The Promise of Reconciliation

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0:00Good morning again. If you don't know my name, my name is Joel, and I'm happy to be serving you all and here as a new creationist pastor. We're continuing our Advent series, four weeks, four passages from Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied many, many times about the coming Messiah, so it's good to use that in this time of Advent. He uses vivid stories, wonderful stories, and words, and these are true words, visions of the future. Not myths, not some fanciful imagination, words from God about the future that he was going to bring to all of his people through the Messiah. Isaiah tells us about our promised salvation. Now these prophecies that we hear, all of them, they begin their fulfillment at Jesus's first coming, but they will be completed at his second coming. There's common threads in all of them, but you can read them and know that some of these things happen through Jesus when he comes first, and some of them happen later.

1:04That makes them helpful for Advent as well, because in Advent, in case you don't know, we are getting ready to celebrate what's already happened, the birth of our Savior, but we're also looking forward to his second coming, his return. Now let's get to today. You can measure the severity of a problem by how much it takes to solve it. The deeper the wound, the more medical intervention is needed.

1:35This principle is for our bodies, for our physical health, but it's also true of our relationships, our communal health. On March 3rd, 1991, a man was arrested because he was breaking the law, but Los Angeles police officers used excessive force during the arrest. That man's name was Rodney King. Some of you may remember this happening. When those officers a year later were acquitted of using excessive force, it was April 23rd, 1992, and it was like a match had been dropped into dry underbrush. The city of LA just erupted in protests for six days. There were riots. 53 people were killed in those riots. Over 2,000 people were injured. Rodney held a press conference on May 1st, 1992, three days into the riots. His lawyers had given him a script, something angry, something defiant, but when the cameras started rolling, he threw it away, and he spoke impromptu. Words that became famous, words that were addressing the protesters and the rioters. He said, people, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we stop making it hard for the older people and the kids?

3:21It's just not right. It's just not right. It's not going to change anything. We'll get our justice. To keep going on like this, it's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. We all can get along. We just gotta. We're all stuck here for a while. Let's try to work it out. Now, Rodney was immediately criticized by the very people that he spoke to for what he said at that press conference. How could you say that? And after that, for years later, he was mocked.

4:07But I think there's a lot of dignity in his words. There's a cry of dignity there. There was a desire for peace. There's also a lot of helplessness in what he said. Everywhere around us, we can feel different levels of hostility between nations, between neighborhoods, between neighbors, between family. We long for reconciliation and for peace deep within us. How can it be? Well, today's passage points us forward. It gives us the answer to that. God has a plan.

5:02God has a plan, and he is unfolding that plan. He is already taking action on that plan. This is extremely good news, and it speaks to the deep desires of our heart. Let's go to Isaiah 11 and read what God says here. Just to remind you, this is God's word. He does not lie. He does not change his mind. He does not make mistakes. We can take those principles and read his word and rely upon it, and we should. Let's do that together today. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

5:53And 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 of 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 on what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. 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. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat.

6:47The calf and the lion and the fatted 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.

7:17They 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. In that day, the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples of him, shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

7:44In that day, the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people. From Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, help us to eagerly receive your word because of the working of your spirit in us. Lord, till up our hearts. Make them soft, ready to receive that seed. Change us, Lord. Give us hope. Fill us with hope and with joy today.

8:29At the truth and the power of your gospel, the promises that you are fulfilling. The promises that are for us in Christ. And Jesus, we pray this in your name.

8:45The promise of reconciliation. A lot of Isaiah is meant to call us out of cynicism and into hope. It is so easy to be cynical. And God knows it. And that's one reason that he sends the prophets.

9:05Who's ready for hope today? Anybody need hope today? Then come with me to the word of God. Come with me to the true one. Who knows you and knows your heart and wants to give you hope today. Isaiah is speaking. And he's saying it is not always going to be like this. Because someone new is coming. Someone new is coming. In Isaiah's time, the nation of Israel had turned away from him to false gods. It was bad. They looked no different than the nations around them.

9:40There were wicked practices, even child sacrifice, if you can believe that. It's hard to believe, but it's true. They had adopted the wicked worship practices of false gods of the nations around them. It had been absorbed into them. It had contaminated them. They had completely abandoned their Lord. Back in Isaiah 6, God told the prophet that he would punish his people for their sin. He was going to punish them with exile. And he compared it then in Isaiah 6 to the felling of a tree, leaving only a stump.

10:24It was going to look like God's people were no more. But God had mercy in store for them. He was going to bring new growth to that stump. There shall come forth from a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. I don't know if you know this, but it's possible for a stump to have a shoot and it to grow back. Like this picture right here.

