Isaiah 11:1-9
What a privilege to be back here.
It’s always an honor or privilege to be back here at First ARP
in Burlington. I have a great affection for
you, for this congregation, and for the gospel witness in this
city, and thankful that this church is that here. And so I
appreciate you inviting me back. I look forward to being back
in another month or so. and bringing God’s word to you. If you have your Bible, I wanna
invite you to open to Isaiah, and it says in your worship guide,
Isaiah chapter one, that’s because I’m a bit of a doofus and don’t
know how to type. It should be Isaiah chapter 11. So instead of Isaiah chapter
one, we’re gonna look at Isaiah chapter 11, verses one through
nine. And it’s on page 575 of your
Pew Bible, if you are looking for that. Page 575, it’s Isaiah
chapter 11. verses one through nine. And
we’re also going to look at this hymn that we’re going to be singing
at the end of our time together today, O Come O Come Emmanuel,
because that hymn is actually based on the passage that we’re
going to be exploring this morning. So if you have your hymnal, you
want to take that in hand, I’d invite you to turn to that as
well because I want to just zero in on a few salient points that
we’ll notice in that hymn as we engage in this particular
passage of scripture. Now some of you here today remember
the year 1984. And you’ll remember that that
was the year that we had the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Muhammad Ali lit the torch that
year. It was also the year that Ronald
Reagan was re-elected president. He won 49, I believe, out of
50 states. And it was also the year that
the music group Wham, led by the lead singer, the great theologian,
George Michael, wrote that timeless classic, Last Christmas I Gave
You My Heart. And if you have listened to the
radio over the past few days or been in a store or a coffee
shop, you have perhaps already heard that song several times.
And between now and Christmas, you may hear it somewhere in
the range of 75,000 to 80,000 times. It is ubiquitous. You’ll hear
it everywhere. And some of those songs that
we hear at Christmas time, that we hear on the radio, we hear
in the stores, we hear wherever we go, they might stir up some
warm nostalgic feelings of the holidays, of Christmas, of you
know, tinsel and holly and all of the wonderful aspects of the
Christmas season. But at the end of the day, when
you hear the lyrics, you hear the tunes, you realize that they
are about as shallow as a parking lot puddle. and there’s really
not much to them, right? And so, thankfully, when we approach
this time of year, when we can zero in on the incarnation of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and come to terms with his coming to us
in a manger, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin
Mary, we have some great songs, great tunes, great music to turn
to, to remind us of the beauty of that great gospel promise
that our Savior has come, that Emmanuel has come for us. The very best music, the very
best Christmas carols, the very best hymns that we sing out of
this hymnal and elsewhere are shaped by the scriptures. They’re
infused with the Bible. The Bible informs the lyrics
and the tunes carry the lyrics well so that our whole soul when
we sing them gathered together in the corporate worship of the
Lord is engaged with him. Our whole soul worships him.
Martin Luther said that next to the word of God, music deserves
the highest praise. The gift of language combined
with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim
the word of God through music. So with that in view, I want
to focus a little bit on this great Christmas Advent tune and
hymn that we’ll be singing at the end of our time together,
which is really a running commentary on Isaiah chapter 11. A little
bit about this carol before we read the passage. It’s ancient,
and you will notice that as you sing it. It has a tune that sounds
old, and it sounds old because it is old. The words, kind of
the genesis of this, this carol began in the 8th century and
it kind of came to full fruition by about the 12th century. And
the tune, it seems to have originated in France in the 1400s. So it
is a very old tune, but it has this beautiful subject that it
addresses. And what we find in O Come, O
Come, Emmanuel is that each stanza of that hymn carries a major
theme of messianic prophecy, of pointing to Jesus, to Emmanuel
who has come for us. And so you’ll notice in the first
stanza of O Come O Come Emmanuel, that you’re looking back just
a few chapters from this passage that we’ll be exploring today
to Isaiah chapter 7. And it’s a prophecy there in
verse 14 of Isaiah chapter 7 where we discover that a virgin will
conceive and bear a son. and shall call his name Emmanuel. O come, O come, Emmanuel. That’s
the first time in scripture that we see that word Emmanuel being
used to refer to the coming of the Savior. And it speaks to
the fact that Jesus is God with us. He has come into our midst. He has come to make his dwelling
place among us. And he is with us and he is for
his people. And you will remember If you
remember your scriptures all the way back into Genesis chapter
3, that God was present with our first parents, right? He
was present with them. He was with them in the garden. But then, our first parents rebel. Adam and Eve rebel. They sin
against the Lord, and there’s this intrusion of sin that comes
in, and they’re kicked out of the garden. And the relationship
with the Lord becomes fractured because of that. But the Lord
makes a promise that he would send a redeemer from the seed
of the woman. and that he would reestablish
his presence with his people. And he does so, and we get little
glimpses of this throughout the course of the Old Testament.
