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 Shoot From The Stump Of Jesse, King David’s Descendant and Source (Isaiah 11)

On the scorched and blackened ground are short hills of charred wood, the cold remnants of trees that once stood proud in the garden of God. In their midst is one that was once the tree called Jesse, from which each new branch was a king, now reduced to a small mound from which go roots into the now rich and darkened soil.

Isaiah 11:1 (ESVUK)

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,

   and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

  

Jesse, a Bethlehemite, was a shepherd of the tribe of Judah. In the days of Israel's first rebel king, Saul, the prophet Samuel came secretly to Jesse's house. He told the humble shepherd that God had sent him with good news. From his family would come a new king. Samuel had come to anoint one of Jesse's sons as this next shepherd of the nation (1 Samuel 16).

David, Jesse's youngest and most humble son, was anointed king that day. Years later, after a miraculous deliverance from the oppressive Philistine giant (1 Samuel 17), and a time of exile in the wilderness (1 Samuel 20-30) in which his submission to God was tested and his character was forged, David did finally take the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 2, 5). He would be the first of Judah's tribe to fulfill the prophesy of kingship made to Judah by Jacob, his father, hundreds of years before.

David would go on to become Israel's ideal king, called precious to God's own heart in the Hebrew scripture (1 Sam. 13:14; also Acts 13:22). In his reign, the prophecy of Judah's line of kings would be renewed and expanded to David. God promised David that the kingdom established in him will never end, that an heir of David, of Judah's tribe, would always sit on the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 7). During the reign of David, Israel prospered, and experienced their first time of true rest from war or wandering since they had left Egypt .

However, though ideal in the eyes of the nation, even David failed to be the wise and just king God had called him to be. Once established in his power, David arrogantly claimed the authority God had graciously given him when he was a meek shepherd boy as his own, as though by his own strength he had earned it. For David's rebellious and foolish entitlement, God judged the nation. Before the judgment was complete, on the hill of Abraham's sacrifice of his son David repented, pleading with God to let the curse for his sin fall on him alone, and to spare the nation. For David's humility, the curse is lifted, and even David is spared (2 Samuel 24). Though he frequently failed, it is in this humble and willing repentance that David most pleased God.

The hand of God's judgment would not be held back forever. Each king after David would repeat his acts of arrogance, each generation building upon the hubris of their fathers (1 Kings). There would be times of repentance, but no king after David would ever come even as close to the heart of God as David had, though even David himself had been a failure. Isaiah preaches in a day of utter apostasy. The judgment that was stayed in the time of David will now return. The nation of Israel, God's garden of love and justice in the world, will be razed to the ground, leaving only a seed of a hope of renewal (Isaiah 10). Even the line of kings, God's precious promise to the people of God, will be cut down to the roots, to even before the time of the most precious King David. God is starting over.

Hundreds of years later a child was born to descendants of the tribe of Judah, in Bethlehem, the city of David. The child was named Jesus. News of his arrival was as humble as the quiet anointing of King David. The first to greet the new king were shepherds called in by angels telling the good news, as David had been called in from the sheep by Samuel the priest (Luke 2:8-20). Like Israel twice before him in both their wilderness wanderings and their exile, and like King David during his flight from Saul, Jesus would also be taken into the desert and tested (Luke 4:1-13). As Israel had been cut down by God and destroyed by the empires surrounding her, Jesus would also be killed at the hands of the empire of his day (Luke 23). Yet while Israel was punished for her rebellion, this king had never transgressed a single law (Luke 23:4, 14). And, like the nation Israel was before him, Jesus was also raised to new life by the hand of God (Luke 24).

By his willing fulfillment of all of Israel's law and history, Jesus became the substitution for any and all who would from then on be added to the family of God. Though we rebel as Israel did, we need not ever be cut down. Christ, into whose branch we may now all be grafted (John 15), has been cut down in our place (2 Corinthians 5:21). In this was the full nature of God manifest. Our Just King did not forgive our corruption by looking over it, but by fully satisfying the debt incurred by our wrongdoing. The death of Israel because of the rebellion of the kings became his. At his resurrection he became the new and final King, the firstborn of a new humanity (Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5), a merciful and loving God by whom all may be brought back to justice.

Hebrews 1:1-4 (ESVUK)

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

The Kingship of Jesus was inaugurated by his death and resurrection, but his origin was from long before. Jesus was present in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him (John 1:1-4; Ephesians 1). His rule began after his payment for sin on the cross (Hebrews 1:3). His reign is eternal, the fulfillment of the eternal kingdom promised to David. All else is subject to change.

Revelation 5:5 (ESVUK)

And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Jesus became the shoot from the stump of Jesse, and therefore also the root of David, the one from whom even David takes his source. By his intervention in human history, all debts owed by we, the rebel kings of earth, are now paid. Jesus becomes like David, the intercessor on the hill between the judgment of God and the people of God. Jesus becomes like us, the rebel nation deserving of destruction. In exchange, we become like him, grafted into his new life, drinking deep from divine roots.

Revelation 22:16 (ESVUK)

“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

Jesus is both the root of David, his divine source from whom he receives his adoption into God's family, and the descendant of David, his human son, whom he willingly became so that the lineage of David may be redeemed (Matthew 22:41-46).

 

By his death and resurrection, Jesus becomes the final judge on whom all judgment may fall.

Isaiah 11:2-4 (ESVUK)

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.

Jesus came as the poor and received the judgment of the wicked upon himself. He judges with righteousness by his own death. His judgment is equal. By his death he set free both the oppressed and the oppressor. Every one saved by the death of Christ has been a king like David, arrogant rulers of our own world as though we made our own throne, and the oppressed of the land under the wicked kings after David. The true and final King has set us free from both.

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Tomorrow, June 26, 2014: 1 Peter 2:11-12 - Aliens 
Next Tuesday, July 1, 2014: Isaiah 11 - The New King and the New Kingdom

Click the image to read the entire series from Isaiah.