Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text (Isaiah 11:1)
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him.
Prayer: O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny, from depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory o’er the grave. Amen.
For the last two Wednesday nights, we’ve been working our way gradually through the old Advent hymn, O come, O come, Immanuel.
The first week we meditated upon Jesus as the Key of David. And last week we looked at Jesus as the Day-break, the Day Spring, the new dawn which lights up the whole world.
And so now as we get closer to Christmas, we’re going to have a look at the second verse of the hymn which goes like this:
O come, Thou rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan’s tyranny; From depths of hell Thy people save, And give them victory o’er the grave.
Rejoice, rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to Thee, O Israel.
The original verse, on which this hymn is based goes like this:
O root of Jesse, which stands as a signal to the peoples, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, unto whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come and deliver us, and do not delay.
So over the past two weeks we have seen Jesus compared with a key and last week the Sun and the stars.
This week, he is called in the hymn “the rod of Jesse”.
When we hear the word “rod” we usually think of a stick – sometimes a wooden rod, or an iron rod. We can also have a fishing rod and a lightening rod. It’s a very flexible word in English, so we have to make sure we really understand what the picture is in this word.
Also, in Psalm 23, you will remember the famous passage, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” In this psalm, we talking about a rod which belongs to a shepherd to help him look after his sheep and scare away wild animals. Micah 7 also has an expression like this when it says, “Shepherd your people with your staff.”
Now, I have to admit, that this is what I think of when I imagine “a rod”.
But that type of a rod is completely different from what is spoken of in this hymn verse, when it says, “rod of Jesse”. In this verse, the word “rod” is more like the word “root”, as in the root of a tree.
Now we don’t often call a root or a shoot of a plant a “rod”, but I think that in older English they did. So when the poet writes, “Rod of Jesse”, what he’s actually talking about here today is “a root”.
And we find this expression in Isaiah 11:1:
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
Now, I don’t know how you all are at gardening, but in this one little verse there are five words which have to do with different parts of a plant.
We have a shoot, a stump, a branch, roots, and fruit.
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
The thing about a root is that you have no idea that it is there unless you dig it up. There’s a weed in our garden that looks a bit like a creeper, and one time we tried to dig it up, to discover what an enormous root system it had. It could have been easy for us to say, “Well we can’t see the plant, it can’t be there any more.”
This prophecy which Isaiah speaks was spoken in the time of King Ahaz, who was one of the worst kings in Judah’s history. Not only did he decide to reorganise the temple and its worship according to how he liked it, but also he worshipped Molach, and offered his own son as a burnt offering. There were many religions in the ancient world that used to do this, sacrificing their children to their gods. The ancient Aztecs in what is now modern-day Mexico, also used to do something like this on their pyramids.
We also read about this in Psalm 107, where it says,
“They [the Israelites, the chosen people of God] did not destroy the peoples, as the Lord commanded them, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.”
So at this time in history, things would have looked pretty bleak, to say the least. The temple was being defiled with false worship, the King was making sacrifices to the demons, and the true worship of God was going to wrack and ruin. And especially now that king Ahaz had destroyed the worship at the temple that God himself had commanded at Mt Sinai to be done.
But what was there to be seen of the true church on earth, the holy nation of Israel? Not much! In fact, close to nothing.
King David’s kingdom and lineage and family, and all the good things which came from it was cut down. It was nothing but a stump. All that was left was the root.
And so we read the promise here:
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
There will be hope! A beautiful tree will arise, and, we read:
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.
Now, like last week, and the week before, each of these images, these pictures, are linked to person in biblical history. Last week, it was “a star shall arise from Jacob”. The week before, it was “the Key of David”.
And this week the person is Jesse. There’s not much said about Jesse in the bible, except that he’s King David’s father. And there’s not much else said about him.
And we might think: What’s the difference then between talking about Jesse or David? Does it make any difference? Would it make any difference if we called Christ the “root of David” from the “stump of David”?
Jesus is not just a descendent of King David. But he is a kind of new King David.
In Jeremiah 30, we read: They shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.
Now at the time that Jeremiah wrote this prophecy, King David was dead. And it’s not like he believed in a kind of re-incarnation, or that King David was going to rise from the dead. Here there is promised a new King David.
There’s another passage like this in Ezekiel 34:
And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.
Here we see also this new King David. Jesus Christ is a new King David – someone like King David, but bringing in a new type of kingdom, a more brilliant kingdom, a kingdom which is not of this world. Jesus is also a new Adam – as St Paul says, In Adam all die, in Christ shall be made alive.
But here particularly we see the prophecies that Jesus is a new King David. He’s even born in the same city of David. But also we see that Jesse was not a rich, well-to-do man. He was a humble man who looked after sheep. So King David had humble beginnings. He looked after the sheep for his father Jesse.
And Jesus Christ also had humble beginnings. He was born in a stable, of poor parents. And he is also a shepherd. He says, “I am the Good Shepherd. My sheep hear my voice.” And so we say in return, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
And so we see Christ here as a “root” (a little insignificant shoot) from the stump of Jesse! And the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, we read, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord…. And in verse 10 we read: In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples, of him shall the nations inquire.
This root of Jesse, anointed with the Holy Spirit, shall grow so tall that it will attract the attention not just of the Jews but of the Gentiles.
This is what the root of Jesse does – he stands as a tall tree, inviting people from all nations to come and call on him. Now, unless I’m mistaken, we are all Gentiles, and so we are part of the fulfilment of this prophecy, that the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples, to the Gentiles.
St Paul says: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.” And again it is said, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him.” And again Isaiag says, “The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles; in him will the Gentiles hope.”
+++
For us, as well, I want you to think about something. We want Christ to dwell in us and to grow up into us as a fruitful tree.
But we also know that we have an old King David in us. And this old King David is full of all kinds of sin and failure and perversion. This old King David gives way to king Ahaz, who worships other gods, and does away with the true worship of true God.
St Paul says in Ephesians, “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
I’d like to rephrase that and say, “Put of the old King David”, and be renewed in the Spirit of your minds, and put on the new Self, the New King David, the shoot from the stump of Jesse (who is filled with the Holy Spirit), created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
When we hear the word of God, and particularly the Holy Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, it takes root in us, and grows up into a fruitful tree. And we grow up into Christ. We are grafted on the root of Jesse, like branches on a vine! We draw everything we need in our life from him. He has planted us in himself through Holy Baptism, and week after week he plants himself in us through the Lord’s Supper.
A root seems like such an insignificant thing. In the time of great apostasy, during the reign of King Ahaz, it would have seemed like God’s promises were nowhere to be found.
But also in today’s world, we still say, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the (little, invisible, seemingly insignificant) Gospel! …enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”
So trust in that Root of Jesse, our Lord Jesus Christ, that blessed man, who we read about in Psalm 1:
He is like a tree, planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in it season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers!”
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, Rod of Jesse, tiny shoot from the stump of Jesse, we thank you that so quietly and insignificantly came to live among us, and were born for us in a small stable from a young woman, the Virgin Mary. Cut down everything in us that wants to worship idols, and plant yourself in us, so that it is no longer we who live but you who live in us, working and willing in us to your good pleasure. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment