The Coming of the Kingdom

for the one whom God has sent speaks the word of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.

In our chapter, the fullness of the spirit is indicated by the sevenfold gifts of the spirit. So in chapter 11, verse 2 and 3, we see the sevenfold gifts of the spirit which are given to the king. What are the gifts that will be given to this coming king? They are the gifts for which good kings are praised in the ancient Near Eastern literature. and especially in the Old Testament. They are listed in three pairs. The first pair is wisdom and understanding to decide difficult matters and judge rightly. These are characteristics of good leaders in the Old Testament. We see that in Deuteronomy 1.13 and 1 Kings 3.9 and 12. They are the first qualities of which the Assyrian king boasts in chapter 10 verse 13. The second pair is counsel and strength. This refers specifically to making war strategy and having military strength, as we see in chapters 36 verse five. The last pair is knowledge and the fear of the Lord, to be a worshiper of the one true God. Indeed, the last pair of gifts, namely awe and intimacy, are essential to a right relationship with God. Following the three pairs, we are told that the king will delight in the fear of the Lord. This is a particularly significant statement that we need a moment or two to unpack fully. Many who read the scriptures, who read the Bible, are not aware that the fear of the Lord has an objective as well as a subjective component. So many people understand the fear of the Lord to mean that we humble ourselves before him and we turn away from relying on ourselves and put our trust in him and submit to him. But the fear of the Lord in the Old Testament has not only a subjective component, It has an objective component and refers to God's revelation, God's objective revelation. It actually refers to Scripture itself. We can see that in a number of places. I'll just take a moment to show this to you. Proverbs 2, verse 5. Proverbs 2, verse 5.

If you do these things, then you will discern the fear of Yahweh and understand and find the knowledge of God.

As you know, Hebrew poetry is based on parallel lines. What is parallel to the fear of Yahweh? The knowledge of God, object of knowledge. We see the same thing in chapter 9. We see the same thing in chapter 9, verse 10.

The beginning of wisdom is the fear of Yahweh, and the understanding is the knowledge of the Holy One.

So once again, what's parallel to the fear of the Lord is the knowledge of the Holy One. This actually comes out very clearly in Psalm 19. You're probably familiar with Psalm 19, a psalm that speaks of God's revelation, first in creation and then in scripture. We're familiar with these words.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of Yahweh is firm, making wise the simple. The statutes of Yahweh are upright, rejoicing the heart. The command of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, standing forever. The judgments of Yahweh are true. They are righteous altogether.

Notice in this Hebrew poetry, Hebrew poetry consists of parallel lines. Notice that the A line says what it is, and the B line says what it does. I'm sorry this doesn't match. I just have a Hebrew Bible up here, so it may not match exactly your translation. The law of Yahweh or the instruction of Yahweh is perfect, that's what it is. Converting the soul, that's what it does. The testimony of Yahweh is perfect. Firm, that's what it is. Making wise the simple, that's what it does. The statutes of Yahweh are upright, that's what they are. Making glad the heart, that's what they do. The command of Yahweh is pure, that's what it is. Enlightening the eyes, that's what it does. You see the pattern? The A line tells you what it is, the B line tells you what it does. So you notice that as we go through this text, all of these words are synonyms for divine revelation. They're synonyms for scripture. What are the synonyms for scripture? The law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the command of the Lord, the fear of the Lord. Did you see that? The fear of the Lord is a synonym for scripture. It's not here used of the subjective aspect of our turning away from trusting in ourselves, it's used of the objective aspect of God's revelation of himself. And so, when it says in Isaiah 11, this is what I think is the correct interpretation, that the future king will delight in the fear of Yahweh, he will delight in God's revelation in scripture, he will delight in the Torah, and this text calls to mind Deuteronomy 17 verses 18 to 20 where the future king The king, when Moses lays out the rules for the coming king, he has to copy the Torah, always have it with him, and be reading the Torah. So the one instruction, the one positive instruction for the king of Israel is to be totally taken up with the instruction of God in the covenant, the law of the Lord. And this is what it means, this future king. And we see that fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That we see that all through his life, especially when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. He quoted scripture. It is written. and he was delighting in the law of the Lord, in the instruction. Each pair of gifts corresponds to each of the major transformations described by the prophet. Justice is effected through the wisdom and understanding of the king. The defeat of guilty rebels and evil persons will result from the strategy and strength of the king, and harmony and peace among animals and humans ensues from knowledge and from the fear of the Lord. Notice how the third pair of gifts, the third pair of gifts, embraces the entire poem. In verse 3, the fear of the Lord is what motivates the king in his actions. And in verse 9, the knowledge of the Lord is the basis for the harmony and peace in the new paradise. So the last pair of gifts embraces the entire poem. That's the first stanza. Now we're looking at the second stanza, the rule of the future king in verses 3b to 5. The prophet deliberately lists and names these gifts in the first stanza of the poem. The gifts identified in the first two pairs, profit and wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, are often ascribed particularly to figures of authority and leaders in the Old Testament. The last pair, however, knowledge and the fear of the Lord are attributes that all people may have. They are not exclusive to authority figures. The logic and progression of thought in the poem are specifically tied to the dissemination and use of these pairs of gifts. The Lord gives these pairs to the king in the first stanza in the poem. In the second stanza, verses 3b to 5, the king uses the first pair, wisdom and understanding, to effect justice in verses 3b and 4a. We see that the decisions and judgments given by the king are not based upon normal powers of observation, In fact, they appear to be based on the kind of knowledge that only God would have. In addition, the king defends the cause of the helpless, the lowly, the outcasts, and the poor. He cannot be manipulated by some corporation or rich tycoon. John Gresham has a fiction novel called The Pelican Brief. There is a man named Matisse, who strikes oil but needs permission from the President to override concerns of the needy and poor to have access to the oil-rich land he has acquired. He becomes the biggest donor to the election campaign, and so the President is in his hands. Here, the authority of the King does not rest upon such political power. And he is able to face the power of the big corporations and tycoons wielding power to crush the poor and bankroll profits. He is not subject to zucker bucks. Here is a king in whose hands the concerns of the poor and powerless will be safe. In verses 4 and B and 5, the king uses the second pair, strategy and strength, to smite the evildoers of the land. We will develop how he does this in a few moments, but let us stop to notice that the foundation of this kingdom is justice and righteousness. Here's another place we were talking about this over the weekend, the word pair justice and righteousness. Here's another case of how this word pair shows up at a critical point in the book of Isaiah. Verse five, let me just see if I can find this here.

