A Stump, a King and a Kingdom

This morning, as we sort of, I guess, have been doing over the past few weeks, we're going to be looking at a text in this Advent season leading up to Christmas. That's a bit of a classic. Isaiah chapter 11. So we're going to turn there this morning, and I think you'll probably realise if you haven't heard it before, you'll probably realise soon why it's a Christmas time passage. Isaiah chapter 11 from verse one.

God says, "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 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. And His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord."

"He shall not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide disputes by what his ears hear. 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. Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist and faithfulness, the belt of His loins. 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."

"The cow and the bear shall graze. Their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. 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." So far, our reading. Well, there are, I think, about three key themes that are addressed here in our passage.

This message this morning is entitled, "The Stump, the King, and the Kingdom." And I think these are the three main ideas that are communicated in our passage. We get to the very first point in the very first verse, don't we? We read in verse one, "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse." And we are introduced to this idea of a cut down tree, a stump that sticks out of the ground.

It is called the Stump of Jesse. Yet something noteworthy is meant to stick out here, is meant to jump out at us, and that is that new life is sprouting out of this dead stump, this cut off tree. In the previous chapter at Isaiah 10, God has described His people, Israel, as a nation that are about to be cut down. The Assyrian Empire, that power hungry, vicious regime of the time was going to steamroll her straight through them into the Middle East, conquer and overthrow anything that stands against them, and Israel is in the firing line. But what is made clear in chapter 10 and earlier is that this is happening not simply because they are a very powerful nation, but because God is willing it.

Israel had rebelled against God. They had taken and worshipped the idols and the gods of the nations around them. And so Israel was going to be judged by God, and Assyria would be His vehicle. And yet, chapter 10 from verse 20, if you flicked in your Bibles, you'll see that there is a hopeful tone at the end of the chapter. A remnant will continue.

A handful of Israelites will be spared. They will be the people God continues His covenant promises through. But then we get to chapter 11 verse one, and there is a cut down tree, and there is a sprout coming forth from this tree. And we may easily assume, and I wouldn't blame you, that we read verse one and we think that God is talking about the remnant of Israel sprouting out. They are the faithful ones that are spared, we may think, yet there is a very specific detail that can correct, I think, that makes us think twice at least about that.

This sprout is referred to as a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Now again, for some of us, that name may ring bells. Others of us may have to do a little bit of research. If you do a word study on the name Jesse, you'll be taken back to a time where David, King David, was anointed king of Israel, and his father was named Jesse. David, the greatest king of all of Israel's history, had a father named Jesse.

David, the greatest king of Israel who received the promise from God that His kingdom would never end. That His reign would be forever. And yet, we find an image of a stump of a tree chopped down. The prophets tell the people in Isaiah, in Hosea, in all those minor prophets that David's line would be chopped down. That they would be dead ended. His reign would be like a stump.

And what I think is being shown here is not so much a symbol of faithful Israel, but a symbol of a new king who needed to come. Someone like David, but also someone who is different. There's a shift in the emphasis here, isn't there? It's not a stump of David.

It is a stump of Jesse, the father of David. And again, if you go and you look through your Bible, you go to that moment where King David, out of the blue, a shepherd's boy, is anointed king over Israel. You realise Jesse was never a king. He was never a king that would have sort of be recognised as royal lineage. His son became king.

His son is an anointed king. So why is Jesse mentioned here? Well, I think God is saying here that God's grace, just like with King David, God's grace would once again provide a king out of humble circumstances. Like Jesse, the nobody would have a son that would become king. And like David, this person would be an unexpected king.

And like David came as a direct son of Jesse, so this fresh new sapling sprouting from the stump of Jesse is not simply a king descended from David in some sort of line, but in a significant way, a direct sprout from Jesse himself, the father of David. This is a new David. He is a son of Jesse. And so what God is promising here is that He is a God of second chances. A God is merciful even when His beloved people have messed up.

Even when sinful humanity have rejected Him and deserve His fair judgment, God is going to show mercy. He desires to show mercy. And friends, perhaps one of us here this morning finds himself in a situation that is almost as severe as a chopped down tree. Dead ended.

You may feel your life is a dead stump, ground down to no sign of hope. 2018 may have been a very hard year for you. You've lost more than you've won, and it feels like there's nothing good, nothing good that could come out of your situation. But what this verse is telling you, friend, is with God, there is always hope. What this verse is telling us is just hold on because God can restore anything.

God could have, perhaps should have wiped Israel off the face of the planet. And one day, if we were to stand at judgment day when all of humanity is able to see the long history of humanity. All of us. All of us on that day when God had wiped out Israel could have said, what the Lord has done is perfect. What He has done is right.

