Jesus was born in obscurity and raised to glory in his death and resurrection, fulfilling the prophets’ prophecies.
Jesus was born in obscurity and raised to glory in his death and resurrection, fulfilling the prophets’ prophecies.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas. My weird statistical analytical mind this morning wanted to know how often this happens, this Christmas on Sunday thing. It feels like it’s been a while, but we looked it up, I thought it’s got to be every seven years, but it isn’t. Because of leap year it happens irregularly and the next time it’s going to happen is 11 years from now. So I’ll be really old by then, so this is the last opportunity I have as a young man to preach on Christmas Sunday, so grateful to share it with you all.
Today we celebrate the birth of our King, the King of Glory, Jesus Christ, into the humblest and most obscure of circumstances. Today we’re going to peer into the darkness of a stable where animals were feeding, and standing and resting and lowing and mooing and bleating, and a tiny baby is born, weak, small, unknown, the seed of a formerly glorious lineage that had fallen for almost six centuries into total obscurity. This one born so low would be exalted to infinite glory by the hand of God, born to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. My focus in this message today will be on the God ordained obscurity of his birth. God ordained obscurity. It was predicted in the prophets, it was worked by the hand of God, it was decreed, personally worked by almighty God for his purposes, and then the infinite glory to which He will rise and bring us with him, that’s the message today.
I. Like a Shoot Out of Dry Ground
I want to begin with this phrase “like a shoot out of dry ground.” It comes from Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah the prophet spoke these words of prophecy over seven centuries before they were fulfilled. Isaiah 53:1-3, “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
The powerful image in that prophecy is that the Messiah, the savior of the world, will be completely physically, visibly, unimpressive. No majesty to attract our eye to him. Nothing in his appearance, he’ll be underwhelming to the untrained eye, there’d be no radiant glory, no obvious display. We’re going to speak more in detail about this marvelous prophecy later in the message, but let me zero in on this image that has captivated my mind. He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. This is a powerful agricultural metaphor, as so many are in the Bible, speaking of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, growing, which He did, from infancy to manhood. The text says He grew up before him. That is the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, grew up in the presence of almighty God, with God watching over his growth.
But the growth was like, it says, a tender shoot, meaning apparently weak, frail, and impressive, and like a root out of dry ground. His culture, his people, his nation were fruitless, dry, sterile, like a desert. No power, no glory, no prospects, a dry and weary land with nothing alive, that’s the image. But there is in the center of that desert, a tiny shoot, a little root with a small amount of activity of life, of power, but not apparently amounting to anything at all, that’s the image.
As I meditated on it my mind went to a part of American history, relatively recent, called the Dust Bowl. In the American Prairie in the 1930s during the Depression was a terrible era of drought and erosion and wind resulting in overpowering clouds of dust that destroyed all crops and drove a mass migration of poverty stricken farmers westward just to survive. John Steinbeck wrote a classic on this era in American history called Grapes of Wrath, and it powerfully depicts the desperation of farmers in this Midwestern Dust Bowl, seeing the Dust Bowl emerge, dust storms ravaging their crops and their hopes, nothing left but stunning poverty, desolation, emptiness and despair. Listen to some of Steinbeck’s prose that skillfully captures this desperation.
“The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones carried up straws and old leaves, even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened, and through them the sun shown redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth, pointed in the direction of the wind. The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it, and the children ran out of their houses, came out of their houses. But they did not shout or even run about as they would’ve done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent, they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside the men, to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s face secretly, for the corn could go as long as something else remained. The children stood nearby drawing figures in the dust with their bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break this time.”
That was the Dust Bowl tragedy, the destruction of a hundred million acres of farmland, crops devastated, hopes utterly crushed, buried in billowing clouds of dust. The powerful question Steinbeck raised is whether this time the dust storm, which destroyed the corn, would also break the spirits of the people and crush hopes.
That’s the image that I have here when it comes to Israel, like a root out of dry ground. So it was with Israel’s messianic hopes, a kingdom of words and dreams only it seemed. A bygone era of power and glory; it’d been a long time, more than half a millennium. Ancient prophecies that seem to have absolutely no chance of coming true of a worldwide empire of righteousness in which all nations on earth would submit to the power of the Son of David, the Messiah, reigning on a throne of majesty in Jerusalem. But the house and lineage of David seemed nothing, it meant nothing, apparently. The tree had been felled a long time ago. The lineage of Jesse was a stump left in a dry fields, nothing stirring. So it was that holy night when Jesus was born, the son of God, born to be king of heaven and earth, but it did not appear to be so.
II. The King of Glory Born in a Stable
The king of glory was born in a stable, you‘ve heard the narrative, it’s very famous. We read it every year, Luke 2:1-7, listen again, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and lineage of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”
At the beginning and then at the end of this short passage, we have two individuals in stark contrast with one another, you have Caesar Augustus, and then you have Jesus Christ. The narrative begins with the most powerful man then on earth, Caesar Augustus. He was the first Roman Emperor and reigned from 27 BC until his death in the AD 14. He was considered one of the greatest leaders in world history. He established the pattern of the Roman Empire under the Caesars for centuries to come. He had been born Gaius Octavius. He was a great nephew of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated in 44 BC. Julius Caesar had named him his legal son and heir. He won total control over the Roman Empire by the year 31 BC. Four years later in 27 BC the Roman Senate voted him the title Augustus, meaning “majestic one”. For them it implied deity. Luke writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit did not mean so, but he used the title by which he was well known, Caesar Augustus.
