Advent: Day 14

Isaiah was not the only prophet to prophesy about the coming Messiah. Prophecies of the coming Christ are all over the Old Testament. There are more than I have time to blog about. But, we have time to look at some, and today we are going to look at how both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that the Messiah would be a branch from the stump of Jesse, the house of David:

¹ There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
² And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
    the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and might,
    the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
³ And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide disputes by what his ears hear,
⁴ but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵ Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,
    and faithfulness the belt of his loins. (Is. 11:1-5)
⁵ "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ⁶ In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: 'The Lord is our righteousness.'" (Je. 23:5-6)

Both Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that the Messiah would come from the line of Jesse (David's father). Both likened him to a shoot or a branch. Both declared that He will save God's people. And, both declared that He will be a man of righteousness. And, of course, centuries later we see that Jesus was exactly that. He is the one through whom we have righteousness (Ro. 5:12-21). Indeed, as Paul declared, Jesus is our righteousness (1 Co. 1:30). As the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) states it:

Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. (WCF 11.1, emphasis added)

Thank God for that branch, that shoot from the stump of Jesse, for we have no righteousness of our own that would ever be acceptable to God (cf. Mt. 5:20). By the way, did you notice the Messiah arose from the stump of Jesse? It was not from the thriving tree or even from the sickly tree. It was from the stump, i.e. dead humanity (Eph. 2:1). He arose from the same dead humanity that He came to save. This Christmas season, remember where God found you, where God found all humanity when He sent His Son to be our sacrifice so He could be our righteousness.

By His Grace,
Taylor