Isaiah 11-12, Peace!

If you skimmed these two chapters or didn't read them at all, stop now and read them.  Seriously.  Pick up your Bible and slowly read Isaiah 11 and 12.  These two chapters are so full of hope, promise, worship, thanksgiving, praise and peace.   So much so that I hardly know where to begin.  So I guess we'll start at the beginning.

"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit" 11:1

In my last post I talked about how God protected Judah from destruction in order to preserve His promise that the Messiah would come from the house of David.  Well, eventually the kingdom of Judah was mostly destroyed by the Assyrians and almost completely ended by the Babylonian exile.  But God, in His faithfulness and sovereignty, was not done working.

While Judah may have been leveled, there remained a stump. And from this stump would come a Branch.  And that Branch was Jesus.  Hundreds of years before Jesus came to the earth, Isaiah gives a glorious description of Him as being full of the Spirit of the Lord, of wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge, fear of the Lord, righteousness, justice and faithfulness.

Isn't it so like God to bring the Messiah out of a kingdom brought low?  Life out of what was nearly dead?  A glorious King out of a tender shoot?  This is the upside down kingdom that Jesus would establish.

This Kingdom, as we see in 11:6-10, will one day be a kingdom of peace.  When Jesus finally reigns on this earth, when the enemy is finally defeated and sin and death exist no longer, when His Kingdom is established for all eternity, there will be peace.  Forever.  The wolf will dwell with the lamb, young children will play with vipers....nothing will harm or destroy any longer...

"...for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him and his place of rest will be glorious."  11:9-10

Amen.  That is a promise we can stand on.  One day the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord and the result will be peace. love. joy. rest. glory.

"Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.  Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.  Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you."  12:4-6