By the time Jesus was born, scholars tell us, in 4 BC, Caesar Augustus was at the absolute height of his power. He ruled over a vast realm of 1.7 million square miles, 45 million people, about 20% of the world’s population was under his domain at that time. He was so wealthy, personally wealthy, that during an economic crisis for Asia Minor, he paid that entire region’s tax bill out of his own coffers. He lived in purple, surrounded by marble columns, dining on whatever food he wanted, the finest of meats, the best of wines anytime. The world trembled at his slightest command. It was he who ordered that the census be taken of the entire Roman world, causing minor migrations of people, as for example, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem.
Jesus, on the other hand, entered the world at the other end of the spectrum. Though he was King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He was born into poverty, the son, so it was supposed, of an obscure Jewish carpenter in a conquered backwater of the empire. The actual circumstances of his birth are famous for their poignant aspects, they are humble and poverty stricken in the extreme. Forced temporarily to migrate from their home village of Nazareth, they had to travel to Bethlehem to register. The reason they went to Bethlehem was that Joseph, we are told, was of the house and lineage of David, the ancient king of Israel. But however glorious was the lineage of David back in the heyday, that line had fallen into total obscurity by this time.
The birth of Jesus, the son of David, was in total obscurity, and in far more distress than would’ve happened if he had been born in Nazareth with his mother Mary at least surrounded by family and some friends that could help with the birth. Instead of that they were desperately seeking a place to stay, a place where the baby could be born, because her time had come and she was in the agonies of childbirth. Of course, very famously, Joseph could not find any lodging in the inn, there were too many people there in the tiny town of Bethlehem. So Mary gave birth to Jesus surrounded, it would seem, by animals. She laid him in a manger, a feeding trough for livestock. Instead of a royal birth in which he was wrapped in purple, He was wrapped instead in simple swaddling cloths of the lowest sort. What a stark contrast to the life of Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man on earth.
The humble origins of Christ’s birth were essential to God’s plan. God wanted his only begotten son to be born into this level of poverty and humility. It’s not an accident, it was ordained by God. Honestly there is no glory, there is no wealth, there is no power on earth that remotely compares with the kingdom Christ left to come here. Let’s be honest, God is not impressed with Caesar Augustus. He’s not impressed with his wealth or his power or his purple. No matter how powerful rulers like Caesar Augustus are, God is not impressed, and God willed that Christ should humble himself to identify with us in our poverty and weakness, for we are poor and we are weak, and apart from Christ we are wicked. He wanted this humility and obscurity and poverty for Christ.
“The humble origins of Christ’s birth were essential to God’s plan. God wanted his only begotten son to be born into this level of poverty and humility. It’s not an accident, it was ordained by God.”
2nd Corinthians 8:9 describes this journey, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich.” Or again, Philippians 2:6-7, “Jesus being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness.” We see the intentional strategic poverty of Jesus, that was his mission.
Jesus was born into extremely low circumstances, very few babies in the world are laid in mangers after they’re born. I’ve not done any actual research on this, but I would have to think it would be highly unusual to put a newborn baby in a feeding trough. I think about the standards of cleanliness all over the world where babies are born. The OB-GYN wards here seem pretty clean to me. I don’t think they have any mangers there, in either little Duke or big Duke Hospital. That’s it, there’s a level of cleanliness and protection for newborn babies around the world vastly higher than that which Jesus, the son of God, received that night.
Shortly after his birth, Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt with the baby Jesus to escape the murderous King Herod. Jesus went from a temporary migrant from Nazareth the Bethlehem, to literally a refugee fleeing to Egypt to save his life. When the family returned it was to Nazareth, to an obscure and poverty stricken area of Palestine, where Joseph was a manual laborer, he was a carpenter, and Jesus would be too before he was presented to Israel and began his public ministry, a manual laborer. Jesus’s poverty would continue throughout his life. He told one of the people who wanted to follow him wherever He went, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, the son of man has no place to lay his head. I have nowhere to sleep tonight. Don’t expect any kind of earthly power or prosperity if you follow me.”
Now Jesus’ disciples one day were walking through the grain fields on the Sabbath and were picking heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands and eating them. We are told that this is the way that poor people were provided for in Israel back then. This was basically welfare for poor people in Palestine in that day. Jesus’s followers had to do that. Jesus’s own financial needs were met in part by some women, we’re told in Luke 8, that contributed to him out of their private means.
But the clearest display of Jesus’ poverty would be at the end of his life. When He was arrested, condemned, and crucified, all of his worldly belongings were gambled for in fulfillment of prophecy. John 19, “When the soldiers crucified Jesus they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. ‘Let’s not tear it,’ they said to one another, ‘let’s decide by lot who will get it.'” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled, which said, ‘They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.’” That is what the soldiers did. Jesus entered the world penniless and left the world penniless, without a single possession on earth. All of his actual possessions were fair game for the fulfillment of prophecy.
His poverty at that moment was infinitely greater than the material, for He was stripped of all glory and all favor in the presence of almighty God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, and once God transferred our guilt and our sin onto Christ the substitute, the Savior, He then poured out his wrath on him, justly and rightly, and broke fellowship with him in his role as Son of man Savior. In Mark 15:34 Jesus, “Cried out in loud voice ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'” To be forsaken by God is the ultimate poverty. And all of that to make us rich.
Brother and sister in Christ, let me tell you something, you are infinitely rich, you’re richer than you can possibly imagine. Part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to help you know how rich is your inheritance together with all the saints. You’re richer than you think you are. Rich in forgiveness, all of your sins, past, present, and future 100% paid for, forgiven by almighty God. Rich in love, for the Father and the Son have lavished all their love on us and will continue to lavish that love for all eternity, and the Holy Spirit pours out his love into our hearts, that we would know that we are adopted and beloved. Our wealth is just beginning, for we have an infinite inheritance of glory waiting for us in the next world. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you and I’ll come back, and you will be with me and see my glory, and you will have heavenly possessions yourself, that can never be taken from you, can never perish, spoil or fade.” So Jesus became poor so that all of us who believe in Christ might be forever rich.
