DECEMBER 24th, 2023 (10 am) PASTOR DON PIEPER
This Christmas Promise ISAIAH 2:1-5; 11:1-10
“DEALING WITH DISAPPOINTMENT”
Expectations run high this time of year, but what happens when reality doesn't match up? It brings to mind six-year-old Calvin, lying under a pile of snow, having ended another sled run with a mighty crash. Lying on his back, he gasps, “Reality continues to ruin my life.”
Disappointment and discouragement come in all shapes and levels of intensity. For some, it can be a small matter like that of receiving a disappointing Christmas gift. There's a video on YouTube, for example, featuring a girl opening her gift, finding there some clothes, looking back at her parent in dis-gust, then closing the box and walking off. I read of one girl who wrote to her grandma, “Thank you for the nice gloves you sent me for Christmas. They’re something I wanted – but not very much.”
Of course, that's nothing compared to far more deeper sources of disappointment & discourage-ment that so many in our community are facing this Christmas season. There are some struggling to make ends meet, some or battling melancholy or even depression, others who are facing Christmas without their spouse or parent, or have just received, as of late, some rather discouraging news.
How do you deal with that? In Isaiah 1-12 we read of the prophet's message to the people of the southern kingdom of Israel known as Judah, who are under an ongoing threat of attack. The people are discouraged by this threat, to be sure, but also by Isaiah’s prophetic warnings regarding their guilt, their lack of faith and God’s coming judgment against them. “Oh, what a sinful nation you are!” he opens with. “You are loaded down with a burden of guilt! You evil and corrupt children have turned away from the Lord. Why do you continue to invite punishment? Must you rebel forever? If you keep turning away…you will be destroyed…” (Isaiah 1:4-5, 20) Sounds a bit like John the Baptist...
So it goes, chapter after chapter. Those who took the prophet’s warnings seriously were, to be sure, very discouraged. But within this warning, this “bad news”, are interwoven passages of hope and good news. In an attempt to encourage the discouraged, Isaiah seeks to bring some clarity: “Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot – yes, a new branch bearing fruit from the old root.” (Isaiah 11:1)
Isaiah uses a metaphor of a death tree, suggestive that the Davidic dynasty will one day lose power. But like many a stump any one of us might find in the woods, it has a branch growing out of it.
He goes on to say, “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him.” Him? Who’s the him in that sentence? “He will delight in obeying the Lord.” Who will? I thought we were talking about a tree stump, that the family tree was no more. “He will not judge by appearance.” He won't? Who won't? Doesn't sound like anyone famous I know. But a Holy Spirit anointed tree branch? That's messianic!
(Isaiah 11:2-3)
Isaiah’s not finished. “In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will rest with the baby goat. Cattle will graze among bears…and lions will eat grass like livestock do.” (Isaiah 11:6-7)
So what do these strange images of herbivores and carnivores living in a kind of cosmic commune have to do with the messianic sprouting stump in verse 1? How do these mixed metaphors bring clarity to those of us struggling with disappointment and discouragement?
It reminds me of a Court Jester, serving as a royal taste tester, faced with confusing directions...
-2-
B: Listen! One of our spies caught one of the Black Knight’s spies carrying a pellet of poison for the king, so we double-crossed them. I put the pellet of poison into the vessel with the pestle!
D: The vessel with the pestle?
B: Yes, but you don’t want the vessel with the pestle, you want the chalice from the palace.
D: I…don’t want the vessel with the pestle? I want the cha-lee from the – whatiss?
B: The chalice from the palace. It’s a crystal chalice with a figure of the palace.
D: Does the chalice from the palace have the pellet with the poison?
B: No, the pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle.
D: Oh, the pestle with the vessel.
B: No - the vessel with the pestle.
D: What about the palace from the chalice?
B: Not the palace from the chalice – the chalice from the palace!
D: But where’s the pellet with the poison?
B: In the vessel with the pestle! Don’t you see? The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!
D: The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true…
B: Now you’ve got it. One more thing…: Should anyone hand you the flagon with the dragon that was brought in from the wagon, disregard that altogether!
D: The flagon with the dragon that was brought in from the wagon? What? Get out of here!
What if, like a royal taste tester, your life, or at least your perspective in life as you face the trials and disappointments in life, depended on making sense of perplexing images, like these in Isaiah 11? “In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will rest with the baby goat, the calf will graze lions, eating grass as the livestock do, and a little child will lead them all.”
(Isaiah 11:6-7)
The prophet's words paint a vivid picture of a time when that messianic stump sprout will be in full bloom. It's an image reminiscent of the Garden of Eden, prior to the Fall. God will bring it about not thru a pillar of fire or a display of power but thru a little child. What's more, this healed world will be populated by people who know him. “Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain. As the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.” (Isaiah 11:9)
The implication? Like the animals just mentioned, the hunters and the hunted, these people who were once inclined to hurt and destroy, will no longer. Now they live in peace and harmony with each other, and with their Creator, as they once did in the Garden. Isaiah says they will know the Lord using a Hebrew word that conveys deep intimacy. These are people who intimately know the Lord God and wind up in this New Garden, with all of creation reconciled, because a little child led them there...!