We see that there’s the construction of the tabernacle and the wilderness. And later on, we start to see
the construction of the temple in Jerusalem, the dwelling place
of the Lord. So there’s a real sense in which
God continued to dwell in the midst of his people. But even
then, the only one who could enter the most holy place, the
holy of holies into God’s direct presence was the high priest. And even he could only do so
once a year. And you also remember in the
Old Testament, Ezekiel. Ezekiel mourned as he saw the
presence of God depart the temple. as a result of his people’s sin. Can you imagine that, the presence
of God departing the temple? He sees this vision of this,
but he and all the other prophets that you discover in Scripture
Always look forward to this promise when God would restore his presence
among his people. He was not going to break that
promise. And what you discover in Isaiah chapter seven is that
promise that this child would come, that he would be God with
us, and there’s the hint of that in Isaiah, and we sing of it
in this great hymn. And then when you get to the
second stanza of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, you see that the child
here is referred to as the Rod of Jesse. And we’re going to
explore that in significant detail as we plumb the depths of this
passage here in just a moment. So I’ll just pass over that because
we’re going to get into it momentarily. But then you get to the third
stanza and you see that this child is called the Dayspring.
And that’s a reference to Jesus being the light of the world. You read of it all over the place,
particularly in the gospel of John and in the letters of John,
that he is the light of the world. And that is based upon Isaiah
chapter nine, verse two, where we discover that the people who
walked in darkness have seen what? A great light. That Jesus is the light of the
world, illuminating our way. and that those who dwelt in a
land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined.” And so in
the carol that we’re going to sing, you’ll notice a line in
that third stanza that Jesus is the day spring who has come
to disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death’s dark shadows
put to flight. Jesus is the one who frees us
from darkness, from the darkness of sin, from the wrath of God
that it deserves, from the justice that it deserves. And then you
get to the fourth stanza and you discover that Jesus is also
referred to as the wisdom from on high. It’s another reference
that we’ll discover in Isaiah chapter 11, and so we’ll get
to that in a moment as well. And then finally in the fifth
stanza, Jesus is referred to as the desire of nations. The desire of nations. It’s a
reference to Haggai’s prophecy, the book of Haggai, probably,
you know, one of the books, the prophecies that’s tucked away
that you may not focus your attention on as much, but it does point
to Jesus. And in Haggai 2, verse 7, we discover there that God
says, I will shake the nations so that the treasures or the
desire, as it could be translated, the desire of all nations shall
come in and fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.
And so Jesus would come and he would fill the nations, be a
light into the nations and fill it with his glory. He would enter
the temple and He would reign and rule with universal peace
and restoration, that one day we look forward to that and the
coming of Jesus. And so when we sing this hymn,
we sing that Jesus is Emmanuel, that He’s the rod of Jesse, that
He is the day spring, He’s wisdom from on high, He’s the desire
of nations. causes us to lift our voice with
double rejoicing, right? Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel has
come for thee, O Israel. Isn’t that just beautiful news? That’s the great hope that we
sing of at this season. And so with that in view, I want
us to look at the running commentary that that hymn is and that passage
that it’s based upon, Isaiah chapter 11, verses one through
nine. You were wondering if we were
ever gonna get to the scripture, weren’t you? Well, we’re going there.