III. The Humble Origins of Christ’s Kingdom Predicted
This whole downward journey that I’ve been describing here, from glory into poverty and then back up to glory, is essential to our salvation. The humble origins of Christ’s lineage, the humble origins of his kingdom were specifically predicted by God and orchestrated by God. Isaiah 53, as we’ve already seen, “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not.”
Now we need to understand this is written in the seventh century BC by Isaiah the prophet when the lineage of David was still in power, when Hezekiah was a powerful successful king. So this was the prediction of the laying low of the house and lineage of David. The Messiah, the son of David, would have no majesty that would attract anyone, nothing in his appearance, this was predicted before there were even indications that it would happen. And like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground, Isaiah had said it earlier in his prophecies, with the idea of Israel becoming a tree that was felled leaving a stump in the ground seemingly lifeless with no future.
Remember the great calling of Isaiah to his prophetic ministry, “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord seat in the throne, high and exalted.” He sees the glory of God, and a voice comes out, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” “Here am I, send me,” says Isaiah. What’s the mission? “Go tell them, ‘Be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing but never perceiving. Make this people’s heart callous, make their ears dull and close their eyes.” How would you like to be a prophet and be told right up front, “They will not listen to you.”
Isaiah said, “For how long, oh Lord? How long do I have to do that difficult ministry?” And he answered, “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, and the fields ruined and ravaged. Until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.” That’s the Dust Bowl, that’s emptiness, desert. “And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste, layer upon layer of devastation by the judgment of God. But as a terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be a stump in the land.”
Here’s this image of a dry desert and a stump, how does that look to you? It looks like nothing. But then in Isaiah 11 it says this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From its roots a branch will bear fruit.” There’s life in that stump in the middle of that desert, a shoot coming up from the stump of Jesse. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of an understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord and He will delight in the fear of the Lord. That is Christ rising like a shoot from a stump in the middle of a desert.
Ezekiel said the same thing in his prophecy, about the destruction of the monarchy of Judah because of the wickedness and sins of the kingdom of Judah, including their kings. The kingly line of David being reduced to total obscurity, the prophet Ezekiel ministered during the days of the exile to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, reduced the kingly lineage of David to the lowest level of poverty. There were still descendants of David, there are still sons of David physically alive. God made sure of that, there would always be a son of David, the lineage would not die out. But they had absolutely no power, no glory, no majesty, they were stripped. The image that Ezekiel gives in Ezekiel 17 is of a low spreading vine, a vine crawling on the ground looking for water. Ezekiel 17:5-6, “He took some of the seed of your land and put it in fertile soil, he planted it like a willow by abundant water and it sprouted and became a low spreading vine.” Picture kudzu I guess, I don’t know, something low and insignificant and weak.
Ezekiel 17:12-14, a couple verses later, very clear, because it’s a complex parable in Ezekiel 17, but then he says, let me spell it out for you, “The king of Babylon went to Jerusalem and carried off her king in her nobles, bringing them back with him to Babylon. Then he took a member of the royal family,” [that’s the house in lineage of David] “and made a treaty with him, putting him under oath. He also carried away the leading men of the land so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to rise again, surviving only by keeping his treaty.” Only by getting along with the Gentile overlords would they even have a future.
It was the same thing in Ezekiel 19:12-14, “It was uprooted in fury and thrown to the ground. The east wind made it shrivel, and it was stripped of its fruit,” that’s the Dust Bowl image, shriveling, dry, no fruit. “Its strong branches withered and fire consumed them. Now it is planted in the desert, in a dry and thirsty land.” That image, it’s a desert and there’s just nothing going on. “Fire spread from one of its main branches and consumed its fruit, no strong branches left on it fit for a ruler’s scepter.” He’s talking about the house and lineage of David, there’s no one strong enough to be a king.
This is a prophetic image, I think, of the Jewish nation as a whole, but especially the kingly line of David, and it’s because of their great wickedness and sin. It’s not an accident, it’s because they’re idolatrous, it’s because they sacrificed their own sons in the fire to Moloch. Descended from David, they took some of David’s descendants and burned them to Moloch. God judged them with the Exile, stripped them of glory and kingly power. A shoot growing out of dry ground, seemingly with no future at all, a mighty glorious tree that is then leveled until there’s nothing left but a stump in the land. Then a straggly vine crawling on the ground searching for water, finding enough to survive, but not enough to be anything other than a straggly low, weak vine, a leafy vine, humbled, obscure, weak, powerless, nothing mighty enough for a scepter like a shoot out of dry ground.
So Joseph of Nazareth was born a son of David, but He’s totally obscure. If you look at the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, it covers 42 generations, and they’re broken into three groups of 14. The first two groups, the first 28, are relatively well known and written about in the histories of Israel, in the Kings and Chronicles, we know about them. But the last 14, we never heard of them. Who are these people? They’re all sons of David, they’re in the lineage, but they’re completely obscure, they’re weak. Where do they live? Do they live in Palestine? Live in Babylon, live in Assyria? Where do they live? We don’t know, but they’re in the lineage, and they’re obscure, we’ve never heard of them.
[Trivia question, what was Joseph’s father’s name? It is knowable. It’s Jacob. Tell me about Jacob of Nazareth. I don’t even know if he was in Nazareth, I don’t know anything about Jacob except that he was Joseph’s father. Obscure, weak, and lowly.]
