of the one who will save his people of Israel.

Isaiah 11:1-5

Have you ever seen a stump with a little shoot growing out of it?

-There might be dead wood all over that stump, but if you see green, or in this case a shoot growing you know there is life still in there somewhere.

we know this person to be who? Yes Jesus

we know this person to be who? Yes Jesus

Isaiah 11:2–5 ESV

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.

Isaiah 11:2-

Now when we get to this point in the text there is a break and a shift from who they are talking about which is the picture of the messiah we know to be Jesus .

The author starts writing about a time that God has shown him will come.

Now when we get to this

-Jewish minds would have most likely gone back to this idea of perfection and thought about the garden of eden a time where sin was not present.

-a time where sin was not present

-In our position in life and history we might think of things in a different way.

-For us the messiah has already come.....and we await the time of his second coming.

-Jesus came to earth bringing the Kingdom of God with him.

-He paid the price for our sin and we know that we have abundant life not only in heaven, but now.

So we are in this time period where Jesus has come once and has broken the power of sin and death, but we wait the time where he will come again

Big word called Eschaton and after that will be what we know as the age to come or heaven.

We live in this place now some have called the already and the not yet

-Jesus has already come and brought a little bit of what will be in heaven and given us a taste of that now

-We can bring a taste of heaven to this world now because we have that in us through the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

-The church is to be a picture of what heaven will look like one day....a little slice of heaven.

So this next section

so lets read this together as what will be in heaven yes, but for the next 4 weeks we will look at what the church is called to be in our world now.

Isaiah 11:6–10 ESV

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 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.

Isaiah 5:6–10 ESV

I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry! Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land. The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: “Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah.”

Isaiah 5:6-10

Well it is easy to see that this is not how things are

-but this is how things were shows us that God gave every green plant for food for all the wild animals.

-Gods plan never included death or destruction of any living thing

-AS backwards as it seems for us to hear about Lions eating straw, the leopard and the goat being together.......I can only imagine that it is far more bizzare and backwards for God to see things in the state they are......in all respects.

This kind of brings us to this word we see behind me and what he have been hearing about in preparation for this week and that is Transformational

In this text we see that there is great transformation between what we know currently and what God shows is his desire for our lives.

Application

As individuals we are striving to be transformed

- says we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind

-if we are living in a life changing relationship with Jesus then we should be like him more tomorrow than we were today.

-We should be more like him today than we were yesterday.

-If you’re unsure about who Jesus really is as the second person of the trinity then spend some time reading about him in the New Testament

-BUT ALSO we have direct access to Jesus through prayer and he has given us the gift of his Holy Spirit who is already present with us.

-Changing our nature

We each have an essence and a nature

Essence- How God has created you to be strengths, abilities, gifted ness, personality. Unique to you!

Nature “heart”- How you live out your essence, self-centered nature, or serving others centered. People are born selfish the nursery example.

As the church we should be fertile ground for transformation to happen

-Accepting of where people are in their journey of being made into the likeness of Christ

-A place where others can be free to ask and learn

-A place where the Spirit of God is free to speak to people corporately

-A place where people can be nurtured/guided on their journey into Christ-likeness

-A place where truth in love can be spoken

As shocking as it is to read about lions laying down with lambs and lions eating straw......it can be equally as shocking for the world to see a group of people so transformed into something they might not even know how to put it into words, but they know. Hey thats a place I’d like to live.

We each have an essence and a nature

Essence- How God has created you to be strengths, abilities, gifted ness, personality. Unique to you!

Nature “heart”- How you live out your essence, self-centered nature, or serving others centered. People are born selfish the nursery example.

Be who you are but in nature living out with Jesus’ heart.

Transformational living is to have the heart of Christ