SPEAKER_00: Welcome to City Church Dublin Sermon Archives.
SPEAKER_00: Join us this week as we work through the book of Isaiah with the start of our Advent series, The Songs of Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_01: My name's Ben.
SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the leaders here at City.
SPEAKER_01: And like Mark said this morning, we're taking a pause from our series in John's Gospel.
SPEAKER_01: If you've not caught that series, if you've missed some of those, you can go wherever you go for podcasts and you can search for City Church Dublin.
SPEAKER_01: Just don't do it right now.
SPEAKER_01: Because we are starting our new series here, The Songs of Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: And it's exciting.
SPEAKER_01: For the next three Sundays, we'll be looking at Advent.
SPEAKER_01: We'll be looking at the book of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: Like Mark said, um, it's from the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: It's 700 years before Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And like you said, you know, this is not necessarily the time where we're gonna where we're gonna look at manger and stable and all of these, all of these familiar images that we have around Christmas time.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna we're gonna wait.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna we're gonna look at this.
SPEAKER_01: Because in this old news, we're looking ahead to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's the easy answer.
SPEAKER_01: But digging a little deeper, we see that Isaiah really sets the stage for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Really kind of gives us the idea of why the world was just so eager for his coming.
SPEAKER_01: So just as Isaiah was waiting for the arrival of Jesus the first time, we as Christians, we in our day and age are waiting for the second coming of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And so at Advent we find comfort.
SPEAKER_01: We find comfort that the creator of the world has come.
SPEAKER_01: We find encouragement to keep going because of God's promise.
SPEAKER_01: And we find cause for celebration because the light has come into the world to dispel the darkness and make all things new.
SPEAKER_01: Let's open with prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this season and we thank you for the opportunity to look into uh the book of Isaiah here, and we thank you that uh you show us so much about who we are and what our world is.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, we do long for the renewal.
SPEAKER_01: We do roll, we do long for the new world.
SPEAKER_01: And so I pray that as we as we dig into this uh here this morning, that you would open our eyes, open our ears, and let us see how you might use this passage to transform us.
SPEAKER_01: Pray this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: All right, so here we are.
SPEAKER_01: It is Advent.
SPEAKER_01: It is 2021.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember a year ago, 2021, the year that everything goes back to normal?
SPEAKER_01: Remember that?
SPEAKER_01: They said uh we'll have the vaccine.
SPEAKER_01: Everything will be great.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, 2020, it was like they gave us two variants.
SPEAKER_01: They gave us the alpha and the beta, you know, the UK and the and the and the South African.
SPEAKER_01: But 2021 gave us 11 more variants if you weren't uh keeping track of that.
SPEAKER_01: This latest one, Omicron, yes, uh, it's lots of fun.
SPEAKER_01: But um, we're dealing with still vaccines and masks and boosters and restrictions and all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty clear we're not really back to normal here at the end of the year.
SPEAKER_01: But really, what is normal?
SPEAKER_01: What is normal for our world?
SPEAKER_01: Normal is social division, racial division, economic division.
SPEAKER_01: Normal is environmental disaster, climate disaster, natural disaster.
SPEAKER_01: Normal is human trafficking and wrongful imprisonment and crime and oppression.
SPEAKER_01: Here in the 21st century, friends, shouldn't we be past all of this?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, wasn't that the promise of the Enlightenment, right?
SPEAKER_01: That we as a species, given the right inputs, would inevitably improve, progress, make a better life?
SPEAKER_01: We have these these elements, these ingredients like personal growth, education, acceptance, social action, coming together, using the resources of this world and its people to solve its problems.
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we may never achieve literal perfection, but you know, things should get better and better.
SPEAKER_01: The human race will pull itself out of ignorance through reason, freedom, and tolerance.
SPEAKER_01: But of course, we know that an age of reason has not ushered in a real-world utopia.
SPEAKER_01: With all our advances in medicine, do we lead healthy lives?
SPEAKER_01: With all our ways to communicate, do we feel more connected to one another?
SPEAKER_01: With all our access to knowledge, are we wise?
SPEAKER_01: With all our choices, do we have more joy?
SPEAKER_01: With all our free time, do we do the things that are important to us?
SPEAKER_01: With all of our political freedoms to elect whatever leaders we want, are we any more satisfied with our political system and our government?
