Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Isaiah 4:1-6 and the Branch of the Lord

As we study your word together that we would rejoice in what you have to say and that you would give us a clear view of your Son that we may worship you and that you would continue to do your good work in us as we look forward to the day of Christ Jesus.

We pray these things in his name.

Amen.

Alright, so Isaiah chapter 4 and reading verses 1 through 6. And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own food and wear our own apparel, only let us be called by your name to take away our reproach.

In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious. And the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and appealing for those of Israel who have escaped. And it shall come to pass that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who is recorded among the living in Jerusalem, when the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and purged the blood of Jerusalem from her midst by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.

Then the Lord will create above every dwelling place of Mount Zion and above her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night. For over all the glory there will be a covering, and there will be a tabernacle for shade in the daytime from the heat, for a place of refuge, and for a shelter from storm and rain.

So in the midst of these sermons for a difficult present with the Assyrian threat on the horizon, the Lord is shown as the true redeemer for these children of woe. They are rightly condemned by the holy word of God, and so they may wonder what hope there is for them.

He has rebuked them thoroughly for their foolish ways, their foolish thinking, their inadequate trusts. And so he now, after rebuking them, gives some hope. And this hope is in parallel to something he said at the beginning of chapter 2.

So rather than continue on and show more of their iniquity in their Jerusalem and the way that they did things in their lives, he showed them how he's going to make all things new in his Mount Zion, in his Jerusalem.

Then he goes back and rebukes them for their fourfold folly in chapters 2 and 3. And then we come back to another scene of hope here in chapter 4 that parallels what we see in chapter 2. The Lord's house in chapter 2, and the Lord's branch here in chapter 4.

And we have the four things happening. We have the convening of the new bride. We have the seven women taking hold of one man saying, take away our approach, just give us your name. We don't want anything else from you, just give us your name.

Cover us with your name. And in considering the person to whom they cling, which is in the very next verse, this branch of the Lord who we looked at in Zechariah and Jeremiah, and of course we see the branch again in Isaiah.

We find that he is righteous and that he is holy, he is anointed. And so they want his name to take away their reproach. And again in verse 2, this branch in this day shall be beautiful and glorious, excellent and appealing.

So, of course, this is the name that they want to cover them and take away their reproach and their shame. So there's a convening of the new bride and we have in chapter 4 verse 1, the seven women taking hold of one man is echoed again in Zechariah, the ten men from every nation grabbing the hold of one Jew.

The women here say, take away our approach, the men in Zechariah say, take us up with you into Mount Zion, which of course is an echo of Isaiah 2 as well. And so thinking about the new bride, the seven women taking hold of one man, we have the pattern in the Old Testament of the kinsmen redeemer and leviarate marriage, how they are left without any husband and so they cling to this one who will be to them their husband and take away their reproach once they have his name.

So in verse 2, now the attention is properly upon the branch of the Lord and his descriptions and there's a twofold description. In parallel, we have in the first half of the verse in that day, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious.

Now we know that this title, the branch of the Lord is about the Messiah because we have this repeated in various places in the Old Testament. But in classic Hebrew parallel poetry, we have another line that comes after it, enhancing.

The first.

So the first line says, the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious and here's the second line, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and appealing. So we are led immediately to understand that the branch of the Lord, the name of the Messiah is in parallel to another name of the Messiah, the fruit of the earth.

And we were just beginning to explore why this is a name of our Lord, why this is a description of Messiah. And we see of course that he is beautiful and glorious in the first half of the verse, second half of the verse gives an amen to that, excellent and appealing.

And we see that the fruit of the earth and the branch of the Lord, these titles of Messiah, this one, he is for those of Israel who have escaped. So Israel isn't the branch of the Lord. Israel isn't the fruit of the earth, that's Messiah.

And he is for this people and they need a savior, they need a redeemer, they need help because we've already seen how entrenched and entangled in sin and despair that they are. So we've thought about the branch of the Lord, we've seen that from Jeremiah and Zechariah, the branch is usually used to speak about the Messiah being a descendant of Jesse and David, speaking to his earthly ancestry.

