519: The Unexpected King | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Good morning everyone, glad that you guys are here. Hey, I wanted to start with a question this morning. I wonder if you've ever considered why it is that we as human beings love a comeback story, a story of an underdog that nobody expects to win out of the blue in the face of what seems like an inevitable defeat. That person ends up winning the battle.

I remember watching sports with my dad when I was a kid, and if we were ever watching two teams compete against one another, and he didn't have necessarily a vested interest in either one, he was always cheering for the underdog. He would tell me, I'm rooting for the underdog, and the reason is because if you don't have a dog in the fight, you want to see the underdog win. We love stories like that.

That's probably why my favorite movie as a kid growing up, if you're a child of the 80s, it might have been yours too, was The Karate Kid. This is the story of an unlikely hero, Daniel LaRusso, who comes from Newark, New Jersey, to Reseda, California, and he is not received by this new community. In fact, he's bullied by this new elite class in this community — this elite class of high school kids who are all wealthy and all black belts, which is just like real life.

And they don't much like Daniel, and in the final scene, it looks like all hope is lost. Daniel is squared off against his prime enemy, his primary enemy, a guy named Johnny, the leader of the Cobra Kai, the evil Cobra Kai. He stands there, and across from him is this opponent who is stronger than him, more confident than him, more well-trained than he is. And Daniel is wounded, his leg is injured, and at that moment, it looks like all hope is lost.

And in that place of certain defeat, Daniel does something that looks foolish. In fact, what he does is probably seared into every mind of every child of the '80s. I remember doing this as a kid. I mean, he takes on this posture — if you think about how silly and foolish this is, it is a posture that is completely exposed, completely weak, standing on one leg. And it is from that posture of weakness that he deals the final blow, and he kicks Johnny in the face. He goes down in the crowd's roar, and he gets the girl — just like in real life, also, everything from his broken life is restored.

You know why? This is called the crane kick. You know what Mr. Miyagi said about the crane kick? If done right, no defense. There is no defense against this seemingly weak, vulnerable posture that deals its death blow at its mortal enemy. And it's that moment that sticks with us. It’s not the cheering crowds or the fact that he wins the girl or he's holding the trophy. It is that moment of almost inevitable defeat that we cling to.

It resonates, and I'll tell you why, because you and I know that's what real life is like. We know what it's like to stand wounded. We know what it's like to feel like all hope is lost, to see that our strength has failed, and all of our best strategies have fallen flat.

And when we see a story where from that place of apparent defeat comes triumph and victory, it resonates deeply because somewhere deep inside of us, we're hoping that that's not just true for Daniel, but it's true for us too.

The Context of the Passage

Isaiah chapter 11 that we're going to look at today, this is exactly where the people of Israel are. The royal house of David has been cut down to a stump. The nation has been judged. Things do not look good. They have been overtaken by their mortal enemy, and they are standing wounded, looking like there is no hope.

And precisely in that place, Isaiah says a shoot will spring forth from a stump. Isaiah's going to invite us today to look at this shoot, and in this shoot, he's inviting us to see a king that wins through weakness, that from this place of apparent defeat comes decided victory.

Isaiah's going to show us three things about this shoot, who is a king. He's going to show us the origin of the king. He's going to show us the character of this king — what is he going to be like when he shows up. And then he's going to show us the result of his reign. What does a world look like under this king's leadership?

Let's take a look, starting in verse 1 of chapter 11. Let's see the origin of the king.

The Origin of the King

Isaiah's going to tell us not only where this one comes from, but he's going to tell us how he shows up on the scene. Let's take a look.

For there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. — Isaiah 11:1

He says that this coming king is going to come from a man named Jesse. Who was Jesse? Jesse was not famous, by the way, for anything that he had done. He was famous because of someone that he raised. You know who he was? He's David's father, David, who was Israel's second and greatest king, the king with whom God made this specific promise and covenant that his throne would last forever, that there was going to be a descendant that would come from David who would sit on his throne forever.

He made this promise to David. So it would make sense that Isaiah would say a shoot would spring up from David, but that isn't what he says. This one would come from Jesse. Why does he point to Jesse and not David?

When you think of David, what you think of is triumph, victory. He is a man of valor. He slays giants and conquers his enemies and expands Israel's borders. He lives in a palace. David evokes a sense of greatness.

That is not how David started. Do you know the story? Samuel, he shows up to this obscure Bethlehemite named Jesse. Samuel shows up to Jesse and he says, "God is going to anoint one of your sons as king. Bring out your kids." And so, Jesse brings out all of his sons, all seven of them, and they're standing there before him.

