Isaiah 11: 1 - 9

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Well, let's pray. Lord God, this day is yours. This Christmas season, we want to focus on what you accomplished and what you did. And maybe all the trappings and busyness that we have just gets in the way. So give this time, Lord. We give this time to you. Holy Spirit, that you'd be working right now through the prophet Isaiah and his words, the vision he had of the future for us. The future that you would usher in, Lord. And we thank you for that, especially in a day and age of chaos and questions and struggles and hopelessness. Lord, we lift up all the people in our area, especially those at this season who are having a blue Christmas. A Christmas that is difficult and a struggle for those who have lost loved ones, for those who are going through tough times. Lord, be there. Be present. Be the present of Christmas. Be the gift of Christmas for them. And may we gift them, Lord, with you. So we ask this week to work through each one of us here this morning, that we would be able to gift someone else with your presence. That we'd be able to do something in some way that you would open up an opportunity to invite, to witness, to care, to listen, to love, to serve. And open our eyes and ears and our hearts to that, Lord, that this season would be yours, that we would be yours this week. We ask that you'd be with all the missions and ministries in this area who are celebrating this gospel hope right now. That you'd be working throughout your entire church, the one church, so that you, Lord Jesus, born in Bethlehem, would reign supreme. All this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're taking a break right now. We have been doing foundations all the way up through last Sunday, which was, we're saying the foundations of our lives, the foundation of what we build on, what we trust in, what really makes a difference, the narrative, the story that God has for us, that we saw kind of summarized in the Apostles' Creed. We got to the end of that second article on Jesus Christ. We're taking a break for these three weeks to do the gift of Christmas, which, duh, makes sense, right? Because here we come, like it or not, here comes Christmas. And then after, starting January 8th, we will go back to foundations for about five weeks, January 8th on, to deal with, I believe, in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the life everlasting. There's a lot in that, and we're looking forward to that as well. But we're hoping this series today, the start of which, is really going to give you the gift of Christmas, and you are going to be able to gift others with that as well. Today, I think we're looking at the gift of the future. Sometimes you wonder if the future is a gift, right? But we're going to talk about that today. So here, Isaiah 11, verses 1 through 10, we're going to read the whole thing. The kids did a pretty good job, but not the whole text. So we're going to read that again. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from its roots shall bear fruit, 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 of the fear of the Lord, and his delight will be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide 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. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened gaff together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples of him, shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. The gift of the future. Isaiah 11 speaks about that. And Isaiah doesn't look just to his day and age. It's not just about Christmas just barely in the future. This is not just about Christmas past or Christmas even present. It's really about Christmas to the future and beyond. This is a look at a vision that just is out of the blue, even for his day and age, 700 years before Jesus was born. But it goes beyond just that 700 year time period to all the way past our time period ...