11:00Now you look at that little shoot on the side, and I want you to know this picture and what Isaiah is talking about, it is not a metaphor for the triumph of man's will and people overcoming obstacles. It is a metaphor, an illustration of the truth that it is God's will to fulfill his promises that will happen. That little shoot is God's will to bring life from what seems to be dead.

11:32Jesse was King David's father. Isaiah is saying a new person will come, a new heir. A new heir to the throne. He will be filled with the Spirit. It says four times in verse 2, the word Spirit there, four times. And this Spirit filling gives him great wisdom. There are five synonyms for wisdom in verse 2. Wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, and of course, the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. This person will not use his wisdom, though, for profit, for personal gain, for fame.

12:16He uses his wisdom for justice towards the helpless, towards the poor, towards those in need, towards the oppressed and the downtrodden. Verse 4 tells us he will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. To do this, he doesn't rely only on his senses. He judges with righteousness. Even when it means punishing the wicked, in all things, this person will uphold right and wrong. Don't we all recognize the goodness of this? The inherent goodness of this?

12:54I know subjective truth, do your own thing, morality. Reality, it's fashionable today. It's always been fashionable. It's having a rebound right now. Subjective truth is what people want. But deep down, we have a sense that there really are moral absolutes. Especially when we see someone who's helpless get victimized.

13:28I think many people aren't so much hesitant about objective truth as they are about who gets to sit in the judge's seat. So why not me? We all say. What if the person who's judging is biased and skewed? That's really what we have a concern about. But here we have a picture of someone different. Someone completely different. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. In the Bible, clothing metaphors are used to depict someone's character.

14:06Someone's purpose. Who they are on the inside. This is someone in Isaiah 11 with power and authority and compassion and moral clarity to move forward and judge faithfully. Someone new is coming, and what will this person do with his wise and spirit-filled judgment? Well, he ends the hostility.

14:35Verses 6 through 9 are some of the most fascinating and compelling passages in Isaiah. He gives us these counterintuitive animal pairings. Wolf and lamb, leopard and goat, lion and calf. There's a pattern here. Do you see it? Predator and prey. Verse 7 takes things even further. Bears are grazing. A lion is eating straw like an ox. These animals have been changed from the inside. They're no longer carnivorous. They're herbivores.

15:28Listen, death was not part of God's good creation at first. He did not create it that way. Death infected creation along with sin because of Adam's disobedience. It was an after effect of sin.

15:48Back in the Garden of Eden, after sin entered the world, I think there must have been a moment when a lion felt his stomach growl, and he looked up, and he saw an antelope, and he was like, hmm, that looks delicious.

16:05But he didn't think that before the fall. There's this new thought in his mind. Hmm, I'm hungry. I'll go take that. This passage tells us that animals killing and eating each other is not part of God's plan for the future.

16:30Now, I'm not saying you have to be vegetarian. You can if you want to, of course. But God did lower the sheet to Peter and say, look, Peter, kill and eat. So I do think that eating meat is fine. I'm not trying to say it's sinful. But in the future, in the ultimate redemption of all things, lion and lamb grazing together, look at verse 8. Helpless children are not hurt by serpents. They can play over their nests and put their hand inside without fear.

17:06Remember, Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent. And ever since then, we feel them as a threat. But now that threat is gone. Verse 9 is the great summary of all this. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain. These animal pairings, this is not a Hallmark card. This is not just a cute image. This is conveying a truth that is huge.

17:37This is a picture of reconciliation between enemies. Of peaceful coexistence. Not because predators are chained up or because prey are protected behind fences, but because the instinct to kill and the fear of death are both gone. They're gone. The lion doesn't want to kill anymore. And the antelope is not afraid.

18:09Isaiah is telling us that this promised one, this promised heir of Jesse, will remove all hostility from nature like poison being sucked out of a wound.

18:23This is why predator and prey are friends and roommates. That's why tigers are eating vegetables. And chomping on beets instead of deer. And that's why little children, little children, not lion tamers, little children, are leading them and tending to them and playing with them. It's this vision of peace because the hostility has been removed. It's gone. Along with it, the fear of death and harm. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

19:12Peace is arrived and it will never leave. You know, one of the great paradoxes of humanity is that even while we make war, we long for peace. And even while we long for peace, we make war. A hundred and ten years ago, on Christmas Day, 1914, during World War I, something remarkable happened between some British and German troops on the Western Front. A truce. A one-day truce. It started with Christmas carols being sung across the battle lines to each other.

19:55Then it began to be shouted, broken English or whatever language, cross-talk about a ceasefire. And then careful meetings in no man's land where they would talk and give each other gifts and smoke and drink together.

20:20Here's a picture of that very moment. Listen to what a private from London wrote. Dear Mother, I'm writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Ha-ha, you say. From a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh, dear, no. From a German soldier.