Israel did not deserve a second chance, but they got it. There would be a remnant. There would be a part that would remain and be spared. And not only that, but a new David would be king. A struggling believer.

Hold on this morning to the promise here in Scripture that God can make a green sprout come out of the most charred, burnt, ground down stump. That is your life. A new king, a new shoot is going to come up from the stump of Jesse. Now, then it moves on our passage to describe in more detail who this king is actually going to be. The king is one sorry about that.

The king is one who will rule, and he will rule well, finally. Verses two through to five creates another sort of theme for us as it describes how this king will live, what he will be like. And again, we see that this will be a person. It is not a nation. It is not a collective group of people.

It is a person who will be a king, and he will be a good king. Like David, he would have the Spirit of Yahweh resting upon him, verse two says. The Spirit of the Lord will be upon Him. Now again, a bit of biblical theology, only certain people in the Old Testament had the Spirit of God on them. Not every believer, not every Jew had the Spirit of the living God in them.

Kings were the special ones that had the Spirit. Prophets had the Spirit. Some priests had the Spirit, but not everyone. And here we find the image or the language of a king having the nearness, the indwelling power of God in them. And so we see that this sprout from the stump of Jesse will receive the Spirit of Yahweh, but there is a perfection in this indwelling nature of the relationship He will have with God.

If you count the attributes in verse two. Right? The attributes of what this Spirit will do in their life. Firstly, it is the Spirit of the Lord that will rest upon Him, but then there are six elements. It will be a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, a Spirit of counsel and might, and a Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.

That's six. But if you count the first opening line, that's seven. The Spirit of Yahweh Himself. That is perfection. He is consumed by a perfect giving of the Holy Spirit.

He is full of the Holy Spirit, this king. And again, we know that not even David, the great king of Israel, could claim that. Psalm 51, remember that psalm of confession when he had failed and committed adultery, he prays, "Oh, Lord, please do not take Your Spirit from me." It was possible because the Spirit was not with him perfectly. Fallible King David.

And then we see some of these further trigger words as we read on verses three and four. We find that immediately this concept of the king would resonate with the Israelites. Verse three says that this person who has a full measure of the Holy Spirit will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decides by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness. Verse four, and he will judge the needy and with justice. He will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

The king will reign with righteousness and justice. Now that would immediately make Israelites, Jewish people that knew their Bibles have their ears prick up. People would think of Psalm 72. The only Psalm, I think, that's attributed to King Solomon. Right?

Psalm 72. And in this Psalm, King Solomon, said to be the wisest king on earth, wrote Psalm 72. Let's actually turn there this morning. Psalm 72. And what he does in this Psalm is to describe a godly king.

He gives the job description of what all the kings of Israel should be. And this is how he opens Psalm 72. It's a prayer to God. "Give the king Your justice, oh God. Give the king Your righteousness."

Justice and righteousness, trigger words, are the modus operandi of the king. It's like a criteria list for what he should be. Verse two, "May he judge Your people with righteousness and Your poor with justice." So these are the main attributes of the kings of Israel, what they should uphold. And if you read the rest of the Psalm, you see those words coming up again and again and again.

In Isaiah 11, God is saying, this perfect king is coming. No one lived up to Psalm 72, not even King Solomon, but he is coming. Look at verse four in Isaiah 11. It says, "Will strike the earth with a rod of His mouth. With the breath of His lips, he will slay.

He will kill the wicked." In other words, he will conquer his enemies. He will have victory over those opposed to him, even the wicked who oppose righteousness, who oppose justice, he will destroy, but he won't do it with a sword. He'll do it with the breath of his lips, with his mouth. This is a man not marked by physical force or aggression.

He will be marked with peace and wisdom. He will be marked with righteousness even in the midst of his enemies. What a king this man will be. What a leader. Who would not want to be led by someone like that?

Who would not desire a prime minister, a president who would be like this? Well, friends, I want to tell you we have a leader like this, and he is Jesus Christ. I shared this reflection on my Facebook page this week. This is what I thought about this week. As we head into Christmas, I've been struck by the amount of carols we've been singing, and we'll sing some more on Tuesday.

But these carols we sing talk about and sing about the physical elements surrounding the Christmas event of Jesus' birth. Have you ever realised that? We sing carols like "Silent Night". We sing lyrics like, "Wild fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, Repeat the sounding joy." Why do we sing about rocks?

Why do we sing about a night? Why do we think about a star over Bethlehem? Well, because it's biblical. Luke two, verses nine and ten says, "An angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord in the middle of the night shone around them, so much so they were terrified. And the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid.

