Isaiah's Vision Of Jesus' Coming

INTRODUCTION

How optimistic are you about the future? For a number of years, a market research company, IPSOS, has been doing a survey at the start of the year. One of the questions they ask is whether people expect the coming year to be better for them than the previous year. In Britain, about 64% of people expected that this year – 2024 – would be better than last year.

I think if IPSOS asked me if I expect 2025 to be a better year FOR ME than 2024, I’d say yes. 2024 has been a good year for me but I’m naturally optimistic so I expect 2025 to be even better.

But if I extend the time horizon, and make the question not about me, but about the world, then I would give a very different answer. If I look ahead to the next fifty or a hundred years then I’m not optimistic at all. I expect that the world will suffer enormous environmental damage. I expect that persecution of Christians will increase. I wouldn’t be surprised if a devastating war breaks out somewhere.

That is all assuming that Jesus doesn’t come again in that time. But at some point, I expect that Jesus will come again.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent – the first Sunday in the Christmas season. At this time of year, churches usually pick Bible readings about the birth of Christ and that is very logical. But almost from the start of the church, churches have also seen the FIRST COMING of Jesus as an opportunity to remember and look forward to his SECOND COMING.

The passage I chose for today relates to both Jesus’ first coming and his second coming. It’s a passage which has been used in Advent for a very long time. The earliest record I could find of this was a list of set readings for the church in Georgia which went back to about 600 A.D. This passage in Isaiah was one of the readings for December 24th.

Our passage is one we should enjoy because it gives us a beautiful picture of the world which Jesus came to establish. Isaiah prophetically foresees a world founded on justice and righteousness in which there is peace not just among humankind but also peace between humankind and the rest of creation.

We don’t see this now. But we can be very encouraged when we see what we have to look forward to. We may also feel we need to reflect on what we are striving for. Isaiah’s vision reflected God’s vision. As we see God’s vision, we may feel that our own vision doesn’t align with it very well. An adjustment may be in order.

I’m going to look at the context, then at what Isaiah says about Jesus, and then consider what it means for us.

THE CONTEXT

Isaiah starts by saying, ‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit’ [Isaiah 11:1].

Who was Jesse? And what’s all this about a stump of Jesse? We need some background.

Jesse was the father of David. David was the second and probably the greatest king of Israel. He built up Israel as a nation. But after him, the Kingdom of Israel split into two: Israel and Judah. Both nations declined. The people of Israel fell away from God. 250 years or so after David, when Isaiah was prophesying, Israel was about to be invaded by Assyria. The people of Israel would be carried away from their land and that would be the end of the Kingdom of Israel. Perhaps 170 years after that, much the same happened to the Kingdom of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon attacked. He besieged Jerusalem and captured it. He captured Zedekiah, the king of Judah, put his eyes out, and took him to Babylon where he remained a prisoner until he died. FROM THAT TIME ON, THERE WERE NO MORE KINGS OF THE JEWS FOR 500 YEARS. About 30 or 40 years before Jesus was born, the Romans appointed Herod as king. But he was only ever a puppet king.

David, son of Jesse was a great king. But his line declined until we reach Zedekiah. After Zedekiah there were no more kings over Judah for the best part of 600 years – and we can hardly count Herod as a king. So, what remained of David’s line? Next to nothing. It would be generous to call what remained a stump.

When Isaiah was prophesying, he knew that God was about to punish the northern Kingdom of Israel. He’d just talked about it in the previous chapter [Isaiah 10]. Isaiah also knew that later on, the same would happen to the Kingdom of Judah [see e.g., Isaiah 39:5-6; 2 Kings 21:13].