Isaiah 11:1-10 (2)

When we lived in Colorado, Melanie and I loved to go on hiking adventures. Living in Denver was absolutely fantastic, because we had all the amenities of a city-center, and then a short 40 minutes drive west you have access to some of the most beautiful places in America. So we’d frequently go on weekend hikes, and there would be times when we’d get on I70, heading into the mountains, and you see these vast stretches of alpine land, lush with evergreens and tall grasses and aspens that would change glorious shades of yellow in the fall. But every now and then you’d come around a bend in the road, and the view would be dramatically different. The grass would be gone, and the trees would be bare and scraggly and black. Fallen trees would litter the ground, and dead stumps would be everywhere. We had never seen the effects of a forest fire until we went out west, and it really looked like a barren wasteland.

Other times though, we’d see the exact same scene, but without the blacked char: acre upon acre of trees just dead and fallen as the result of the pine beetle. A tiny beetle, well, a million tiny beetles, turning an alpine paradise into what looked like a scar in the earth.

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It’s an image that has stayed with me over the years, and it is the image that comes to mind as I read this section of Isaiah. In chapters 9 and 10, Isaiah speaks of the dreadful consequences of Israel’s arrogance and oppression. He calls their attention to their unfaithfulness to the God who had rescued them and shown them great mercy, and the ways in which they lack compassion for the poor and vulnerable. They’ve puffed themselves up, believing that they are self-sufficient, and that nothing is beyond them, all the while they oppress the weak among them and turn a blind eye to the injustices in the land. Isaiah says that their wickedness is like a fire, “it consumes briers and thorns; it kindles the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke. Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts the land is scorched, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no one spares another.”

In God’s eyes, Israel is a barren wasteland - a forest ravaged by fire, leaving behind only blackened stumps. This of course is a spiritual metaphor, describing how they’d turned away from God, but was you continue in chapter 9 and 10, you begin to see that this metaphor will become a reality, as God was preparing the Assyrian Empire, this great and cruel and powerful enemy, to come and lay waste to Israel. Assyria was the axe being prepared by God to cut down Israel’s tree.

But even though Assyria would be God’s instrument of discipline for his people, their own cruelty and arrogance and oppression would not be overlooked, and Isaiah describes how God’s might would be brought against the Assyrians, using a very familiar metaphor: “Behold, the Lord GOD of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the great in height will be hewn down, the lofty will be brought low. He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon will fall by the Majestic One.” Israel and Assyria both will become barren wastelands.

One of these trees will be felled and remain dead. Assyria would be destroyed by the combined forces of Babylon, Media, and Persia; and nothing would ever rise from its ashes. The other tree, the tree of the people of God, would also be felled, but Isaiah gives word of a very different future: verse 1:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

11 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,

and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

Have you ever brought a plant back to life? Melanie and I aren’t very good at keeping plants alive, especially indoor plants, and so there have been many times when we’ve tried to revive plants that look very, very dead. And most of the time nothing happens, because dead things normally don’t come back to life. But there have been a small number of times, when a tiny sprout blooms out of the brown deadness of the plant, and we celebrate the tiny miracle that happened. Because it feels miraculous, doesn’t it? That’s what Isaiah is talking about here - a miracle. Dead things don’t come back to life. Burnt stumps don’t bloom apart from some form of divine intervention.

And that’s precisely the point. Isaiah’s talking about a divine intervention. For generations, the descendents of the kings of Israel, from the line of David, the son of Jesse, had led Israel away from God. You read through the accounts of the kings after David in 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles, and you can see that it wasn’t pretty. You start empathizing with Isaiah - yeah the kingship has become a barren wasteland, and it doesn’t look like there’s anything anyone can do about it. Because sure you may have a blip on the radar, you may get one good king, a Josiah or Hezekiah, but they die and their son does a 180 and takes the nation even further into arrogance and oppression than ever before.

But God had promised that a descendant of David would sit on the throne of God’s people forever, but David’s line was as dead as a stump, so the question throughout Israel was always, “Who would right the ship? Who would bring the peace of God? Who would bring an end to the injustice, arrogance, oppression, and violence?”