I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.'" Why do we find nature acting so unusually at the arrival of Jesus? Because the physical elements point to a cosmic importance in the Christmas event. The glory of the Lord turns a night sky into something so awesome it terrifies humble shepherds in the field. Night turns today, darkness into light, the wise men follow a star or a comet or a planet that makes an unusual orbit, pronouncing the epoch of something significant.

Nature itself recognises and declares something which humans will be slower to grasp. Something massive is happening. It is the arrival of a king. It is the arrival of the Creator King. And even though His arrival is muted, downplayed, humble, and hidden, an arrival easily missed, yet for a moment, it is as if Heaven itself breaks through a curtain partially pulled back, and for a moment, earth and Heaven cannot help but celebrate.

The one true ruler of the earth had entered its time and space. Friend, do you believe this? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the king? He did not overcome His enemies on earth with force, did He? He ran circles around them with His words.

He fed the poor and the hungry, 5,000 of them in a single sitting. He provided forgiveness to repentant sinners and sat down with tax collectors and prostitutes. His ministry was overwhelmingly identified with righteousness and justice. And so if you're willing to believe that Jesus Christ is this king, I want to add another question. Are you living in submission to this king?

Are you living in obedience? See, the thing is we can say that He is king pretty quickly, but then we have to believe and we have to know that He demands our allegiance then. And if you aren't serving Him and you profess to be Christian, if you aren't serving the king and you profess to be Christian, then you are actually saying He serves you. If you aren't obeying Him and yet you claim the victory of the cross as your own, He isn't king. You are.

And you've made Him your servant. Someone who has died for you. Someone that became cannon fodder for you. And you remain unchanged in your sin. But if Jesus is king, then He demands our allegiance.

He demands our obedience, and you must follow Him. You must. And if you know that you have not lived as though He is your king today, then friend, you must repent. You must turn away from that life, that way of thinking, and pray today for forgiveness and make Him your Lord. Make Him your king.

And then finally, because He is a king, He has to have a kingdom. And we come to our third and our final point. He will have a kingdom. He will have a kingdom, and it will be a world of peace. We see that the long awaited king will establish a kingdom and a reign marked with peace. Verses six through to nine, or six through to eight rather, we see how ferocious animals like wolves, leopards, lions and cobras all coexist with defenceless creatures like lambs, goats, cows, and babies.

Not only do they coexist, but they interact and play with one another. And this is what the king is going to establish. Once again, it makes you think, what kind of a king can promise this? Of all the kings of all of human history, the kings and the queens, could any of them have caused an infant to put their hands into a nest of vipers and not be bitten? Could anyone say they could have achieved that?

No earthly king. Now, again, there's speculation amongst scholars whether this is referring to an actual existence where lions and vipers lose their natural desire to bite or eat other animals, or whether this is a symbolic picture of the existence of peace. I believe it is word art. It is metaphor. It is symbolic.

The king will create a place that is filled with peace where natural hostilities have ended, and justice and righteousness and life flourish. But having said that, we also know that God is busy restoring creation that was radically altered by the fall of mankind into sin. Remember what paradise was like in Genesis one and two. Before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no death. And a world where animals existed, but they did not kill and they did not devour.

And so maybe there is something of a reality that's talked about here, pictured here. But whether we see this as absolutely literal or absolutely figurative, what is important to recognise is that Christ will establish a kingdom of peace. And we see that already happening today. As a result of the death and the resurrection of Christ, the apostle Paul can write in 1 Corinthians that we now, as Christians, exist in a kingdom that is steadily being converted and expanded and redeemed more and more into a place of peace. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26, this is what Paul says.

"For he, Christ, must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. From the time of his ascension, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God, and he quotes all the Old Testament here, for God has put all things in subjection under his feet." Christ is king over all now.

He does not need a millennial kingdom. But all things will not bow their knee to him. Christ, therefore, is working to conquer every power and every force as we speak. He's not waiting for another time to do this. He is already busy with that process now.

Paul alludes to this. Paul chose this as evidence in Ephesians two. Paul explains there that Christ is showing the power of the kingdom in existence by making Gentiles and Jews one. And he writes it in terms of peace. Have a look.

Ephesians 2:14. And I promise this is the last time you have to flick in your Bible. Ephesians 2, verse 14. "For he himself, he who is Christ himself is our what? Peace.

Who has made us both, Jews and Gentiles, one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. The requirements of the covenant, the old covenant. That he might create in himself one man in place of the two, and so make peace. And that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who are far off the Gentiles, and he preached peace to those who were near the Jews.

For through him, we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer what, strangers and aliens, people without a home, but you are now fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God. What does a kingdom need? It needs citizens. And so what this means if you are a Christian and you are already in the kingdom of peace.

It means that you belong to the true church, the one church. And the true church is the physical collection of kingdom people who are now involved in establishing more and more the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And what this means for you is that you are and you will be used by Christ Himself to conquer and redeem the enemies that stand in His way. That is your purpose in the kingdom. As you work your nine to five job, therefore, you are being used.

As you engage with people at university, you are being used. As you engage with people that struggle, people that push back against, even very, very stubbornly against the rule of Christ, you are being used. Abraham Kuyper said that very famous line, "There is not a square inch in all of creation over which Christ does not or cannot say that is mine. That is mine. That is mine."

Christian purpose, therefore, is to redeem every aspect of our world for the kingdom. And so this gives, if you understand that, this gives incredible weight. This gives incredible dignity to every aspect of our lives. There is no job, therefore, that is pointless. There is no job that is without dignity.

You can be a street sweeper to the glory of God and for the upbuilding of His kingdom. And even the darkest places of society, you will be a light. You will be a light, and you will make a difference because Jesus is patiently, but purposely making all His enemies a footstool for His feet. He will bring all of them in subjection to Himself, and they will all eventually bow the knee, whether that is gladly or not. But all enemies will yield to Christ.

And so do you see the promise of Isaiah 11? Do you see why this is a Christmas time message? Peace has come to earth. It's declared by the angels themselves. Peace has come to earth.

But we see in that peace that death has lost its thing. A lion will not devour the lamb. The serpent is no longer feared. A baby will use it as a plaything. Whip it out of its nest.

Satan, who came to mankind as a snake tempting humanity to walk away from God, Satan has lost his venom. And through the powerful ministry of Jesus Christ, His all sufficient sacrifice on the cross as payment for our sin, His powerful resurrection proving that that payment was enough, all of this is the down payment and the evidence of a kingdom that has been established and a kingdom that will be marked by peace. I just want to finish with this. For some of us here, we may not believe that this is true. You may struggle to believe that a man from the Middle East two thousand years ago could be the fulfilment of these cosmic sounding promises.

You may not believe in the concept of sin. You may not think that you need a saviour, but as we wrap up this morning, let me ask you, why does every single one of us long for a world like this? Why do we hope for a world ruled with justice, with peace? A perfect kingdom reigned by a truly good king. Friends, somehow, you want something better.

Somehow, you know that some ideal some ideal does exist out there. You may not believe in God. You may not believe that He exists or that you need a saviour, but that hasn't stopped you hoping for a world that only God can establish. Kings and queens have come and gone, presidents and prime ministers too, and none of them has produced what your heart is aching for. And so I want to ask you to explore this question.

Why do you hope for this? Why do you have that desire in you? If we simply exist, if we simply live, breathe, and then die, we are truly without hope. There is no greater purpose than simply breathing than dying. But you do want something more.

You want something better. Perhaps you don't dare to think who put that desire in your heart. You just focus on the desire that you have alone, but please think about why you have hope in the first place. And then I want to tell you, the one who placed that in you is the only one who can satisfy that hope. Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for Your Word this morning. We thank you for a wonderful snapshot, that wonderful behind the scenes look of this kingdom and wonderful imagery, beautiful symbolism of a peace that will exist with death and hostility, aggression will be dealt with, and where peace will reign. Oh, Lord, we hope and we long for that to finally and fully come. Lord, we sense perhaps all too keenly that there are still many enemies against you. And some of them, Lord, are powerful seemingly for us.

Lord, we are encouraged and we are strengthened again this morning to realise that they will not rule forever. And, Father, that You are able and You are strong enough to conquer those enemies in our lives even now. You are the God of second chances, and so You can overcome the enemy that is our self, the enemy that is our mind and our heart. And Lord, You have already done that. Help us to conquer and push back against those pockets in our hearts that have not submitted to Your lordship fully.

Help us to conquer and to put them to death. Again, not through physical force, but by the breath of Your lips, by Your Word, by the promises and the truths that You share with us. Father, for those of us who work in very dark places, those of us who are holding our little candle against a very, very overwhelming sense of darkness. Father, I pray that You will use us. Oh, God, and that You will fan into flame, perhaps even smouldering little wicks that are nearly snuffed out.

Help us to see our work. Help us to see our studies. Help us to see our relationships, our friendships, Lord, as places of incredible ministry to conquer, to redeem, to win land, to make ground for Your kingdom. And Father, help us to see the joy and the peace that comes from that. Help us to dwell in that land.

Help us to taste and see how amazing it is to have You as king over our lives. Father, we commit ourselves to You. We commit our families in this Christmas time. We pray for those who feel like they are without hope, charred, blackened stumps. And we pray, oh God, that You will give them eyes to see the green sprouts that come by Your grace.

We ask all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.