Isaiah 11:1-10 *
Isaiah’s Portrait of
the Messiah
Dear believers in the Messiah,
Plants can
be pretty resilient things. Last year
Julia and I had a plant in our apartment and despite all our neglect it just
would not die. It’s not that we hated
this plant we simply didn’t want to have to bring it back to
The
illustration Isaiah uses of the stump is actually a continuation of the
prophecy in chapter 10. It was here that
he wrote that the enemies of God would be cut down like trees. They would be reduced to nothing more than
lowly stumps in the ground. So who were
these enemies you might ask? Well they
were all those who
But this was not some irrational act by our God. He did not do this in a fit a rage without thinking about the consequences. This was God’s plan. He was going to bring salvation from the lowliest of circumstances. He was going to bring life out of death. And we see this reflected in the text. Notice how Isaiah refers to the stump of Jesse rather than the line of David? He was doing this to remind us of the lowly origin of our Savior. I’m sure that all of you have heard of King David but how many can say that about Jesse his father. This was exactly Isaiah’s point. Our Savior would come from the most unlikely source. From a kingdom that had been reduced to it’s humble beginnings, a kingdom reduced to a stump in the land it once proudly ruled.
But there was more than just a stump. If that’s all Isaiah had said I don’t know if he would have inspired much confidence but notice what precedes this stump in our text. A shoot. There was in fact a difference between this stump and the others. While the others would remain dead this stump would spring forth life. God would bring the stump of Jesse back from the dead. And he had good reason for this. God did this to fulfill his promise to us, the promise that our Savior would come from this line. When you stop to think about it this was quite a miracle. The line of Jesse had been reduced to nothing more than slaves yet God would preserve them out of love for us. This shows us the grace and power of God. He made the almost impossible and certainly improbable happen in order to bring us salvation.
Because of this chain of events
that our God set in motion we can say that our Lord does in fact come from
royalty. Mary and Joseph were
descendents of Jesse’s son King David; they were part of the royal line. Our Messiah did in fact come from royalty but
not by much. You see by the time Jesus
was born David’s Kingdom had been reduced to nothing. None of his descendents ruled in
This was the type of kingdom our Messiah came to establish, a spiritual one. And this is what distinguishes our king, although he could have had everything here on earth, he came to rule in our hearts. He came not only as a royal king but as righteous king, a righteous king that would reign supreme for all eternity.
This again sets our Lord apart. Every earthly king fails at some point, if nothing else they die, but our king Jesus will reign forever. He will be perfectly righteous in every sense. If you look up the word righteous in Webster’s dictionary you’ll find these definitions, “acting in accord with divine or moral law, free from guilt or sin, morally right or justifiable.” These definitions are what righteousness means to us today and they all apply to our king Jesus. He is our perfect and righteous ruler because the Spirit of the Lord rests on him. And in verse 2 we see exactly what this Spirit is, “the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.” These are the gifts our king has but what do they do? How do they benefit our Lord and ultimately us?
Well wisdom allows our Lord to know everyone and everything. Understanding gives him the ability to distinguish and perceive differences. It means that our Lord knows exactly what we need. As Christmas quickly approaches we begin to think about all the things we need. We start dropping hints to others about how useful certain items are and how much better our lives would be if we had them. We think we know exactly what we need but in reality there is only one who can say this, Jesus. He knows what we need and will provide for us accordingly.
And even more
importantly he knows each one of us.
Listen to the words of Luke 12:6,7 “Are not
five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.
Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are
worth more than many sparrows.” Our
Lord is able to watch over each one of us individually. He knows exactly what we are going through,
exactly what we need, and never forgets about us. So as the passage says, don’t be afraid. The Lord is constantly with you, constantly
protecting and providing, you’re never alone.