We’re going there. Before we read it, let’s pray
and ask God’s blessing upon his word this morning. Father, we thank you for your
holy, inspired, inerrant, breathed out, fully sufficient word. We ask that you would write its
eternal truth on all of our hearts this morning as we hear it read
and preached. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen. Isaiah chapter 11, beginning
in verse one. 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 his
eyes see, 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 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. Amen, this is God’s word to us
this morning. You get the sense as you read
Isaiah up to this point and even in this passage that the people
are longing for peace. They’re longing for Emmanuel
to come and to ransom the captives. And we see it in the first stanza
of the carol that we will be singing at the end of our time
together, that he’s come to free his people from the tyranny of
Satan. There’s a longing that there
would be one that would come and push back the darkness and
do away with it so that it was not so foreboding and bearing
upon us and weighing upon our shoulders because the government
would be upon his shoulders. And we see these things and when
we understand them, they make a lot of sense as we sing this
carol and we see it in light of Isaiah chapter 11. Isaiah
was written around the late 8th century, early 7th century BC. And at that point in time, God’s
people had totally lost sight of him. They were stirred by
the things of the world. Their sin was just flourishing
and being cultivated and growing and crowding out the things of
God and ultimately of God himself. They forgot who they were and
they forgot who God was. And this was being manifested
in the king, in the king of Judah, King Ahaz. Even in the north,
Israel, the kingdoms were divided at this point, and in the north,
Israel was about to come under siege. They were about to face
the discipline of the Lord, and the discipline of the Lord was
gonna come in the form of a godless pagan nation, the Assyrians,
and they were about to take Israel down, and now in the south, and
Judah, King Ahaz, who’s reigning at the time, sees the writing
on the wall. He sees that Judah is about to
go down, and they are next, and so What Ahaz is, is this reflection
of the people that he governed. He reflected them. He reflected
them in the sense that he lived by sight and not by faith. He
looked to his own native strength. He looked to his own power and
his own understanding. The Proverbs say, trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
Well, what he does is he trusts in his heart and he leans on
his own understanding, not on the Lord’s understanding, not
on the Lord, but on his own. And so what he does is he places
the promises and precepts of God to the sidelines for his
own wisdom. as to how to pursue life, just
as the people did. And so when you look back to
Isaiah chapter seven, what you discover there is Ahaz is facing
this conundrum, facing this fact that the Assyrians are about
to attack, they’re about to take them down, and God actually is
gracious to Ahaz and says, and says, I will give you a sign
that still my promises will remain true, that still there will be
a deliverer, that still I am good to my people, even in this
time of discipline. I will give you a sign. In fact,
Ahaz, you can ask for anything you want, just about anything
that you want to ask for as far as a sign is concerned, and I
will give that to you. And what does Ahaz do? He doesn’t
take God up on it. He doesn’t ask for a sign. But God is merciful, he gives
them a sign anyway. And the sign is what I mentioned
just a few moments ago in chapter seven, verse 14, where God says
that the Lord himself will give you a sign, and the sign is this.
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call
his name Emmanuel. In other words, God gives Ahaz
the sign that he didn’t even ask for, that he didn’t deserve,
and he says that even though now is gonna be this time of
discipline, I’m gonna be faithful to my promises. And that faithfulness
is going to be in Jesus Christ, the one who would be born of
the Virgin Mary. But instead of believing that,
Ahaz, again, looks within, And he looks to his own understanding.
What he understands is a political alliance, military alliances,
not the works of God. So he cuts this deal with the
Assyrians in the hopes of turning down the political heat. Even
though God warns him, he warns him, he says, do not yoke yourself
to the Assyrians, he does so anyway. And guess what happens?
Shocker of the day, Judah, ends up being completely taken captive
by this pagan nation. And so you read Isaiah and you
see that the Assyrians are actually going to be used by God as a
means of discipline to his people. And it’s a lesson to us, right?
It’s a lesson that even the very powerful and intelligent and
savvy enemies of God are nothing but pawns in His hands. He has His purposes for them.
God is directing their steps for His purposes, and maybe even
for the discipline of His people. So you read forward in Isaiah,
and you get to the end of chapter 10, and you just discover there
that God will judge the Assyrians as well. He will judge this nation. He will judge the enemies of
God then and now, and he will do so with this image of taking
the ax to them as trees. If you vision them as these trees,
he will take the ax to them and cut them down as stumps. In fact, if you look in the previous
passage to chapter 10, verse 33, just a few, just right before
the passage we just read, you see there that God says, behold,
the Lord God of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power. The great in height will be hewn
down, the lofty will be brought low. He will cut down the thickets
of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon will fall by the majestic
If you’re familiar with the flag of the nation of Lebanon, what’s
in the center of it? It’s a cedar tree. Lebanon is
this mountainous thin strip of land, this nation along the Mediterranean
Sea, and it’s full of cedar trees. And if you can think about that
for a second, All of these trees, these beautiful trees with the
animals frolicking and the birds chirping and the fresh air and
the beauty of that forest. And God is using these Assyrians,
these mighty trees to discipline the people of God, but eventually
they will be slashed down and the whole forest will be nothing
but tree stumps. That’s all they will be. And you look around and at those
stumps at what used to be, of what could have been, and you
ask the question, where is the hope? Not hope in the sense of, A wish
upon a star, but the absolute certain hope, something you can
lean on as a promise. Where is it? Because as far as
you can see, there’s nothing but stomps. There’s nothing but
a wasteland. There’s nothing but evidence
of complete and total failure. Nothing but self-inflicted harm.
