The New King and the New Kingdom (Isaiah 11)

Isaiah is wrapping up the first portion of his book with a beautiful image of a coming kingdom in which justice reigns, and the just King from which the peace of the kingdom will come.

Isaiah 11:3-5 (ESVUK)

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.

Chapters Eleven and Twelve end a portion of Isaiah often called The Book Of Immanuel, after the name of the child mentioned three times since Chapter Seven, and the meaning of the child’s name, God-With-Us, a phrase also included in this portion of scripture. The first twelve chapters are also a unit, considered by many scholars to be a collection of Isaiah’s early writing. In this first collection, Isaiah has proclaimed judgment on the nation of Judah, and prophesied its destruction. In the book of Immanuel, he gives Israel and Judah hope for redemption, and he paints us a picture of a Saviour who will come and bring peace to the nation after her fall.

Here, Isaiah writes of the shoot from the stump of Jesse, a new king that will emerge from David’s family, and take the place of David as Israel’s ideal king. This king will be just, and his justice will flow from his fear of God. He will remain faithful to God, and be unmoved by the selfishness that so corrupted the line of kings that followed after the first David.

Christians worship Jesus, the Son of David, as this forever King. Upon his death and resurrection was his kingdom inaugurated. His willing death, though innocent, purchased for him the earth that had been corrupted by human rebellion. No more would God’s judgment need to fall on rebel kings and kingdoms, as it did upon Judah. This king took it all. By his blood may any and all enter his Kingdom of Justice, an upside-down kingdom that would grow from the seed of a king who would willingly die as a criminal, into a garden of former insurrectionists against this very king. Up from the ground would spring up a salvation that will consume the entire earth. All will be turned back to justice, peace, and love, as it was all originally created to be.

Jesus is already on the throne. However, like Judah and Israel in their exile, as they waited for God’s promise of their return to their land to be fulfilled, so we also wait patiently as all injustice and oppression and empires of violence both military and personal are placed under King Jesus’ feet.

We watch as the world’s empires crumble and God’s Kingdom of freedom grows. We are invited to be citizens of the kingdom now, and to begin now to participate in the work God is doing in the world to call all things back to true peace and order. At the return of Jesus, we will see the final consummation of this just kingdom, as everything is finally put back to right.

Isaiah 11:6-9 (ESVUK)

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.

At Jesus’ return death itself, the final enemy, will be defeated. At this final victory of Life over Death, the citizens of the Kingdom of God will be resurrected with new bodies, like Jesus’ resurrection body, onto the earth similarly transformed to its fully healthy and living state, as God always intended it to be.

All of Creation will live in harmony and peace. Death and pain will no longer exist, yet rest and play will remain.

Into eternity will remain everything good about God's Creation. Only sin and the consequences of sin will not remain. To imagine what may continue of this life into eternity, we need only ask what of this life is neither sin nor the consequences of sin. All else will be restored to its original purpose.

Some of the things in this life are symbols of the realities of eternity. Many of these things will remain, but in their true, transcendent, eternal form. For example, the sacrificial law of the Old Testament was a symbol of the final sacrifice of Christ on the Cross once for all. The transcendent reality replaces the temporal one.

Our physical bodies and the joys and pleasure we experience in them will be redeemed and glorified. This is not a hope for a misty, abstract eternity, but weighty, and real, the perfect image of what we now know and experience. God could have made Jesus' resurrection body in such a way that he did not need to eat. Yet, Jesus ate fish in the presence of the disciples (Luke 24:41-43). The animals in Isaiah 11 also eat. If eating can be preserved for eternity, and play can be something we look forward to, than we can expect that most of what we enjoy about our life now will also remain. Jesus says that after the resurrection there will be no marriage nor giving in marriage (Matthew 22:30). Yet God has made us as sexual beings, and called us as his Creation, "very good" (Genesis 1:28,31). The expression of all of these parts of our being may be different than we know them now, but there is no biblical reason to believe that they will be destroyed in eternity.

The new earth, unmarred by the scars of our selfish treatment now, will be resurrected as we are, yet still as true and corporeal as Jesus’ body was to the disciples when he appeared to them. For an eternity we will be able to explore all of the earth, in communities of pure love, the fruit coming from the source of all love to whom we are connected. We may enjoy travel, exploration, invention, and artistic creation. Like the Old Testament sacrificial system, our eternal, physical existence in the presence of Immanuel, God-With-Us, may be manifest as a more true, eternal, transcendent experience for which our temporary lives and relationships as we know them on this side of eternity are only a symbol.

