Messiah's Renewal

A shoot will grow out of Jesse’s root stock, a bud will sprout from His roots. – Isaiah 11:1 (NET)

With these words, Isaiah speaks of God’s Messiah. He speaks of the King in the line of David, the Son of God, the Son of Man, that will be sent forth to lead God’s people from their exile, via a new exodus, into a new promised land. That promised land is a renewed creation, in which Jesus reigns as King and Lord of all. It was inaugurated at His Resurrection, with His establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, with a renewed Israel, a people under the covenant of belief in Jesus, as the people of God that constitute and serve to establish and expand His kingdom by the operation, through them, of the glorious power of God’s Holy Spirit.

As it is written of the Messiah that “The Lord’s Spirit will rest on Him” (11:2a), so it is to be said of all those in union with Him, through faith, because of His faithfulness. That Spirit is said to be “a spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom” (11:2b), and just as it fell upon and infused our Lord as He walked the earth, so it shall infuse those who believe in Him. The Spirit is one “that provides the ability to execute plans” (11:2c). God executed His saving plan for the world through His Messiah, and it is through that Spirit that God executes His plans for the expansion of His kingdom, through the preaching of the Gospel. By that Spirit---the same Spirit that raised up Christ from the dead---God works through His people to confront the evil to be found in this world, extending His mercy, grace, love, and saving faithfulness to a people and a creation that is beset by pains and sorrows. By that Spirit, God sends forth His people as ambassadors for Christ, making royal declarations on behalf of the world’s true King. Yes, God executes His plans. Because Jesus is a sovereign ruler, the Spirit that produced His absolute loyalty to the will of the Father is the same Spirit “that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord” (11:2d). Of course, this only matters if Jesus was raised up from the dead and lives forevermore.

The new creation, previously mentioned, was inaugurated and goes forth with Resurrection power. As the first man, Adam, was placed in God’s good creation, to tend and steward it as his charge, so the second man, Jesus, was resurrected into a world of God’s creation---a world that was now fundamentally changed because of the power for Resurrection that had been unleashed into the world through its delivery to His lifeless body. We know that Jesus was the first-fruits of those to be raised up from the dead. We know that just as Jesus was raised, so too will we be raised. We know that the creation itself awaits its liberation from its long bondage to corruption. Jesus’ Resurrection into this very creation, along with God’s working through His people to be ambassadors of His light and glory in this world, means that we do not simply await the end of our days or the world’s days, so that we can be whisked off into the blessed, eternal state, of an other-worldly existence. God did not broker a deal with death and corruption, giving over our physical bodies and this world that He created. He intends to redeem the whole.

We do not await the demise of this world. The Scriptures constantly point us to a restoration of this world to the condition for which it was intended by its Creator. This restoration was why He sent forth His Messiah. This restoration is why that Messiah, contrary to all expectations, would suffer and die. This restoration is why that same Messiah, contrary to all expectations, would be physically raised up from the dead. All of this was done to point God’s people to the time in which the final defeat of death would be accomplished, and in which “there will be universal submission to the Lord’s sovereignty” (11:9b). Though that Resurrection power works through us and we share in eternal life, we will most certainly fade and die; but because Jesus was physically raised, with a glorified body, and because we have the promise that we will experience the same, we look to our being raised to a new life and a new creation in which “A wolf will reside with a lamb, and a leopard will lie down with a young goat; an ox and a young lion will graze together, as a small child leads them along” (11:6).

When the curse of exile from God’s original purposes is finally broken, and we are led into the promised land of God’s renewed creation, we will see that “A cow and a bear will graze together, their young will lie down together. A lion, like an ox, will eat straw” (11:7). Because of the Resurrection, “A baby will play over the hole of a snake; over the nest of a serpent an infant will put his hand” (11:8). When Jesus reigns without question, God says, “They will no longer injure or destroy on My entire royal mountain” (11:9a). If we believe this, then it is incumbent upon us to lift up the Gospel of Jesus “like a signal flag for the nations,” so that “Nations will look to Him for guidance and His residence will be majestic” (11:10b).