Jesus' Unexpected Birth Foreshadowed His Unexpected Work

Second Sunday in Advent

December 4, 2016

Isaiah 11:1-10

Jesus' Unexpected Birth Foreshadowed His Unexpected Work

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

I.

The promise of the Jesus the Savior coming into the world was under threat from the very beginning. Around 2000 years before Jesus was born, Isaac, Abraham's son and Jesus' ancestor, was almost murdered. Jacob's sons and their families proposed in Egypt for a time, but soon the pharaoh tried to exterminate the Hebrew people. Around 1500 BC God rescued them and sent Moses to deliver them and things went well for quite some time.

But around 600 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem calamity struck the nation of Israel: the Babylonian Empire and its king Nebuchadnezzar invaded and destroyed Jerusalem. It probably seemed to many Jews and Gentiles that the promise of a Savior Messiah coming true was slim to none. God had promised that the Savior would be a descendant of David's dynasty of kings. But the Babylonians put an end to David's dynasty. It's a good bet that many assumed that this coming Messiah would be an actual king, born in the palace at Jerusalem, amid pomp and circumstance. But now after the devastation of Jerusalem and the exile of her people and kings, things looked bleak.

But others read the writings of Jesus' prophet Isaiah. Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would have unexpected beginnings.

Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

ISAIAH 11:1 HCSB

Jesse was the father of King David; his stump meant that the line of David would be chopped down. But Isaiah also added that a Branch would spring up from Jesse' roots. This meant that David's descendants wouldn't be kings or queens, but lowly people. Like a shoot that grows up from the trunk of a tree, Jesus' birth would look like an afterthought or accident. But instead the reality was the opposite of appearances: Jesus' birth happened at just the right time.

And so this brings us to the blessed Virgin Mary and her betrothed Joseph, lowly descendants of David. The angel spoke God's Word into her ears and the Spirit of the Most High overshadowed her and she was with the Child. And this Child would be born and grow up. And His grown-up life began like this:

¹³Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴But John tried to stop Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and yet You come to me?” ¹⁵Jesus answered him, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him to be baptized. ¹⁶After Jesus was baptized, He went up immediately from the water. The heavens suddenly opened for Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on Him.

MATTHEW 3:13-16 HCSB

And so just as Isaiah predicted:

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him

ISAIAH 11:2 HCSB

II.

Then this Jesus who had an unexpected beginning would go on to do strange and unexpected things.

He will not judge by what He sees with His eyes… and He will kill the wicked with a command from His lips.

ISAIAH 11:-3b, 4d HCSB

This judging and killing sum up the unexpected things that unexpected Jesus does. He does not judge by what He sees. This is what we humans do. We judge by seeing. We see what we want to see. This goes for how we judge our fellow human beings and how we judge God.

But Jesus doesn't judge like we do. He sees what we try to hide. And what we try to hide is our false expectations, which is another way of saying our sins. And so Jesus sends preachers to expose our sins to the light of day, as we hear in the preaching of John the Baptist:

“Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones! Even now the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees! Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

MATTHEW 3:7b-10

John's preaching was meant to kill the hearer's false expectations. They thought they were good and going to heaven because Abraham was their father. This is as foolish as our expectation today that our grown children will go to heaven because they once years ago recited some lines in a Christmas program or that they still show up for their annual trip to the Christmas Eve service.

The truth is that if they can't be bothered to come to their nearest faithful church and receive Christ, they aren't Christians. That's the simple truth. Like the Pharisees, we try to make God fit into our expectations. Abraham is our daddy, so we're good. My parents took me to church, and I don't hate Jesus, and I try to be a good person, so I'm comfortable in my despising of Christ and His Word.

We judge by what we can see. We look like good people. Our children look like good people. And God should be content with how we look on the outside.

III.

We are tempted to believe these lies, and sometime we actually believe them. So Jesus sends preachers to chop down the whoppers with the ax of His Law and kill us. He does this to bring you back to real life and bring us to His holy mountain. We heard last Sunday how Isaiah spoke of God's holy mountain of Zion, which is a way of speaking about His Church here on earth and of our future with Him in heaven. This is how Isaiah pictures it.

The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat. The calf, the young lion, and the fatling will be together, and a child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze, their young ones will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. An infant will play beside the cobra’s pit, and a toddler will put his hand into a snake’s den. None will harm or destroy another on My entire holy mountain, for the land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water. On that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will seek Him, and His resting place will be glorious.

ISAIAH 11:6-10 HCSB

For now these are unexpected pictures of our unity in Christ. In the Church here on earth we spend time with people whom we might not otherwise expect to spend time. And I think Isaiah might be pointing us back to the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden to show us what our everlasting future might be like. But whether little kids are actually play patty-cake with cobras or not, we know that our Savior-God, born as Man in Bethlehem, will gather us to Him, just as He does now.

So even though now it might seem that our future looks like a tree stump—our nation is divided, our children are abandoning the church—we judge by whom we cannot see: Jesus. And in Jesus our stump shall be the tree of life.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be Served, but to Serve, and to Give His Life as a Ransom for Many. Amen.