Full of the Spirit (Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7, 11:1-5)

Okay, good morning. Welcome to the Kuti church. It is 9 30.

So I'll give a couple of you a second to find your seats this morning. And as you're getting your seats, let's open in a word of prayer.

Your heavenly father, we come before you this morning with grateful hearts, ready to learn and and grow together as a church body.

Thank you for the gift of your son, Jesus, who walked this earth in humility and in full dependence on your spirit.

As we dive deeper today into the word and into his life, help us to see the beauty of his humanity and the power of the

Holy Spirit working through him. May this lesson inspire us to seek your spirit in our own lives, to grow in wisdom and obedience, just as Jesus did.

Open our minds up this morning, soften our hearts if necessary to receive the truth that you have for us today and give us the firm desire to walk by your spirit in everything that we do.

We may become more like Christ, reflect his love to the world around us.

We pray this morning for a spirit of understanding, heart eager to learn, and the courage to make changes in our own lives to reflect your will for us.

Be with us, guide us, and fill us with your spirit this morning. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

All right, well you can open up your Bibles to Luke chapter 4. We will be in the book of Isaiah for the majority of our time together, but we're going to get a running head start at it in Luke 4.

And welcome back to all of you who may have missed some of the past three weeks. We're in week four of our series,

Walk by the Spirit. It's a series that's essentially about sanctification. We are seeking to be sanctified together in the

Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore we're focusing our attention theologically on the person, the man,

Christ Jesus, his humanity. But as a secondary thread, we've been focusing extensively upon the relationship between the

Son and the Spirit, because it is through that relationship that we are sanctified.

So if you weren't here for one of the past three weeks, let me just catch you up very quickly here. Week one, we went through the 10 reasons, the 10 essential reasons, why we focus our hearts and minds on the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Week two, we spent time together in Luke chapter two, verses 40 to 52, in that brief account of Jesus' childhood that Luke gives us there.

And we saw how Luke describes that as Jesus increasing, growing in wisdom, learning to depend upon the

Spirit as he submitted to and obeyed his earthly parents. And then last week, we were in the book of Hebrews chapter two, and we were looking at three, or four, excuse me, motivations for us to be sanctified that we find in the life of Jesus Christ.

Now this morning, we're going to modify the format just very slightly. I'm going to set aside time in the middle of the

Sunday school for you to interact in the form of questions, comments, right? So as you're thinking and processing as the

Spirit is drawing out the truth in your life through the words of Isaiah, as we go through this morning, make a mental note or write it down, whichever you prefer.

And I'll make sure to give some time for you to voice those comments or questions as we're moving forward here.

And as I have said last week, if you would like copies of the application questions that I put into the

Sunday school, I have two options for you. The sound team or the audio visual team is graciously putting those into the

YouTube description. So you can go grab them off the YouTube itself. Or if you'd like me to email or text them to you, just come up to me after Sunday school and put your name on my list.

And I'll be happy to send those off to you. Okay, question for you as we get started. You got to interact with me at least with a raise of hand or not raising your hand.

How many of you like Christmas? Okay, good. I figured that would be a pretty safe way to start. My wife loves

Christmas. And over 21 years of marriage together, I have been growing in my ability to embrace her desire to start celebrating

Christmas earlier than my preference, which was originally after Thanksgiving, but I have graciously bent on that preference.

And I must acknowledge she's right in many ways. But one of the benefits that starting your

Christmas celebration a little earlier is that it provides the opportunity to turn your heart and your mind towards the beauty and the wisdom of the incarnation.

We have just so much great music that we sing.

And sometimes we try to pack it all into like three weeks, right after December 1st, between December 24th, 25th, and then we stop and we don't sing any of those songs that have so much rich theology packed into them.

So I thought about this this morning because I'm going to be teaching out of some verses in Isaiah that are often in those

Christmas songs. And you got to know, I had to pause and think to myself, is that really the right thing to do on November the 3rd?

Should I really be doing a Christmas Sunday school here? So now you know how much

I love my wife. We will be delighting in that this morning. Because two weeks ago, when we looked at the beginning of Jesus' life in Luke 1 .35,

we observed how Luke summarized that progress that he's making. At the age of 12, it says that Jesus continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

And then in verse 52, we saw that Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men.

