Advent 16 | Peace on Earth 2024

“1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

2 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.

3 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,

4 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.

5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

6 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.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

9 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.

10 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.” – Isaiah 11:1-10

The Heart of the King

First off, let’s pay attention to how God is narrowing the path to the Messiah. Twice in this little passage, Isaiah tells us that this hero is going to come through Jesse’s family. And you remember the story, right? Jesse was a faithful Israelite looking forward to a Messiah when out of nowhere a prophet comes to tell him that one of his boys is going to be the king. This is when Jesse parades each of his sons out in front of Samuel but then finds out that none of them are gonna work. He has to actually go out to the field to get David from watching the sheep so that he can be anointed as the king! How crazy this that?! Don’t forget: man looks at outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

Like the Best Petting Zoo Ever

As we have seen over and over this is just another example of God narrowing and expanding the vision for his kingdom. He is narrowing it by telling us that it is going to come through Jesse’s family, but he is expanding it to include the whole world, “far as the curse it found”. We know that there is something wrong in the world. When we look around us there is so much violence. Not only do we see wars and fighting among men and nations, but we see it in the animal kingdom as well. When God created the whole world and said that it was “very good” there was no violence, just peace.

The vision that Isaiah is giving us is of that same kind of peace. Have you ever watched Planet Earth or the Discovery Channel? How do animals typically treat each other? More like food than friends, right? We

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