By Lynn Sawyer Parks

Isaiah 11:1-10
When I was growing up, we had woods that surrounded our property in the back. They were mainly pine trees which grow very tall, and I remember hearing the wind blowing through the trees and seeing them sway. The noise could be quite loud. I also remember walking through the woods with my grandfather when I was little, and I still love walking through the woods today. After I grew up the trees became infested with some type of bug and had to be cut down in order to stop the infestation from spreading. It looked so ugly when the trees were cut down. We weren’t used to seeing it like that. But eventually the trees grew back and now it looks like it did before, and you can hear the wind in the trees again.

Isaiah’s prophecy about the branch of Jesse starts with a tree stump. The tree has been cut down. In fact, in the chapter before this one, the prophet speaks of God’s judgement coming on the nations and God is shown as a lumberjack cutting down the tall trees with an ax. They had become infested with the evils of injustice, oppression and pride, and had to be taken down. But then a shoot comes up from the stump of Jesse. It’s the picture of a tree stump that one would think was dead, but a new tree starts growing out of it. Life is still there. Even though there had been something bad going on in the trees and they had to be cut down to stop the spread of evil, new life grows from the remnants of the old.

Jesse was King David’s father, so this verse is a reference to a descendant of Jesse who will grow up and become influential at a time when it seems like the royal house has been cut down. When Jesus was born, a descendant of Jesse, there was no royal house of David ruling the nation of Israel. A descendant of that royal house had not ruled in several hundred years. It did seem as if that royal line had been cut down or cut off from power, even though the line had not died out. The royal line was not a threat to the power of Rome. I have read somewhere, that after Jesus was resurrected, and Christians started talking about Jesus as Messiah and King, that some of Jesus’ family were questioned by Roman authorities to see if they were plotting to take back the throne and the authorities saw how rough their hands were and how poor they were and decided they were no threat. I don’t know how true that is or not. But if it is true, it shows how much of a stump there was of the royal house of David.

We do understand this prophecy to refer to Jesus as the branch that comes up from Jesse’s stump and bears fruit. Isaiah says that the Spirit of the Lord is on this person, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. These are all qualities that one would want in a good king. Wisdom and understanding give a king the ability to make good decisions and render good judgement in cases that are brought before him. Counsel and might mean that he’s able to successfully defend the people against enemies and is able to make strategic plans for the good of his people. Knowledge and the fear of the Lord refers to the king’s character. He’s someone who has experience of life and centers his life around God as we talked about last week. This person takes delight in knowing God and does not govern or render judgments by appearances only or by rumors that he hears. Instead he rules in righteousness and justice, defending and delivering the poor, providing equity for the afflicted and lowly ones. He will deal fairly with those who have been unfairly treated.

The picture is of someone who cares for the marginalized, the ones who don’t have enough, the ones who have been victimized or taken advantage of. This person looks out for those who can’t look out for themselves and have no one to help them. This person’s influence will go out over all the earth. Verse 4 says that with the rod or the scepter of his mouth he will strike the earth and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. His rule will extend over the whole earth and he has the authority to judge wickedness and do away with it.

If you are someone who has been the victim of wickedness, someone who has lived under oppression, or in a war zone, someone who has lived in poverty or not had the advantages that others have had, to hear of a king who will come to take care of you, to notice you and provide justice for you, is to hear good news. You want this person to come quickly and want to know what you need to do to get ready, right? What will it take for this person to come to power?

Right now, we are getting into election mode and I know people are already thinking, who is the person best suited to lead this country next. Imagine if the person matched the description given in Isaiah 11. I know who I would vote for. When Jesus began his public ministry he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus fulfilled all these things in his ministry. But there are still things prophesied about Jesus that he has not yet fulfilled. We believe that Jesus will come again and, at that time, he will judge the earth and that is when wickedness will finally be done away with. But there’s still plenty that the Spirit of God wants to do to address the problems of evil and injustice in the world right now. We’re not to be sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for Jesus to come set everything right. There’s kingdom work to do right now.

Isaiah goes on to describe what things will be like in the kingdom established by this great king. The animals will all get along. The wolf and the lamb will live together. It won’t be just Bonedigger and Abby who get along, but all lions and weiner dogs can play together. It’s a description of a place where there are no enemies. There will be no one who will cause harm or destruction in that place. The key is verse 9 “…for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” I believe that this is not just head knowledge about the Lord but actual experiential knowledge of God. To know someone is to have experienced them. I can’t say that I know someone if I’ve never communicated with them, never interacted with them, never had any experience of them. I can say I know about them or I know what others have told me who do know them, but I can’t say I know them. It’s the same with God. We have to actually communicate and interact with God in order to say we know God. Otherwise we only know about God.

When we experience God, we learn things about God and ourselves because we are made in God’s image. We experience God by reaching out to God through prayer, through worship, through reading the Bible, through talking with others about God and then talking with God some more. We experience God through nature, through others who know God, through reflection on our lives and the things we experience. There are many ways we can experience and know God. And as we come to know God, one thing that will characterize our relationship with God is repentance. Repentance means to turn from one thing towards another thing. It has to do with the orientation of our lives.

