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.

Unto Us A Child Is Born (Isaiah 9)

After willingly accepting the call to carry God’s message of salvation to the people of God, Isaiah is deeply burdened with the sad news of the destruction of Israel and Judah, and the scattering of the survivors into exile into Syria and Assyria, the nations of the North.

The northernmost region of Israel is Galilee, a rural area far from the cultural centre and political capitals of the nations. It is humble Galilee that will be the first to fall to the invading armies, her people slaughtered or taken into slavery, her land given to the families of the foreign settlers.

Soon after, all of Israel would fall. Judah would follow. The temple would be destroyed. The line of kings after David, the kingdom God promised would never end, would be taken, and with it would Israel’s hope for their coming Messiah-king, Son of David, die with it.

As always in the midst of the promise of judgment, God gives Isaiah a message of great hope, salvation for Israel and the whole world, but especially for the precious little scarred and broken region of Galilee.

Isaiah 9:1-3 (ESVUK)

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

    on them has light shined.

You have multiplied the nation;

    you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

    as with joy at the harvest,

    as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

God has good news for Galilee. She is not forgotten. On the contrary, It is in this place of Israel’s oldest and deepest wound, among a people most long lost and forgotten, that God will first shed the light of love and restoration. Galilee, small and forgotten, on the edge of the nation and vulnerable, a child among her people, will be the beginning of the planting of the new garden of God for restoration of all the scattered of God’s people over the earth.

Where there has been deep sadness, there will be joy. Where the people have been most divided and scattered, they will be gathered, and the nation will be multiplied. Those who have lost their fathers will be made heirs of the family of God. They who have been taken as spoil by the enemies of God will enjoy the plunder of the army of God.

Our redemption begins with the resurrection of that in us which has been most baptized in death. In the place of our greatest pain and loss will God appear most glorious in healing, most generous in grace, most comforting in love, and most rich in restoration.

Isaiah 9:4-5 (ESVUK)

For the yoke of his burden,

    and the staff for his shoulder,

    the rod of his oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult

    and every garment rolled in blood

    will be burned as fuel for the fire.

All tools of oppression, yokes of slavery that would keep the oppressed bound, will be broken and destroyed. All authorities, the rods of the abusers and the scepters of the kings, will be gathered as kindling. All systems of control and violence, and all the armies and officers and mercenaries that keep them in their power, will be dismantled. Even the evidence of the pain of Galilee’s pain and darkness will be gathered up and forgotten, burned along with the kindling that was the power of those who abused her.

Galilee will be free. They who have walked through the dark valley of the shadow of death have not been alone. They will see a great light. They will return home.

Years later, Isaiah’s prophecy would come to pass. A few generations after her destruction, the children of Galilee would return to their battle-scarred land. What was once an obscure land on the edge of Israel, populated by people from many nations outside of the Jewish tradition would now be doubly so. Galilee had been settled by people from Syria and Assyria and Persia and from the many other lands that those nations had conquered. But they were home. Back in their own land, they would rebuild their community with whom they now shared it, their nation multiplied to now include families from all over the earth.

Into obscure little corner of the nation, broken and restored, would God plant the light of humanity that would shine in the darkness, and the darkness would never overcome it.

Isaiah 9:6-7 (ESVUK)
For to us a child is born,

    to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

    and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace

    there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

    to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

    from this time forth and for evermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

God’s promise to David will be fulfilled. The king will be established again. But the Son of David will not arrive first in Jerusalem, the capital of the nation, or  in Judah, the namesake of his tribe. A king will be born for Galilee of the nations on the very edge of God’s Promised Land.

How beautiful that God would send a son to be brought up in a multiethnic neighbourhood among a simple people. Young Jesus grew up among neighbours who knew languages from all over the world. In his local synagogue, the gathering place for the community, he likely saw faces of all complexions, and experienced the difficult but rewarding reality of building community among a diverse people.

The gospels and history books tell us that Galileans had a unique accent. Perhaps it was a special blend of the whole world who called itself Galilee. Religious purists would mock the disciples for their accent, assuming they were backward and uneducated because of their humble origins. However, Galilee was more than good enough for the God of the universe. In Galilee, Jesus was able to learn and carry the face and history of not just his own family, but the world’s, the world into which he’d been sent. Jesus was fully human, for all humanity.

The hope of God's salvation is for all people, everywhere. Galilee, the land of the Gentiles, of all the nations, will be blessed. No longer will only one people know and follow God. God will inhabit all nations, and by God will all nations be blessed. Violence will be destroyed and oppression will cease because of the justice and righteousness of the King of kings who fills all in all. Light will shine on all people, and the voices of all will be raised in joy.

To the world God sent Jesus to save, he began his ministry with a simple but bold announcement of hope in the synagogue of the little rural village in which he was brought up.

Luke 4:16-22a (ESVUK)
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

    and recovering of sight to the blind,

    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.”

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him and marvelled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

The Galileans, first to be attacked and destroyed by the armies of the North, were the first to hear the glorious announcement of Jesus’ Jubilee. As Isaiah had predicted hundreds of years before, in this man, the Son of David, would God plant the New Kingdom of God in the earth. The scepters and rods and yokes would be removed. The captives would be set free. The blind who had lived in darkness would recover their sight and witness a great light.

This would be only the beginning. The Kingdom had come and the new order would be established. The prophets had spoken of this day, when a rock cut by the hand of God would tumble into and destroy the idol of the violent empires of the earth.

Daniel 2:35 (ESVUK)

Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

The blood soaked robes of our captivity, all evidence of our oppression, will be burned along with the scepters and rods of the kings and abusers. The empire is destroyed. The Kingdom is here.

Jesus would say the same thing of the Kingdom of justice and peace that he came to inaugurate.

Matthew 13:31-34 (ESVUK)

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables;

    I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”

Like a single seed that becomes the scrappy little weed of a mustard bush, known for overgrowing graveyards, so would these humble beginnings beget a kingdom that would spread over the land of the crumbling empire. As impossible as it would be to remove the yeast from a rising dough, so also will this kingdom of love and justice and freedom spread through the former slaves and slaveowners of the world, until the empires of violence and hate are but distant memory.

This is the good news of Galilee, land of the nations, land of joy, land of light, land of freedom.

Isaiah 9:7 (ESVUK)

Of the increase of his government and of peace

    there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

    to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

    from this time forth and for evermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

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Recommended: For more on the Kingdom of God parables of mustard seed and yeast, read Overgrow The Government (Luke 13)

Next Tuesday: Isaiah 10 – Condemnation of Injustice as Policy

Tomorrow: 1 Peter 1:10-12 – Things Into Which Angels Long To Look (part 2/2)

Click the above image for the entire series from Isaiah