A King is Coming | Isaiah 11:1-10

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Great. Thanks so much Morehead family for leaving us in the lighting and the reading of scripture this morning.

I’m not sure how I compete with that, but I’m up here for the next, however long we have, so there we go. Good morning everyone. My name’s Jessica. I’m one of the pastors here at South. And I get to continue our advent series through the lectionary passages in the Old Testament, focused in Isaiah on the second week of Advent.

And if you’re not super familiar with the season of Advent, oh. It’s one of the season of the church calendar, which I will show you if this is on. There we go. It’s one of the seasons of the church calendar, the first season of the church calendar, actually, that over the course of the year, reminds us of the story of Jesus and the story of the gospel, and it’s an invitation instead of charging forward to Christmas, to slow down and to practice waiting an expectation.

We acknowledge our need for Jesus and our longing for him to come into the world. But another way, it’s an invitation to notice our own need for God and the need that the world has for God, and also to notice how God is already acting in that need. Pastor Rich Otus says The season of Advent opens us up to the surprising ways of God.

In Advent, we are invited to wrestle with our longings desires and hopes for a world marked by grace, goodness, and peace. It’s a time to recall the biblical truth, that the renewal of our lives and our world is found in God’s coming among us in Jesus Christ. Okay, but it’s a challenge to practice advent.

The tone of this season is so like diametrically opposed to the way that our American culture celebrates the Christmas season. It’s dark and slow and quiet and pondering. On one hand and loud and bright on the other. And it’s so much easier to just go with the inertia of everything around us and get caught up in all of the traditions and the trappings of the Christmas season.

’cause that’s like the fun stuff, right? Or it’s supposed to be the fun stuff when we think we’re getting into it. And those are really good things. I love my traditions. I love the consistency and the memories that traditions tend to bring. And it also means that when it comes to Christmas, I have a few hills that I’m willing to die on when we get to the Christmas season.

Maybe you have some of those too. Maybe if you don’t bake three specific types of Christmas cookies, it’s like Christmas just didn’t happen for you, so you are gonna make sure that you have those cookies. Maybe you have to watch a certain movie or six different movies. Maybe it’s how you do lights or you do gifts in a certain way, or having mashed potatoes or something at Christmas dinner and whatever it is.

If you don’t have that tradition, don’t have that peace of the Christmas experience. It’s like you’re missing something. I, like I mentioned, have a few of those traditions in hills to die on, and one of the big ones is having a real Christmas tree. I know there’s plenty of reasons if you have a fake Christmas tree for you to have a fake Christmas tree.

No. Shame if you do. I don’t personally care about those reasons for my own household, but it’s fine if you do, and it’s for me, if it’s a real tree. Maybe not going quite that far out or having that one that big but it’s a real tree or it’s no tree. And I’ve also come to realize that it’s not really about the tree.

It’s not that I just have this abiding preference for dead Douglas furs in my living room instead of plastic ones. It is actually about the years that my family and I spent going to a Christmas tree farm and getting muddy and cold and arguing about what was actually gonna fit in the space and fit our ornaments and which one we should actually take, and then taking it home and decorating it and watching Christmas vacation.

And it’s not that I miss being muddy and cold or arguing right, but I do miss my family. And being halfway across the country from them. There are things that I would love to experience as we prepare for Christmas that I’m not there for and I know that I’m missing out on. And so I hold onto the tree because really what I’m holding onto is this connection that I have with my family at Christmas time that I miss, that I long for.

And if you’re one of those people who has that tradition that you hold really tightly to. Maybe you would say some of the same things. So it’s not really about the tradition, it’s not really about making it happen. It is about the memories and the meaning and the people behind those traditions, and we start to see that even in the fun and the bright of Christmas, that advent longing and that sense that not everything is as it should be.

Like even here, maybe something’s missing and something’s not perfect. It starts to seep in. And our passage in Isaiah today actually embraces that same sense of longing and anticipation. In Chapter 11, one Isaiah says, A chute or a root or a branch, depending on your translation, will come up from the stump of Jesse.

From his roots, a branch will bear fruit. What is a stump? It’s a reminder that something that used to be in this spot is now gone. There used to be a tree strong and steadfast and beautiful. Maybe giving life to other creatures, maybe shaping the environment around it has now disappeared where there used to be vibrancy.

Now there’s desolation. And it’s not the first time, by the time we get to Isaiah 11, that he’s pulled from this imagery of stumps and trees. He’s using it here in Isaiah 11 to talk about the Davidic kingship that used to be vibrant and now is lifeless and ineffective and not doing its job as it was meant to be.

