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This is a family worship service, so we won't be dismissing the kids. We'll look forward to a little uh extra activity and excitement  during  our service. And I'd like you to stand with me  as we read our scripture from this morning. It's taken from Isaiah chapter 11.  We'll be reading verses  one through nine.  Isaiah 11,  one through nine. There shall come forth a shoot from the  stump of Jesse and a branch from its roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see.  nor decide disputes by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall  strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fatted calf together,  and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, and their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like an ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of a cobra,  and the wean child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the  earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. This is the word of the Lord.  Good morning. Good to see all of you.  Has anyone else had the opportunity over the last week with all the wind storms to pick up lots of sticks in your yard,  fallen branches? ah If you've ever been out walking after even a bigger storm, Right? Like not just  kind of what we've seen typically.  You may see trees,  in fact, whole trees that  are  bowed down, some of them even broken,  ones that used to reach up to the sky now bent over. Big trunks that used to be flourishing and full of branches and leaves are now  broken and lifeless. And there's maybe just a stump there. Not much to look at. Right? Debris. clutter, sad reminders of what once was impressive. But if you come back months later,  sometimes  what do you find?  You can look at the stump and there may be a tiny green shoot growing up through what was dead gray wood. Something living breaking through what appeared to be dead. The stump wasn't the end. It was the beginning of something else. There have been  seasons in my life  over the years, some of them even recently, where I kind of felt a little bit like one of those stumps cut down. Parts of my ministry, parts of my life may be taken away, taken to with an axe,  shattered, removed. It felt like maybe sometimes I even heard that there's  nothing good left, nothing valuable there. I don't know if you've had experiences like that. I know for me, God has met me in painful seasons like that with encouragement, encouragement from His Word, encouragement from other people who maybe didn't have an answer, didn't have a solution,  but could at least remind me, point me to Jesus' goodness and Jesus' faithfulness in the middle of all that loss. I've been encouraged by the help of  godly counselors who  told me, you're not crazy for feeling what you're feeling, but you get to choose what you do with your feelings. And who reminded me that feeling hopeless is not the same as being hopeless.  Here's what God helped me see through seasons like that. Stumps are not necessarily dead things, right? They can often be places where God has hidden roots, seeds of hope for new life.  Maybe circumstances in your life, maybe the reality of the world around us, maybe even things that other people have said or done have left you feeling cut down, hopeless, maybe even a little dead. Isaiah is writing to people like that. People who feel cut down, they're worn out, they're surrounded by darkness. Those people almost certainly felt the way that you and I sometimes feel. Foundations that we thought were secure have  cracked. Promises that we hoped in have failed. It may be one big thing. It may be a thousand little things that have all gone wrong somehow. The story of God's people seemed like a  stump that has been cut off. The promise of a righteous ruler through the royal line of David. The hopes of God's people ended. But Isaiah says,  there will come forth a shoot from that stump. Out of the stump, hope of new life. Out of the darkness,  light.  We're entering into this season of Advent.  It's not a season of naive optimism, right? It's a season where the people of God dare to proclaim hope  in the middle of brokenness,  in the middle of darkness and loss. It's not naive, not simplistic. Just as we heard from the beginning of John's gospel, a light, the light, shines in the darkness, and the darkness can't overcome it. During Advent, we anticipate the celebration of Christmas, the coming of Jesus Christ, and the promise of His return. And each week during Advent,  we recognize, we celebrate the themes of that season, hope, peace, joy. love. And like many churches, we light a candle each of those  Sundays to celebrate one of those themes and to picture light in the darkness. And today we're looking at hope from this passage in Isaiah 11.  And here's, think, what Isaiah is getting at, that hope rises  from hidden roots. Hope  rises  from hidden roots. If you haven't already, go ahead and open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 11. We're on page 683 if you're using those black Bibles in front of you. And we're going go through the text and see three movements, three pictures of hope that Isaiah gives us and think about what that might mean for our lives. So let's jump in.  The first thing in verse one is this hope from an unexpected place. Isaiah points us to hope from an unexpected place. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots  will bear fruit." Now,  the context, we need a little bit of background, right? The  context that Isaiah assumes all his hearers know.  