Isaiah 11:1-16

Promise can describe an oath or a vow to do something or it can describe a state of hopefulness.  Today’s passage describes both types of promise.  God has made many promises to the nation of Israel in the form of covenants that were made with Abraham, David and the nation as a whole.  Those promises have found partial fulfillment, but we have never seen a time in history when those promises have been completely fulfilled.  We must conclude that God is planning to fulfill these promises at some point in the future.  Isaiah seems to be describing those days.  They are days of great promise in the sense that there is more hope in the description of those days than we have seen at any point in the history of the earth since the fall in the Garden of Eden.  These truly will be days of great hope.

THE REIGN OF JESUS: A descendant of David will come forth to rule over the nations.  Jesus is obviously the fulfillment of this prophecy as is made clear in all of the genealogies.  Jesus is the Messiah that has been promised to the nation of Israel and to all the nations of the world.  However, what Isaiah did not imagine, or any of the Old Testament authors for that matter, was that Jesus would come as a suffering sacrifice before He came as a reigning ruler.  This passage does not describe the first coming of Christ to the earth, but it describes His second coming when He will establish His millennial reign.  This will be a reign like nothing we have ever seen before.  He will reign with perfect justice and righteousness.  The Spirit of God will be upon Him and we will see a faithfulness and peacefulness like has never been experienced before.  Wars will end.  Animals will not devour one another and children will play with snakes without any danger whatsoever.  All the nations will seek the Lord and submit to His holy reign.  The nation of Israel will experience perfect peace and they will worship the Lord Jesus as their Messiah and King.


THE RETURN OF ISRAEL: When Jesus establishes His kingdom on the earth all the armies of the earth that oppose Him will be destroyed.  He will come in judgment and the nations that have lived in rebellion against the Lord will fall before His almighty power.  Israel, which will be spread out in all the nations of the world will be called back to their home land where they will dwell in perfect peace.  There will no longer be a division between Israel and Judah.  All of the tribes will unite in perfect harmony with one another and there will be no outside threats to the security of Israel.  They will worship the Lord and lead all the nations in an anthem of praise to the Lord Jesus.  This peaceful return of Israel to The Promised Land will happen when the Lord returns to the earth.  It is a wonderful promise to which the nations can look forward because it will be a period of history with more promise than any we have yet to experience.

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