Now that passage raises a lot of questions. And there are some of them that we will not be able to answer this side of heaven.

That's a good thing. But I don't believe that God shrouded all of that in mystery.

I do believe that if we look very closely at the Old Testament and the New Testament, his spirit will enable us to see what we are intended to know and to believe and to act upon regarding the mystery of the

God -man, the incarnation. I have a quote for you from one of the authors

I've cited before you several times, Gerald Hawthorne. He says, thus, on the one hand, without either surrendering a single characteristic of true humanity, or on the other hand, without giving up any attribute of divinity, the eternal son in the mystery of the incarnation, nevertheless, so chose to encapsulate his divinity within the confines of humanity, so chose to make his attributes latent, potential within him, that he faced life precisely like any other human being faces life, not as some colossus striding unfeelingly over the earth, but as a person, limited physically and mentally, exposed to all kinds of diseases, subject to all sorts of temptations, susceptible to misunderstandings or hatred, unshielded from weakness and weariness, unprotected from frustrations and vexations, vulnerable to death, and on and on.

I think that that quote captures the reality that our central truth as we've been moving through this series has been that Jesus, as the

God -man has embraced full, authentic humanity so that he can live out the human life that we were intended to live independence upon the spirit, and we can contemplate that truth.

Now, as we look at the biblical record, we encounter a gap between the ages of 12 and 30, when

Jesus is baptized, filled by the spirit and led out into the wilderness to be tested by Satan.

And we're going to look at those passages together. But before we study those important narratives,

I want us to do what Jesus did in those years between 12 and 30, and that is study the

Old Testament. I want us to take this week and next to look at the book of Isaiah and see what being filled by the spirit meant in the life of Jesus.

I have another quote for you here from Gerald Hawthorne. He said, Jesus depended on the spirit of God as the spirit came upon human beings in the

Old Testament in their weakness and limitedness to inspire them to see life as God sees life and to evaluate it with God's valuation.

As the spirit came upon them to equip them for special tasks, superhuman tasks, as the spirit came upon them to enable them to push back the darkness and bring light, hope, and healing, so the spirit came upon Jesus.

The Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus is but one additional proof for the genuineness of his humanity, for the significance of the spirit in his life lies precisely in this, that the

Holy Spirit was the divine power by which Jesus overcame his human limitations, rose above his human weakness, and won out over his human mortality.

Now, the fun part for me here is that Jesus knew the book of Isaiah so well.

And by the beginning of his earthly ministry in Galilee, he knew how to pull

Isaiah out, open up to the exact part of the scroll and point directly to his ministry as the

Messiah. So let's look at that. Let's look at Luke 4. If you're not there already, turn to Luke 4, verse 16, and we're going to be reading through verse 21 here to get our running started,

Isaiah. It says in Luke 4, chapter 4, verse 16, he says, and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read.

And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and he opened the book and found the place where it was written.

The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and set free those who are oppressed to proclaim the favorable year of the

Lord. And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

And he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Now let's turn back to what he just quoted, Isaiah 61. They handed him the

Isaiah scroll, right? So not a scroll with pages, a scroll that you roll out.

So Isaiah 61 is towards the end of that, right? And it doesn't have chapter verse delineations.

So you got to know where it is. And Jesus knew where to find this verse in Isaiah 61.

I'm going to read it to you again. It's that good, right? From Isaiah, the spirit of the

Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the

Lord. And Jesus stopped there and that's significant for a whole other set of reasons.

Think about that. Jesus said the spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

Jesus was acutely aware that Isaiah's prophecy here in Isaiah 61 was looking forward to his work of gospel proclamation among his people who were afflicted and needy.

And his proclamation to them was to be empowered and filled up by the spirit of the

Lord God. And that proclamation consisted of freedom, liberty, and the favorable year of the

Lord. Now this morning, as we look at three separate passages in Isaiah, we're going to see and ponder three essential activities in the work of the

Holy Spirit in the incarnation so that we will desire his enablement, the spirit's enablement in our sanctification.

We're going to take a look at three activities of the Holy Spirit in bringing the Son of God to earth to be our king so that we will desire the same enablement of the spirit in our lives.

So I want you to turn to Isaiah chapter seven. So go back from where you are currently.

We're going to start in Isaiah 7, 14, Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14.

