Dwell in the Word: Isaiah 11:1-16

Contemplate these questions as you dwell in Isaiah 11:1-16:

1. The imagery in Isaiah 11 paints a vivid picture of a future world where predators and prey coexist peacefully, and even the nature of dangerous animals is transformed. How does this vision of restoration and harmony resonate with your understanding of God's ultimate plan for creation?

2. Isaiah highlights that the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth in the same way that waters cover the sea. How does this imagery challenge us to play a role in spreading the knowledge of God and His salvation in our world today?

3. This passage speaks of a "shoot from the stump of Jesse," which points to a future Messiah from the line of David. How does the promised Messiah's role in this restoration narrative relate to your understanding of Jesus Christ as the bringer of hope and reconciliation in our lives?

Transcript:

As we move into chapter 11, we still have this idea of coming judgment, but here we see some good news. We have seen glimpses of good news as there is a promise of one who will come and restore things. But here we see something specific, and we see this idea that it is someone who is going to come from the royal line of David. And we see this here with this line in verse 1 that says, There shall come forth a shoot from the stub of Jesse, and a branch from his root shall bear fruit. Now we can understand this imagery. I'm guessing each and every one of us has driven by a field or by a series of trees that have been lopped off, that have been cut down, and they're nothing but a stump. When you see that, if you were to see that with a grove or small forest, if that were to happen, you would say, It's over. There are not going to be trees there anymore. This is done. Somebody has decided to cut this down. Humans have come in and destroyed what probably came up naturally. Of course, the growth here has been stymied.

It is considered to be done. The imagery that we have here is that there's going to be a shoot from the stump of Jesse, from this line of David. This shoot is going to come out and from it will grow something that's going to bear much fruit, where it seems like their death, where it seems like the story is over, God is going to do something. He is the one who is in control. That is the image that we have been seeing over and over again here, as judgment is proclaimed, then there's a sense of God doing something for His people. And we see that there is a looking forward to something that is totally amazing. And this is the language that we really know. Yeah, we know the branch from the Stump of Jesse language. We hear that around advent time, probably on a regular basis. But here we see this language of, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the young goat. This is powerful imagery that we remember, that we call upon, that we look to when we think about the idea of the new heavens and the new earth.

And the idea here is that these animals who are predators, these animals that are able to destroy, whether it is the wolf with the lamb or the leopard with the goat or even, and I haven't highlighted it here if you're watching on video, but the idea here of the nursing child playing over the whole of a cobra and a weaned child putting their hand in an adder's den. All of these things that are designed to attack, these things that have this nature in them to destroy, no longer have that. Things are restored to the way they were before in verse. I think probably my favorite imagery here is in verse 9, They shall not hurt or destroy. In all my holy mountains, when God restores things, there isn't going to be destruction, there isn't going to be death. Here's the imagery that I just love to recall as I think of these verses, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. Oh, really? As the waters cover the sea. You don't have a sea without water, right? You know that this is going to be the knowledge of the Lord is going to be everywhere.

This is going to be the way things are in the new heavens and the new earth. These are the way things are going to be that these animals who are, because of the curse, killing, instead, they're going to be nurturing. They would be preservers, perhaps, of this life instead of the ones who would take it. That is the idea that we have here. We see this and all of this, and get the idea here that God is going to be the one who is going to do this great thing. We see this in verse 16 as the chapter closes up, And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnants that remains of His people, as there was from Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt. Who did that work? Isaiah is calling upon these stories that people know, but he's also calling upon it. God's the one who did it. There was no question in the Egyptian exodus who was doing the work. Through the whole thing, through all the plagues, it was almost like it was a contest between the Lord God and the false gods of Egypt. At each point, who was the victim?

Even to the point where people walked through the sea on dry land and enemies of God were destroyed. Who brought people out of the land? Who brought the people into the promised land? It was God. That's the imagery that we're meant to call upon as we read this passage here from Isaiah. There is this sense for us as we read this. There's this longing. We long for the idea that there will no longer be death. There will no longer be the destruction of these predators upon the ones who are weaker. We long for that day. We long for the day of this beautiful language where the earth is full of the knowledge of Lord as the waters cover the sea. So, we long for that day. We desire that day. May that be a continual thing for us as we step out into the world and we see times where people who are weaker are taken advantage of, or where there is death, where there is difficulties in life. May we remember the imagery here from Isaiah. As we do this, may we remember that we are able to partake in this future, new heavens and new earth by proclamation of the Gospel.

We partake now because in a sense, through this restoration that we have in Christ, we are getting a foretaste of this. We are able to look forward to it. And so may we proclaim the word of the Lord. May we proclaim what God has done, that the knowledge of the Lord might go around the Earth. Because someday, in the new heavens, in the new Earth, it will be, as it says here, the knowledge of the Lord will be as the waters cover the sea.