SPEAKER_01: With all our understandings of mental and emotional health, do we have mental and emotional health?
SPEAKER_01: Or do we find that we get the thing that we want only to find out that we really wanted something else?
SPEAKER_01: Do we labor?
SPEAKER_01: Do we achieve only to find out that it's not enough?
SPEAKER_01: Our heroes let us down.
SPEAKER_01: Our dreams disappoint, and on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: So Advent 2021, time marches on.
SPEAKER_01: Humanity continues this unbroken line from the Garden of Eden, from the fall of man to now.
SPEAKER_01: And the solution to our world's problems hasn't turned out to be economic or social or educational.
SPEAKER_01: And why is that?
SPEAKER_01: It's because broken systems can't fix broken systems.
SPEAKER_01: We need a solution from outside the system altogether.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we find this opening, this introduction here a bit discouraging, well, maybe that gives us a little better insight into where we need to be as we approach the season of Advent.
SPEAKER_01: If we feel that it's a bit hopeless, then maybe we're ready to look for the hope of the nations.
SPEAKER_01: Now, by way of historical background, Isaiah wrote this like 700 years like uh we said, before the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a time of great hopelessness.
SPEAKER_01: Because the superpower of the region, the Assyrian Empire, was was at the gates.
SPEAKER_01: They were coming with an army that no one could stand against.
SPEAKER_01: But against the backdrop of this political unrest and this serious threat was a promise from God.
SPEAKER_01: And the promise looked well beyond the geopolitics of the moment.
SPEAKER_01: The promise looked even beyond, you know, a manger in Bethlehem and a star and a baby and all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: The promise was not so much about salvation as it was about a savior, not so much about deliverance as it was about a deliverer, and not so much about kingdoms rising and falling as it was about a coming king, a different kind of king.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is that king.
SPEAKER_01: Let's take a look in our passage here.
SPEAKER_01: If you have it in front of you there, verse one, let's take a look.
SPEAKER_01: It says, There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
SPEAKER_01: So our first image is one of forestry.
SPEAKER_01: But this points us back to chapter 10.
SPEAKER_01: If we want to take a look, we're not gonna spend a lot of time in chapter 10, but just to take a look at it there, we see some of the images that are that are brought forth in this chapter.
SPEAKER_01: We already know from earlier in Isaiah's book here that uh that the Assyrian Empire is coming.
SPEAKER_01: We know that they're gonna conquer the northern kingdom of Israel, and we know that God is using the Assyrians as a means to punish the Israelites, his own people.
SPEAKER_01: But we find out in chapter 10 that even though this is God's way, that he is using in chapter 10, verse 15, uh it says that uh the Assyrians are the axe that God is wielding.
SPEAKER_01: But in 34, it says that God's axe will go to work on the Assyrians as well.
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to go unpunished.
SPEAKER_01: This wicked empire is also going to be facing God's judgment as well.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's quite a reversal, and this image at the end of chapter 10 that we're left with of this mighty forest that has been brought low and is now just a field of stumps.
SPEAKER_01: It's quite a powerful image.
SPEAKER_01: So our passage starts with the stump of Jesse.
SPEAKER_01: Which stump is that?
SPEAKER_01: Who's Jesse?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Jesse is the father of King David.
SPEAKER_01: David, in the Old Testament here, it's about a thousand years before Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: David is called a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_01: David united the kingdom and led them in righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: That's what a king is supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: David wrote about half the Psalms that we have in our Bible.
SPEAKER_01: He was God's chosen king, and he, in some ways, was the king that all future kings would be judged against.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't perfect, clearly not.
SPEAKER_01: He was far from perfect.
SPEAKER_01: But God promised David would have a descendant who would establish the royal line for all eternity.
SPEAKER_01: That descendant, that king, is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So from the stump of Jesse, from this kingly line that's been cut down, new growth.
SPEAKER_01: And it works that way in nature.
SPEAKER_01: If you've seen sometimes trees that have been cut down, they can get new branches on them, they can get new sprouts on them.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever walked around in a forest fire, after a forest fire, it looks like just this scene of waste and devastation and ash, and it's it's terrible.
SPEAKER_01: But if you come back after some time has passed, you see that new life starts to grow even in those circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: So this kind of natural reality points us to the spiritual reality that Isaiah is pointing to here.
SPEAKER_01: From this wasteland of sin and judgment, God will raise up one who will restore.