We're going to be looking at our first essential activity here. The spirit brings

God to us. The spirit brings God to us.

Let's read it. Isaiah 7, 14. Therefore, the

Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son and she will call his name

Emmanuel. Now I think we too quickly overestimate or underestimate how much better off we are as New Testament 21st century believers.

We come back to this Old Testament text and we're like, oh yeah, that's easy. I mean,

I've sung that a thousand times. I've seen it on a dozen Christmas cards already this year, right?

Of course, it's Isaiah. He's talking about Jesus being born to Mary, a virgin,

God with us. Come on, let's move on to the more interesting part here. Just remember, right, there was an initial context to this.

So let's think about that initial context. Isaiah is speaking at about 735, 734 BC. He's prophesying here to the nation of Judah, the southern kingdom.

And he's speaking to them with both judgment and encouragement mixed together.

And this comes about because they're dealing with three very significant issues. Number one, they have a very wicked ruler,

Ahaz, who's ruling over the kingdom. In the line of David, Ahaz is definitely a

Davidic king. He's not one of the northern kings, but he's still a pretty despicable guy.

So you got a wicked ruler. You got this threat brewing, right?

The Assyrian empire is coming for this region of the world. And you got a third problem.

Ahaz has sought to ally himself with Syria and Samaria, the northern kingdom to the north, to protect himself against the

Assyrian empire. And they've turned on him and are attacking him. So you got three big problems that Isaiah is speaking to and with respect to, as he prophesies here in Isaiah chapter 7.

And his words in this text are so familiar to us, right? We just pull them forward into our context right away.

And we forget that God is making a promise here to an unfaithful people led by a wicked ruler in David's line.

And this promise is intended to both rebuke them for their wicked faithlessness and point them back to God's faithfulness, that he would bring a king that would sit on David's throne through the most amazing and most wondrous of human events, a virgin birth.

Now, Isaiah in verses 8 to 9 speaks to Ahaz and gives an exact time within 65 years, he says, where God will deliver the nation of Judah from the threats of Syria and Samaria.

He then challenges the faith of Ahaz. He speaks to him directly and basically offers him the ability to request a sign to which

Ahaz nobly goes, well, I shouldn't tempt God. That'd be stupid, right?

This is not tempting God when God is asking you to request a sign. Ahaz is disobeying

God. Therefore, it's Yahweh himself, God, the father who initiates this statement when he says the

Lord himself will give you, and not just you

Ahaz, look back at verse 13. Listen now, O house of David, this is a sign not just to you

Ahaz, this is for every king that comes after you in the line of the house of David.

I will give you a sign, behold, a son, right?

A virgin will be with child and bear a son. We have the father, we know

Jesus is the son, the son of God. Where's the spirit? I thought this was a

Sunday school lesson about the spirit. Where is he? This is where we benefit because we're

New Testament believers. We know from Luke 1 .35, which we've talked about before, that the spirit is the person of the

Godhead who will bring about the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary, the virgin.

They're all three of them are here, right? Father, son, and spirit. Luke 1 .35 says the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you.

And for that reason, the holy child shall be called the son of God. So this is a future prophecy, right?

It's future tense. The virgin will be with child. And we know that this promised son is

Jesus. And we come upon this word that we delight in, but we go so quickly past it.

Emmanuel. It literally means has settled down on us.

So God himself has literally settled down on us in the person of Jesus, a man.

And not just that man, but the spirit who comes with him.

Because when Jesus leaves us as a man, right? When he ascends to heaven, what does he say to his disciples?

I'm going to leave you my spirit. And as New Testament believers, we are indwelt by the

Holy Spirit. So the promise that Isaiah 7 .14 gives of God with us,

God settled down on us is ultimately fulfilled through both the son and the spirit.

So there's three implications that I will draw forward from this one verse and its context.

First, God in all three of his persons is a personal God. He's a personal

God who comes down to his creation, even in their sinful rebellion.

The nation of Israel and the nation of Judah here particularly did not deserve

God's power. But he sent it to them anyway. We, in turn, do not deserve the personal presence of God, the father, son, and spirit.

But he sends it to us. Second implication is rather than righteously judging the sin of Ahaz and his people,

God grants them deliverance, both physically and in the spiritual promise of Messiah.

