Isaiah No.3 The Life and the Times of Jesus

So, today we're going to read from Isaiah with an American accent. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding.

The spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord. 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. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.

With the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. 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 hole of the cobra, and the young child will put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

In that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious. In that day, the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel. He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. Ephraim's jealousy will vanish, and Judah's enemies will be cut off.

Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, nor Judah hostile towards Ephraim. They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west. Together, they will plunder the people to the east.

They will lay hands on Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them. The Lord will dry up the gulf of the Egyptian sea. With a scorching wind, he will sweep his hand over the Euphrates River.

He will break it up into seven streams so that men can cross over in sandals. There will be a highway for the remnant of his people that is left in Assyria, as there was for Israel when they came up from Egypt. Now, just before we look at that passage, let's sing a song about the Messiah, and the achievements which are still to come in this world, as far as the working out of the triumphs of Calvary are concerned.

Five, two, three, or the valleys shall ring with the sound of praise, and the lion shall lie with the lamb. Five, two, three, stand and sing. We'll sing it twice.

Five, two, three, or the valleys shall ring with the sound of praise. The lion shall lie with the lamb, and the lion with the lamb, the lion shall lie with the lamb, and the lion with the lamb, O'er the valley shall ring with the sound of praise He will reign, and his glory shall ever be heard He will be loved, he will come from And he shall be known as the answer for He will be the Lord of all Amen. You come back from holiday and you've got your camera loaded and you take out the film that you have used up and you put it in the hands of Boots or some other agency in the town that looks after photography.

Aren't you glad they don't then leave you in a few days' time with just a negative? I mean, it's alright a negative, you lift it up, have you done that, to the light or maybe to a lamp and you can see the picture in some degree. But really it's a poor relation compared with the finished job. And so you feel satisfied when you've got not just your negative but you've got all the photographs fully developed and you see just what a magnificent photographer you were and feel that Lord Snowden, if only he could see what you had done, well he would blush at his own attempts.

I often think that the Old Testament is very much like the negative. We're glad to have it, we lift it up to the light of the Spirit and we see a lot of truth coming through it. But in the grace of God he's taken the negative and through the refining process of the Holy Spirit as more revelation has been added the Old Testament is taken into the New Testament and you see there in all its perspective, in all its dimension, in all its relief, in all its wondrous colour all the plan of God, the negative, the Old Testament and the fully developed picture, the new.

Now you need your negative. Christians who go around just with the New Testament are not fully equipped. But you also need your New Testament as the photograph in one sense controls the negative so the New Testament controls the Old Testament.

We understand the Old Testament through the revelation in the New Testament. We're glad for the negative, we're glad for the fully developed picture. Now here's our beloved Lord and he's in jail.

I took you to that particular instance in the Gospel of Matthew some months ago. I say our Lord is in jail, I'm sorry, his cousin John is in jail and there's a problem amongst John's disciples. You remember how I summarized it? If he is who you say he is, John, why are you like you are? John's disciples go to Jesus, that's the only place to go when you've got a theological problem.

And Jesus says to John's disciples, quoting from the book of Isaiah Tell John it's all under control. The blind are receiving their sight, the deaf their hearing. And John, blessed is the man who is not offended in me.

In Matthew 8 John the Baptist gets a little telegram from Jesus saying John I'm working it all through from the negative in the Old Testament and it's all coming to fulfillment. And there is a sense in which the footprints of Jesus are found in the Old Testament. Here in the first part of our Bible is the blueprint.

Here is the plan which controls in many respects the life of our Lord Jesus. But the wonder is that the development is even greater than the anticipation in the Old Testament. And so when you come to this wonderful, beautiful, brilliant book of Isaiah you're absolutely amazed at the miracle of inspiration as you find there.

So well demonstrated for us in the first two addresses we've had from this prophecy you find there anticipations of what the Lord is going to do in history as well as illustration of what he has done to that point. So as far as the Savior is concerned you already know having got to the 11th chapter that one day a virgin will conceive and bear a son. You found that earlier on, did you not? And likewise you know that the government will be upon his shoulders two chapters later in Isaiah.

You're told that. You see the blueprint, the negative, it's being fleshed out, it's being developed in some degree but there's far more to come. Well, here in the 11th chapter you get further impressions of what the negative of the Old Testament so to speak has in mind as it predicts the coming ministry of our Lord Jesus.

And here I suggest you in the first three verses you have some answer to the question of what he is. And then from verse 3, the latter part, to the fifth verse, what he does. And from the sixth verse through to the ninth, what he achieves.

And then from the ninth verse through to the fourteenth, what he wants. Let's have a look at that then, shall we? Speaking of our Lord Jesus, what he is or who he is, well, we've got the language of metaphor. We're told about his ancestry and we're also told about his authority.

As to his ancestry, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. As to his authority, the spirit of the Lord will rest on him. You can pay to have your family tree researched.

Did you know that? It can be a painful business. Sometimes best to be in ignorance as to what your forebears were like. True, they may have gone back to Oliver Cromwell.

But on the other hand, they may have gone back to some criminal record. Pedigree. Strange, isn't it? A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.

The previous chapter has talked about the disasters of the Assyrian Empire and the whole of the known world then almost being engulfed, almost like California after an earthquake or a fire. And yet out of the devastation, the prophet says within the precincts of Palestine or the Holy Land, a shoot will come out from a stump. Now it's interesting because you're in on the secret, at least the majority of you are.

It's interesting to notice that when Isaiah speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ and his ancestry, he doesn't call him a son of David. He calls him the stump of Jesse. Jesse, of course, was David's father.

And whenever the kings of Israel and Judah are referred to, particularly the kings of Judah in the Old Testament, they're always traced back to David, one of David's descendants. But here is Isaiah, and he speaks of a greater than King David in terms of the shoot, which comes up from the stump of Jesse. Let's enlarge upon the mystery.

Look at verse 10. In that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. Now here, Isaiah is almost playing with us.

I mean, he's talking metaphorically of the same person. But in the first verse, it's a shoot. In the tenth verse, it's a root.

How can he be a shoot and a root? Do you remember those words which fell from the lips of Jesus before Abraham was, I am? Do you remember way back in the early pages of the Old Testament, references made to the fall of Adam and Eve? But from Adam's descendants, a seed would come. And as a result, tremendous consequences would follow. You see, our Lord Jesus Christ, at the ancestral level, he traces his lineage back to David.

Beyond David, he traces his lineage back to Jesse. But did you not know that Jesus, though born in Bethlehem, existed before Bethlehem? Thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little amongst the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me one whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Here, in the negative, is an indication from the pen of Isaiah, inspired by the Spirit, that when the son of Jesse, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes into the world, he shall be of human stock.

He is the shoot, but more than that, he is the divine stock. He is the root. He is before all things.

Isn't it marvelous that the Old Testament leaves you with inadequate information and you strive for some additional knowledge and in the New Testament it's there. Isaiah is prepared, if you like, to leave these two strings dangling and it requires the New Testament to come along and to tie them together and to show that far from being bizarre in his reasoning, Isaiah is wonderfully inspired. As to the authority of the blessed Lord, well, he is the man of the Spirit.

Messiah, Hebrew, Meshiah, Greek, Iesus. It has the idea of someone who has known a copious anointing, not of the literal oil that Aaron knew, that was placed on his head and fell down to his beard and eventually covered the whole of his body. When Messiah comes, he will be anointed in all fullness with the Holy Spirit, born of the Spirit at birth, baptized by the Spirit, almost in tandem with his being baptized in water.

And when he comes back from his 40 days in the wilderness, he comes as a man anointed with the Spirit. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he says in his preaching debut in Nazareth. Why? Because he has proclaimed, appointed me to preach the gospel.

How do you know that you can preach the gospel, Christ? I am the anointed one, the Spirit of the Lord. Amazing, isn't it, that dangling also, needing the New Testament's additional information is this idea of the ruach of God, the breath of God, connected to God and yet different from God, the Lord Jehovah, the Spirit of Jehovah, and the Son of Jehovah, all within the negative, needing the New Testament to develop it and set it out in all its wonder, in all its relief. I could go on, but time won't permit to show you how this anointed one with the Spirit has these sixfold or sevenfold characteristics which are listed in the second part of the second verse.