Joseph himself, interestingly, was called a son of David by the angel Gabriel. Remember how he was engaged to Mary, to be married to Mary, and found out that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. He resolved to divorce her quietly, because he was a righteous man. But an angel spoke to him in a dream, Matthew 1:20-21, “The Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Listen Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”
Did you hear that? Joseph is called a son of David. Well, what was he? He was a carpenter in an obscure town in northern Galilee, a despised backwater of Jewish life, a conquered people in a land dominated by Gentiles, especially by the mighty Romans under Caesar Augustus, with no end in sight. Another half millennium of Roman power in that region.
IV. From Humble Obscurity to Infinite Glory
But from humble obscurity we rise to infinite glory, the future is unspeakably glorious. Listen again to Isaiah 11, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from its roots of branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness. he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They’ll neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will rally to him and his place of rest will be glorious.” [Isaiah 11:1-10].
That’s the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the king of the kingdom of heaven, the spirit of the Lord rests on him to build a worldwide kingdom of peace and justice and righteousness, and the earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. It will include Gentiles, for the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the nations. They are going to rally to him, they’re going to come, a multitude from every nation on earth, from every tribe and language, and people and nation will rally to the banner of the root of Jesse. They will worship and obey him, and his place of rest will be glorious. The new Jerusalem will shine, will be illuminated, will radiate with the glory of God and of the lamb, forever.
Ezekiel 17 finished that same way, if you know what to look for, it’s glorious. Ezekiel’s vision was of the house of David being leveled like a low crawling vine looking for water, but not forever. Ezekiel 21:27 speaks of the desolation, “A ruin, a ruin, I will make it a ruin, it will not be restored until he comes to whom it rightfully belongs, to him I will give it.” Ezekiel 17:22-24 is equally majestic. This is what the sovereign Lord says,“I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and I will plant it. I will break off a tender sprig from its top most chute and I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain, on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it. It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it, they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and I make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken and I will do it.”
That’s awesome, I’m going to take this tiny little shoot and I’m going to plant it on Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and this tender sprig will grow to be a mighty cedar. But it’s a strange cedar because it bears fruit. You guys know anything about cedars? They’re coniferous, like pine cones. Have you ever eaten a pine cone, or a pine needle? It’s nasty. So what is this fruit on the cedar? The cedar is the immensity and height and size, but it’s fruitful, and the branches are shaped for birds of all kind to nest in. It’s a picture of Christ and of his kingdom that God is going to establish that will reach to the ends of the earth.
To me it reminds me very much of the parable of the mustard seed. Mark 4, “‘What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?’ asked Jesus. ‘It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground, yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.'” Friends, do you not understand how powerful the interconnections are in the Bible? You think Jesus didn’t know about Ezekiel 17? He knew about Ezekiel 17. All of the birds of the air can nest in its shady branches and eat fruit from it, and that’s a picture of the Gentiles from every tribe, language, people and nation coming to Christ, coming to the kingdom. It’s beautiful, and it’s fulfilled in Christ atoning death and the spread of the gospel. The prediction in Ezekiel 17 is God takes the tall tree and levels it, and makes the low tree grow tall. He has the power to do that.
Let me ask you a question. Let’s say there are different censuses taken of the entire world. Now two simple questions, have you ever heard of Jesus Christ, or have you ever heard of Caesar Augustus? Who do you think would win? Let me ask another question, of those who have heard of Caesar Augustus, how many have heard because of Luke 2:1-7? So you got to take them off the table, you have to ask a different question, how many have heard of Caesar Augustus but have never heard of Jesus? I think there’s like 5,000 of those people. They’re all scholars in universities, I guess. I don’t know, but they’ve heard of Jesus. My goodness, Jesus is much more famous than Caesar Augustus.
God has the power to take the lofty tree and make it low, level it, and He has the power to take the low tree and make it fill the earth with glory, and that’s what He did through the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was made low, died, so that fruit might come. John 12:24, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground or dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Christ was never weaker and more obscure than when He died, but from his death has become infinite fruit, infinite glory, spreading to the ends of the earth and to the ends of time.
VI. Applications
Applications for Christmas. Meditate on this, meditate on this rise from obscurity to glory. Meditate on how God worked it. Meditate on the fact that God wills that that obscurity is temporary. He doesn’t want obscurity anymore, just so you know. Our job is that Jesus would not be obscure. We are witnesses, we are messengers to take the name of Jesus to those who have never heard of him before. God wills it through the power of the Holy Spirit, that all peoples will hear of Jesus. That this gospel will be preached, and the whole world is a testimony to all nations that He would not be obscure. Meditate on that.
Understand that Christ gave up all that infinite wealth and power and glory and honor so that we might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9, meditate on that. The willingness to become low so that he might take us with him to glory, meditate on that. Ponder the cost of your salvation. This is a time of celebration, but realize the reason He took on that body was so that that body could be shattered on the cross, so that that blood that flowed through his veins could be poured out as an atoning sacrifice. Ponder the cost of your salvation through that, and ponder the riches of your eternal inheritance. Read Revelation 21 and 22, see where we’re heading. Look at that glorious place of rest that Christ is working for you. And then finally, enjoy your Christmas celebration with one another.
“Understand that Christ gave up all that infinite wealth and power and glory and honor so that we might become rich.”
Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for the depth of your word. We thank you for themes that perhaps we didn’t even know were there, in Ezekiel and Isaiah. Lord, we in general have been aware of this rise from obscurity to glory, but Lord, we didn’t realize how much you directly predicted and orchestrated it so that we would know how glorious is Christ. Help us to meditate much on him, to feed our souls on the gospel. Help us, oh Lord, to be willing to proclaim the message of Christ’s death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins so that any who hear and repent and believe would find forgiveness, and help us to celebrate with one another in ways that bring you glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus was born in obscurity and raised to glory in his death and resurrection, fulfilling the prophets’ prophecies.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas. My weird statistical analytical mind this morning wanted to know how often this happens, this Christmas on Sunday thing. It feels like it’s been a while, but we looked it up, I thought it’s got to be every seven years, but it isn’t. Because of leap year it happens irregularly and the next time it’s going to happen is 11 years from now. So I’ll be really old by then, so this is the last opportunity I have as a young man to preach on Christmas Sunday, so grateful to share it with you all.
Today we celebrate the birth of our King, the King of Glory, Jesus Christ, into the humblest and most obscure of circumstances. Today we’re going to peer into the darkness of a stable where animals were feeding, and standing and resting and lowing and mooing and bleating, and a tiny baby is born, weak, small, unknown, the seed of a formerly glorious lineage that had fallen for almost six centuries into total obscurity. This one born so low would be exalted to infinite glory by the hand of God, born to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. My focus in this message today will be on the God ordained obscurity of his birth. God ordained obscurity. It was predicted in the prophets, it was worked by the hand of God, it was decreed, personally worked by almighty God for his purposes, and then the infinite glory to which He will rise and bring us with him, that’s the message today.
I. Like a Shoot Out of Dry Ground
I want to begin with this phrase “like a shoot out of dry ground.” It comes from Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah the prophet spoke these words of prophecy over seven centuries before they were fulfilled. Isaiah 53:1-3, “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
The powerful image in that prophecy is that the Messiah, the savior of the world, will be completely physically, visibly, unimpressive. No majesty to attract our eye to him. Nothing in his appearance, he’ll be underwhelming to the untrained eye, there’d be no radiant glory, no obvious display. We’re going to speak more in detail about this marvelous prophecy later in the message, but let me zero in on this image that has captivated my mind. He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. This is a powerful agricultural metaphor, as so many are in the Bible, speaking of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, growing, which He did, from infancy to manhood. The text says He grew up before him. That is the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, grew up in the presence of almighty God, with God watching over his growth.
But the growth was like, it says, a tender shoot, meaning apparently weak, frail, and impressive, and like a root out of dry ground. His culture, his people, his nation were fruitless, dry, sterile, like a desert. No power, no glory, no prospects, a dry and weary land with nothing alive, that’s the image. But there is in the center of that desert, a tiny shoot, a little root with a small amount of activity of life, of power, but not apparently amounting to anything at all, that’s the image.
As I meditated on it my mind went to a part of American history, relatively recent, called the Dust Bowl. In the American Prairie in the 1930s during the Depression was a terrible era of drought and erosion and wind resulting in overpowering clouds of dust that destroyed all crops and drove a mass migration of poverty stricken farmers westward just to survive. John Steinbeck wrote a classic on this era in American history called Grapes of Wrath, and it powerfully depicts the desperation of farmers in this Midwestern Dust Bowl, seeing the Dust Bowl emerge, dust storms ravaging their crops and their hopes, nothing left but stunning poverty, desolation, emptiness and despair. Listen to some of Steinbeck’s prose that skillfully captures this desperation.
“The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones carried up straws and old leaves, even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened, and through them the sun shown redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth, pointed in the direction of the wind. The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it, and the children ran out of their houses, came out of their houses. But they did not shout or even run about as they would’ve done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent, they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside the men, to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s face secretly, for the corn could go as long as something else remained. The children stood nearby drawing figures in the dust with their bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break this time.”
That was the Dust Bowl tragedy, the destruction of a hundred million acres of farmland, crops devastated, hopes utterly crushed, buried in billowing clouds of dust. The powerful question Steinbeck raised is whether this time the dust storm, which destroyed the corn, would also break the spirits of the people and crush hopes.
That’s the image that I have here when it comes to Israel, like a root out of dry ground. So it was with Israel’s messianic hopes, a kingdom of words and dreams only it seemed. A bygone era of power and glory; it’d been a long time, more than half a millennium. Ancient prophecies that seem to have absolutely no chance of coming true of a worldwide empire of righteousness in which all nations on earth would submit to the power of the Son of David, the Messiah, reigning on a throne of majesty in Jerusalem. But the house and lineage of David seemed nothing, it meant nothing, apparently. The tree had been felled a long time ago. The lineage of Jesse was a stump left in a dry fields, nothing stirring. So it was that holy night when Jesus was born, the son of God, born to be king of heaven and earth, but it did not appear to be so.
II. The King of Glory Born in a Stable
The king of glory was born in a stable, you‘ve heard the narrative, it’s very famous. We read it every year, Luke 2:1-7, listen again, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and lineage of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”
At the beginning and then at the end of this short passage, we have two individuals in stark contrast with one another, you have Caesar Augustus, and then you have Jesus Christ. The narrative begins with the most powerful man then on earth, Caesar Augustus. He was the first Roman Emperor and reigned from 27 BC until his death in the AD 14. He was considered one of the greatest leaders in world history. He established the pattern of the Roman Empire under the Caesars for centuries to come. He had been born Gaius Octavius. He was a great nephew of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated in 44 BC. Julius Caesar had named him his legal son and heir. He won total control over the Roman Empire by the year 31 BC. Four years later in 27 BC the Roman Senate voted him the title Augustus, meaning “majestic one”. For them it implied deity. Luke writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit did not mean so, but he used the title by which he was well known, Caesar Augustus.