If we’ve ever traveled in a ship or plane, whether we were aware of it or not, we were dependent on a navigational system to keep us on the right course and get us to our destination. If we had gotten off course for some reason, this navigational system would recalculate and get us back on course. If we get off by little bit along our journey, it makes a huge difference and we can end up hundreds of miles from our destination. Repentance is our spiritual navigation system. Repentance is the means by which we stay on track in our journey with God. It keeps us oriented towards God just as a navigational system keeps us oriented to the destination we are moving towards. The Holy Spirit is the one operating our spiritual navigational system. The Holy Spirit alerts us when we get off track so we can repent. But we have to be checking in with the Holy Spirit and listening to him. Vandy told me the story one time of when he was traveling somewhere using his GPS and he didn’t like the route it was trying to take him, so he ignored it. But the GPS didn’t recognize the route he was taking and kept trying to turn him around and he just kept ignoring it. Finally, it shut up and stopped giving him any instructions at all. We don’t want that to happen with the Holy Spirit. We want to pay attention to what the Spirit is telling us.

In Matthew 3 we have the story of John the Baptist, another prophet who spoke about the coming of the promised king. John called the people to repentance as a way to prepare for the coming of the king. He called them to stop doing unrighteousness and start living righteous lives. In Luke’s gospel, he records that John was very specific when people asked him what they should do. He said the person with 2 coats should give to the one who has none and the person with extra food should do the same. In other words, look out for the poor. He told the tax collectors to stop overcharging people for their taxes and he told Roman soldiers to stop extorting money and making false accusations against people. These were injustices and they were to stop. We can see that John was telling people in very practical ways how to reorient their lives around God. There were navigational changes they needed to make so that God would now be their destination.

In working on this sermon I realized that, in these accounts of John the Baptist’s ministry, Jesus is moving towards the people, he’s on his way to start his ministry, but the people also have to be moving towards Jesus, and John gets them moving in the right direction by calling them to repent. It’s the same with us. The Spirit of God is here and is ready to come close to each one of us, but we also have to make some movement towards God’s Spirit and that initial movement in our lives starts with repentance, when we change the orientation and direction of our lives. If we don’t make this course change, what will happen is that Jesus will come, looking for good things in our lives and instead will find we are infested with the things of death.

John the Baptist says, beginning at Matt. 3:10 “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Jesus is looking for good fruit in our lives, the fruits of compassion, justice and righteousness. If there are areas of our lives where this good fruit is not being produced, we need to examine those areas with the Holy Spirit because, if there is evil growing there, it will spread like an infection through other areas of our lives and out into the world. Rather than wait until the infection is too far gone and the only remedy is to cut down and burn the tree, it’s better to examine our lives now, to repent of anything the Spirit shows us that is harmful to our spiritual growth, that is harmful to the work of the Kingdom of God, and to reorient ourselves towards God. This is grace. God is giving us the time and space we need to examine our lives, to repent and to produce good fruit.

The result of examination, confession of sin and repentance is peace or wholeness. It is to experience the wholeness of the reign of Jesus as described in Isaiah 11. We can live without fear because we are at peace with God, living under His reign. We don’t see in this world the peace that Isaiah describes. There’s plenty of danger still in this world. I wouldn’t take my dog to the zoo and let her play with the lions there because the norm is that lions and dogs don’t play. But we do get a foretaste of that peace now, just as we’ve heard today about a lion and a dog who do play together in peace. The fullness of the reign of Jesus is still to come but it’s breaking into the world already and we are to be part of that inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. We are to already be producing good fruit, making peace with others, working for justice and righteousness, showing compassion, looking out for the poor, all the things that Jesus did. As we do this, as we move towards God, God is also moving towards us. The kingdom of God is moving towards us and we begin to participate in that kingdom already, even as we wait for it to fully come.

Today we are looking at how we prepare for the coming of the King. We prepare through examination, confession, repentance and reorientation towards God. We do this as individuals and we do this as a community of faith. People came out in droves to be baptized by John because they were expecting their King, the King of them all, and they wanted their whole nation to be ready so that meant each one of them needed to get ready. It astounds me that even Roman soldiers were coming to be baptized by John. It meant they were switching allegiance from Ceasar to the Jewish Messiah who hadn’t even shown up yet. But this vision of peace and life without enemies, a life of wholeness where there is no fear is one that resonates in our spirits and we know this is how things really should be. The gospel message that Jesus comes to give life is one that is attractive to the whole world and we also have a responsibility to be communicating this message to others in our lives. What is it in our lives that is showing people a foretaste of the reign of God? It’s just as important that we identify that as it is to identify what in our lives is working against the reign of God.

As we go to prayer, and as the worship team comes to lead us in our closing worship, I want us to participate in a simple exercise of examination that you can also do on your own throughout the week, or with a prayer partner or small group or with your family. I’m going to guide us through a prayer and at different points will pause to allow each of us time to examine our lives and respond to God’s Spirit with silent prayer.

Let’s pray: Thank God for the Word we’ve heard and the presence of the Holy Spirit, ask for openness to hear from God and grace to respond to God.

Pause for silence

Pray that God would show us the areas of our lives where good fruit is being produced and then offer God thanks for His work in our lives

Pause for silence

Pray for God to show us the areas in our congregation’s life where good fruit is being produced and offer God thanks for His work in our congregation.

Pause for silence

Pray that God would show us the areas of our lives where repentance is needed, where good fruit is not being produced, and ask for the grace to truly turn from those things and to reorient our lives towards God.

Pause for silence

Pray for God to show us where in our congregational life good fruit is not being produced and to give us grace to reorient our congregational life towards God, that as a congregation, we would be bearing good fruit.

Pause for silence

Thank God for His grace and pray a blessing on the coming week, that we would follow the leading of the Spirit with courage and faithfulness and that we would see God’s Kingdom of peace and wholeness breaking into the world in new ways.

Amen.