His ancestry, the shoot of Jesse, his authority, the Spirit of the Lord, is upon him in all the fullness of the Spirit's power. His originality, he will delight in the fear of the Lord. That Hebrew word, delight, is a wonderful one.

It really has its roots in the concept of Noah, who, you remember, when the ark came to rest, offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and it was a pleasing odor. So the life of the Lord Jesus is a sweet perfume that rises to heaven. The same sort of worship that God wants you to bring, not just the mouthing of praises or perhaps sometimes platitudes on a Sunday, but the pouring out of a life.

I delight to do your will, oh my God. Who he is, his ancestry, his authority, his originality locked up for us in descriptive fashion in the first three verses. What he does, what will the beloved Christ do when he comes on earth? Well, you discover information from halfway through verse three down to the fifth verse.

Let's take the fifth verse to start with because that talks to us about his regalia. The context indicates that when our beloved Lord comes, he will ultimately come, at least his long-term activity will be that of judge. Not immediate, for God's immediate reaction to sin is not judgment.

Did you know that? God's immediate reaction to sin is mercy. His long-term reaction to sin, if mercy has been pushed on one side by the sinner, is judgment. There is no other option.

Our Lord comes in the regalia of a judge. Righteousness will be his belt, faithfulness the sash round his waist. Once again, the concept is Davidic.

I mean by that, Isaiah has David at the back of his mind, but here is a king who out-David's David. If you read in the book of Chronicles and Kings, you will discover that time after time, the kings that follow David have this epitaph on their lives. They did not follow in the way of the Lord.

They were poor successors to the Davidic line. But the blessed Lord, when he comes, righteousness will be his belt, faithfulness the sash round his waist. Righteousness, conformity to God's standards in all things, faithfulness, firmness and stability from which he never wavers.

As far as this king is concerned, his character and his rule are the same. What he teaches, he is. What he is, he teaches.

Does anyone convince me of sin? Is there any deviousness in me? Nobody takes up the gauntlet. Nobody can respond to the challenge because he stands there impeccable. As unsullied as a lily in a pond.

Absolutely pure in his righteousness. Thus, he has the right to judge. And of his judgment, you can say two things.

One, it's fair. And two, it's far-reaching. Fairness, well, it's not cosmetic.

Look at the latter part of verse 3. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears. This judge does not go by ear-gate or eye-gate alone. He goes by heart-gate.

Does that help? You are an Israelite in whom there is no guile. How does he know? He always knows. Judas, you're a man who's riddled with potential treachery.

How does he know? He always knows. And the punishment will always fit the crime. With righteousness, he will judge.

With justice, he will give decisions. It will be fair. And it will also be far-reaching.

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. With the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked. This is metaphor, and yet within the metaphor, there is a kernel of literal truth.

He does not need armies. He does not need battalions. By the word of his mouth, he can save or he can condemn.

And thus, when you read of him in Revelation, again with metaphor pronounced, John sees a man with a sword in his mouth, a man whose breath can cut down ordinary people like ourselves. He speaks the word of salvation, or he speaks the word of judgment. You take the one or you take the other.

There is no third option. His judgment is fair. His judgment is far-reaching.

And he has the qualifications uniquely to be the judge. Righteousness his belt. Faithfulness the sash round his waist.

What he is. What he does. What he achieves.

Verse six to nine. Some of my most favorite verses in this prophecy. John Milton, Paradise Lost.

Do you remember sweating through it at school, some of you? Good book, read it again. Really help you, better than some of the modern rubbish. Paradise Lost, that's Milton's shorthand for what happened at Eden and he was dead right.

But Isaiah, he's more positive than Milton. He talks not in terms of Paradise Lost. He talks in terms of Paradise Regained.

Adam is expelled from the garden. But when the second Adam comes, the garden gate is open. With remarkable consequences.

I'll tell you something as Christians. We are impoverished by the fact we do not think about what is to come often enough. If we knew, I don't know whether the word chump will be allowed in the eternal age.

But if it is, we should probably be spending the first decade or so saying, what a chump I was. All this in store and I lost my temper sometimes over such small things. And I lost sleep over such really stupid reasons.