SPEAKER_01: So this king, this one here, what are his qualifications?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we see in verse 2, it says, The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.
SPEAKER_01: Now this reminds us of what John the Baptist said when he saw Jesus in the Gospel of John, the series that we're just uh taking a pause from right now.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to go back and September 19th is the is the one that talks about this.
SPEAKER_01: But don't do it now.
SPEAKER_01: Um but he says, I saw the spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.
SPEAKER_01: This is John the Baptist seeing Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So in the Old Testament, just a word about the Holy Spirit here.
SPEAKER_01: In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit worked in people, worked through people, primarily through these roles of prophet and priest and king.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes and fulfills all three of these offices.
SPEAKER_01: And we can see this even in the way that we have this threefold explanation of the Spirit in verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: It says, you know, the spirit of wisdom and understanding.
SPEAKER_01: This is like a prophet who's bringing God's words to the people.
SPEAKER_01: It says the spirit of counsel and might.
SPEAKER_01: This is like leading and ruling and deciding for God's people, like a king would.
SPEAKER_01: And then the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord, this might be like calling God's people together for worship and presenting them to him.
SPEAKER_01: It's clear that this king will have divine, supernatural resources as his qualifications.
SPEAKER_01: So what's he like?
SPEAKER_01: That's what we have as his qualifications.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 3 starts into what he's like, and it says, his delight will be the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now, a word about the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We see this passage and we see this phrase in Scripture a lot, this idea of the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And we might think one of two extremes with this.
SPEAKER_01: We either think, you know, fear like like terror, like panic, like, you know, very scary stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Or we might think, you know, some kind of, you know, just just respect, you know, we do we just have respect.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it's really either one of those things.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the panic thing, because, you know, you can't really delight in your panic, right?
SPEAKER_01: In verse 3, his delight will be the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We also wouldn't be able to manage with places in the Old Testament where God says, fear not, for I am with you.
SPEAKER_01: If God's scary, if God's terrifying, if you know we're supposed to live in dread of him, then we wouldn't be saying, you know, fear not.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Proverbs, in the first chapter, it says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: And this is contrasted with the idea that fools despise wisdom and instruction.
SPEAKER_01: So when we think about fears that we have, we might have rational fears, we might have irrational fears, but to one extent or another, to one degree or another, our fears do a lot in how we order our lives and how we set up our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We build our lives to avoid our fears.
SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings about our fears.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said in the Gospels, to make sure that you have the right fears in mind.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it says, um, don't fear those who can kill the body, but fear the one who can destroy both the body and the soul.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So have the right, the right sequence, the right ordering.
SPEAKER_01: We might be scared of spiders and snakes.
SPEAKER_01: We might be scared of open spaces or tight spaces, scared of heights, might be scared of social situations, might be scared of being alone.
SPEAKER_01: But God is bigger than all of those fears.
SPEAKER_01: So fear of the Lord here just means that we have the right view of God.
SPEAKER_01: We put God in his right place in our lives, that we build our lives on him and not around the things that we fear in this world.
SPEAKER_01: And we can see this in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, when he was walking around on the earth, um, it's clear that he was not scared of God, scared of his father.
SPEAKER_01: But his earthly ministry displayed just an unwavering obedience, you know, an ordering of his life to be about the business of his father.
SPEAKER_01: So, like verse 3 says, his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And in verses 3 to 5, we see how this plays out in his work.
SPEAKER_01: So he's not turned aside by sights and sounds.
SPEAKER_01: His rule is based on righteousness and equity.
SPEAKER_01: And is characterized by righteousness and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: This is verses 4 and 5.
SPEAKER_01: Think about this kind of ruler.
SPEAKER_01: He is righteous toward the poor, he is equitable toward the meek.
SPEAKER_01: He's not turned aside by grand spectacle or flowery speeches.
SPEAKER_01: He's not impressed.
SPEAKER_01: He does justice, he punishes the evildoer, he rights wrongs.
SPEAKER_01: Integrity and fidelity are strapped to him like a belt.
SPEAKER_01: Now, whether you're a lifelong Christian or a diehard atheist or anything in between, this work, this rule is the is the kind of leader, the kind of ruler that we would all want.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is that King.
SPEAKER_01: Look at how the king interacts with three different categories of people here.