And I wonder if you’ve asked that lately. Ask that of yourself,
of your life, the church, of the world in which we live. What about yourself? If you ask,
where’s the hope in my life? You’ve been dealing with the
same besetting sins in your life since the War of 1812. I mean, it’s
always been there, it just seems like. You’ve been dealing with the
same weaknesses, the same hardships. Your family is not all that you
dreamed that it would be. You look at the church, you look
at the church in America, in the world, maybe even this church
in some respects, and you see people professing faith in Christ,
professing to follow him, and yet they’re capitulating to the
spirit of the age. They’re mimicking the patterns
of the world. They’re buried in a trench of
legalism or shallowness. or false teaching and you ask
yourself, where is the hope? Where’s the hope for the church?
Where is the hope for my community? Where is the hope for my family?
Where is the hope for myself? And what you discover here in
Isaiah is that there is hope and there is good news. See, in verses one through two
of this passage, you see hope coming from the most unlikely
of places, and it just seems like it isn’t much, right? It just seems like there’s not
much to it. There shall come forth a shoot
from the stump of Jesse. All of these stumps, and there’s just this little that kind of shoots up from a
stump. I mean, you wouldn’t even, you
might pass by it without even recognizing it. Back in chapter
nine of Isaiah. You had this picture of Emmanuel
that would be the day spring that would disperse the gloomy
clouds of night. And here you get that he is the
rod of Jesse, right? Jesse, who’s Jesse? Jesse is
David’s father. King David’s father. Who is,
what is David known for? He’s known for restoring and
reuniting the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Of leading
spiritual health and revival. And yet, we know some things
about David, right? We know that he was a far from
perfect man. I’m always befuddled that the
scripture says that he was a man after God’s own heart, and then
you actually see the depravity of his heart. I mean, he would
have been deposed from the ministry if he were serving today. He might have been thrown in
prison. far from perfect man, but God
uses him. And what Isaiah is saying here
is that there is a much greater David to come, the Lord Jesus
Christ, Emmanuel. who will disperse those gloomy
clouds of night, free his people from all that the Assyrians represented,
which was the tyranny of the devil, enslavement to sin, hopelessness
in this life, and in the next. And so you get to verse two and
you see that Jesus, this shoot from the stump of Jesse, will
be nothing like King Ahaz, nothing like this Linguini spined king
who is reigning in Judah at the time and truly making a bargain
and a deal with the devil. In verse two, you see that Jesus
would be the one that the spirit of the Lord would rest upon,
the spirit of the Lord would rest upon him, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might,
the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. He is the anti-Ahaz,
the 180 of who Ahaz is. Ahaz lives by sight. Jesus never
lost sight of the will of his father. Ahaz ruled with foolishness
and wickedness. Jesus rules with righteousness
and justice and truth and wisdom. Ahaz would cause God’s people
to go into exile and bondage. Jesus would come to release his
people from exile and bondage. And this is imminently important
for us. Absolutely practical for the
moment you walk out those doors this morning because you need
to remember that God does not work in the way that the world
works and he does not bring hope in the way that the world brings
hope. In other words, Jesus doesn’t,
your hope is not going to come from the great institutions of
this world and what they contribute to it, however good and well-meaning
they may be. Your hope is not going to come
from who governs us or what laws are passed or what comes out
of our universities or what comes out of the corporate world or
any other institution. It’s not, the ultimate hope is
not going to come from that. It’s not going to come from the
most esteemed and powerful and brilliant people of this world.