What is in store? Well, when he comes, he will regain Eden. Paradise Lost will be recovered. That which is far will be brought near.

The Gentiles, believing Jews, brought together into the presence of God. In an age the like of which is so wonderful that Paul doesn't even try to match Isaiah and describe it. But simply says, I have not seen nor heard the things that God has in store for those who love him.

But Isaiah plays it out in the imagery of the animal world. There's a new world coming. I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming from heaven as a bride adorned for a husband.

Behold, I make all things new. Peter says, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. The apostle Paul, writing to the Romans in the eighth chapter, says that the whole of the inanimate creation groans.

Waiting for what, Paul? Waiting for its redemption. Waiting for the curse that has been placed upon it to be lifted so that the earth can return to the glory that was its at the point of creation. And Isaiah, in his negative, gives us some idea as to what it will be like.

When the shoot breaks forth, there will be new life. And I give you three words to write shorthand what Isaiah takes several verses to describe. Number one, reconciliation.

The wolf will lie with the lamb. The leopard with the goat. The predator and the prey will be at one.

All hostilities will be eliminated. And a little child can go into a cage. There won't be any cages, actually.

And he can lead the calf and the lion, the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the goat. And the little child will have no fear. The hostilities have been removed.

Reconciliation. Transformation. The cow, verse 7, isn't this lovely? The cow will feed with the bear.

The young will lie down together. The lion will eat straw like the ox. What you really get is a picture of one of the animals, like the lamb, suddenly saying to the wolf, come and have fellowship with me.

I mean, that really is a Hebraic concept here. It's opening your door to the stranger outside your gate and giving him hospitality. That's what the Jews were commanded to do in the Old Testament.

Well, here's the concept of the animal world doing this. The lamb saying, hey, wolf, come and have a meal with me. Stressing the preposition with.

Transformation. And the transformation is permanent. The cow will feed with the bear.

The young will lie down together. You see, this isn't some temporary patch-up job. This is the seismic shift.

I love the way Californians sometimes speak about earthquakes. Have you noticed this, Richard? Earth corrections. I mean, it's a much nicer way of thinking it, especially when the roof is caving down on you.

It's all right, it's just the earth correcting itself. This is a permanent correction that is yet to be. Transformation.

The nature, red in tooth and claw, now being returned to what she was in Genesis 1, 29 and 30. Elimination. Look at verse 8. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra.

And the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. Here you find the baby and the toddler, and they're at play. And alongside the infant, as he's in his cot, comes the cobra.

And mum has no need to fear. And the young child will actually put his hand into the nest of the snakes. And there is no reason for him to be terrified.

The Satan came along in the form of a serpent, injecting his fangs into the human race. The devastation of the curse passed on to every generation. Here is Isaiah, wonderfully, poetically saying, The curse eliminated? How is it gone? Well, look away to what the man of God, the Messiah, has achieved.

See him there on yonder cross, bleeding. Why is he bleeding? Well, because of the curse. It's moved from us to him.

And as a result of his death and his marvellous resurrection, he has procured an antidote for sin. And the cleansing has got to be, ultimately, universal. Reconciliation.

Transformation. Elimination. What he is.

What he does. What he achieves quickly. What he wants.

Verse 9. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain. The idea is of Zion. The idea is of Eden.

But Zion is no longer one geographical location. Zion is the concept of being where God is, and God inhabiting the whole earth. Look at chapter 2 and verse 2. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains.

It will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. We are not to be confined to the concept of geography here. All the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. And in the age that is yet to be, Jerusalem is internationalised. Zion is throughout the world.

And so, when you move to the 10th verse, you get, if you like, an anticipation of what the beloved Christ wants. That they may be one. That people that you have given me, save Jews, Gentiles, from every generation, come and enjoy our presence.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the metaphor of the root and the shoot is now given over to the strong metaphors of the banner and the hand. The root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples.

The nations will rally to him. If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself. And this is what the gospel is achieving, not so.

And in these days, in an unprecedented fashion. It really is amazing that our lives are knowing the greatest expansion of the Christian church since Pentecost. And that the change that there is in the political climate in our world is such that it makes thinking Christians believe that the day cannot be far hence.