SPEAKER_01: You talk about the poor, we talk about the meek, we talk about the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: You know, he's doing justice and he's doing righteousness and he's acting in truth.
SPEAKER_01: Truth is, each of us, all of us, deserve to be counted in the category of the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: We've all fallen short of God's mark.
SPEAKER_01: We've all done wrong by our words, by our thoughts, by our actions.
SPEAKER_01: We've all not done right things that we should.
SPEAKER_01: None of us, by all rights, should get a seat at the table, should get a place in this kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: But this king comes not only with the spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might, but with mercy, with grace.
SPEAKER_01: The people of God, we're going to talk about the people of God in the next half of this passage here.
SPEAKER_01: They're not the people of God because their behavior is good.
SPEAKER_01: They're not the people of God because they have a certain DNA or certain ethnicity, and they're not the people of God because they've had certain experiences or done certain things.
SPEAKER_01: They're the people of God because of God's character, because of this grace.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 30 of Isaiah, which we will not get to this morning, I Isaiah writes, The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
SPEAKER_01: So the big difference, the key difference between the people that we see in this first section here, between the wicked who are put to death and the people of God who are called home is this grace, which they've taken hold of by faith.
SPEAKER_01: So we've seen what this king will do.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's have a look and see what results he brings about.
SPEAKER_01: Verses six to nine are some fantastical verses.
SPEAKER_01: This world just looks so unnatural to us.
SPEAKER_01: Predators and prey coexisting peacefully.
SPEAKER_01: We see babies playing near vicious snakes.
SPEAKER_01: This is this is foreign to us, and this would be sheer madness in our world.
SPEAKER_01: If you have a pet goat, don't set him up on a play date with a leopard.
SPEAKER_01: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_01: If you've got an African lion, don't put him on a lead and let a little kid lead the lion around.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a good plan.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to go well.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let your babies play uh peekaboo with cobras, all right?
SPEAKER_01: Because these just are so horrifying in the results that they would have in our world.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, under the rule of this king, under the rule of Jesus, that we look ahead to, situations like this would just be normal.
SPEAKER_01: And this points us back to what the world would have been like before the curse of sin, before the struggles of life and death and natural selection and competition.
SPEAKER_01: This is the created order as it should have been.
SPEAKER_01: In Genesis, after God's created the world, it says God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
SPEAKER_01: Very good.
SPEAKER_01: There's not a hint of scarcity of resources.
SPEAKER_01: There's not a hint of the toil of survival.
SPEAKER_01: This is a world of abundance and blessing.
SPEAKER_01: These are the conditions of the world that this king ushers in.
SPEAKER_01: And again, Jesus is that King.
SPEAKER_01: When we think about Jesus and his work to conquer sin, we usually think about it on a personal level.
SPEAKER_01: We think about how people are forgiven, people are released from condemnation, they're not under curse, they're not under punishment.
SPEAKER_01: And this is all very true and all very important.
SPEAKER_01: But here in this section, we see that the conquest of sin extends even to the world around us.
SPEAKER_01: The curse is reversed, and God's people will no longer have to live in a place that sin has ruined.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 9 says, The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as waters cover the sea.
SPEAKER_01: This is a very different world from the one that we live in now.
SPEAKER_01: But again, I think we would all agree this is a place that we would all like to live in.
SPEAKER_01: So the other set of results has to do with the people.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10 says, people of all nations will be drawn to this king.
SPEAKER_01: And verse 11 says, God's people who have been scattered in all directions will be gathered and they'll be brought home.
SPEAKER_01: So right away we can see this kingdom is not about ethnicity.
SPEAKER_01: It is not about national identity.
SPEAKER_01: We see here that people from the nations will seek to know about this king.
SPEAKER_01: Nations here, it's the same word for Gentiles, right?
SPEAKER_01: And in the Old Testament, in the Jewish mind, Gentiles are the outsiders.
SPEAKER_01: These are the non-Jewish people.
SPEAKER_01: But this king is not limited just to the Jews, not limited just to that people group, not limited just to that political nation state.
SPEAKER_01: He's the king that people from every nation, all tribes, peoples, and languages stand before at the end of the Bible in Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: These divisions that we have in our world, they're not a thing under this king.
SPEAKER_01: Exiles get to come home.
SPEAKER_01: Those political realities are undone by this king.
SPEAKER_01: People from north and south, east and west, come to this king.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, Jesus is that king.
