The Book Of #4 “The Root And Stump Of ”

I. The Context Of Isaiah’s Prophecy

• Once again Isaiah is given a vision of the coming Messiah in the midst of dark times. God is sending to judge His people – to break them of their sin and idolatry. In chapter 10 though, God says that after He uses Assyria as His instrument then He is going to turn around and destroy Assyria for their sin and or thinking that they were able to defeat God’s people in their own strength. God will not allow Assyria’s arrogance to stand.

• But God will not forget the remnant (:20). Mixed in with those deserving judgment and destruction are those that the Lord has chosen to save by grace and He promises that while the Assyrian destruction will be terrible, and the people of God will be taken into exile – yet it will not be the end. God promises that a remnant will return from exile – a remnant from both the north and the south, and .

• God promises that through the exile, His people will no longer “lean on him who struck them” (Assyria) but will “lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.” The great irony is that God’s people had looked to Assyria, trying to make an alliance with them for protection, but this ended in destruction. The great mercy is that God will use tough love to draw them back to Himself. Whenever we look to anything besides the true God for life it will end up destroying us.

• But God’s purposes are bigger than our sin! And thus God will send a shoot from the stump of Jesse!

II. Who Is The Stump And The Root Of Jesse? (11:1-10)

• A shoot from the stump of Jesse (vs. 1): Jesse was King ’s father, but all of the kings descended from David are called “the son of David” in the – not the son of Jesse. To call this one who is coming the “stump of Jesse” is to say David is coming, the True David – not just any old king from David’s line.

• The root of Jesse (vs. 10): Now this introduces a real conundrum. How can Isaiah speak about the root of Jesse coming in the future when Jesse is long dead? Because this One who is coming, is the One behind Jesse and His whole lineage. The Messiah comes in fulfillment of the promise in Genesis 3:15 that the seed of the woman would crush the seed of the serpent – and the first son of Jesse, King David, was part of the fulfillment of this earlier promise. The Davidic Kingship was to be a picture of the True King, King Jesus, the True David, who God was committed to send. Only Jesus could be both the root of Jesse, because He exists eternally as the Triune God, and also be the descendant of Jesse through David. Isaiah 11 introduces a conundrum that only the coming of Jesus will unveil.

• God’s people would have been happy to have another king like David – they looked back to his reign as the glory days. But David was not the Messiah! Every good thing God did through him whetted His people’s appetite for the True King to come. And every bad thing David did was a sobering reminder that we needed a real Savior. David was a gift to God’s people in many ways, but so often it is easier to put our hopes in the gifts rather than the Giver of the gift. No human can live up to the ideals God has set in our hearts. We were made for a real King, like the one Tolkein imagined so well in Aragorn, the King who was known by having the hands of a healer and bearing the sword that had been broken but was now re-forged to deal with evil and suffering. This is the King Isaiah sees here!

II. A Vision Of Our Coming King (11:1-5)

• The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon Him (vs. 2): He is to be anointed by God in a remarkable way – and this was indeed true of Jesus. At his baptism the Spirit came upon Him in an extraordinary way and enabled Him to fulfill all God had called Him to do - to be a true and godly King.

• All of the descriptions in vs. 2-5 are the things a leader needs (as Motyer points out):

o Wisdom and understanding when grouped together like this in the OT (Deut 1:13, 1Kings 3:9) refer to being a wise leader who knows practically what needs to be done. o Counsel and power refer to “strategy and military strength” (see :5). Jesus know what course of action to take and has power to accomplish it! o The Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord refers to what drives Him. Behind everything He does is His love for His father. And vs. 3 emphasizes this as well – “his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” In vs. 2 the emphasis is on what the Lord gives to the Messiah, but in vs. 3 we see that He responds with joy and delight in God. “My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (John 4:34). The Lord deserves more than grudging obedience and Jesus lived this out to the fullest! o Jesus is the One who does not just judge by appearances, but gets to the heart of an issue and decides rightly. He can’t be fooled. o Jesus is the One who will treat the poor fairly too – He does not give special preference to the powerful (or the poor) but judges righteously. o Jesus is a man of action! A belt serves to hold your robe up so you can take action. So Jesus’ actions are described as righteous and faithful. Of course His ultimate action was dying on the cross and Paul uses this imagery from Isaiah 11 in telling us to take up the full armor of God – to put on the righteousness Christ earned at the cross – in Ephesians 6.

• Think of how many of our fears come from not believing this is the kind of King we have! It is important that we be captured by this picture of Jesus, so that we can fight against our sins and fears! In each of these descriptions there is an answer to some doubt or fear that you have! Remember your King!

IV. Vivid Pictures Of His Coming Kingdom (11:6-16)

• Peace instead of warfare (vs. 6): Isaiah is stretching the bounds of our imagination here – but which is easier to conceive of: predators and prey living in peace, or a world with no more warfare? And with all due respect to John Lennon, this will take more than our imaginations to bring to fruition – it will take the Messiah dying, bearing the punishment that brings us peace (as will reveal.)

• A change of nature (vs. 7): This is a picture of the very nature of things changing – meateaters becoming herbivores. But something no less incredible is promised in the new covenant where God will take away our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36.) This is a glorious promise!

• The end of the warfare that began at the fall! (vs. 8): The seed of woman will no longer be harmed by the seed of the serpent (cf. Gen 3:15), because of what the Messiah will do!

• The knowledge of God spread to the ends of the earth! (vs. 9b): This King conquers, but in a way unlike any other. Evangelism replaces armies as God’s purposes are fully revealed in the New Testament. (Mt. 28)

• The nations will rally to Him! (vs. 10): The language is that if desiring to come to Him – He will draw all people to Himself as Jesus promised His being lifted up on the cross would do (see John 3). This is a multicultural vision – God had always intended to bless the nations through Israel and He is still committed to this. Remember, is not a white European religion! African Christian scholar Lamin Sanneh argues that “secularism with it’s anti-supernaturalism and individualism in much more destructive of local cultures and African-ness than Christianity is… When Africans become Christians, their African-ness is converted, completed, and resolved, not replaced with European-ness or something else. Through Christianity Africans get distance enough to critique their traditions yet still inhabit them.” (See Lamin Sanneh’s “Who’s Religion Is Christianity? Christianity Beyond The West” for more.)

• A glorious resting place (vs. 10): This phrase is used for the promised land elsewhere in the OT and as Hebrews 4 tells us, the Messiah is the true rest for the people of God that the promised land pointed to.

• Return from exile (vs. 11-16): All of the returns from exile, first the exodus, then the return from , were a demonstration that God is committed to the ultimate return from exile – the reconciliation that we have in Jesus! Thus Isaiah can say that the return from exile is as much the doing of the Root of Jesse as the work Jesus does on the cross in reconciling us to God. “That day” in vs. 11 when they will return from Babylon a demonstration that God is committed to the ultimate “that day” prophesied in vs. 10!

V. So What?

• Christians are to live this day in light of that coming day. And this means that today does not have to bear all the weight of joy for your life – there is another day coming. “He who rides to be crowned, thinks little of a rainy day.” (the puritan John Trapp) In other words, who cares if you have a little rain fall on the way to your coronation day? We need perspective! Worship is about getting this perspective.

• The church is to be a “colony of the coming kingdom” (Hauerwas and Willimon) demonstrating that there is another way to live. Peace in the church should give credence to our claims that our God is committed to bring peace out of warfare! Taking our rest seriously should demonstrate that we don’t need to take care of all our needs etc. Being in His kingdom means embracing His vision and purpose for His world!

• Jesus is the proof that God is committed to this – in Him all God’s promises are yea and amen! (2Cor 1)