Kind of like a stump. But he’s pulled from this imagery a few times since Isaiah chapter seven. Okay. And Isaiah’s Day, Israel had been divided for a long time for centuries into two different kingdoms. The southern kingdom of Judah, this is where Isaiah lived that was the southern kingdom. It was still ruled by the descendants of David and the northern Kingdom of Israel that had broken off after the reign of Solomon.

Taken most of Israel with it. And now these two kingdoms were sometimes in a okay alliance. Sometimes they could work together, but more often than not, they were in conflict with each other. There was tension and in Isaiah seven is real and that neighboring nation of Arum way up there on the top in the pink, they’ve decided that they’re going to come together and they’re going to invade Judah this smaller, weaker nation and their own reckoning.

The leaders of Judah and the people of Judah don’t have a whole lot of hope for victory against this kind of threat. They used to be this powerful United Kingdom that won victories, and now they’re this small, weak nation. They used to be led by these great kings of David and Solomon who ruled with faith and wisdom and whose names we still know today.

And now they’re led by Ahaz. He’s one of their worst kings in their history, even though he’s descended from these great leaders. Second King 16 tells us a little bit more about the reign of Ahaz. Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for 16 years. Unlike David, his father, his forefather, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

He followed the ways of the kings of Israel, which means idolatry, and even sacrificed his son in the fire, engaging in the detestable practices of the nations. The Lord had driven out before the Israelite. He offered sacrifices and burn incense at the high places on the hilltops and under every spreading tree with his passages highlighting is that Ahaz, the leader of Judah at the time of Isaiah, has failed at one of the most basic requirements.

Of kingship in Judah and Israel. Deuteronomy 17 lays out some of these requirements of what was suspected as of a king. He was supposed to be one of their own people not from a different country. He was not supposed to pursue power through military Might. Or strategic marriages or pursuing wealth and money.

And most importantly, he was supposed to obey God and his law and everything that was supposed to be the foundation of wisdom that he was supposed to ba base his rule on. And instead of doing this, Ahaz has gone all in on the worship of other gods of surrounding nations, even going so far as to sacrifice his own son to signify his devotion to these other gods.

And he’s rejected this basis of wisdom that the kings of Israel and later Judah are supposed to follow. Two. King 16 goes on to say that in response to this threat from Israel and aem, in this historical moment in Isaiah seven, he sent Messengers to say, to take La Pali, sir King of Assyria, I’m your servant.

And vassal, come up and save me out of the hand of the King of Arum and the King of Israel who are attacking me, and he has took the silver and gold found in the temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace and sent it as a gift to the king of Assyria. And Ahaz, instead of trusting God for the protection of his country, like the kings of Israel and Judah were supposed to do, he takes all of the wealth out of the temple, which he wasn’t supposed to touch, says it to Assyria, which is actually a threat in and of itself, a bigger threat really than Israel and Arum and we just, his future and the future of his whole people.

On what they are going to do, their whims, their ability to wipe out either his country or someone else if he gives them enough, and it’s into this stressful scenario, intense scenario of immediate threat that Isaiah comes to Ahaz in Isaiah chapter seven and says to him and to the people of Judah, don’t be afraid.

Israel and Arum, these nations that seem so powerful compared to you who are like the tall, flourishing, powerful trees in a forest compared to this withering, desolate stump that Judah and the Davidic kingship has become. They’re actually not that big of a deal. They’re not powerful. They don’t have the ability to harm you.

Don’t lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood, because of the fierce anger of resin and Arum and of the son of Alaya, Aaron Ofum, which is another way to refer to Israel and Malia’s son, have plotted your ruin saying, let us invade Judah, let us tear it apart and divided among ourselves and make the son of to bele king over it.

Yet this is what the sovereign Lord says. It will not take place. It will not happen. For the head of Aus Damascus and the head of Damascus, its only resin. Within 65 years, a ream will be too shattered to be a people. The head of a Remus Samaria, and the head of Samaria, it’s only Elia’s. Son, if you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all and he is giving us this image of these two countries.

That seemed like they’re going to take everything that Judah has, that seeing strong and sturdy like trees in a forest really have no more power, no more ability to harm than burned up firewood. And he continues throughout the following chapters now talking about a Syria, this powerful nation that could basically do whatever it wants to, whoever it wants.

