Finding the King in the Straw - An Advent Sunday Sermon

FINDING THE KING IN THE STRAW

 

In a few short weeks, most of us will be opening Christmas gifts. You may receive a gift that is impeccably wrapped; the paper will be of the expensive, festive variety; the wrapping will be accented by a carefully tied ribbon and curled endings; maybe there will be bow; and there will be a name card with a masterful cursive script. Given the exquisite exterior of the gift, one would expect something fantastic within the wrapping. You hope that the gift outshines the wrapping. 

            What if the wrapping is misleading? What if the gift itself is so ordinary that you would have preferred leaving it unwrapped? The gift may be practical and thoughtful, but out of sync with the presentation that preceded it. 

            I just described the Christmas season. The trappings of the “Yuletide” season have always left me with a strange feeling. I enjoy them, but the traditions we have wrapped Christmas in do not seem to match the gift we have received. 

            This morning I want to take Jesus out of the Christmas wrapping and see him as he was first presented. We are going to look at the prophecy and the fulfilment, the expectation and the raw reality of God becoming a human being.

 

The Prophecy: A King like no other (Isaiah 11:1-10)

 

Let us go back 2700 years to the time of Isaiah. Israel was divided into the northern and southern kingdoms. Isaiah ministered to the southern kingdom, Judah, which was under the reign of Ahaz. This king, Ahaz, was a godless king; he had no desire or inclination to obey Yahweh. In fact, he worshiped idols and even sacrificed his own son to these false gods. When an army threatened to invade Judah, instead of going to the Lord, Ahaz made an alliance with Assyria. 

            Ahaz was a king in the line of David. But king after king failed to obey the Lord and led Israel into sin. And the consequence of sin is disaster. God would end the line of Davidic kings, take the land away from the Israelites, and send them into captivity in Babylon. Prophets like Isaiah had warned the kings that disobeying the Lord would end badly. 

            Imagine a ravaged forest. After a team of foresters clear cut a swath of trees, there is nothing left, just stumps. That’s Judah after God allows the consequences of sin to fall on them. They will have no king. They will have no land. 

            Just when the immediate future looked bleak, Isaiah prophesied, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit,” (11:1). The imagery is amazing. Out of a seemingly dead stump, a felled tree, with all signs of vitality gone, something begins to happen. A sapling emerges from the root. 

            Jesse was the father of David, the great king of Israel. And the reference to Jesse indicates that the shoot is not just another king in David’s line, but rather…another David. The line of Davidic kings was a failed ancient dynasty. God was going to take the Davidic template and start again. The Jews knew this promised king as the Messiah, in Greek, the Christ.

            What would make this king different than other kings? Isaiah tells us that the Spirit of the LORD will rest on him (2). Very few people in the OT were privileged to have the Holy Spirit rest in them permanently (Moses, Elijah, David). The Messiah would be permanently endowed with the Holy Spirit and his reign would reflect how he ruled (see slide). 

             Jesus in his life and ministry would fit this description perfectly. At his baptism, John the Baptist witnessed the Spirit come upon Jesus as he came up out of the water (John 1:32-34). John said, “I have seen and testify that this is the Son of God,” (34). “Son of God” had a double meaning: kings were called “sons of God” (Ps. 2), but we know that Jesus was literally the Son of God. Did John mean both? 

            With the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Messiah would not judge by what his eyes see or what his ears hear. His leadership would be governed by Spirit-empowered discernment. That’s what is meant by judgment; not condemnation, but uncommon insight into matters of justice for the poor and the meek. Messiah would deliver people from their impossible circumstances and lift them up.

            With the Spirit of counsel and might, the Messiah would strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. The language sounds violent and harsh, but what we see in Jesus is someone who speaks with authority. How many times did his listeners come away with awe at his teaching (Mk 1:27). His teaching was fresh and filled with conviction. 

            With the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD, the Messiah would wear righteousness and faithfulness as a garment. As we say, the clothes make the man. What we wear says a lot about who we are. In this instance, Messiah will be seen to be a straight shooter, a person of integrity before people and in the right before God.

            These are qualities of leadership that Israel had never really seen. It was foreign to them to have a leader who had their interests at heart and who was in touch with them. 

            The effects of Messiah’s reign would be profound. Look at the results in verses 6-9. We read of the reconciliation of old hostilities (wolf & lamb); we see a child commanding wild and domestic animals; we see a change of nature within the beasts themselves (a cow and a bear both eating grass). Most striking of all is a little hint revealed in an infant playing with poisonous snakes. That hint goes all the way back to the garden when the LORD pronounced a curse on the serpent and humankind because of their sin. These verses reveal that when Messiah takes the throne, the curse will be lifted. Sin will no longer hold people and creation in captivity. 

            The “shoot from the stump of Jesse” reveals the human ancestry of the Messiah, the promised king. He comes from the genetic bloodline of David’s royal line. But then Isaiah says something odd. In v. 10 he says the shoot of Jesse is also the root of Jesse, meaning that not only does he come from Jesse, but Jesse sprang from him. And he will be a signal, that is - a flag, a rallying point, for all people everywhere. 