You remember back in Genesis how God called to Abraham and said,  I will make a relationship with you and through you all the nations of the world will be blessed. And  as... Abraham's family grew, that promise grew. They ended up in slavery in Egypt and then God delivered them powerfully, remember, and brings them to His holy mountain, Mount Sinai, where He commissions, calls them to be His  representatives  on earth,  to be His holy special people, to bless the nations. Did God's people do a good job? Kids, what's the answer? No,  they failed, right? And later God raised up David. A king who was supposed to  lead God's people faithfully where they were unfaithful. Did David do a good job? No, he failed. God promised that a righteous king would rule from David's family, but it wasn't David. It wasn't his son, Solomon. It wasn't any of his descendants. And now we come to this book of Isaiah where one of his main themes is this promise of a king who will come from David's line to fulfill all of God's purposes. But in Isaiah's time, everything was failing, including the kingship. Large enemy nations threatened on their borders. David's  kings, his offspring ruling in Jerusalem are thieves and murderers and idolaters. Worship has become a A hollow hypocritical pretense, corruption is rampant, injustice defines their society, the nation is pulling itself apart. Maybe we could relate.  Isaiah chapter 10, the one right before, this prophecy pictures God chopping down arrogant nations like trees and he includes his own people among them. Israel has been felled. God will send his people and the last king from David's line into exile. No king, no home, no power, no hope. And that's where we come to Isaiah chapter 11 and this promise of a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was King David's father, okay?  It looks like the whole project has failed.  dynasty that once flourished like a big tree in the forest has now been cut down and left like a stump. But God promises that through David's family, New life will come out of what looks dead. uh A shoot will come from the stump of Jesse. Hope rises  from hidden roots. That's really the whole  story of the gospel through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, right? Abraham and Sarah, too old to have children. Joseph, forgotten in a prison cell. Israel trapped at the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army behind them Daniel thrown into a lion's den Mary a young girl from nowhere important across a Place of defeat that actually brings victory an empty tomb a place of death that brings life God specializes in bringing hope where hope seems impossible. Did you notice how God does that? The contrast here. We might expect Isaiah to say, a mighty tree will come again. But he doesn't. He points instead to  a shoot, a tiny, fragile,  small, unimpressive thing. New life rarely begins dramatically. It often starts  small, quietly, gently, vulnerable. It's reminder that when God sends salvation, He doesn't send an army. He actually gives us a baby. And He doesn't send salvation to the royal palace, but to a cattle shed. Isaiah says the Messiah is going to do something unexpected because he's going to be something unexpected. It's a reminder that hope is not rooted in human power, but God's promise. What are the stumps in your life? As we come into this Advent season, maybe you're feeling Some of that heaviness yourself, a relationship that's been cut down, a dream that feels dead, faith feels thin. You're just overwhelmed with the weight of it all, a season of exhaustion, a world that seems darker every month. And God says,  I know it looks like a stump, but I'm not done. This isn't the end of the story. The hope of Advent is not everything is fine. The hope of Advent is God is at work when everything looks cut down. That's what hope is. It means that we look at  stumps  differently. Some of you may be old enough to remember  in 1988 the great Yellowstone Park wildfire. Over a million acres were burned. People feared that the park had been destroyed, that it would never recover. Some said if it does ever come back, it will be decades, maybe a century. But then forestry experts noticed something really almost unexpected. Within one year, the ground was alive with  new growth, bright green shoots, young lodgepole pines. Why? because there's a certain variety of those trees that have pine cones that  only drop their seeds and flourish under intense heat. It actually takes a forest fire for those trees to become productive. It was the fire, the devastation that actually became the ground for the hope. God often brings His greatest growth out of the most painful season. Where do you feel cut down? Where do you see a stump? Where does it feel like a stump? Can you by faith dare to say God can bring life here in this place? Ask God to help you see where life might come in places that you didn't expect. Because hope rises from hidden roots. Well Isaiah moves from the image of a shoot to the identity of the king, the Messiah, which means the anointed one. That's the second thing. There's hope in the Spirit-anointed King. Look in verse 2. uh on this shoot, the spirit of wisdom and understanding. not just empowering this person momentarily, but filling and defining and becoming the life of this person. Jesus said his baptism, the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. You remember Jesus reads the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth and says, Spirit of the Lord is on me. It's Jesus healing and teaching and forgiving in the power of the Spirit. It's not an ordinary king, an ordinary ruler.  Isaiah goes on in verse two to give this  description of what he will be like. And if you count up these expressions, there's seven of them. And that's a significant number in scripture that indicates completion, perfection, wholeness. The spirit of the Lord, Isaiah says, will rest on him. In other words, Jesus did not have a spirit like we have that's often false or deceptive. A spirit of wisdom. He's perfectly wise in all things. Not just that he has wisdom, but that he is  wisdom itself. A spirit of understanding. That Jesus understands all things and he understands  us  perfectly inside and out. Spirit of counsel. He has the direction, the guidance that we need all the time. Spirit of might.  