And in Isaiah 10, continuing this tree and stump imagery. It says, see the Lord. The Lord Almighty will lop off the bows with great power. The lofty trees will be filled. The tall ones will be flat low. He’ll cut down the forest that gets with an ax, and Lebanon will fall before the mighty one. This enemy that appears as numerous and powerful as a forest will themselves be cut down and left lifeless like a field of stumps.

This is Detroit Lake in Oregon. And this area used to be a forest in a logging town up until the 1950s when they built a dam to put in a reservoir for the surrounding area around it. And to do that, they clear cut 3000 acres of forest. So when you drive by and the water line’s low, all is a field of stumps.

And this is the imagery that Isaiah’s giving us in these chapters leading up to our passage today in Isaiah 11, that what was once a forest, what looks strong and mighty and is by the world’s standards, strong and mighty, is in the end going to be reduced to life, the nations that you fear that seem powerful now.

Are going to have that threat taken away and sooner or later they will have no power to harm you. And if you are facing immediate threat and there are enemies at your doorstep, planning to take away everything you have your entire way of life and all of a sudden you’re being told this isn’t gonna happen.

They can’t hurt you, you don’t have to worry. This is good news. This is a relief. This is everything you can ask for, but then you also have to ask, so if Judah was once this flourishing, vibrant nation, powerful nation, steadfast and sturdy as a tree, and now it’s this desolate, ineffective stump, and David and his line were once.

These powerful kings who won victories and did everything they were supposed to, and now they’re lifeless and ineffective as a stump and all these other nations who are numerous as a forest and powerful like treason, a forest, are themselves gonna be reduced to lifeness, like a field of stumps? What are we actually supposed to rely on?

What are we supposed to put our hope in? If all of our measures of power and ability and value don’t last, what are we supposed to hold onto? And it’s not like we’ve stopped asking this question, right? Even though this particular story of Isaiah took place thousands of years ago in a different culture, in different continent, we know what it is to live in a world that feels lifeless and feels like it’s going nowhere.

You open up your phone or look online or open up a newspaper. ’cause I know there are people here who still do that. And it’s right in front of us every single day, even every minute, as fast as you can. Refresh the app and refresh that website. There’s massacres in Sudan. There’s death and destruction and war in Palestine and Israel and Ukraine.

There’s political violence and unrest in our own country, and even sometimes around our own tables, right? We see our neighbors, maybe ourselves going hungry and without healthcare, and what are we supposed to do about that? How are we supposed to fix it? Is it just always going to be like this with humanity?

Striving for goodness and life and progress and. Everything just falling apart. Do we flourish for a little while and then everything collapses? Is it just the cycle forever of vibrant trees being reduced to stumps? Maybe this is a feeling that you have in your own life right now. You can’t even pay attention to the world’s problems because you’re too busy trying to make it through today.

Maybe it’s financial pressure or grief or the weight of loneliness and depression and anxiety that makes you feel like life used to be vibrant and flourishing, and now it’s desolate and broken. Maybe you’re just trying not to be alone. Maybe you’re watching someone you love, struggle with illness. And you’re wrestling with what that means for the future.

We know what it feels like for life to have felt like it’s withered and to long for something different. We know as humans what it feels like to long for what is good and true and right to when out. Long for peace, long for hope, long for the innocent to be protected. For the poor and vulnerable to have what they need.

Despite every effort that we might make to protect ourselves, protect those we love, maybe make life a little bit better for something else. Those things that we seek and pursue just seem to elude or grasp, or if we finally get them, they don’t seem to last very long. We know what it is. For everything we seek to break or end or be a disappointment, and to the people of Judah who are wrestling with their own reckoning that the world is just not what it should be.

Things are not right. I say it comes and he says to them, have hope. The pain is real. The desolation and the disappointment is real. The stump is real, but it’s not all that there is. Going back to chapter 11 verse one, A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse from his fruits, a branch will bear fruit.

Isaiah tells us that we can have hope. In a world that feels so hopeless because a king is coming. The Davidic line of kings that was supposed to be full of these great rulers that was supposed to last and reign in Israel forever, as promised in two Samuel seven has failed at this point in history and is failing as we’ve talked about.

They have a king who’s rejected. The basis of his rulership Politically, they don’t have a lot of options. There’s not a whole lot that they can stake their future on, and Isaiah tells them that in spite of all of that, everything that they see, their hope is not dead. Out of this lifeless stump of the Davidic kingship life will be found.