20:58Yes, a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday, the British and Germans met and shook hands in the ground between the trenches and exchanged souvenirs. Yes, all day, Christmas Day, and as I write. Marvelous, isn't it?

21:22It is wonderful. It's a wonderful and it's a true story. But you know what happened the day after Christmas? The bullets started flying again. And the brutal war kept going.

21:42But Isaiah is promising that there will come someone that will make that Christmas truce go on forever. There will be no day after the truce. It will just be peace forever. The very thing that those soldiers longed for, risked their lives to see if they could have it just for that one day and then it was gone. That's what God will bring.

22:19Isn't that amazing? Don't you want that Christmas truce to go on forever? No, but this land of peace, it's got to have people in it, right? It's not just for animals.

22:38And so next, this promised one, this someone new, he gathers the scattered. He gathers in the scattered. Isaiah says, Inquire is just too polite of a word here. The word really means to search out with care, with urgency. To go after. The nations are coming. They're drawn to this person. They want to know about him. They want to know him. You know how hard it is to get a group of people to do anything together? It's like the more people, it could be something fun.

23:27And the more people you have, the harder it is to get them out the door and in the cars and off and going on this thing. Someone's wandered off and as soon as that person comes back, somebody else has left. That's not happening here. It is a concerted drawing in. The people are coming. And God is doing it. In that day, the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people. Through this person, God himself is reaching out and gathering in.

24:03Now remember, Isaiah had already told Israel that exile was coming. They're going to be scattered abroad. But this scattering would not last forever. God is going to get them and everyone back. He's going to come for the nations. What's remarkable about this list is that it isn't a list of nations that the Jews were exiled to. It's a list of the known world at that time. It's north, south, east, and west. All around. When you combine that with verse 10, speaking of the peoples and the nations, what you realize is that Isaiah is talking about the fulfillment of God's promises all the way back to Abraham.

24:58Look at this. Listen to what God says to Abraham. In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. In your offspring, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Isaiah is talking about the fulfillment of Abraham's hope. But it's also the fulfillment of our hope. Our culture has long been fascinated with global harmony and reconciliation. There comes a time when we heed a certain call. When the world must come together as one of all.

25:42So sang Lionel Richie in 1985 in the opening lines of We Are the World. You got a picture of that, Luke? Luke? No? Okay. All right. You'll have to just envision Lionel Richie in your head.

26:07We Are the World is a worship song to humanity. The chorus says, there's a choice we're making. We're saving our own lives. It's true. We'll make a better day, just you and me. Who's the savior in that song? It's explicit. We're saving our own lives. God is nowhere to be found in this utopian vision. And yet, the desire for togetherness, it does reflect how we're made. And it does reflect the purposes of God. Listen, often it's not what we want that's the problem.

26:44It's how we try to get there. The promise of reconciliation hits us at a closer level too. Because we're scattered, aren't we? We're separated. From family, from friends. Sometimes it's because of distance. Sometimes estrangement. There's unresolved conflict. Sometimes you just don't know why. You just don't see each other like you used to. This passage gives us hope that someone is coming that will end the hostility and will gather in the scattered.

27:20And he is Jesus. Jesus, no one but him could fulfill this passage. He came full of the Spirit and he is the giver of the Spirit. He's full of wisdom and understanding. He walked in the fear of the Lord. He acted with righteousness and with faithfulness. And he is both shoot of Jesse and root of Jesse. Did you notice that? It's subtle. Verse 1, this must have confused people who heard Isaiah talking. Verse 1 says this person is the shoot of Jesse coming from Jesse.

27:56But then verse 10, he's the root of Jesse. Jesse comes from him. How is that possible? Only if this person is both man and God. Only if he's both man and God.

28:13Jesus is this promised Messiah who ended the hostility and he did it through his sacrificial death. To pay the penalty of treason and rebellion and sin. And all who have faith in him have a reconciliation that is vertical. It's between us and God and a reconciliation that's horizontal. It's between one another. Listen to how Paul describes it in both of these terms. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. He is now reconciled in his body, a flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

28:55That's a reconciliation that's between us and God. But then there's the horizontal component as well. For he himself is our peace who made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. We heard about that earlier in Galatians. He is bringing us together from every tribe, tongue, and nation. If this has happened to you, then do all you can to make peace. Do all you can to make peace. In a world of broken relationships, in a world of lingering resentment, a peacemaker is light and salt.

29:40A peacemaker stands out. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This Jesus who ends hostility gathers the scattered, and he is already doing that among us. Just look around. He is already doing that among us. He is gathering us into his church. And he himself is the head.

30:07And John gets a vision of the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. After this, I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number. From every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God and who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. God is accomplishing a glorious promise of reconciliation.

30:42He is calling all of his people into a peaceful and restful home. And there will be no day after. The day of peace will go on forever.