And Samuel says to Jesse, "Is this all your kids? Is this all your sons?" Because it's none of these guys. Can you imagine? Samuel goes, "Oh, I do have one more." I have one more kid. He's out in the pasture tending the sheep. This one, David, he was the forgotten son, overlooked, destined for greatness, anointed by God to be Israel's greatest king — and his dad forgot that he was his. He calls David, Samuel anoints David to be this king.

David's story started in obscurity. And when Isaiah points past David back to Jesse, he's taking us back to a time of humble origin, a time before the royal monarchy and the power and the success that David would usher in to the kingdom. See, Isaiah is telling us not just that he would come from David because this one coming in Jesus, he would be the fulfillment of the promise to David, but he wouldn't just come from David. He was going to come like David, small, insignificant, overlooked, in a little town called Nazareth.

And can anything good come from there? You know, an interesting fact. He says that he was going to be the shoot that would come up from Jesse's stump, and then he says a branch that would bear fruit. This branch theme would be continued throughout the prophets. But the word used here for branch that Isaiah uses, it's a Hebrew word, netser. And Jesus would come from a place called Nazareth. And Matthew picks up on that, and he said he was a Nazarene in order that the word of the prophets might be fulfilled.

What does Matthew mean by that? No prophet ever said he would come from Nazareth. Most commentators believe that what Matthew picked up on was this idea that netser — branch — sounded like Nazareth, which if you take that meaning, it just means the branch, the Nazarene. That every time he was mocked for being from this place of obscurity, people were actually announcing, here is the branch. Here's the branch that God promised centuries ago that would come. He was a nobody from a nothing town, just like David. That's how he would show up.

Isaiah said, and then here's how he would come, he would come as a shoot from a stump. A stump is an intentional picture of God's judgment. In fact, if you read through chapters 9 and 10, you see Israel has been hacked down. They are no longer a mighty forest. They are a forest of stumps.

A stump is the byproduct of a choice. It's not an accident. When you're looking at a stump, you are looking at someone's decision to cut something down. Israel is not a stump by mistake. They have been cut down by God's conscious decision. Because of their rebellion, they're in shambles. And it's from that stump, that place of apparent death and lifelessness, no more hope — that's where the stump or from that stump life would come.

Do you know that that's precisely how Jesus showed up on the scene? Malachi is the last prophet in the Old Testament. And there are 400 years of silence before Matthew, before Jesus shows up. No word from God. Six hundred years the Davidic throne was empty.

If you were an Israelite growing up in that season of history, you would have known the prophecies, you would have known the promises, and you would have felt like a fool for believing them, because every generation, nothing changed. It was a stump, but then Jesus shows up in a little town called Nazareth.

But he didn't look royal. He didn't look like the king they expected. In fact, Isaiah would put this beautifully in Isaiah chapter 53. It says this:

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. — Isaiah 53:2

He was a shoot. He wasn't a king in a palace. He was a baby in a manger. This is how he comes. And by the way, if I can just stop here for one second and make a point, this is God's favorite way to show up. And it looks like all hope is lost. That becomes the soil where God brings life.

So I want to ask you a question this morning. Is there a stump in your life? Or maybe, does your life feel like a stump? Do you feel cut down in judgment? Maybe you are navigating a failed career, or a marriage that feels beyond repair, or maybe a moral failure in which you are tempted to believe, I'm disqualified.

Can I tell you something? God is never finished. Last week we talked about the darkness and the light. The darkness represents our sin, our rebellion, and what we said was the darkness does not disqualify us from receiving the light. It's the exact opposite. It is our darkness that becomes the doorway through which his deliverance comes.

And it's the same thing here, a stump, judgment, failure. It becomes the fertile soil for life from that rubble that you have created. God is writing a story of redemption. Don't believe the lie that he's finished with you.

One more thing about the origin of this king. Skip ahead to verse 10, and listen to what it says about him:

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 11:10

Did you catch that? In verse 1 he's the shoot of Jesse. In verse 10 he's the root of Jesse. In verse 1 he's Jesse's son. In verse 10 he's Jesse's source. How can he both be a descendant but somehow the divine source at the same time?

Because this one coming would not be an ordinary king. He would have a human lineage, but he also would be fully and perfectly divine. This is the perfect God-man, and Isaiah makes no bones about it. You can't read this prophecy without seeing both his humanity and his divinity.

He is the source and the son. And that is precisely why Isaiah says this in verse 2:

And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. — Isaiah 11:2

Now, we don't catch this immediately in the English language, but this is not the language that is typically used of the spirit in the Old Testament. Very seldom do they use that word nuach for rest.

What is more frequently used — go to that next slide — is the word salak, which means to rush. This is how the spirit came upon David, rushed upon David. It’s this sudden power of divine enablement for a task that God has assigned to a specific person for a specific time. Therefore, you did not get the spirit in perpetuity.