SPEAKER_01: So if we want to sum up this passage, this points to a king who is appointed and empowered by God to institute social and moral justice, to renew the natural world and environment, to unify and reconcile the races, to release captives and to welcome his people home.
SPEAKER_01: If this were a political candidate standing for office, running for office, he would get just about everybody's vote.
SPEAKER_01: If he were applying for a job, we'd ask no questions other than when can you start?
SPEAKER_01: This world that he ushers in is timeless.
SPEAKER_01: This was written 2,700 years ago, and it's still appealing to us here today.
SPEAKER_01: So the question becomes why isn't More of the world on board with this king.
SPEAKER_01: Well, one reason might be the way that the kingdom was inaugurated.
SPEAKER_01: We think about Bethlehem, we think about the birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't kings and rulers and the elites who came and turned up for it.
SPEAKER_01: It was shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: We think about the people that Jesus spent his time with during his earthly ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't the elites, it was the poor and the meek, like we saw in verse, you know, the verses four and five there.
SPEAKER_01: Even in verse 10, the signal, it talks about a signal that will call people to inquire of him.
SPEAKER_01: This sounds like a great and mighty thing, but it's pointing to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to Jesus' words here.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 12.
SPEAKER_01: We'll get to this maybe in the new year.
SPEAKER_01: But uh Jesus says, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds a lot like the language that Isaiah is putting forth here.
SPEAKER_01: But the next verse explains it, and it says, He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
SPEAKER_01: Another reason might be that this kingdom seems very far off.
SPEAKER_01: And yes, it was inaugurated 2,000 years ago, and we still wait for its consummation.
SPEAKER_01: We as Christians live in an already but not yet kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Peter pointed this out nearly 2,000 years ago himself and said, you know, that scoffers will say, Where is the promise of his coming?
SPEAKER_01: For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
SPEAKER_01: And to this Peter says, The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
SPEAKER_01: He says that we should count the patience of our Lord as salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, it's it's faith, and that faith is borne out in repentance.
SPEAKER_01: It's faith that makes the difference between the wicked and the people of God.
SPEAKER_01: But perhaps the biggest reason why people aren't flocking to this king is the call.
SPEAKER_01: To live in this coming kingdom that we've been reading about this morning means that we are to be about the business of this kingdom in the here and now.
SPEAKER_01: We're not to be about building our own kingdom, not to be building our brand, not to be serving the idols of this world.
SPEAKER_01: Now, some of those idols, I mean, they're very appealing, right?
SPEAKER_01: Comfort and control and success and reputation and money and power and sex, just to name a few.
SPEAKER_01: But like all the idols of this world, they promise big but fail to deliver.
SPEAKER_01: They bring us all back to that futility that we were we were looking at at the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Broken systems can't fix broken systems.
SPEAKER_01: The more we achieve, the less they satisfy, the more we have, the more we want.
SPEAKER_01: Be speeding down a track to a bleak and unfulfilling future.
SPEAKER_01: And yet all of us, every one of us, falls victim to these idols at some time.
SPEAKER_01: That, friends, is the human condition.
SPEAKER_01: And the hope of Advent is that Jesus came into this world to set us free from those idols, and he will come again to start up this new kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're a follower of Jesus already, if you're a Christian, if you're walking with him, take the comfort and encouragement of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look beyond this broken and sinful world.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look ahead to a better world.
SPEAKER_01: Hold on to this picture, hold on to this image because times of difficulty, times of discouragement will come.
SPEAKER_01: We wait in hope of a better world.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't yet know this, Jesus, I'm glad you're here and I'm glad that you are with us this morning.
SPEAKER_01: But I hope you can also see the brokenness of this world, the futility of this world trying to fix itself.
SPEAKER_01: How the more we change, the more things stay the same.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you'll put the passage we've just read against anything this world has to offer.
SPEAKER_01: And look into this king, look into this Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And for the church as a whole, that's a gathered body of believers here this morning, across Dublin, around the world, let's remember that our hope is not in a far-off world to come only, but in the king from this passage, the one who came to be Emmanuel, God with us.
SPEAKER_01: We struggle and we suffer, but we do not do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: We have God's presence with us by his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We have his word and we have his people.
SPEAKER_01: Let's encourage each other.
SPEAKER_01: Let's uh go forward together as we move towards this new world.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, visit our website found in the links below.