Some of us, you you have people in your lives that would help you if they could, but they don't have any power to help you. And then  there are other people who have power to help you, but don't have any interest in helping, right? Jesus is this unique mixture of both love and  might, power to help us. Spirit of knowledge. Jesus knows everything. He knows us. He knows our fears, our failures, our hearts, our hurts. He knows all the facts. He has the knowledge that we don't have. And all of this is leading us to this insight that Jesus is the King that we actually long for, but that we never get in our human politics. Because  as Isaiah says in verse 3, his delight will be in the fear of the Lord. What does this King love? Not power, not celebrity, not wealth, but the fear of the Lord. A joyful, reverent, submitting his plans and his will to do what is pleasing to God. It's just like Jesus said, my food, my life is to do the will of the one who sent me. Look in verses three and four. He will judge  with  righteousness.  He will not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. Finally a judge who doesn't judge by outward appearance who doesn't bend justice based on Who looks impressive or who's been nice or flattered his ego? He sees clearly truthfully. He defends the poor. He confronts the wicked. He speaks with integrity and authority He sees beneath the surface He knows the truth and he judges  rightly He cannot be bought, he cannot be bribed, he cannot be flattered, he cannot be intimidated. In a world of shallow assessments and unjust decisions, Jesus is the judge that we long for, but we don't see in our human courts. Verse five, righteousness will be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt around his loins.  Righteousness, this idea of doing what is right because the person is right on the inside. That is  the belt Isaiah says around his waist, right? Something that's worn close, something that's worn daily, something that's near  him. He doesn't occasionally act faithful. He doesn't sometimes remember to be faithful. He  is  faithful. Faithfulness defines him. When I started out in pastoral ministry,  ministry was easy, right? Because I knew all the answers and I knew what all the guys who were in charge were supposed to be doing. The only problem was how come those guys didn't get it? It was obvious what they should be doing, right? Then I had to lead. I realized that pastoral ministry, any kind of leadership, is a little more complicated than it looks or than we've read about.  I've had lots of opportunities to be reminded that in myself, I am not wise enough, am not good enough, I am not smart enough,  I am not gifted enough to lead the way that God actually leads, that God calls us to lead. But I've also been encouraged that my job is not to be the Messiah.  We have a Savior already, and the job of any leader is to try and reflect. that Savior, but ultimately to point others to that Savior and to remind all of us that He's the Savior that we need. He has the Spirit without measure. He is righteous. He is faithful. That's the point, right? Jesus is the leader that we are not.  Sometimes he's even the leader we don't want. Because we live in a culture that always tells us to put our hope in the next election, the next leader, the next policy, the next economic cycle. And those solutions and those leaders often reflect  not what is best, but what is us. greedy and grasping, control and cruelty, pride and power, domination. Isaiah says, thank God that your hope is not in humans or human solutions. Hope is in the Spirit-anointed King. And means if Jesus rules with righteousness, that means as His people, we pursue justice. We reflect  mercy. We reject favoritism. We seek His wisdom. We walk in the fear of the Lord, just as Jesus does. Hope is not passive, you see. It's a way of life. Hope is actually embodied as we  walk with Jesus and follow Him. Where can your life in this season more reflect the character of this king? Because Advent reminds us that our hope is not whoever it is that sits in the White House or in the State House or in the Courthouse. Our hope is in the one who is enthroned in heaven. He is ruling and reigning and one day he will return to rule and reign on this earth as he does in heaven now.  Because hope rises from hidden roots. From things that we can't see right now but we trust and believe that God is working in. And the final movement of Isaiah's vision is stunning. A hope in a world that one day will be the way God always intended it to be. Hope for a renewed creation. Hope for a renewed creation. Look in verse 6. The wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the young goat, the calf, and the lion, and the fatted calf together. I mean just... I know we've heard these images before. We've maybe even seen, you know, illustrations or paintings of it. But just think about it, right? Predator and prey dwelling together in peace because the creation has been transformed. This is not naive optimism. It's not sentimentality. It's reality. It's eschatology. It's the future. Natural enemies become Companions who live at peace. Violence is gone. No one is preying  on anyone anymore. The natural order is healed. Isaiah is picturing the undoing of the curse of Genesis 3 that our parents brought into the world with all the violence and death and competition and grabbing. Nature itself, Paul writes,  echoing this in Romans 8, nature itself is waiting, longing for  our redemption, our rescue, because then nature itself will be healed. Isaiah's prophecy at the end of verse 6, a  little child shall lead them. Not a warrior, not a hunter, not a powerful king from a palace, but a little child like a toddler. You know, an image of kind of innocence and safety and peace and  non-threatening, right? In a world that we live in that's often marked by fear for our children. Isaiah says, day is coming when even little children will live together peacefully with lions and leopards. In verse 8, the nursing child will play over the whole of the cobra. The weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. Just a quick reminder, this is why we have to understand what type of literature we're reading. This is not a command. It's not an encouragement. It's not direction for parenting in this age. We don't send our kids out to play with venomous serpents.  