The spirit would come to Samson, and then one day, Samson thought he could go out and win against his enemies because he did not know the spirit had left him. The spirit comes upon Saul for leadership, the first king of Israel, and then the spirit leaves. David, in Psalm 51, says, "Take not thy spirit from me," because everyone understood in the Old Testament the spirit comes and goes as he wishes, and he enables people intermittently — but not permanently.

But that is not the word used here. The word used here is nuach — rest, stay, remain. This one coming is not someone that would just get the spirit for a little while. He is the one in whom the spirit would find his final home. The evidence of the spirit in this one's life does not just confirm his identity, it also shapes his character.

We need to look at the rest of verse two. We are going to look now at the character of this king who is coming. It says this:

In 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. — Isaiah 11:2

Notice the totality of the spirit. In fact, this verse is often called the sevenfold spirit. When you take those six attributes connected to the spirit and then that first title of the spirit of the Lord, you get a total of seven.

The seven in the Bible is a number of completeness or fullness or wholeness. This one coming would not just have something from the spirit. He would have, as John would say in chapter three of his gospel, the fullness of the spirit, for he gives the spirit without measure.

He's Samson. He got God's spirit for might, but what did he lack? Wisdom. Saul got the spirit for divine enabling to lead his people, but he lacked moral purity. Same as Solomon. The prophets would get the spirit of God to proclaim a word. But they didn't have the spirit in the fullness.

He doesn't just have the spirit permanently. He has the spirit completely and fully, and it shapes everything about who he is. Listen to the first thing that it says about him because of the fullness of the spirit that he has.

In verse three, it says:

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. — Isaiah 11:3

Now, these are words that we don't often use in the same sentence: delight and fear. But this one coming, his greatest joy would be in obeying God. We might call this his controlling affection. It is the thing he loved most was to honor and obey.

Obedience for this one would not be drudgery. It would be joy. It would not be duty. It would be his varied delight, his greatest treasure.

And you know, this is how Jesus showed up on the scene. One of my favorite quotes from The Praying Life by Paul Miller was this:

Jesus was the most dependent human being to ever walk the face of the earth. He said, "I only say what my Father gives me to say, and I say it exactly how he tells me to say it. I only do what I see my Father doing."

Jesus' greatest delight was in submitting to his Father, and you can trust a leader like that.

I want you to see how this willing and joyful submission shapes the kind of leader he would become.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear. — Isaiah 11:3

Do you remember what we've been learning about in the book of John about Jesus? He didn't need testimony about a man; he knew what was in a man. Why? Because he sees everything.

This one that has absolute authority, he is absolutely pure, and he is absolutely omniscient. He knows everything, and therefore he does not have to hear in court, in way between different testimonies. He always knows what is right because of the fullness of the spirit, of knowledge.

What else does it say? It says:

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. — Isaiah 11:4

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness, the belt of his loins. A belt back in that day was not just decorative. It was the piece of your outfit that held everything together.

This one coming, he is going to have a character. His righteous exterior is what will hold everything together. And then the belt of his loins — see, one is talking about his outer life. The belt of his loins is faithfulness. What Isaiah is saying is this one coming, he is exactly the same on the outside as he is on the inside.

Everything he does on the outside is a reflection of who he is on the inside. This one is completely pure. It is integrity through and through.

It is striking, too, how much emphasis there is on the poor and the meek that he leads. He judges for them. Do you know why it says this? I don't think Isaiah is making the point that he has a preference for poor people over wealthy people.

I think what Isaiah is acknowledging, and we all know this to be true, that all human poor structures favor the elite. It is the wealthy that keep people in power. It's not the weak. It's not the poor.

You don't stay in power by accommodating the poor. You stay in power by accommodating the lobbyists and the special interest groups and the super PACs and your largest donors. That's how you win.

So, democracy is probably humanity's greatest effort at healthy government because here's why: It limits human corruption, but democracy can never produce righteousness. What Isaiah is telling us here is we don't need less authority. We need more authority.

We just need a better king. We need someone who rules not because of his self-interest, not from a desire to stay in power, not from a desire to please men, but from this place of purity and righteousness.

What we need, in a sense, is a benevolent dictator whose absolute righteousness is matched by absolute power. In every decision he makes, he can always be trusted. His delight is in the fear of the Lord.

You know what that means? It means that whatever we are most afraid of is what controls us. If we are afraid of the opinions of men, if we're afraid of losing our reputation, we'll be tempted to bend the truth. If we're afraid of losing our possessions, we will cling too tightly to things.

It is our fears, it's whatever we fear the most that controls us, and this one would be controlled by his controlling affection — to delight and please the Lord.

The Result of His Reign

Finally, let's take a look. What would the world look like? If we had a ruler like this, if we had a king who ruled the world like this, what would it yield?