Without a doubt, every one of us desires the peace of God in our lives and in our world. Without a doubt, every one of us longs for the end to injustice and oppression and violence and hatred, and we the world are constantly searching for the same answers that Israel was seeking. “Who will right the ship? Who will bring the peace of God? Who will bring an end to the brokenness in our world?”

Isaiah says it’s the shoot from the stump of Jesse, but we’ve got to ask, “what separates this Davidic King from all the others?” Because unless something is different about this king, than who’s to say he won’t just become another pompous, self-serving king that we know all too well?

Look at how he describes this one who is coming. Verse 2.

English Standard Version Chapter 11

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.

3  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,

4  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.

5  Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,

and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

What’s different is that this king, this shoot from the stump of Jesse, knows God like no one else ever has. He will be filled with the ruach of God, the Spirit or breath of God, and therefore every decision he makes, every act of strength, every move he makes is in step with God. Under his care, the weak and poor are taken care of, and those who would oppress and victimize are removed. This king knows God, and knows God not in the sense like if you were to say, “I know algebra.” More like how you’d say you knew your spouse or your best friend. It’s a knowledge that speaks of a deep and significant connection and relationship. This shoot from the stump of Jesse knows God with a deep relational, connecting knowledge, and that makes all the difference.

Look at how Isaiah describes the world under his leadership. Verse 6.

English Standard Version Chapter 11

6  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.

7  The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

9  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.

What’s different about this shoot from the stump of Jesse is that he will be characterized by the ruach of Yahweh - the Spirit of God. His decision-making, his strength, and his character are all filled and imbued with the Spirit of God. His connection with God is absolute and lasting. He knows God like no other king has known him. This is an utterly different kind of King. The kings that had come from the line of David were self-serving, power hungry, cynical, and cared little for the poor and weak. But this shoot from the stump of Jesse will be different. John Oswalt puts it this way, Isaiah looks to, “a time when the ruler will no longer see himself as privileged but rather as responsible, when he will become one for whom his people’s welfare is uppermost. In a word, the ruler will be the servant, not because he is too weak to dominate, but because he is strong enough not to need to crush”

What interesting images we get here. So wolves and lambs don’t go together. We know this from nursery rhymes. Cows and bears probably don’t mix either. The image that haunts me in this though is the child playing around the snake’s hole. Many of you know that I love a good scary movie, and in every B-rate scary movie there’s the inevitable scene of someone sticking their hand in a dark hole for some terrible reason. There’s something haunting about sticking your hand in dark holes. There could be spiders or snakes or some other creepy crawly. If a child were threatening to stick their hand in a hole in the ground, you’d want to snatch them up and out of danger!

So what’s Isaiah saying - that under the reign of this good king, we’ll all be vegan? No! He’s saying under this king’s reign the fears associated with insecurity, danger, pain, and evil will all be removed; and he’s poetically showing that through these images of the predator and prey, where there would normally be great fear of danger and even death, but instead there’s peace. What better way to show that under this king’s reign, death itself is defeated.

Now let’s be honest - this ideal world where the fears of insecurity, danger, and pain - this is not our world, and many of us know this all too well. We hear this beautiful message from Isaiah about this coming king and the world that he’ll bring into existence where everything broken is put back together, and we find that it simply accentuates the brokenness we are dealing with today.

During Advent we hear a lot about the future hope that is ours in Jesus. We hear about the future Kingdom of God that is breaking into our world. We hear about the swords being beaten into plows, and the lion laying down with the lamb, and all this great and wonderful stuff. But sometimes what all this glorious future talk does, is it highlights all the junk I’m dealing with now - and I become even more aware that the swords are still being sharpened, the lion is still prowling, and death is still destroying.

A friend of mine called these the dark days of Advent, and they are very, very important. We desperately want to get to the end of the Advent story, where we can say that it all ends happily ever after. But to do that is to miss the invitation of Advent, which is the invitation to be honest about our disappointments, to be honest about the things in our life that simply are not right and are not fair and are not good, to be honest about the great burdens that we’ve carried through these doors this morning.

But why did you come through those doors this morning? Because of what Isaiah says in verse 10:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

10 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.

Even with the great chasm between these promises and your reality, you came through those doors because Jesus, the root of Jesse, stands as a signal, a signpost marking the truth of these promises. Death has been and will forever be defeated - why? Because Jesus was risen from the grave.