There is deliverance rather than judgment for the people of God. And third, the spirit is the agent of God's action, who brings about this miraculous advent of the human son who comes to be

God with us. So let's stop there. Let's do something we haven't done for the past three weeks.

Let's give you a chance to interact a little bit about that. So any comments or questions that you might have from that section?

Okay, you're all still waking up. There's coffee in the lobby. Let's apply this together.

I want you to think when you sin, do you look to the grace of God, our savior, through the gift of his son by the spirit as the response that God has given to you and that therefore you should give to him to deal with that sin?

In other words, when we sin, we should first go right back to the reality that throughout scriptures,

God's response to man's sin is to send the grace gift of the righteousness of his human son,

Jesus. Through the spirit and apply that righteousness to our lives. Do we have the faith to look when we are sinning at that gift rather than trying to find our own way to deal with that sinfulness?

It's that simple. Second encouragement that I have for you is to ask yourself, how have you spent time this week meditating on the personal relationship that you can have or that you do have as a believer with God, the father,

God, the son, and God, the spirit. They are all three persons and their relationship with one another enables us to have a relationship with each of them.

So the first essential activity that we've looked at this morning is that the spirit brings

God to us. Secondly, oh, I see a question.

No, it's okay. It's okay. It's a good time. Significance that he stops right there is that that section of Isaiah 61 will be fulfilled in his second advent and not his first advent.

For him to say today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. He has to be referring to the first advent portion and not to the second advent portion.

I'll read it again for you here. Isaiah 61, when he finishes there, he says, to proclaim the favorable year of the

Lord, that's where he stopped, and the day of vengeance of our God.

We are still waiting for that day of vengeance. So it would not have been correct for him to say today, this has been fulfilled if he finished that verse.

Yeah, great question. So our second essential activity is going to be found in Isaiah 9.

So let's move over to Isaiah 9 verses 6 and 7. And we'll see there that the spirit gives us a king.

The spirit brings God to us. And then the secondly, the spirit gives us a king.

Now, this amazing passage is even more well known to us than the one we just took that.

So do your best to read it with me and allow your mind to be refreshed as if this was the first time you had encountered this.

Do your best to try to get away from the familiarity and just encounter God's word to us in Isaiah.

And put yourself back in Jesus' shoes when he was a young boy and he first encounters

Isaiah 9 verses 6 and 7. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders, and his name will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

There will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. Now, there are so many observations and truths in this very short statement that we could pull forward today.

But we're focusing upon the action of the spirit in bringing Jesus to earth.

So let's focus in on the reality that first off, it says for a child will be brought to us.

God chose to bring Jesus to earth as a child. Now, did he have to?

Could he have practically just produced an adult human being? I mean, he has created adult human beings before, correct?

Out of nothing. Adam, Eve. So he's not confined to saying, well, look,

I can only create babies here. So bear with me. It's going to take him 30 years before he's ready to rule.

No, God is not confined to being only able to create babies. He chose to create a child, a human child.

John Oswalt in his commentary on the book of Isaiah says, ultimately, God's truth is not merely in the realm of ideas.

Ultimately, it is meant to be incarnated. Jesus is the human manifestation of God's truth brought to earth as a human child.

A child will be born to us. A son will be given to us, right?

That to us, that repetition, the given to us emphasizes that Jesus is God's gift to us.

Now, obviously first, the recipients of Isaiah here, but we know that this us stretches forward in time to include all of those who are his people.

Jesus is God's gift to us. Well, what kind of a gift? Is he just a human guy who's just going to live a human life and end it?

And no, of course not. He has a purpose. And the purpose that we see here is related to his purposes and salvation.

They're never separated from one another. But what's on the surface here? Is it his salvation, death, crucifixion?

No, the purpose here is this is a king. This is a king in the line of David, right?

On the throne of David, verse seven, and over his kingdom. Jesus had to be a human descendant of David to be able to rule as the king of David and over his kingdom.

Now, this child is not going to remain a child. He's going to grow to the stature of a king.

Look at that. And verse six, and the government will rest on his shoulders.

Didn't at the beginning, he wasn't the king at the very beginning, right? He had to grow into it, right?

Eventually, the government will have the resting on his shoulders, which points forward to this maturation process that Jesus is going to undergo.

He has to get ready to become the king. Now, we see here these very familiar couplets.