Righteousness will be the belt of his loins and faithfulness the belt of his

Well, another word for loins, I guess. The Hebrew word actually means girdle. The NIV uses the word belt and speaks of the sash of the king. The actual word in Hebrew means a girdle or a loincloth. This is the most basic garment in all of our clothing. Even today in some sectors, underclothes are still called foundation garments. The foundation garments of this king are righteousness and faithfulness. Righteousness and faithfulness and social justice are the foundation of this kingdom. And here, he's using the word social justice, not defined the way Americans do today. defined by, based on some Marxist theory or some idea of tolerance or equity, but it's defined by all of the instructions in the covenant. It's defined by the covenant relationship between God and his people. Psalm 89 verse 14 tells us that righteousness and justice are the foundation of God's throne. God himself is the ultimate judge who judges justly and the care of the weak and needy is his special concern. Exodus 22, Job 34, Psalm 10, 140, 146, Proverbs 22, 23. Thus, this king is the true son of God because he is like his father and his rule accurately and fully represents the rule of God himself. The rule of this king follows the description of the rule of Yahweh elsewhere in the Old Testament. Thirdly, verses six and seven, the harmony of the future king. Sorry, the harmony of the future kingdom. As we turn to the third stanza, verses six and seven, one expects that this third pair will turn up in some action of the king. that we will see an action displaying his piety and worship of God in terms of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Yet this does not happen. Instead, the poem paints a new scene in which unimaginable harmony and peace is realized. Whereas the king's wisdom and strength are unusual because they affect results with unnatural and divine swiftness and go far beyond the ordinary exercise of these gifts, the peace described in verses six to eight is far-reaching and universal and indeed is far beyond what would be accomplished by any act of a king. The very nature of the animals is transformed. Look at these verses. They describe three facets of the new creation. First, former hostilities have been reconciled. Old fears have been allayed. The wolf is the guest of the lamb. Predators and prey are reconciled. Secondly, animals once carnivorous are now behaving as domesticated livestock and are eating straw. Thus there is a change in nature as seen by the change in the beasts themselves. Thirdly, the snake is now no longer a threat to the most helpless in the community, the baby and the toddler. The curse of Genesis 3 has been lifted and reversed. The listener is astounded by these changes and wonders whether the king's piety somehow affected a change in the beasts of the forest. Is the king like God that he could affect such changes? Verse 9 responds, this harmony is not attributed directly to the king, but to the fact that the third pair of attributes is distilled throughout the whole land. The beasts no longer harm each other because evil has departed from humans. Thus the poem has a surprise ending. Yet it agrees with the biblical teaching as a whole that unlike wisdom and understanding and counsel and strength, knowing and fearing the Lord is not the peculiar property of good leaders. It is meant to be the property, the domain and possession of all people. This is backed up by the fact that verse 9 says,

they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.