A chute will spring up from the stump of Jesse. There will be one day, Isaiah says, another king, not a king that’s out for his own power in advancement. Not a king who just stumbles along by his best decision and still messes everything up anyway, but a king. That’s all that he should be. And in Isaiah 11, two through five, he starts to outline what kind of king this king will be.

The spirit of the Lord will rest on him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and of might the spirit of the knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He’ll not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness.

He will judge the need be with justice. He will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the right of his mouth. With the bread of his breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belts and faithfulness the sash around his waist. Centuries before this was spoken, Psalm 72 was written outlining Israel’s desire for a good king.

A king that will lead them well, that will be the type of king that he is supposed to be. Give the king your justice oh God and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people and the hills in righteousness.

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy and crush the oppressor. And here Isaiah says, referencing the very verses of this psalm is a king that fulfills his prayer. That’s all that he’s supposed to be. That looks out for the little guy that isn’t corrupt or swayed by who has power or money that doesn’t let those who do wrong get away with it.

And this is good news, but it’s not good news just because someday there’s gonna be a course correction. The good news isn’t competency or ability, or even just that this king’s a good king after years of bad. The good news is that this king is a unique king, a king like no other that’s come before or any of that will come after him.

And he’s unique, not just ’cause it’s by his own ability that he reigns, but because it’s the power of the Lord, the spirit of the Lord that’s actually empowering him to lead into rule. The people of Isaiah are people of Judah are led in Isaiah’s time by a king who’s actively rejected God in his way, and Isaiah turns around and says, have hope because one day a king will come who not only knows God and follows God as he’s supposed to, but the presence and the spirit of the Lord is with him like no one else.

And because of the presence of this, the Lord, this king has life in himself and he turns around and he gives life to those around him. To go back to our metaphor of the trees in the stumps to stump is finding life again and is pouring life into the creation around it. Isaiah goes on in first six to outline the kind of kingdom that this king will rule.

The wolf will live with the lamb. The leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf, and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear. Their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy an all my holy mountain for the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will rally to him and his resting place will be glorious. And this is a picture of the Hebrew word shalom.

Shalom means peace in its most basic sense, but not just an absence of conflict. It’s a sense of wholeness, a deep state of wellbeing, things that they should be, and they were intended to be. Not like surface level stability that’s gonna be broken like that, but peace infused into everything. The vulnerable and the powerful, the predator and the prey living together in harmony.

No threat. No enmity, no question of safety, no lingering sense that any second now something is gonna go wrong, or maybe it already has gone wrong. Just peace. Just rest. Just the world as it should be. Just every cry and longing and hope fulfilled. And what Isaiah’s prophesying and promising here is such a different picture from the day-to-day experience of the people of Judah and from our day-to-day experience, right?

Instead of a king who’s rejected God, there’s a king who’s empowered by God. Instead of political tension and threat and uncertainty, there’s peace. And not just peace for some people, not just peace for Judah, but peace for everyone. First 10 says that all nations are included in this invitation to peace.

All nations have the opportunity to be included in this kingdom instead of the suffering of the poor. There’s provision and justice instead of desolation and life cut short. There’s fullness of life, and Isaiah says it’s coming. All of these things that we crave in our souls is coming. It’s not a wish.

It’s now an expectation,

and this is such a beautiful picture and a beautiful promise, and it can feel so far away. Because it’s not the picture that we often see in our world. We’ve already acknowledged that. It’s not even the picture that many of us see in our day-to-day lives. We see the darkness, we see the struggle, we see the disappointment, and we see the lack, and we try our best to fill in that lack, don’t we to?

Provide our own shalom, provide the world set right as we think it should be for ourselves. We try to protect ourselves, create our own sense of security. We do our best to make sure we have a retirement account and that’s full and maxed out. We position our kids and the way that we think is gonna set them up for the best possible future that they could have, so they will be happy.

Maybe we do that for our grandkids or nieces and nephews. We try to make sure we’re not alone, that there’s someone who acknowledges our existence and affirms us in the way that we long to be. We try to live up to what the internet tells us we need to do and live. In order to be a man or a woman who has value and worth and who someone is going to want around, maybe we try to make the world a little bit better for people around us.

Maybe we give to a good cause. Maybe we volunteer at the food bank, which is good, and you shouldn’t stop doing that. As a result of this message, maybe we go all in on our political ideology because we believe that if we just have the right person and whatever office it is that is going to make everything okay, and at least for our lifetime, the world will be right.

