Isaiah 11

Here's where it lands with our passage today.

The word for branch in Isaiah 11 is the Hebrew word neser, which sounds a lot like Nazareth.

In the totality of God's story, Jesus' hometown of Nazareth is not an accident of history.

The branch of Isaiah 11, the Messiah, the neser, would come from the unexpected place of obscurity, from Nazareth, from the unlikely stump in the rubble.

Like the ultimate cosmic version of the survivor tree, Jesus is the one branch of life, the one sliver of hope that makes all the difference.

He is the branch that extends through the death and through the decay and says to you and to me and to people in Isaiah's day and to people in Matthew's day, I still have life.

It means he's going to declare in favor of it and rescue and restore it.

Otherwise, why would creation be celebrating? Um, and that then leads into that passage I quoted from Isaiah 11, but it's also in Habakkuk 2 and in Psalm 72 and various other places, about the whole creation being filled with God's glory.

And I began to realize that just as Solomon built the temple so that the divine glory could come and live in the midst of his people, so the, the, the righteous king in Isaiah 11 and Psalm 72 and elsewhere does justice for the poor and the meek and the oppressed and the widows and the orphans so that the divine glory may flood the whole creation.

Those two are in parallel.

So the first story is the long-term project of God wanting to put all creation right and flood it with his own, saturate it with his own presence.

Then there's, as part of that, the abolition of the food laws, that now all foods are made clean.

Then particularly, think about this right now, where we are historically.

It's the arrival of the peaceable kingdom, the kingdom in which Jesus says, "Those who take the sword perish by the sword." The kingdom in which Jesus says, um, "You must love your enemies and pray for your persecutors." And even though that seems to be an overturning of the Old Testament vision of a kind of a violent king coming in Psalm 2 or Psalm 110, nevertheless, it is already hinted at in Isaiah 2, in Micah 4, in Isaiah 9, and gloriously again in Isaiah 11, where the wolf and the lamb will dwell, dwell together, and a little child will lead them, and so on.

Just so we're clear, we use language like New Exodus, which is not, strictly speaking, in the Bible, but it's the right interpretation of phrases like preparing the way of the Lord, make stray in the desert, right? I just want to...

Well, it fits with, you know, back at the end of Isaiah 11, Isaiah had said, verse 15, the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt and will wave his hand over the river.

So it's kind of like he parted the Red Sea for you at the Exodus.

He's going to do that again.

Lord, if you're looking for a people to offer themselves fully, Lord, I pray there would be an unhindered offering on the altar to your name.

Father, I pray that Isaiah 11 speaks about the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might.

Lord, I pray over this room collectively a spirit of might over the room.

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, and your spirit comes with might.