By the time Jesus was born, scholars tell us, in 4 BC, Caesar Augustus was at the absolute height of his power. He ruled over a vast realm of 1.7 million square miles, 45 million people, about 20% of the world’s population was under his domain at that time. He was so wealthy, personally wealthy, that during an economic crisis for Asia Minor, he paid that entire region’s tax bill out of his own coffers. He lived in purple, surrounded by marble columns, dining on whatever food he wanted, the finest of meats, the best of wines anytime. The world trembled at his slightest command. It was he who ordered that the census be taken of the entire Roman world, causing minor migrations of people, as for example, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem.
Jesus, on the other hand, entered the world at the other end of the spectrum. Though he was King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He was born into poverty, the son, so it was supposed, of an obscure Jewish carpenter in a conquered backwater of the empire. The actual circumstances of his birth are famous for their poignant aspects, they are humble and poverty stricken in the extreme. Forced temporarily to migrate from their home village of Nazareth, they had to travel to Bethlehem to register. The reason they went to Bethlehem was that Joseph, we are told, was of the house and lineage of David, the ancient king of Israel. But however glorious was the lineage of David back in the heyday, that line had fallen into total obscurity by this time.
The birth of Jesus, the son of David, was in total obscurity, and in far more distress than would’ve happened if he had been born in Nazareth with his mother Mary at least surrounded by family and some friends that could help with the birth. Instead of that they were desperately seeking a place to stay, a place where the baby could be born, because her time had come and she was in the agonies of childbirth. Of course, very famously, Joseph could not find any lodging in the inn, there were too many people there in the tiny town of Bethlehem. So Mary gave birth to Jesus surrounded, it would seem, by animals. She laid him in a manger, a feeding trough for livestock. Instead of a royal birth in which he was wrapped in purple, He was wrapped instead in simple swaddling cloths of the lowest sort. What a stark contrast to the life of Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man on earth.
The humble origins of Christ’s birth were essential to God’s plan. God wanted his only begotten son to be born into this level of poverty and humility. It’s not an accident, it was ordained by God. Honestly there is no glory, there is no wealth, there is no power on earth that remotely compares with the kingdom Christ left to come here. Let’s be honest, God is not impressed with Caesar Augustus. He’s not impressed with his wealth or his power or his purple. No matter how powerful rulers like Caesar Augustus are, God is not impressed, and God willed that Christ should humble himself to identify with us in our poverty and weakness, for we are poor and we are weak, and apart from Christ we are wicked. He wanted this humility and obscurity and poverty for Christ.
“The humble origins of Christ’s birth were essential to God’s plan. God wanted his only begotten son to be born into this level of poverty and humility. It’s not an accident, it was ordained by God.”
2nd Corinthians 8:9 describes this journey, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich.” Or again, Philippians 2:6-7, “Jesus being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness.” We see the intentional strategic poverty of Jesus, that was his mission.
Jesus was born into extremely low circumstances, very few babies in the world are laid in mangers after they’re born. I’ve not done any actual research on this, but I would have to think it would be highly unusual to put a newborn baby in a feeding trough. I think about the standards of cleanliness all over the world where babies are born. The OB-GYN wards here seem pretty clean to me. I don’t think they have any mangers there, in either little Duke or big Duke Hospital. That’s it, there’s a level of cleanliness and protection for newborn babies around the world vastly higher than that which Jesus, the son of God, received that night.
Shortly after his birth, Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt with the baby Jesus to escape the murderous King Herod. Jesus went from a temporary migrant from Nazareth the Bethlehem, to literally a refugee fleeing to Egypt to save his life. When the family returned it was to Nazareth, to an obscure and poverty stricken area of Palestine, where Joseph was a manual laborer, he was a carpenter, and Jesus would be too before he was presented to Israel and began his public ministry, a manual laborer. Jesus’s poverty would continue throughout his life. He told one of the people who wanted to follow him wherever He went, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, the son of man has no place to lay his head. I have nowhere to sleep tonight. Don’t expect any kind of earthly power or prosperity if you follow me.”
Now Jesus’ disciples one day were walking through the grain fields on the Sabbath and were picking heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands and eating them. We are told that this is the way that poor people were provided for in Israel back then. This was basically welfare for poor people in Palestine in that day. Jesus’s followers had to do that. Jesus’s own financial needs were met in part by some women, we’re told in Luke 8, that contributed to him out of their private means.
But the clearest display of Jesus’ poverty would be at the end of his life. When He was arrested, condemned, and crucified, all of his worldly belongings were gambled for in fulfillment of prophecy. John 19, “When the soldiers crucified Jesus they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. ‘Let’s not tear it,’ they said to one another, ‘let’s decide by lot who will get it.'” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled, which said, ‘They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.’” That is what the soldiers did. Jesus entered the world penniless and left the world penniless, without a single possession on earth. All of his actual possessions were fair game for the fulfillment of prophecy.
His poverty at that moment was infinitely greater than the material, for He was stripped of all glory and all favor in the presence of almighty God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, and once God transferred our guilt and our sin onto Christ the substitute, the Savior, He then poured out his wrath on him, justly and rightly, and broke fellowship with him in his role as Son of man Savior. In Mark 15:34 Jesus, “Cried out in loud voice ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'” To be forsaken by God is the ultimate poverty. And all of that to make us rich.
Brother and sister in Christ, let me tell you something, you are infinitely rich, you’re richer than you can possibly imagine. Part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to help you know how rich is your inheritance together with all the saints. You’re richer than you think you are. Rich in forgiveness, all of your sins, past, present, and future 100% paid for, forgiven by almighty God. Rich in love, for the Father and the Son have lavished all their love on us and will continue to lavish that love for all eternity, and the Holy Spirit pours out his love into our hearts, that we would know that we are adopted and beloved. Our wealth is just beginning, for we have an infinite inheritance of glory waiting for us in the next world. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you and I’ll come back, and you will be with me and see my glory, and you will have heavenly possessions yourself, that can never be taken from you, can never perish, spoil or fade.” So Jesus became poor so that all of us who believe in Christ might be forever rich.