It’s not going to come from being a strong nation or having a great
leader or having military or political power, anything else
in the world. That’s not where our hope is
ultimately going to come from. It’s going to come from a baby. Babies, I know a little bit about
them, let me tell you. I’ve got four. They’re totally dependent. You
have to do everything for it. I mean, teenagers, it’s like
15 years in. I mean, it’s still, there’s still
all of that, right? And what Isaiah is saying here
is that the hope for you and for me and for the world is gonna
come, it’s gonna be like this little, this little shoot coming
out of something that appears to be lifeless, this little twig,
this little branch. It’s gonna come from Nazareth,
this nowhere place where scripture says nothing good, you know,
someone said nothing good comes from Nazareth. It’s like, it’s
like Jesus, it’s like Winnemucca, Nevada, right? You know, what,
Siler City, who even, no offense if you’re from Siler City. But that’s where Jesus is known to
have been raised, to have come from, and yet that’s where our hope in
life and in death reigns. And there’s something else you
should know. The word from Isaiah here comes in chapter 11, and
in 11 years from the time in which this is written, the Assyrians
would wipe out the northern kingdom. And then a few decades later,
the Babylonians would come. We know about them. They would
come and take those into the, take them into captivity. And there’s years and years of
life getting worse before it gets better. And as far as Israel is concerned,
the whole Davidic line had been cut off. I mean, it had just
been absolutely wiped out. And they asked this question,
they had to have asked this question, will God actually keep his promises? Like, is he gonna keep his promises?
The people were gonna be mourning in lowly exile, as the Carol
would say. They would live as aliens and
strangers in the world, and they would long for one to bring them
back to the promised land, to bring them back to the dwelling
place of God. They would long for this shoot
from the stump of Jesse. And no doubt there’d be times
that they would lose hope. No doubt. And if you’re an honest
person, you lose hope from time to time. and perhaps more than
from time to time. Perhaps you’re here this morning
right now in this moment and you’re struggling to even believe
what you’re hearing because it doesn’t align with your circumstances. They would call into question
the promises of God. They would begin to doubt whether
or not Emmanuel would come to ransom captive Israel. But here
we are on this side of the cross and on this side of the resurrection.
And we have the advantage to look back. We have the advantage
of hindsight and we know that the Savior has come. These are
demonstrable facts of history. That Emmanuel has come. That he has made his dwelling
place amongst us. that He has obeyed in our place,
that He has died in our place, and borne the wrath of God for
our sins, and forgiven them, and imputed all who look to Jesus
through faith with His perfect righteousness, and has reconciled
us to God, and has given us the hope of glory. That’s what Jesus’
coming, and life, and death, and resurrection, and ascension
all point to, and so we can celebrate this time with joy looking back
knowing for certain that hope has come and joy has dawned and
yet there’s a really clear sense in which we’re in a similar place
as the original readers and hearers of this passage where who had
been taken captive by the Babylonians, who’ve been conquered by the
Assyrians, because there’s a sense in which we remain in a sense
of exile. Peter reminds us of this. You
get to the New Testament, you get to 1 Peter 2, and you discover
there that Peter refers to us as the church as strangers and
aliens, right, in this world. Do you feel like that at times?
More than at times, like all the time? A stranger, an alien
in this world? The world is burning. There’s
corruption. There’s war. Marriages and families,
they fall apart all the time. Injustice is happening all the
time. Righteousness doesn’t even seem
to be a category. I mean, it’s not even on the
grid of so many people. There’s all these things that
seem to be, there are some things that are getting better, but
there are definitely issues in parts of our world that seem
to be getting worse, and they don’t always necessarily seem
to be on this trajectory towards hope. It doesn’t seem to be like
the interstate that we’re traveling down all the time. And we not
only experience it from the world, but we’re guilty of it of ourselves,
and we even contribute to it. So we’re waiting, we’re waiting
for Emmanuel to come again. Our spiritual ancestors of the
Old Testament were looking to the manger. But now, we on this
side of the cross, we’re looking to Emmanuel who will come again. We wait for his coming when all
oppression shall cease. All the wrongs will be made right.
All the injustice, all the sin, all the decay, all the depravity
of the world will be no more. That He will bring about this
new heavens and new earth and He will wipe every tear from
our eyes. Every pain, every suffering,
every death will be no more. And you see it as you get to
the end of the passage here. Verses six through nine, you
see this picture of Eden, a paradise. Right of this world without any
of… the decay. I mean, you can look back into
Genesis 1, Genesis 2, and you think of our first parents there,
and the whole world, and everything’s in harmony. All these animals,
all these plants, nothing bites them. There are no mosquitoes.