The Fulfilment: The King has Come! (Luke 2:1-7)

 

It is difficult to read Luke 2 and not imagine the Christmas card scene that we have become accustomed to. The wrapping paper of tradition has obscured our view of what really happened the night (?) Messiah was born. 

            We cannot help but note that Joseph was of the lineage of David and by law was expected to report to his ancestral home, Bethlehem, to be taxed. Luke thus connects the prophecy of the shoot and root of Jesse, the Davidic king, with the birth of Jesus in a very subtle historical note. 

But two words in this narrative have tripped us up for centuries: “manger” and “inn.”

            The narrative is humbly brief: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn,” (2:7). We have all grown up with the image of Joseph and Mary arriving at night in Bethlehem just as the contractions begin. They attempt to get a room at the local hotel and are rebuffed by a grouchy innkeeper, only to find shelter in a cave where Mary gives birth all alone. It seems fitting that the Holy One should be born in isolation, we think, since God become man is a sacred birth event. 

            That’s not what happened. When we think of an inn, we imagine many private rooms. Bethlehem was too small to have an inn (the word for “inn” is not used in this text; it is used in the parable of the Good Samaritan; inns were places of poor repute as they were like drinking establishments). Palestinian homes all had a “guest room” (a kataluma = Greek word for guest room) attached that served as a storeroom when there were no guests. When Luke says there was no place for them in the “guest room,” their only recourse was for Mary to give birth in the family room (the main room). And she did not give birth alone. The shame and dishonor of turning away a woman giving birth would stain the citizens of Bethlehem for generations. No, the midwives and the women of the village would have helped Mary give birth, while the men waited outside.

            When we hear “manger” we think of a stable, because a manger is a feeding trough for donkeys and oxen. So, Jesus was born in a stable, we presume. Once again, we presume wrong since mangers were naturally part of the home. A family donkey and cow would be brought in for night to keep them from wandering or being stolen. They were kept in the lower part of the main room with the manger on the slightly higher floor. That’s where Jesus was placed. 

            Why does it matter? First, Jesus was not born in an isolated place, but his birth was in a semi-public (and natural) setting where common villagers could attest to the fact that he was actually born a human in a very earthy way. This the opposite of our impression that the birth took place without witnesses because of the sacred nature of the “mother of God” giving birth to the “Son of God.” Pagan mythology tells of gods born in such mysterious circumstances as to suggest that humans could not grasp the divinity of it. Not with Jesus, he was in plain view. Jesus was conceived of God the Father through the Holy Spirit, but he was born like the rest of us.

            Second, in Luke 2:8-14, the first people to hear of Jesus’ birth were a group of shepherds. Shepherds were on the lower rung of society. They saw angels announce Messiah’s birth and were afraid. But the angels invited the shepherds to go and visit the child. “From their point of view, if the child was truly the Messiah, the parents would reject the shepherds if they tried to visit him!” This is the king! How could lowly shepherds expect a welcome? 

            The angels knew this would be a hindrance and they told the shepherds that they would find the baby “wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger,” (2:12). Shock #1: wrapping in cloths is what peasants, like the shepherds, did with their newborns. Shock #2: the baby will be in a manger. They would find the Christ child in an ordinary peasant home like theirs. He was not in a governor’s mansion or a wealthy merchant’s guest room but in a simple two-room home like theirs. This was really good news. They would not be turned away from visiting the long-awaited Messiah after all. 

            The shepherds were welcome at the manger. The unclean were judged to be clean. The outcasts became honored guests. The song of the angels was sung to the simplest of all. 

 

In the first part of this message, we studied the prophecy and promise of a great king who would come and do what kings, presidents, and world leaders have never done perfectly – change the world. The prophecy was so fantastic it seemed too good to be true, too idealistic to be a reality, too heavenly to be realized on earth. The Messiah would bring “peace on earth.” 

            A man of this greatness and stature would be beyond the touch of the common person. The “royals” live in a world out of reach and out of touch with our own. Kings are not on our level. And the king of Isaiah 11 would be of a higher level yet. That’s what the Jews thought.

            In contrast, I am reminded of John 1:10-11 which speaks of the coming of the Word, “He came to the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him,” (NLT).

            I see a negative and a positive in this text. We tend to dwell on the negative: Jesus was born among his own people, and they didn’t recognize him and rejected him. But I saw a positive in this: Jesus became so much like humanity that you couldn’t pick him out of the crowd. He looked like everyone else. He looked like a common Jewish peasant.          

            I don’t know about you, but to me this speaks of the common humanity and approachability of Jesus. Just like the peasant women of Bethlehem and the shepherds who would never make it past the front gate of Buckingham Palace or any other royal place, we can come to Jesus the King and find forgiveness for our sins, peace for our troubled hearts, authoritative teaching for our searching minds. Or let’s put it more simply…we can come to Jesus. 

            The writer of Hebrews put it this way: “Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying,” (Heb. 2:14-15 NLT). 

            Here we find a king in the straw, an oxymoron if ever there was one. Hallelujah! The King has come. He has come for all. He has come for you.

 

                                                            AMEN