We are also told that our Messiah has the Spirit of counsel and power. He has the ability to give us advice and he does this through his Word. We always have somewhere to turn when we’re looking for answers. You don’t have to make an appointment, it won’t cost you a hundred bucks an hour but we all have a perfect counselor in our lives. We can always turn to the pages of scripture and seek much needed advice there. We can always come to our Lord in prayer and ask him to help us in our decisions. We have a great and powerful counselor on our side, one with the power to make anything happen, the power to defend us in any situation, and most importantly one with the power to carry out his plan of salvation.
The last two gifts of
the Spirit mentioned, knowledge and fear of the Lord,
go hand in hand. Our Messiah knows and
understands his father’s will and respectfully submits to it. Verse 3, “He will delight
in the fear of the Lord.” And
thank God he did. He took on the
punishment we all deserved even though it wouldn’t be easy. A lot of times people think that Jesus died
for us because he’s the Son of God and that’s what he was supposed to do. They don’t realize how hard this was for
him. But we see the anguish of our Lord
on
Yes Jesus is like no king this world has ever seen and what a relief this must have been for the people of this time. In Isaiah chapter 10 verses 1,2 we have a description of what the kings of this day and age were like. Here we are told that they issued oppressive decrees, deprived the poor of their rights, withheld justice from the oppressed, made widows their prey and robbed the fatherless. As you can imagine these kings probably would not have won the popular vote but our Messiah stands in sharp contrast to them. Listen to verses 3 and 4 of our text, “He will 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 needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.” To sum it up he will be gracious. And how badly don’t we need a gracious king. We don’t need a fair king that would not be in any of our best interest, we need pure grace. It’s funny because one of the first things people will say to defend themselves is, “That’s not fair.” Well with God we can never use that excuse because after all if God were fair who could stand before him.
Isaiah continues his portrait of the Messiah in verse 5, “Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.” In other words our Lord is righteous and has come to make that righteousness ours. This is his purpose and he won’t stop until it’s done, he will be faithful in this mission. John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” He came on a mission to grant us eternal life and will see it through.
So in Isaiah’s portrait we have a royal and righteous king depicted. But there is one more piece to this painting, there is one more thing that Isaiah would like us to know about the coming Messiah, his kingdom will be radical.
His purpose as king is unlike that
of any other. The kings of this time
ruled for the power, prestige, and plunder but our Lord’s kingdom will be one
of peace. Can you think of anywhere
peace prevails? Even in so-called
neutral countries, places with no enemies, sin still exists. But that won’t be the case in our Lord’s
kingdom. In verse 6-10 we have a
beautiful picture of kingdom that is to come.
We are told it will be a kingdom where hostility between man and God is
gone, where nature perfectly co-exist, a place without sin. Listen to some of the words of Isaiah, “The
wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie
down with the goat.” In verse 7, “The
cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion
will eat straw like the ox.”
Hardly nature as we
know it. Our Messiah’s kingdom will be
radical in that peace will exist between all creatures but more importantly
peace will prevail between us and God.
We will no longer be burdened with the guilt of our sin. We will no longer struggle with the
temptations of this world. We will live
in perfect peace forever.
But not everyone understands these verses as we do? Some see this as nothing more than a pious dream. They say that God simply wants us to try our hardest and leave this earth a better place than we found it. Still others say that this is a description of what the earth will be like when Jesus returns. They claim that Jesus will walk the earth with us for a millennium and we will all live in perfect harmony.
Don’t be misled by these people. Remember the definition Jesus gave Pilate in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Our Lord is not looking to walk the earth with us; he will not establish his kingdom here but in heaven, this perfect kingdom that Isaiah speaks of his our heavenly home.
I don’t know if that plant made it
since we left it as a housewarming gift for the next set of tenants. Perhaps they are taking better care of it
than we did and for all I know it’s doubled in size. But there is a difference between that plant
and the stump of Jesse. You see
eventually that plant is going to die but the shoot that sprang forth from the
stump of Jesse and the kingdom it represents will live for eternity and through
faith in our Messiah so will we.