But here it's branch of the Lord, so we're hearing that he's from the Lord, and later on we'll hear he's also from David, and Isaiah ever finds creative ways to affirm that he is both of the divine and of man.

And so we have that emphasis of the incarnation in Isaiah from early on. As we move on to think about this fruit of the earth, the term earth also translated as, in many places, as land, the fruit of the land.

We were reminded that the Messiah came from the people to whom this land was given. They were brought even back from exile, they were brought back to this land for the sake of the revelation of the Messiah.

We looked at how the Messiah was to be born to this people and he would be born in this land, even Bethlehem as his place of birth, and Nazareth as the place where he grew up and that he would be in this land and making it fruitful.

So we had just begun to think about how it is that the Messiah is the fruit of the earth, the fruit of the earth. This is a great title for him because when we move our way through the last part of the Old Testament and then see in the New Testament, the descriptions that were once reserved for the land begin to be used of Messiah himself.

And the ways in which the blessings of living in Canaan as the promised land and the blessings and curses that were upon the land based on how the servant Israel lived, all of this begins to be transferred to the Messiah himself.

So that Jesus himself becomes our Sabbath and how important was Sabbath for the land. If you didn't observe their Sabbath, then you were kicked out of the land. Sabbath and land were connected, but Jesus himself becomes the Sabbath.

When everything was at peace in the land, it was called Shalom, but Christ comes as our Shalom and our rest. The cycles of the land had to do with harvest, but he's the first fruit harvest. Israel was called a vine that was planted in the land, but then Jesus comes and says he is the true vine.

He describes himself as the grain of wheat, which dies that he may bring in abundance. And indeed, he is described as the one upon whom the curse falls. The curses of the old covenant fall on not a land, but on Jesus Christ, who is also our inheritance, our lot.

In the Old Testament, they would receive their inheritance in the land, in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is our inheritance. In the Old Covenant, the concern was dwelling in the land. Are we dwelling in our promised land?

In the New Testament, the question is are you dwelling, are you abiding in Christ, the one in whom all the promises are?

Yes.

And so, the focus in the scriptures begins to shift the descriptions of the land to see those fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And we're going to look at a couple more things about that since it's a big idea in the Word of God.

Way back in Genesis chapter 49, Jacob was prophesying about his sons and how things would turn out for them. And of course, what he says about Judah is of utmost interest when we're thinking about Messiah.

So, in Genesis 49, verses 8 through 12, he says to Judah, now remember Jacob's favorite son was not Judah, it was Joseph. But the highest praise is reserved for Judah, this is the Lord's will. So, verse 8, Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise, your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's children shall bow down before you.

Now, remember Joseph was the one who had the dream, but now Judah's the one who's being said that in the future there's going to be bowing down to Judah. Verse 9, Judah is a lion's whelp, from the prey, my son, you have gone up.

He bows down, he lies down as a lion, as a lion who shall rouse him, the lion of Judah. Verse 10, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet. So Judah's going to have the ruling scepter.

And so, when we find various characters throughout the scripture, whether it's Caleb or so on, we have people who are of prominence in the tribe of Judah, but of course, David. Remember, David, the tribe of Judah, is the one who becomes the king and is promised an everlasting kingship, royal house.

So the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, Shiloh, man of peace. And to him shall be the obedience of the people, binding his donkey to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine.

He washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk. A very strange ending, when we, first it was like, we're tracking along and saying, ah yes, lion of Judah, check.

All right, promised king of the tribe of Judah. Okay, so we've got that, and Shiloh, we're tracking Solomon, Shiloh, son of David, we're tracking, everything's going, then all of a sudden, we're talking about vines, and donkeys, and washing clothes, and wine, and what is going on.

Well, remember that the promises of God concerning the covenant, what would happen when there was a faithful servant living in the land? What would happen in the land? It would be abundant, wouldn't it?

The seasons would fall just right, the rain would always fall just right, all of the crops would be just super abundant and overflowing, and God promised this to his people, if there was a faithful servant, if they would live as a faithful servant, in obedience to his covenant, they would have prosperity beyond reckoning.

Well, that's a signal, Shiloh's gonna be obedient, he's gonna be faithful, he's gonna be blessed, he's gonna bring all the blessings of this in. Now, why is it so important to these people that there would be an abundance of crops?