III. The Humble Origins of Christ’s Kingdom Predicted
This whole downward journey that I’ve been describing here, from glory into poverty and then back up to glory, is essential to our salvation. The humble origins of Christ’s lineage, the humble origins of his kingdom were specifically predicted by God and orchestrated by God. Isaiah 53, as we’ve already seen, “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not.”
Now we need to understand this is written in the seventh century BC by Isaiah the prophet when the lineage of David was still in power, when Hezekiah was a powerful successful king. So this was the prediction of the laying low of the house and lineage of David. The Messiah, the son of David, would have no majesty that would attract anyone, nothing in his appearance, this was predicted before there were even indications that it would happen. And like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground, Isaiah had said it earlier in his prophecies, with the idea of Israel becoming a tree that was felled leaving a stump in the ground seemingly lifeless with no future.
Remember the great calling of Isaiah to his prophetic ministry, “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord seat in the throne, high and exalted.” He sees the glory of God, and a voice comes out, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” “Here am I, send me,” says Isaiah. What’s the mission? “Go tell them, ‘Be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing but never perceiving. Make this people’s heart callous, make their ears dull and close their eyes.” How would you like to be a prophet and be told right up front, “They will not listen to you.”
Isaiah said, “For how long, oh Lord? How long do I have to do that difficult ministry?” And he answered, “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, and the fields ruined and ravaged. Until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.” That’s the Dust Bowl, that’s emptiness, desert. “And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste, layer upon layer of devastation by the judgment of God. But as a terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be a stump in the land.”
Here’s this image of a dry desert and a stump, how does that look to you? It looks like nothing. But then in Isaiah 11 it says this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From its roots a branch will bear fruit.” There’s life in that stump in the middle of that desert, a shoot coming up from the stump of Jesse. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of an understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord and He will delight in the fear of the Lord. That is Christ rising like a shoot from a stump in the middle of a desert.
Ezekiel said the same thing in his prophecy, about the destruction of the monarchy of Judah because of the wickedness and sins of the kingdom of Judah, including their kings. The kingly line of David being reduced to total obscurity, the prophet Ezekiel ministered during the days of the exile to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, reduced the kingly lineage of David to the lowest level of poverty. There were still descendants of David, there are still sons of David physically alive. God made sure of that, there would always be a son of David, the lineage would not die out. But they had absolutely no power, no glory, no majesty, they were stripped. The image that Ezekiel gives in Ezekiel 17 is of a low spreading vine, a vine crawling on the ground looking for water. Ezekiel 17:5-6, “He took some of the seed of your land and put it in fertile soil, he planted it like a willow by abundant water and it sprouted and became a low spreading vine.” Picture kudzu I guess, I don’t know, something low and insignificant and weak.
Ezekiel 17:12-14, a couple verses later, very clear, because it’s a complex parable in Ezekiel 17, but then he says, let me spell it out for you, “The king of Babylon went to Jerusalem and carried off her king in her nobles, bringing them back with him to Babylon. Then he took a member of the royal family,” [that’s the house in lineage of David] “and made a treaty with him, putting him under oath. He also carried away the leading men of the land so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to rise again, surviving only by keeping his treaty.” Only by getting along with the Gentile overlords would they even have a future.
It was the same thing in Ezekiel 19:12-14, “It was uprooted in fury and thrown to the ground. The east wind made it shrivel, and it was stripped of its fruit,” that’s the Dust Bowl image, shriveling, dry, no fruit. “Its strong branches withered and fire consumed them. Now it is planted in the desert, in a dry and thirsty land.” That image, it’s a desert and there’s just nothing going on. “Fire spread from one of its main branches and consumed its fruit, no strong branches left on it fit for a ruler’s scepter.” He’s talking about the house and lineage of David, there’s no one strong enough to be a king.
This is a prophetic image, I think, of the Jewish nation as a whole, but especially the kingly line of David, and it’s because of their great wickedness and sin. It’s not an accident, it’s because they’re idolatrous, it’s because they sacrificed their own sons in the fire to Moloch. Descended from David, they took some of David’s descendants and burned them to Moloch. God judged them with the Exile, stripped them of glory and kingly power. A shoot growing out of dry ground, seemingly with no future at all, a mighty glorious tree that is then leveled until there’s nothing left but a stump in the land. Then a straggly vine crawling on the ground searching for water, finding enough to survive, but not enough to be anything other than a straggly low, weak vine, a leafy vine, humbled, obscure, weak, powerless, nothing mighty enough for a scepter like a shoot out of dry ground.
So Joseph of Nazareth was born a son of David, but He’s totally obscure. If you look at the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, it covers 42 generations, and they’re broken into three groups of 14. The first two groups, the first 28, are relatively well known and written about in the histories of Israel, in the Kings and Chronicles, we know about them. But the last 14, we never heard of them. Who are these people? They’re all sons of David, they’re in the lineage, but they’re completely obscure, they’re weak. Where do they live? Do they live in Palestine? Live in Babylon, live in Assyria? Where do they live? We don’t know, but they’re in the lineage, and they’re obscure, we’ve never heard of them.
[Trivia question, what was Joseph’s father’s name? It is knowable. It’s Jacob. Tell me about Jacob of Nazareth. I don’t even know if he was in Nazareth, I don’t know anything about Jacob except that he was Joseph’s father. Obscure, weak, and lowly.]