Look at verses 6 through 9. I'm just going to read through this all and just grab hold of these crazy images.

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 whole of the cobra's den, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

What a picture. I mean, look, this is a world not just where evil is restrained or that God is protecting the innocent from evil. This is a world in which evil has been eradicated.

Isaiah is telling you that world is coming under a king who will return. This is a promise. It is a promise and an ache for a world that every single one of us longs for. It is a world where there's no more sadness, no more death, no more disease.

The Samwise Gamgee says to Frodo, a world where every sad thing comes untrue. That kingdom is coming.

And next week, in Isaiah 35, Tim is going to talk about the eschatological fulfillment, the eschatos. It's the end, the last times. And that's what Isaiah is pointing to here.

But it's not where I want to close. Here's the question that I want to ask. See, this kingdom is coming, but Jesus had the audacity to say something when he was here in Mark 1:15. You know what he said? He said, the kingdom of God is at hand, meaning the kingdom of God is here now.

The kingdom is coming, but the kingdom is here, present tense. What did he mean by that? We might say, look, wolves and lambs, they're not lying down together. Republicans and Democrats, they can't make it through Thanksgiving dinner. We don't have this kind of peace to which this kingdom points.

What do you mean his kingdom is at hand? I'll tell you what I think Jesus means. His kingdom is wherever his rule and his reign are acknowledged. We don't have peace out here, okay? Lions and calves, they're not hanging out. But if you're his, that peace — that shalom, we talked about last week, where a life and a world where nothing is missing and nothing is broken — that kind of peace is available today, here.

I want to show you one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Colossians 3:15. This has been such a comfort to me in times of despair and anxiety, times when I forget that he's on the throne and I get stressed out. It says:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. — Colossians 3:15

And I want you to notice a couple of things about this verse. The first thing I want you to notice is that he says, let the peace of Christ rule. It is a passive statement. In other words, this is the default posture of anyone who calls themselves a child of God. Why? Because he's king; he's not going to be king. He's presently king, and when I acknowledge that in my heart, the natural byproduct and the natural posture is rest, peace.

Here's the second thing. It says, let the peace of Christ rule. And that word in the Greek means to arbitrate, to govern. I read a book one time called The Calvary Road that suggests that this word means to referee, and that whenever there is an absence of peace, it should be like a whistle blowing. Something is wrong, and it's not the king.

It's my memory. I have forgotten that he's in charge. And whenever I lose sight of his rule and his reign, I lose the default posture that is my birthright as his child.

Have you lost that peace? It is yours. You can have it. You can cling to it.

Conclusion

Here's the last thought. Isaiah tells us that there's someone coming. He's going to come from a stump, he's going to come from the soil of defeat and judgment. He told us what he would be like. He points to his righteous character, and he tells us what his kingdom will be like when he reigns.

I should mention this too. Not the reason that there's peace everywhere, verse 9 tells you, because the knowledge of the Lord fills the earth like the waters cover the sea. There's coming a day when there is nowhere on planet earth where people don't acknowledge his rule and his reign. That is the reason for the peace.

What Isaiah leaves out of this particular narrative is how he goes about purchasing that peace. How does he do it? He would tell you later in his book, in Isaiah 53:5:

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

Your peace is a byproduct of his punishment. He was wounded. He was defeated. He was crushed. You notice this says, our transgressions, our iniquities — it was your punishment, but it became his, so that his righteousness could become yours.

How does he do it? Just like Daniel, just like Daniel's son. He took a posture of weakness, stood, as it were, on one leg, arms stretched out, vulnerable and weak, looking like he had been defeated in that moment.

On that moment, he dealt the final death blow. He did put his hand in the adder's den. He did defeat the leader of the Cobra Kai, the great serpent of old. He crushed him, and he did it through apparent defeat.

See, that stump, which was his cross, is the place where true life springs forth. Calvary's stump, hear me, is the hope for the world.

Whether you know it or not, what you most deeply long for is to know this peace that only comes from acknowledging that stump, that cross, that place where it looked like the Son of God was chopped down.

That is who he is, and that is why he came to usher in a season of peace, and you can know it. It can be yours right now.

Have you forgotten? Does your life feel like a stump? It's his favorite place to work, perhaps, in your suffering. He is plotting for a deeper satisfaction and salvation that he wants to give to you.

Let him give it.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this picture. This book could not have been written by men, and even if they could have, they wouldn't have, because they're the bad guy, we're the bad guy in this story. But Lord, thank you that you didn't wait for us to come to you, but in the place of death, you inserted new life. You came to rescue, regardless of how many times we, as your people, had turned our back.

I pray that we would experience that peace today. Maybe some of us for the first time. In Jesus' name. Amen.