Just so many grapes, you don't know what to do with them, so many grapes, so much wine, and he's like, well, I'm just gonna wash my clothes, and we have so much of it. We have so much grape vine, that I'm just gonna tie my donkey up with it, I don't care how much vine he eats, I don't care how much he tears off, we just have an abundance of vine, I'm just gonna grab some and tie him up.

Why does that matter to them? Because, remember, remember of Eden, the sin of Adam, what does God say, curses the ground because of the sake of Adam, thorns and thistles, scarcity, so on and so forth, but once there's a faithful servant again in place, right, so what was lost in creation is addressed by the law of the covenant.

He says, okay, we need a faithful someone to stand in the place of Adam here and do the right job and be obedient, and then here comes the blessings, there's gonna be abundance.

Now.

So this is very important to covenant keepers, that there's going to be this abundance. Now, with Shiloh, this abundance is far and beyond anything that God promised in Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26, it's so far out there, it's even bigger and more intense than even what the covenant promised, so this is looking beyond, looking to someone who comes and fulfills.

So we have all of this wine everywhere, he washes garments in wine, his clothes in the blood of grace, there's wine everywhere. He brings the abundance with him, even before Sinai, even before the covenant blessings and curses were detailed out, there's a signal that all the abundance and the reversal of the curse and the undoing of scarcity and the bringing of the abundance, the healing of creation, the making the creation of super abundant, Adam was supposed to contend and keep the garden.

Adam never had a garden as good, he never even got close to a garden as good, and he started off with all the right ingredients. But when Shiloh comes, look what he does, and of course, what does Jesus do in his first public miracle?

Yeah, while also pushing back against the need to continue in the old covenant. The water pots sitting out by the front door were not for drinking, he didn't turn drinking water into wine, he changed ceremonial hand washing water into wine.

Welcome to the new covenant. That's what he was about, he was saying things are going to change, and he did it at a wedding, which is very fitting, very fitting indeed. So when we think about this branch of the Lord being the fruit of the land, we see that the promised abundance of the land is, even from Genesis 49, deeply rooted and connected to the person of Messiah himself.

So that's not like a brand new idea that comes out of left field, that's built in from Genesis 49 prior to the Sinaitic covenant. Also, in Psalm 80, we'll go over to Psalm 80, it says, Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who dwell between the cherubim, shine forth.

So who's the shepherd of Israel? The one who's enthroned on the ark of the covenant. You dwell between the cherubim, where are the cherubim at? They're on either side of the mercy seat. So the true shepherd of Israel is the Lord, and he rules and he reigns from the mercy seat, his throne.

Shine forth, before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up your strength and come and.

Save us.

This is the psalm of Asaph, he knows where to look for salvation, look to the Lord. Restore us, O God, cause your face to shine and we shall be saved. O Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people?

You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in great measure. You have made us a strife to our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Things aren't going well for the Israelites.

They're receiving the curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, you know, the one where it says, like, one enemy will come against you and ten men will run away. You can't stand before them, you're full of weakness.

Things aren't going well. Well, they look to the Lord. Verse 7, restore us, O God of hosts, cause your face to shine and we shall be saved. Just the manifestation of the face of God, just the showing of his glory will be salvation for his people.

Now, verse 8, you have brought a vine out of Egypt and have cast out the nations and.

Planted it.

Now, in that one verse, we have the history of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. The vine that came about of Egypt is Israel, brought Israel up out and transplanted it in Canaan in the process of driving out the Canaanite tribes.

All that is stated in one verse, the power of biblical poetry, verse 8. You have brought a vine out of Egypt, you have cast out the nations and planted it. You prepared room for it and caused it to take deep root and it filled the land.

So Asaph gives all the credit to God, you're the one who did it. You brought us here, you put us here, you got rid of the other nations. Verse 10, the hills were covered with its shadow and the mighty cedars with its boughs.

You ever see a vine take over a tree? Solomon's glory eclipsed that of King Hiram of Lebanon, right? The vine of Israel was all over those cedars. The vine of Israel was far more glorious than the other nations.