The kingdom of this future king is centered on the Lord's holy mountain. We need to remember that the vision of the future in Isaiah 2 is also centered on the Lord's holy mountain, where all the nations stream to hear and receive his Torah or instruction. This connection shows that the vision of chapter 2 and the vision of chapter 11 are one and the same. The holy mountain in chapter 2 is Zion, and Zion has become both the new Eden and the New Sinai, where God speaks his word and instructs not only Israel, but all the nations. Chapter 11 gives us a different view of the same scene. The word of the Lord instructing the nations is the word of the Davidic king, dispensing God's justice and righteousness for the nations. Nonetheless, we need to explore further the connection between the rule of the king and the new creation described here. I suggest to you that the connection involves the commissioning and setting apart of servants of the Lord. And I am not speaking specifically of ministers of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but generally, rather generally, of the role of every Christian, everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ. We don't have time to deal with this, but in the second part of Isaiah, there is a specific theme of the servant of Yahweh, the servant of the Lord, who is the coming king, and who by his atoning death deals with the problem of the broken covenant relationship between God and his people, and restores that broken relationship. But at the end of chapter 54, the servant in the singular becomes the servants in the plural. And those are the people who put their faith and trust in this coming king, whether they are ethnically Jewish or not ethnically Jewish. They are the ones who will belong to the new Israel. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul refers to himself as a minister of the gospel by the phrase servant of Jesus Christ, approximately seven times. In referring to himself in this way, Paul sees himself first as a follower of Jesus Christ, who is the servant of the Lord par excellence, and as an example to all ministers of the gospel and indeed to all Christians. The background for Paul's thinking is the Old Testament, and in particular the theme of the servant of the Lord who is portrayed in the prophet Isaiah. In the book of Isaiah, the servant of the Lord is one who is both Israel and the Redeemer of Israel. This can only be the King of Israel. Yet the path to glory and victory is a way of deep humiliation, suffering, and above all, servanthood. While four songs in the latter part of Isaiah focus in particular on the servant of the Lord, chapter 11 is also connected to the servant theme. In chapter 53, we are told that the servant of the Lord will grow up like a tender shoot and like a root. out of dry ground. This is a clear and unmistakable link to the coming King of Isaiah 11 because the first thing we are told here is that he is a branch from the stump of Jesse and a shoot from his roots. This tree imagery clearly connects the two passages and these prophetic pictures find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In other words, the Apostle Paul found his inspiration for his work in the servant of the Lord in the book of Isaiah. In chapter 56, we see foreigners joining themselves to the Lord according to verse 3 and verse 6. According to verse 6, they are ministering to the Lord and loving his name. The verb to minister and serve is most commonly used in the Old Testament of the work of Levites and priests in the temple. So these foreigners are not just in the temple, their involvement is like that of the Levites and priests. At the end of verse 6, they become the servants of the Lord. We were shocked to discover in chapter 54, verse 17, that those who are included in the new covenant community are called servants of the Lord. The sins of the many have been borne by the one servant, and the victory of the one servant is shared by the many, and in the end, they become servants too. This text is exceedingly rich in instruction for the young man or woman who would be a servant of the Lord, but we have only time to briefly consider three things. Number one, the necessity of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Number two, the role of the word of God in our daily service. And number three, the weapons used in attacking the kingdom of Satan. Let us look at these three things quickly in the opposite order I have just listed them. First, the weapons used to establish the eternal kingdom. What is unusual about the king in Isaiah 11 is that he does not use military tools or weapons to accomplish the task. We are told that his belt is righteousness and the sash around his waist is faithfulness or truth. He girds and prepares himself for the task, not with linen and leather, or even with armor and chain mail, but with attributes that do not decay righteousness and truth. This speaks of the inner character of the servant of the Lord. Corporate leaders may seek to create an image. The servant of the Lord must have character. I do not need to describe for you the lack of character and integrity evident in so many leaders today, even of many, unfortunately, in the church. While the doers of evil will not be eradicated fully until the return of Christ, the servants of Christ can be instruments to advance the righteousness and oppose evildoers even now. The servants of Jesus Christ do not prepare and strengthen themselves by adopting special methodologies and technologies, but they use righteousness and truth. Second, the servant of the Lord relies solely upon the word of God, watered by prayer, to accomplish the task. See how the king smites the evil ones of the land, not with the edge of his sword, thereby continuing the cycle of terror. Rather, he exterminates evil people with his word. Notice again the flow of thought in the four stanzas of the poem. The first stanza announces the coming king gifted by the spirit of God. The second stanza describes the establishment of justice and the eradication of evildoers. The third stanza describes a paradise which in the context of the book of Isaiah can only be the new creation. The fourth stanza reveals that the serpent or snake, the instrument of bringing evil into the world, is no longer a threat. The serpent has been conquered and even the most vulnerable in the community, the little toddler, is no longer threatened by evil. And how do we move from a creation ruined by rebellion and sin to a new creation in which harmony and peace reign? How is this new creation brought into being? by the word of the servant of the Lord. Paul says this very clearly in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. And I point you to that important text even now. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. Notice this text.