When the beloved Lord will be back, I will draw all men to me. To where will you draw them? His place of rest will be glorious. Come unto me, all you that labour, and I will give you rest.

Noah rested his ark. The Israelites, the Hebrews, rested when they came into the promised land. When you respond to the gospel of Messiah, you come to the place of rest.

In that day, verse 11, the Lord will reach out his hand a second time. It's not just a Davidic background, it's also an Exodus background. When did he reach out his hand the first time? When he miraculously brought those Hebrews out of Egypt.

And one of the problems in doing that was the Egyptian sea. Drop down to verse 15. What did God do as far as the Egyptian sea? That barrier was concerned.

He blew with his wind. With a scorching wind he will sweep his hand over the Euphrates river. All that is an obstacle to the free flow of the grace of God will be brought to naught.

He will break it up into seven streams so that men can cross over in sandals. There will be a highway for the remnant of his people that is left from Assyria as there was for Israel when they came up from Egypt. You see in this Exodus it's not going to be as local, it's going to be international.

It will involve the Jews, for God is not through with the Jews. God will grant an enlightenment to the Jews. Paul makes it clear, Romans 9 through to 11.

But there will be an enlightenment and there already is to this day of Gentile people. Verse 12, he will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel. He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.

Matthew makes it plain in his gospel that God will send his angels 24 and verse 31 to the four corners of the earth and mother earth will deliver up those for whom Jesus has died. Time has beaten me, but this is the glory of this great chapter. Here is the blueprint, you see, of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ.

Who he is, what he does, what he achieves, what he wants. I ask you this, do you know him? Do you know him not in negative fashion? Do you know him as your Lord? Do you know him as your Saviour? Is he your King? Is the glory of what is to be acting as a control on what you are now as the New Testament controls the Old Testament? Or do you live your life in cavalier fashion, content just with the negatives, not seeing that the glory that is to be ought to condition your life now so that when you stand in his presence, the presence of the root, the shoot of Jesse, you will stand there saying, thank you Lord that I was privileged to serve you and I did it with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength. I'll leave it with you.

So much more I apologize to God that I haven't the time to share more that is upon my heart. But you're an intelligent people. Take this chapter, live with it this week, work it through.

And now let's sing praise to the anointed one to whom our final hymn refers, 204. Hail to the Lord's anointed, David's greatest son. Let's stand.

We'll sing verses 4 and 5 only. This shall hold an instant's fame, For nations shall adore him, His praise all people sing. To him shall pharaohs cease to sing, And many others sing.

His kingdom save we see, A kingdom without end. For ev'ry poor victorious, We humbly beseech and offer, His power and tribute. His name shall stand forever, His kingdom save all.

For ev'ry poor victorious, Lord, we see it in that chapter, Those ancient enemies of Israel, Phoenicia, Eden, Ammonites, All subjugated by the power, Not of the literal sword, but of the word of God. Lord, we bless you that history is indeed his story. As in a moment or two we come around the table of the king, Help us to find further nourishment and solace.

As we take bread and wine together, Hear us, beloved God, and thank you again for our Lord Jesus Christ, The root and the shoot of Jesse. Amen. Through your love and through the ram, You saved the son of Abraham.

Through the power of your hand, Turned the sea into dry land. To the outcast on her knees, You are the God who really sees. And by your might, You set your children free.

El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Adonai, Age to age you're still the same, By the power of the name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Adonai, We will praise and lift you high. El Shaddai.

Through the years you made it clear That the time of Christ was near. Though the people couldn't see What Messiah ought to be. Though your word contained the plan, They just could not understand.

Your most awesome work was done Through the frailty of your son. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Adonai, Age to age you're still the same, By the power of the name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Adonai, We will praise and lift you high.

El Shaddai. Let's sing that song again. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Adonai.

I speak of the name of God. The name of God was very holy to the Jew. Sometimes the scribe reading the scriptures would wash out his mouth before he would actually even take a substitute for the sacred name.

El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Adonai, Age to age you're still the same, By the power of the name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Kaddai, El Adonai, We will praise and lift you high. El Shaddai.

Thank you for watching.