There’s nothing dangerous about it. It’s all joy and pleasure.
The air’s fresh. The Pilot Mountain isn’t burning.
Nothing is happening there that is falling apart Animals everywhere living in
harmony. There’s this picture of Jesus
being tempted in the desert, right? And you’re familiar with
that. Mark chapter one speaks of it. And in Mark, he actually
brings in this point that just seems maybe not super important,
but it actually is. He says that Jesus, when he was
tempted in the desert, he’s out there in the wilderness, which
by the way, is where our first parents went after sin. They’re
banished from the garden and Jesus is out there being tempted
by Satan and he’s with, and Mark says he’s with the wild animals. He just puts that little parenthetical
in there. And let me tell you something
about wild animals. I love them. I love wild animals
at the zoo, right? I love to look at them from,
you know, there needs to be a safe barrier between me and them. Like, they’re not going to get
to me. It’s not, that’s not going to
happen. Because, you know, when I look
in the eyes of a lion or a tiger or a bear, they look at me. I mean, there’s communication
going on. And they see me as lunch. And I don’t want that,
right? Well, Mark chapter one says that
Jesus is with the wild animals, and so you get the sense that
he’s in a dangerous place. There’s an island about 90 miles
off the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and it’s known as Snake Island.
And this island is home to perhaps tens, hundreds of thousands of
golden lancehead vipers. They have no predators. And so
to go to that island is against Brazilian law. You’re not allowed
to just go visit that island. But if you do break the law and
go visit the island, the breaking of the law and the consequences
of it will be the least of your concerns because you will be
bitten by one of those snakes and you will be dead in 45 minutes.
That’s how venomous they are. The island is patrolled constantly
by the Brazilian Navy to make sure that no one goes there.
And I want you to think about that in light of verses six through
nine. Look at verse eight in particular,
verse eight of chapter 11. The nursing child shall play
over the whole of the cobra and the weaned child shall put his
hand on the adder’s den. That is my worst nightmare. Seeing one of my children coming
in, holding a snake and saying, mommy, daddy, look what I found. You see here that the lion is
laying next to the calf. When the lion lays next to the
calf in this life, the lion is thinking, tasty. But what we
discover here is a picture of the physical universe full of
people and animals living in perfect harmony with one another.
And it’s an illustration of a promise, not a wish, but a promise of
what will happen when Jesus comes again, where warfare and hostility
will be replaced by reconciliation and peace. And that is the hope
that you and I have in our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Not only
that he has come, that He has come to liberate us from sin.
He has come to set us free from death and alienation and condemnation
and the tyranny of Satan, but that He will also come again
to restore to us an existence and an environment of perfect
peace, where there is no warfare, no hostility, no evil. Ever since
the fall, ever since the fall of man, When our first parents
were banished from the garden, we’ve all been trying to get
back there. Everyone. What do you have in
common with the person that you have the least in common with
in this world? The thing that you have in common
with is that you’re both trying to get paradise. You’re both trying to get to
the garden. And we’ll look for it in anything
created in this world. Money, sex, power, control, approval. Whatever it is that your heart
is galvanized by. But our only hope is to look
to Emmanuel. The only hope is to look to the
one who has come such a distance for us. To dwell amongst us. who in whom through faith we
are united to, who’s adopted us as his sons and his daughters,
and whose spirit dwells within us. And we have that promise
that he will bring us back there, but not only back to the garden,
it’s the garden but better. And I don’t know what that means,
but it’s the garden but better, redemption but better. And that’s
why we can sing this hymn. and hit that high note. Rejoice,
rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. And sing it not merely with our
voices, but with our hearts, with our lives as well. Let’s
pray. Father, we thank you for the
gospel hope. the good news, the promise that
you have come for us. The church may not seem like
much, the Christian life may not seem like much, but neither
did a shoot from the stump of Jesse and neither did a baby
in a manger. Yet we know that the hope of
this life and the next is in Him. And as to you, we look. And when we become hopeless throughout
the course of this week, would you direct our gaze to our faithful
Savior, Jesus Christ, who always keeps His promises, and will
keep them to the very end. We pray this all in His name,
for His sake. Amen.