It's a picture instead  of what will happen,  the most primal fears that motivate us. A  few people love snakes. Anyone love snakes? Most of us, more scared. Yes. Those most primal basic fears of danger and threat, chaos will be  Undone Isaiah says when the Messiah comes  And the high point of all of this is in verse 9 They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain  for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of Yahweh the Lord just like the waters cover the sea What is God's holy mountain and the Bible it I mean it can refer to different things it could be Mount Sinai it can be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but it's all pointing towards this truth that heaven and earth come together and meet. It's where God unites His presence to a redeemed, restored creation, finally, once and for all.  That is what Advent is pointing you towards. Not just Jesus first coming as a baby, but His returning again in glory. A world fully healed, creation restored, humanity renewed, driven  out. And sometimes we get pictures of that. You may be familiar with the story during World War I in late 1914. The initial kind of big surge of the armies had slowed down to the trench warfare that it would become for the next four years. But in December of 1914, as Christmas approached, the German Kaiser was trying to encourage his troops. He actually sent Christmas trees to the troops. So the German soldiers set up Christmas trees and they were singing Christmas carols like Silent Night and as the British soldiers on the other side of the of the no man's land heard this they Started singing Christmas hymns back to the German soldiers on Christmas Day Germans and British soldiers who had been firing at each other  slowly crept out of their trenches unarmed Started walking towards each other. They  greeted each other. They shook hands. They shared food they played soccer together, they exchanged gifts for a few hours. Wolves and lambs came together in peace. It's a glimpse of the future world that Isaiah is pointing towards.  An echo of ultimate peace. It's a reminder for us as Jesus followers, there  are no enemies to destroy. God will execute judgment. For us, there are only enemies to love, people to bless, mercy to extend. Because Christians are people of the future.  living in the present. We are people of that future peaceful kingdom living here and now in a broken violent world. And that means for us.  Because we know that world is coming and we already live in it. We  sow peace now. We work for peace now. We look for ways to make peace with one another. We heal wounds. We love enemies. We show mercy. We care for the weak. We live with patience. The world should experience some of that coming kingdom because of being around Jesus followers. because we're people of the future who live and bring that future into the present with us. Hope rises from hidden roots, things that look small and unimportant. And Isaiah wants us to hold on to this vision of the world that is coming and is real and our future, especially when violence seems endless, when death seems to win, when darkness seems in control, when injustice prevails.  Isaiah says, look, lift your heads, expand your vision. That's not how the story  ends. That's not the future. It isn't even how the story has to go right now. If soldiers who were shooting at each other  one day can come together and  share gifts and sing songs together and play football, we as God's people can reflect that peace here and now. Christ will come again. Peace will reign. That means we live in hope. Hope when things look cut down. Hope in a king who rules with  justice and mercy. Hope in the future when all things will be made new. That is light in the darkness. It's not just light for us, but light that shines through us in all the places, in all the dark places that God takes us. Life can feel like a  stump. Darkness is real. Evil seems powerful. But a shoot from the stump has already sprouted. Right? The King has already come. Jesus has already come and the Spirit rests on him. The cross is behind him. He's before the Father's throne now and his future kingdom has already broken into this world. So Isaiah says,  lift your eyes, hold on to hope, guard your heart. The stump that you see in front of you is not the end.  It's just the beginning. It's the place where hidden roots rise to the life that God is bringing because the King  is reigning and the world will be restored. The darkness cannot overcome the light of Jesus  in you and through you. Let his light shine into you. through you. Let's pray. Jesus, You are our light in the darkness. We thank You for the hope that dawns  in You  through this vision from the prophet Isaiah. Where our lives feel cut down, would You help us to hope in new life? Would You help us to see new life? where our world feels chaotic, would you bring your peace, bring it to us and bring it through us. Fill us with your spirit. And we may walk in wisdom,  love, and faithfulness. Help us to wait with faith and to live with hope. Shine your light into the darkness and make us lights in the world. We pray in your holy name. Amen. Thank you for engaging with our community by checking out this podcast.  If you would like more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindie.com.