Until then, we live now in the reality of our New Creation, the seed of the kingdom planted in us by Christ. With the New Creation of our earth and sky in our hearts, we live in faith according to the just and peaceful reign of Christ in which we will live for eternity. We are ambassadors of this coming kingdom and its King, living on this broken earth as hands of healing, as God works life in her from the inside out until his return.

Romans 8:19-25 (ESVUK)
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

A new world is coming. A new world is here.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2014: Isaiah 12 - Songs of Justice and Victory
Thursday, July 3, 2014: 1 Peter 2:21-25 - Following the Lord, our Suffering Saviour

Click the image above for the entire series in Isaiah.

The Kingdom Now and the Kingdom Come – Luke 17:20-37 (part 2)

(Click here to read Luke 17)

Luke 17:20-21 (ESV)

20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

The book of Luke is the story of Jesus life, ministry, execution, and resurrection. This story of his life is the inauguration, demonstration, and proclamation of the Gospel (Good News) of the Kingdom of God. The word “gospel” actually had a political meaning. At the time of Jesus, the Roman empire was expanding and developing rapidly over their part of the world. As the Roman army conquered each territory, they would send ambassadors into that region to colonize and culturalize the area. These “citizens” of Rome would come bearing the gospel message that Caesar was now Lord. They would remain in the region to demonstrate the culture and values of the empire of Rome. By their influence, the area would become more like Rome. What began as a legal reality would become reality in practice over time.

When Jesus' followers began spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven over Judea, Samaria, and the Roman world, proclaiming that Jesus was Lord, they were making themselves a threat to the Roman empire. Most of the first disciples of Jesus followed him to execution by the empire. Many of them were crucified, an execution reserved for non-citizen insurrectionists and enemies of the empire.

The people of Israel had been waiting for their King and the New Kingdom for many years. Every era of their history had a promise of a coming Saviour who would rescue his people and establish justice forever. The prophesies grew in specificity over the years. By Jesus' time, the people were waiting for a king from David's line to take the throne and make things right. The violent occupying Roman empire led them to interpret these prophesies as the coming of a revolutionary military king who would conquer Rome in the name of their God.

It was of this Kingdom that Jesus taught. It was in the context of these understandings and misunderstandings that he preached and lived nonviolence, love for enemies, and a rejection of anxiety and striving for things in exchange for a generous life submitted to justice and love. Jesus was king, but his kingdom would not be like the empire of Rome. The Kingdom of God was planted in the hearts of individuals who became changed from the inside out, living the forgiveness and mercy they'd experienced in the world around them.

Jesus was inviting people to become citizens of his Kingdom, and then leaving them to share the good news, and turn the legal reality of his new Kingdom and Lordship into a demonstrated reality by the power of the Holy Spirit working through their lives.

It is this present reality that Jesus is speaking of when he answers the Pharisees in Luke 17:21. The Kingdom is here. It is among us. Jesus is crowned king upon his death and resurrection at the hands of the corrupt powers of this world. In defeating death, he makes a show of them as powerless, and sets people free to live outside their control. Starting with his life on earth, people are set free to live free and just and righteous lives of love and forgiveness through faith in him.

Luke 17:22-24 (ESV)

22 And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23  And they will say to you, ‘Look, there!’ or ‘Look, here!’ Do not go out or follow them. 24  For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.

But the reality is that the Kingdom as Jesus lived and preached it has not fully come to be. We live its reality now, but it is at his return that it will be fully consummated. By his great patience he waits for the world to come to him, by faith living according to love and truth. But there will be a day when the True King does return, in power, and every person, and every king and ruler, will submit to his rule. The day will come quickly, and the reality of it will be unmistakable. We do not live in fearful expectation of coming destruction, but a hopeful yearning for a real, tangible consummation of the Kingdom as our Good and Just God intends.

Luke 17:25-32, 34-37 (ESV)

25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26  Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27  They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, 29  but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulphur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— 30 so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. 32  Remember Lot's wife.

34 I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. 35  There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left.” 37 And they said to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”

His judgment will be upon those who refused to receive forgiveness from their sins and resist the hateful empires of this world. Those who accept the Kingdom and Jesus will live according to the true freedom for which we were first created, with no fear, sadness, or pain, in unity and love.

Luke 17:33 (ESV)

33  Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.

This coming Kingdom, now and to come, is the Great Reversal Jesus preaches during his entire ministry. Mountains will be brought low. Rulers will be removed, The humble will be exalted. The poor will be blessed. 

Our law is love.