Who are they? They are the child's followers, his protege, those who follow his lead. And who is this child? As he does elsewhere, Isaiah provides some details about his character and his calling so God's people can recognize him: This branch of the old David tree will be the perfect king. He'll be endowed with the gifts of wisdom, understanding, power and an intimate knowledge of God. What's more, “Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.” (Isaiah 11:2,5)
So..., will that belt and sash be in matching blue and gold, or what? Actually..., these are not physical garments but spiritual ones. He will stand out in a crowd not because he looks so good, but because he is so good, so wise, so perfectly in sync w/God, and so powerfully full of the Holy Spirit!
-3-
“In that day the heir to David's throne will be a banner of salvation to all the world. The nations will rally to him, for the land where he lives will be a glorious place.” (Isaiah 11:10) With those words the prophet returns our attention to the point and hope of this messianic promise. This little child who leads those who know the Lord is the heir to David's throne, the new branch shooting out of the old stump of David's family mentioned back in verse one. The prophet points to this little child and declares, he is the key! Like a banner, he brings hope to all the world! Follow him – he will lead you!
Note all the sweet yet poignant clues we're offered about this child's identity & purpose! From this one prophecy we learn that this timeless child is like a shoot growing out of the stump of David's family tree; he is the one upon whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest in complete fulness, he is the one who obeys God the Father as no one before or since, who cares about justice, the poor, and yet whose very word shakes the earth when he speaks! He's the banner God provides for us to rally around.
That last image brings to mind a moment in America's struggle for freedom. It's the story behind our national anthem, The Star-spangled Banner, how Francis Scott Key penned the poem, 'The Defense of Fort McHenry' aboard an American navy ship watching as the enemy pummeled the Baltimore harbor in a barrage of heavy cannon fire. Smoke and fire fill the evening sky when suddenly out of the billows of black smoke he spots a battered but defiant American flag still flying in the wind.
Tears fill his eyes as that star-spangled banner flood his heart with hope, inspiring his famous poem, and that of his countrymen who rallied to its defense, winning the battle as they did so. Yet, even still, they'd have to wait many a moon for the final battle to be won and for freedom to be ultimately realized. Rally to that banner, his song declares! Our flag is still there!
That's the image Isaiah evokes as the final section of his oracle shifts to how the banner rallies the exiles to return home, which is really the message of the Bible as a whole. Since being booted out of the Garden, losing the promised land, and then winding up in exile, repeatedly, God's people have found themselves so longing. It's even at the heart of Jesus' gospel, evident in his parables like that of the Prodigal Son, who “when he came to his senses, he said to himself, 'I will go home...”
(Luke 15:17)
We long for home. The prophet points to two beautiful expressions of homecoming in his book. There is the one here, in chapter eleven, where we catch a glimpse of the end of the book, if you will, a symbolic snapshot of the great reunion God has planned, a homecoming like no other, the ultimate conclusion to the story that He not only places here in our hands.... but invites us to be part of!
Here predators lie beside their former prey, domesticated with the wild, all hostility finally at an end, including of the human persuasion - even Democrats and Republicans will be of one accord apparently – can you imagine - and the way we get there? We rally to God's Banner – the child Immanuel!
In Isaiah 2 and 11 we catch of a glimpse of the cosmic homecoming God is preparing and we see there that that vision of our future changes everything, especially our present trials. But it's not just what awaits us in the future that should interest us but what God intends for us in the here and now.
Such passages powerfully and prophetically point us to a profound hope we dare not miss. The hope the prophet points us to is in following that little child, the very one he's already identified as the root of humanity's hope, the banner to which we're called to rally to! “In that day the heir to David's throne will be a banner of salvation to allthe world and the nations will rally to him.” (Isaiah 11:10) -4-
“Jesus didn't endure the agony of the cross just to keep us in line. The new covenant that he established puts its trust not in the law, but in the transforming power of God's Spirit living within us. Jesus didn't suffer and die so that we could build for ourselves havens, but so that we might expand the kingdom of His love - because invisible kingdoms are at war for our hearts and lives, and that of our neighbors, and his banner rallies followers who're willing to risk life itself for the sake of others.”
(from Erwin McManus' The Barbarian Way)
“In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to bring back the remnant of his people! He will raise a flag among the nations, (a banner of salvation to all the world), and he will gather the scattered people of (God) from the ends of the earth!” (Isaiah 11:11-12)
Christ gathers us anew, calling us to follow his lead by standing out in the name of love, not because we're so brave or good but because we long for home and know deep down, even those in a world of hurt or living their lives oblivious to it, long for home as well. So we look through the smoke and debris of anger and disappointment to discover - his flag is still there! So rally to his banner!
It's to that banner, that child in a manger, that seekers & shepherds are still rallying to this day!