She sent out her boughs to the sea and her branches to the river. We see the spreading out of Israel being magnified by the Lord, his servant in its prosperity. Then verse 12, why have you broken down her hedges so that all who pass by the way pluck.

Her fruit?

Ah, the undoing. The borer out of the woods uproots it and the wild beast of the field devours it. Return, we beseech you, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see and visit this vine and the vineyard which your right hand has planted.

The reason we're reading this now is because we're going to be in Isaiah 5 pretty soon and this same language is going to be brought up, Israel as a vineyard. And the branch, now look at this, verse 15, I'm going to start back at verse 14 again, we have to have this whole thing together.

Return, we beseech you, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see, visit this vine and the vineyard which your right hand has planted and the branch that you made strong for yourself. We hear this vine, vineyard, branch, okay, we're going to come back to that, verse 16, it is burned with fire, it is cut down, they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.

Remember, what we're looking at in Isaiah chapters 4 and 6 and so on is that the branch of the Lord is only made obvious and glorious. The Messiah only comes after the burning, after the tree is cut down, after the judgment.

He comes in the wake of that judgment, which is why we have the thorough judgment in Isaiah 2 and 3, and then in that day, that's when the women grab a hold of the one man. In that day, that's when the branch of the Lord is glorious and excellent and shines.

Forth.

Verse 17 of Psalm 80, let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, upon the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. Back up to verse 15, he said the branch that you made strong for yourself.

And you're already thinking Israel, right, you're thinking Israel, verse 14, the vine, visit the vine, the vine that you planted in the land. Verse 15, in parallel, the vineyard, the branch, but by verse 17, it's the man of your right hand and it's the son of man whom you made strong for yourself.

And Lord, if you will just do this, verse 18, then we will not turn back from you, revive us and we will call upon your name, restore us, O Lord God of hosts, cause your face to shine and we shall be saved.

That's the course of the psalm. So what happens in Psalm 80 is that you start off, here's the glory of Israel, is a vine and a branch and we were planted. But now we're under the judgment of God and we need salvation.

The salvation is what? Revisit the vine, revisit the branch, revisit the vineyard. And what they say about the vine and the vineyard and the branch is said exactly about the man of his right hand and the son of man.

So throughout the Old Testament, there is a constant showcasing of what is said about Israel as a collective in their covenant responsibilities and in their glory is said singularly of the Messiah. Here's their land, here's their role, but here's Messiah.

And it's done that way time and time again. Now why is that important? Why is that important? Well, it's important when you sing certain hymns, right? Anybody sing Jordan Stormy Banks? Ever sing that song?

There's a, I think there has been a rewriting of the hymn. I don't have Chris in here to tell me what it is, but someone came back and they changed the tune of it and added a little bit, add a little bit to it.

Why even revisit that hymn? Why do we sing hymns about crossing the Jordan and going into the promised land? Why do we sing like that belongs to the faith of Christians? What are we even talking about?

Are we talking about taking a vacation and going on tour in Israel? And then we're required to take the roads in through Palestine, through the PLO front and then we come in through the wall? What are we saying when we say going over Jordan, going to the Canaan promised land?

What are we saying? Well, we're saying what Hebrews 4 is about. The reason why Messiah in Isaiah 4 is called the fruit of the land is because what the Old Covenant says about the land, the New Covenant says about Christ.

So all that desire and passion for the people to go into the land, to get there, to get into the land and the beauty of it and so on and so forth, all the blessings promised in it. Hebrews 4 says, therefore, since the promise remains of entering, notice this word, entering his rest.

Rest is a key word, Old Testament, New Testament, rest, dealing with peace, dealing with shalom, being at rest and at home. So therefore, since the promise remains of entering his rest, entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it, for indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

So faith being the gift of God, when we hear the word of God being preached to us, that is very profitable, but if there's no faith, then it doesn't profit anyone. Verse 3, so we who have believed do enter, notice, enter that rest.

So we were somewhere else and then we entered in. We went in to rest. Now, here's a quote, as he said, so I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Now, where is that quote from? Well, that's from the Old Testament, from the Psalms, recounting how God said to that wicked and perverse generation, that first one out of Egypt, oh, you don't get to come into my rest, you don't come into Canaan because you murmured and disputed with me, you complained and you did not operate in faith, so you do not get to go into my rest, into the promised land.