His name will be called, four couplets, right? Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

And believe me, I am restraining myself, not going into each and every one of these and pondering its significance.

That's what I want you to do for the rest of the Christmas season. Don't just sing those words and say those words without pondering their significance.

We're going to look at one of them specifically. The first one, Wonderful Counselor, literally

Wonder Counselor. This is one who partakes of the very nature of God.

Listen to Isaiah 28, 29. It says, this also comes from the

Lord of hosts who has made his counsel wonderful and his wisdom great.

For Jesus to be the king, he needs to be a wonderful, wise counselor who brings the wisdom of God to earth.

Now, how is his kingdom described in verse seven? Well, a series of clauses here joined together.

There is no end to the increase of his government or of peace. This kingdom will be endless, endless in space and time, infinite, extending outward to the very ends of all of the universe.

It will be on the throne of David. It will be a Davidic physical kingdom on this earth, extending from Jerusalem outward.

And it will establish, be established and upheld with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.

Now, again, you might ask yourself, Simon, where's the spirit? You keep telling me the spirit is here.

And again, the work of the spirit is silent as he is not named in this passage, but we can see his work occurring in the background as the child

Jesus grows into a king. Think back to the words of Luke four, as Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61, he said, the spirit of the

Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted.

He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the

Lord. To rule righteously as a king, Jesus needed to demonstrate the attributes of his father.

And he needed the spirit to help him, to enable him to develop these kingly characteristics during his maturation to adulthood.

Now we need to stop and think about that. How many of you have ever served a king other than Jesus?

No one, right? We don't live in that part of history. We have no idea what it would be like to grow up alongside of a guy who lives near to you, but he's going to be the king someday.

And you're going to see every aspect of his physical life. And when he becomes king, you're going to know pretty quickly, is this a good one or is this a bad one?

Does he have the righteous characteristics necessary to rule our realm?

No matter how big it is, you would know if a king was a good king or not. And your knowledge of that would be based not just on what he's doing right now, but who he was as a young man as he grew into adulthood.

If you're going to rule with justice and righteousness, you can't compromise that with a lifetime of injustice and unrighteousness.

Jesus could not compromise his right to rule as the King of David with indiscretions in his youthful time period.

How was he cultivating his justice and righteousness? By the spirit, enabling him to increase in wisdom and obedience to God the

Father. So implication -wise, Jesus was preparing himself for a very specific calling of a specific ministry.

He is to be the righteous king of his people. And the king must demonstrate the attributes of God to rule righteously.

The spirit's work is in bringing Jesus to maturity. And it is critical to enable him to be ready to rule as the

Davidic king. So let me pause there, now that Peter's got you warmed up with the question.

What comments or questions does that section produce? So the question that Phil's asking,

I'll repeat it so that the recording can have it as well, is how would the Jewish people who originally heard

Isaiah prophesy that the Messiah would be the everlasting or eternal father?

How would they have processed that? That's a really good question, Phil. If you know one thing from studying the

Old Testament, the Jews were monotheistic. There's one God and you don't subdivide him.

You don't call him by the wrong names. You worship him and you worship him alone.

So this is absolutely a bold coupling, if I could say it that way. The fact that he couples together the reality that there is going to be a king who sits on the throne of David, who will be given these names, wonderful counselor, mighty

God, eternal father, and prince of peace, would absolutely challenge the

Jewish people because not only did they believe that there's one God, but they also believe that God is not physical.

He's not going to be a person. So I believe that Isaiah is stretching their theological minds out to include the possibility that God could incarnate himself and reveal that to him.

And it would definitely be a good area of study to go back and see what would a

Jewish person have kind of taken out of that verse. Sam, I think so.

The question was, would there have been a difference between the titles prince and king, that the

Jewish people would have been able to kind of separate in their heads and say, well, maybe this ruler is not the king of all the universe.

Maybe he's a delegated prince. I don't think that's a wrong conclusion because I think that the mediatorial nature of the

Davidic kingdom is something that we draw forward from Genesis 1 all the way through 2 Samuel 7, all the way through this passage here.

God intended Adam to mediate over his universe as a man, right?