We’ll get a win. And some of those things aren’t bad things. Some of those things are worthwhile or worth thinking through thoughtfully, but in and of themselves, any of those things that, any things that we could fill in with other examples, we could be here all day. Thinking of other examples, none of those things are going to fulfill those longings that we seek and bring that world of shalom.

That we want, not in and of themselves, because the point of Isaiah 11 isn’t about the outcome. It’s not just about the kingdom, it’s about the king, not as a stepping stone to the right kind of world, not as a checkbox, not as a means to the end of the good life. But as the giver of that life, you can’t have the peace and the shalom and the fulfillment of expectation without the king who brings it.

And part of the good news of Isaiah is that the king is inviting us to join him. Isaiah 11 is an invitation. That the world seems dark, that maybe even sometimes all might seem lost, like there’s no future. We can have hope. Isaiah 11 is a promise that the God who set the world in motion, who raised up the people of Israel and then Judah to be his people and who established David and his descendants in the first place isn’t content.

To let his people go from this flourishing tree to a desolate stump and just to leave them there. He’s not content to let this world stay in. Its broken and fallen state where evil wins and justice passes by every person who seeks it. And he’s not content to let you and I build our futile kingdoms day after day, holding onto one thing after another, just trying to make everything feel okay and make everything work for once.

Isaiah 11 is a promise that God sees all of it and he has an answer for all of it. That even though everything we might hold onto will fail us in and of itself, one day a king will come who never fails, who will set all things right, and who invites us to be part of his kingdom. And during advent, we proclaim that this king has come in Jesus.

And during Advent we also acknowledge. That though Jesus has already come and already set this world of shalom in motion, that work is not yet complete in its final fulfillment. That there’s more to long for more restoration to happen, more life to grow, and yet we wait in the hope and the expectation that these things will come to pass.

We turn around and do our best with his help to live in his way of his kingdom reflecting the heart of our king. As we turn around and we share that hope with others, we move forward holding this tension of what is already and what is not yet, but believing and proclaiming that hope will be victorious because of this king Jesus that we follow.

And I also wanna acknowledge that it’s difficult to wait and hope, and I think one of those reasons is difficult because what does waiting and hope even mean? How do we even begin to do something that seems so abstract? Emily Dickinson famously said, hope is the thing with feathers. And that’s. How we tend to visualize what hope is and what it means that it’s this fragile, delicate thing that we keep holding out again and again ’cause we’re told we’re supposed to until it’s finally fulfilled or crushed.

But for a follower of Jesus, I think having a clear understanding of what it means to hope is actually going to help us practice. Waiting and hope because for a follower of Jesus hope is not a fragile thing. It’s a foundational thing. It’s an understanding that because of the God that we follow, because of who Jesus is and what he has done, what kind of king he is, the pain exists.

The world is broken. There are things that are very wrong, and yet the end to the story is already written. The World of Shalom. The Kingdom of the Lord is already inaugurated through Jesus’s incarnation and death and resurrection, and we’ve actually practiced proclaiming that story of hope and waiting and hope this morning.

We did, we read the Apostle Creed. Did we skip that? No, you did. Oh, I might have been outta the room for that point. We read the Apostle Creed, which rehearses the story. Excuse me. We rehearse, we read the Apostle Creed, which rehearses the story of hope, which is a good way to start if you need a reminder.

The songs that we sung this morning proclaim that hope. We have an advent formation guide for you every week that will give you a practice to remind yourself of a piece of that story. Throughout the week, we talked about one way to share the hope and shalom that we have and long for with others through our Food Bank Christmas shop, in partnership with our king and his kingdom.

And we’re gonna do one more thing today as a body of Christ to rehearse and proclaim. The hope that we have and what we’re waiting for, we’re going to practice communion. You might know it as the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper based on your background or tradition, but communion, taking the bread that symbolizes Jesus’s body and taking the cup that symbolizes as blood isn’t just some church thing that we have to do every once in a while.

It is declaring the story that we believe. It’s declaring that Jesus has died for each of us. It’s declaring our belief that he has risen. It’s proclaiming our hope that one day he will come again and he will make all things right, restore this world, and it’s proclaiming our Isaiah 11 expectation. That the brokenness of this world and the brokenness of each of our lives is not all that there is.

We can have hope in this world that can feel hopeless because the king is coming. So come forward when you’re ready and remind yourself and declare this hope that you have. There’s tables up front. There’s tables in the back. Eat the bread when you’re ready and we’ll take the cup together.