So that's the context for entering into rest. The author of Hebrews, I think it's Paul preaching, Luke writing, but he says, I'm not letting you in, you're not coming across the Jordan, you're not coming into my promised land.

That's the Old Testament example or shadow of this discussion about entering into the rest of Christ, the rest that Christ offers. So I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

So God is at rest, to enter into rest is to enter into communion and fellowship with God. And again, in this place, they shall not enter into my rest, again, from Psalm 95. Okay, so there's some who are not entering into rest.

Why do they enter into rest? Because when they hear the word preached to them, they don't believe. You enter into rest because you believe by faith we are saved, not by works, lest any man shall boast.

Verse six, since therefore it remains that some must enter it, enter what? Enter into the rest. That is the analogy for the promised land, for going into Canaan. It remains that some must enter it, you must enter in the fulfillment of the promised land, which is the rest in Christ, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, right, they didn't believe and they rebelled against God.

Again, he designates a certain day saying in David, today, after such a long time as it has been said, today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Also in Psalm 95. Now listen to this, for if Joshua, remember Joshua, the successor of Moses, if this Joshua had given them rest, if what God was all about in all these old covenant promises, if it really was just about Joshua getting that second generation over into Canaan, the geographical space of Canaan, if that's what it really was about, then he would not afterward have spoken of another day, right?

We're done, right? Stop the Bible after Joshua, don't need the rest of it, right? But there remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God. We don't stop at signs, we go to the destination. We don't stop at shadows, we trace the shadow all the way to the feet of the substance.

There remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from.

His.

Now, as I hinted last time, we have to read all of Hebrews 4. All of Hebrews 4. What's the danger? Well, the danger is that we don't enter the rest. So verse 11, therefore, let us, therefore, be diligent to enter that rest lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

Well, who's to say what's right and what's wrong? Well, the word of God. Verse 12, for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. So ain't nobody getting into the rest unless they measure up to God. And he sees everything, even down to the very inner person.

Nobody's getting in now, except for verse 14, right? The word of God exposes all of us.

It's a sifting.

It's a kind of judgment, laying everything open and bare, giving proper weight to all the things in our life. But we are getting in by faith, aren't we? We are believing the word preached to us, and so by faith we enter in.

And what do we do with all of this exposure of all of our sin before the eyes of whom.

We have to do?

Verse 14, seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through. So the entire chapter, entered in, entered in, entered in, entered in. Guess who went in first? The great high priest who has passed through the heavens.

It's a neat trick, you know, Joshua going through the parted waters of the Jordan River, but far more importantly, we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. Therefore, since we have that, let us hold fast our confession.

Hold fast that confession, that word of faith that we had from the very beginning of the.

Chapter.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

That's what it looks like to live in the rest. You see where we are? We are with Christ. He went in, you know, the Ark of the Covenant went across first, right? Jesus is the Ark of the Covenant. He's the one who bears the covenant in and of himself.

Jesus is the fulfillment of Yeshua, or Joshua, the successor of Moses. Moses came first, but here is his successor. He went in first, and so we go in with, verse 16, we come boldly to the throne of grace.

Here's our rest.

All right?

It's not our works, it's not our works that get us in, it's not our works that get us across the gap. It's not our works that let us go in, it's the high priest that we have. It's the high priest that we have, and that's why we can come boldly to the throne of grace and we can find our rest in him.

So that's why it's important, I think. I guess why it's important is when we look at the glories of Messiah in Isaiah, that we take hold of this description of who he is, that he is beautiful and glorious and excellent and appealing, and he is for those who escape.

So he brings us all the way in, brings us all the way across. Next time we'll talk more about the destination, in verses 3 -4, as we think about the cleansing of the new Jerusalem, and then also verses 5 and 6, where we see the creation of the new tabernacle.

My father, in his pastoral study for all those decades, had a painting of the tabernacle on his wall, and I always would look at that. We're not done with it, though, it's not that it was rejected and wadded up and thrown away in the trash somewhere.

It has been satisfyingly fulfilled in the new covenant, and we'll take a look at that when we get there. All right, let's turn our attention to some prayer requests.