For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, is the one who has shined in our hearts for the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Do you see what he's doing? He is drawing a comparison between the first creation, created by the word of God, let light be, and the new creation, which is also created by the word of God, which is happening right now as I speak. Because if anyone is in Christ, he or she is new creation. There's a difference between the first creation and the new creation. In the first creation, first God made the place, and then he made the people to live there. In the new creation, first he makes the people, and then he makes the place where they're going to live. So if anyone is in Christ, you become a new creation, at least on the inside, right away. Here Paul is drawing a parallel between God bringing the light of the first creation simply by his word and also bringing the light of the new creation simply by his word. Let us not forget that at the university. It is God's word that brings about the new creation. Let us remind ourselves that God plans to make all things new. Let us remind ourselves that when God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, he was creating the first man in the new creation. God has already started the new creation. The first man is already there. Let us remind ourselves that when a man or woman puts their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, he or she becomes part of this new creation humanity. And then let us think about the fact that just as God brought about the first creation into being by his almighty word, so as the servant of the Lord announces the good news, the new creation is being brought into being. This reveals how utterly awesome is the task of the servant of the Lord. We must not rely upon our cleverness, ingenious ideas of our own, or any technique except proclamation of the Word of God. Finally, the poem in Isaiah 11 clearly indicates that real transformation begins by the fullness and power of the Spirit of God. Verse 2 lists three pairs of gifts headed by an introductory statement. The six gifts plus the introductory statement speak of the sevenfold Spirit, and hence of the fullness of the Spirit. The fullness of the Spirit is the basis for speaking the Word of God. This is true here. John 3.34,

for the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.

Acts 2 verse 4,

all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Acts 4 verse 8,

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers and elders of the people.

Verses 10 through 16 in the rest of the chapter, which we won't be dealing with today, draw out the implications for ancient Israel and also for us today. Let us quickly note two things. First, the coming king will bring the exiles of Judah and Israel back to a right relationship to God through an act of deliverance so significant It could only be described as a new exodus, a greater exodus. And this is brought about by the coming of Jesus Christ. All you have to do is read the gospel of Mark. What does it say in Mark chapter 1, verse 1?

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And how does it begin?

A voice crying in the wilderness.

What is that? That's new exodus language from the book of Isaiah. The new exodus, the new salvation, the deliverance of bondage from sin is beginning in Jesus Christ. Secondly, once the exiles are brought back, the nations will be included in the blessing of the righteous rule of this king. Look at verse 10, where we see that the coming king is a banner for the nations, not just Not just, Jesus didn't just come to bring the Jews back into a right relationship to God. He came to bring the blessing of Abraham to all the nations. All the nations in him will be blessed. The shoot becomes the root. Not only will he be a rallying point for Israel, but for all the nations. His resting place will be glorious. The term resting place is used in 1 Kings 8.56 of the land of Israel, that is the territory where the king exercises his rule. In Psalm 132, verse 8 and 13, it make plain that Zion is the resting place of the Lord. This is where he rules as king and extends his rule to the ends of the earth. 1 Chronicles 28.2 also makes plain that the temple is a resting place for the ark, the footstool of Yahweh's throne, the place from which he rules and reigns. In Isaiah 11, we see that that resting place refers to the territory or kingdom of the coming king, a territory which is in fact coextensive with the new creation. Thus the coming Eden is in fact Mount Zion, a Zion which fills the whole earth. That Zion is the people of God today, And when we have the new heavens and the new earth, it will be the place as well. Let us pray together. Our Father and our God, we bow before you and we give praise and thanks to you. And we thank you that today we have hope. We are not, we do not need to be in a situation of despair and hopelessness. Because you have announced a coming king. And that coming king is Jesus Christ. And in the coming of Jesus Christ, we have the new creation. The new creation has begun now, and it will be finished when he returns. And this is a message of hope. It will bring a kingdom of justice and righteousness. It will bring about true social justice. It will rid the world of evildoers. And it comes by relying not upon military weapons, but upon your word and upon your spirit. So we pray that we would go forth as servants of the Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. Sing.