I believe that David gets to pick up that mantle and that centralization of that kingly reign occurs in the context of 2

Samuel 7 in the Davidic covenant, which is obviously drawn out of the Abrahamic covenant as well. But the notion that the king, the delegated mediatorial king is a

Davidic king would potentially have tied together to the reality that this is the prince of peace who assumes that role over the throne of David and his kingdom.

Jim? Correct. Yeah, that's really helpful clarification there.

Did everybody hear that or do you want me to repeat it? Yeah, so he's saying that the term father of eternity or eternal father could be, is not a respect to the person of the father, it's relationship to time.

And so he is not confusing them, the Jewish people, by mixing the members of the

Godhead up here. Okay, good.

Well, let's move forward to our third passage here. Turn over to Isaiah 11. We're going to spend time in verses 1 through 5 in our last section together.

So we saw that the first essential activity of the spirit was to bring God to us.

The second that we just saw in Isaiah 9 is that he's to bring us a king. He's bringing us a king.

And the third that we see here is that the spirit equips the king to rule. The spirit equips the king to rule.

Now we're going to read verses 1 through 5 together and then we're going to go back and we're going to go verse by verse by verse and look at this together here.

So let's read Isaiah 11, 1 through 5. Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the

Lord. And he will delight in the fear of the Lord and he will not judge by what his eyes see nor make a decision by what his ears hear.

But with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

Also righteousness will be the belt about his loins and faithfulness the belt about his waist.

So Isaiah prophesies here and I like to think of this section as all one section, right? Isaiah 7 starts off a line of thinking that Isaiah is carrying forward all the way through chapter 11 here.

This is not a new subject for Isaiah. He's connecting some theological thoughts together and stringing them together in the context of his prophecies to the nation of Judah.

But when he says here a shoot, a branch, a twig, a new twig will spring from the stem of Jesse, right?

This is reaching back and remembering that Jesse is David's father. This is the same promise of a

Davidic king. The house of David will rise again and will bear fruit.

The shoot is going to branch from the stem of Jesse and the branch from his roots will bear fruit.

What produces the fruit? Well, the answer is in verse two, the spirit of the

Lord. Now this is fun for us because obviously the book of Galatians had not been written yet.

So no one who read this in Isaiah 11 would be thinking to themselves, oh, I know what the fruit of the spirit look like.

But I love to think of the reality that this might be like a mini Old Testament version of what the fruit of the spirit looks like.

What does the spirit produce in a man? He produces wisdom, counsel, strength, knowledge, fear, righteousness, fairness, faithfulness.

Just a sampling of the words that are going to come here in verses one through five. What do we think of when we think of the fruit of the spirit?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self -control.

But the spirit is the agent who is producing the fruit in this shoot.

Look at verse two in the first half of it. Spirit of the Lord will rest on him.

The expectation is that when Messiah comes, the spirit of the

Lord comes and rests on him. They come together.

The word rest literally means to settle down. So when the

Messiah comes, the spirit comes with him and he stays with him. Look at the second half of verse two.

The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the

Lord. You see the repetition of the phrase, the spirit here. The spirit of the Lord is what produces the spirit of Jesus.

The spirits that can be described as three more couplets here. Wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the

Lord. So let's look at those concepts and ask ourselves a question. Do we see that in the life of Jesus?

This is the prophecy about the Messiah. Do we see these lived out in the human life of Jesus?

Wisdom is the ability to perceive relationships between elements. Understanding is the ability to divide things up into their constituent parts and to understand a comprehension of the true nature of things.

Wisdom and understanding go together here. You exercise wisdom and understanding as you act in a world where you have to have wisdom and understanding to rightly perceive the complex details of the life that you're living.

So just think to yourself, think of how often Jesus could perceive rightly the complex details of the interactions going on between his followers, himself, the

Jewish leadership, the Roman authorities. Did Jesus need wisdom in his humanity?

Yes, he did. Listen, as I just read for you, John 2, 25 says, and because he did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man.

How did he know? He had wisdom provided by the

Spirit. Second couplet here is counsel and might, which might make you think back to Isaiah 9, 6, the wonderful counselor phrase that we looked at briefly.

Counsel and might. This implies the concept of bravely planning and executing the plans that you make.

Jesus skillfully controlled his location and the timing of when he went to various locations to ensure that he was not arrested until the exact day that he intended.

And he was bold and forceful when he needed to be. He had counsel and might.

Actually, let's turn there. We got a second here. Luke 13, Luke 13, verses 32 and 33.