Joseph himself, interestingly, was called a son of David by the angel Gabriel. Remember how he was engaged to Mary, to be married to Mary, and found out that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. He resolved to divorce her quietly, because he was a righteous man. But an angel spoke to him in a dream, Matthew 1:20-21, “The Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Listen Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”
Did you hear that? Joseph is called a son of David. Well, what was he? He was a carpenter in an obscure town in northern Galilee, a despised backwater of Jewish life, a conquered people in a land dominated by Gentiles, especially by the mighty Romans under Caesar Augustus, with no end in sight. Another half millennium of Roman power in that region.
IV. From Humble Obscurity to Infinite Glory
But from humble obscurity we rise to infinite glory, the future is unspeakably glorious. Listen again to Isaiah 11, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from its roots of branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness. he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They’ll neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will rally to him and his place of rest will be glorious.” [Isaiah 11:1-10].
That’s the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the king of the kingdom of heaven, the spirit of the Lord rests on him to build a worldwide kingdom of peace and justice and righteousness, and the earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. It will include Gentiles, for the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the nations. They are going to rally to him, they’re going to come, a multitude from every nation on earth, from every tribe and language, and people and nation will rally to the banner of the root of Jesse. They will worship and obey him, and his place of rest will be glorious. The new Jerusalem will shine, will be illuminated, will radiate with the glory of God and of the lamb, forever.
Ezekiel 17 finished that same way, if you know what to look for, it’s glorious. Ezekiel’s vision was of the house of David being leveled like a low crawling vine looking for water, but not forever. Ezekiel 21:27 speaks of the desolation, “A ruin, a ruin, I will make it a ruin, it will not be restored until he comes to whom it rightfully belongs, to him I will give it.” Ezekiel 17:22-24 is equally majestic. This is what the sovereign Lord says,“I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and I will plant it. I will break off a tender sprig from its top most chute and I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain, on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it. It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it, they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and I make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken and I will do it.”
That’s awesome, I’m going to take this tiny little shoot and I’m going to plant it on Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and this tender sprig will grow to be a mighty cedar. But it’s a strange cedar because it bears fruit. You guys know anything about cedars? They’re coniferous, like pine cones. Have you ever eaten a pine cone, or a pine needle? It’s nasty. So what is this fruit on the cedar? The cedar is the immensity and height and size, but it’s fruitful, and the branches are shaped for birds of all kind to nest in. It’s a picture of Christ and of his kingdom that God is going to establish that will reach to the ends of the earth.
To me it reminds me very much of the parable of the mustard seed. Mark 4, “‘What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?’ asked Jesus. ‘It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground, yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.'” Friends, do you not understand how powerful the interconnections are in the Bible? You think Jesus didn’t know about Ezekiel 17? He knew about Ezekiel 17. All of the birds of the air can nest in its shady branches and eat fruit from it, and that’s a picture of the Gentiles from every tribe, language, people and nation coming to Christ, coming to the kingdom. It’s beautiful, and it’s fulfilled in Christ atoning death and the spread of the gospel. The prediction in Ezekiel 17 is God takes the tall tree and levels it, and makes the low tree grow tall. He has the power to do that.
Let me ask you a question. Let’s say there are different censuses taken of the entire world. Now two simple questions, have you ever heard of Jesus Christ, or have you ever heard of Caesar Augustus? Who do you think would win? Let me ask another question, of those who have heard of Caesar Augustus, how many have heard because of Luke 2:1-7? So you got to take them off the table, you have to ask a different question, how many have heard of Caesar Augustus but have never heard of Jesus? I think there’s like 5,000 of those people. They’re all scholars in universities, I guess. I don’t know, but they’ve heard of Jesus. My goodness, Jesus is much more famous than Caesar Augustus.
God has the power to take the lofty tree and make it low, level it, and He has the power to take the low tree and make it fill the earth with glory, and that’s what He did through the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was made low, died, so that fruit might come. John 12:24, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground or dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Christ was never weaker and more obscure than when He died, but from his death has become infinite fruit, infinite glory, spreading to the ends of the earth and to the ends of time.
VI. Applications
Applications for Christmas. Meditate on this, meditate on this rise from obscurity to glory. Meditate on how God worked it. Meditate on the fact that God wills that that obscurity is temporary. He doesn’t want obscurity anymore, just so you know. Our job is that Jesus would not be obscure. We are witnesses, we are messengers to take the name of Jesus to those who have never heard of him before. God wills it through the power of the Holy Spirit, that all peoples will hear of Jesus. That this gospel will be preached, and the whole world is a testimony to all nations that He would not be obscure. Meditate on that.
Understand that Christ gave up all that infinite wealth and power and glory and honor so that we might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9, meditate on that. The willingness to become low so that he might take us with him to glory, meditate on that. Ponder the cost of your salvation. This is a time of celebration, but realize the reason He took on that body was so that that body could be shattered on the cross, so that that blood that flowed through his veins could be poured out as an atoning sacrifice. Ponder the cost of your salvation through that, and ponder the riches of your eternal inheritance. Read Revelation 21 and 22, see where we’re heading. Look at that glorious place of rest that Christ is working for you. And then finally, enjoy your Christmas celebration with one another.
“Understand that Christ gave up all that infinite wealth and power and glory and honor so that we might become rich.”
Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for the depth of your word. We thank you for themes that perhaps we didn’t even know were there, in Ezekiel and Isaiah. Lord, we in general have been aware of this rise from obscurity to glory, but Lord, we didn’t realize how much you directly predicted and orchestrated it so that we would know how glorious is Christ. Help us to meditate much on him, to feed our souls on the gospel. Help us, oh Lord, to be willing to proclaim the message of Christ’s death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins so that any who hear and repent and believe would find forgiveness, and help us to celebrate with one another in ways that bring you glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