Actually, I'll start in 31 to get the running start here. It says, just at that time, some Pharisees approached saying to him, go away, leave here for Herod wants to kill you.

And he said to them, go and tell that fox. Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow.

And the third day I reach my goal. Nevertheless, I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside Jerusalem.

Jesus had a plan and he had the ability to forcefully articulate the reasons why he would go one place or not go another place, no matter who was around him and who was trying to force him one direction or another.

You can think to John 2, verses 15 to 16, where Jesus goes into the temple in the early part of his ministry, not the

Passion Week visit, but the early part of his ministry. It says he made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen.

And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables into those who were selling the doves. He said, take these things away.

Stop making my father's house a place of business. John Oswald said, unless a king has the ability to gather, both gather data for decision making and the forcefulness to make decisions, he was doomed to be ineffective.

A king needed counsel and might. And third, he needed knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Go back to Isaiah 11, verse 3 here.

Knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Once the spirit rests on Messiah, he will delight in acquiring knowledge in a humble and holy way that leads to a reverence and an awe, a personal fear of Yahweh, personal fear of the

Lord. And he will delight in seeing others do the same. What will that produce?

Look at 11, 3, second half of the verse. It says, he will delight in the fear of the

Lord and he will not judge by what his eyes see nor make a decision by what his ears hear.

As a king, he needed the ability to judge and decide matters based not merely on what he's seeing and hearing.

He needs to have a discernment that the spirit produces in his inner self.

Think about Mark 2, 8. It says, immediately Jesus, aware in his spirit, they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them, why are you reasoning about these things in your heart?

Isaiah 11, 4 says, but with righteousness, he will judge the poor and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth.

This kingdom will not merely be out of just power, political authority, but will be one that springs out of a righteous rule that allows the poor and the afflicted to see his care and his concern.

Look at Isaiah 11, 4b. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked.

Messiah's holy presence will completely expose all evil and sin and therefore requires that this king have a moral force possessed by a leader who owes allegiance to no earthly pressure groups.

He is not going to be pushed around. Listen to Mark 12, 34.

When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And here's the phrase.

After that, no one would venture to ask him any more questions. You can think to yourself the interactions with the high priests during his trial, his interactions with Pilate during his trial.

Jesus possessed a moral force to him. And finally, 11, 5 says also righteousness will be the belt about his loins and faithfulness, the belt about his waist.

Righteousness is that capacity for doing the right thing in all circumstances that frequently involves keeping one's promises.

Is Jesus going to be a righteous king who is faithful in all circumstances and keeps his promises?

So fundamental to both these words, righteousness and faithfulness is the idea of integrity, consistency, which results in a complete dependability.

Can you trust him as the king to rule righteously over the afflicted and the poor? The third essential activity of the spirit in the life of Jesus is that he equips

Jesus to be a righteous king. To be the

Messiah, Jesus needed to be a comprehensive, comprehensively wise and righteous king.

And Isaiah prophesies that the spirit of the Lord will rest upon him and produce in him the power, the wisdom, and the holiness that he needed to accomplish that goal.

As we become one with Jesus Christ through saving faith, we become one with the same spirit.

So let's just stop, and I know we're a minute over time here, so I'm just going to leave you with a couple of brief thoughts to take with you this week, and really all the way through this

Christmas season here. We've come face to face this morning with the majesty and the glory of God the

Father, as he has revealed to us in his son, Jesus, the Messiah. And we've delighted in the reality that God is a personal

God who desires to dwell with us. And he loved us enough to send us his own son to be the child who would grow in holiness to be our righteous king.

So may our hearts watch and wonder this Christmas season as we see

God fulfill his promises. I want you to take opportunity over the next couple of months to search the scriptures, both

Old and New Testament, for evidence of the work of the spirit in the son.

Let's pray. Our gracious Father, as we close our time together, we just thank you for what you have provided for us in the scriptures today in Isaiah.

Thank you for revealing more of who Jesus is, fully human, and yet reliant fully on your spirit.

We are reminded of how much we need your guidance and strength to teach us to depend upon that same spirit, just as Jesus did, and to trust your wisdom in every situation that we face.

We pray that these truths would take root in our hearts this week, that we would grow closer to you through the power of the spirit.