The Righteous Reign of the Branch

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. So we are in week two of our Christmas series, A Light Has Dawned, and during this particular season we are looking at the book of Isaiah, and Isaiah is a prophet, he's a spokesman to God who hears directly from God and shares with the people what God is saying. And so Isaiah is quoted quite a bit throughout the scriptures and everything, and a lot of his prophecies were fulfilled and shared in the New Testament, and so what we wanted to be able to do was to be able to look at this book that was written, well actually it was written about 700 years before Jesus came into this earth, and to see how these things were fulfilled as Jesus Christ comes into the world to take away all of our sins. And so we've been, we are going to be looking at Isaiah chapter 9 verse 2, especially for Christmas, and focusing on these words right here, the people walking in darkness, and this is for a long time now, have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. So 700 years before Jesus would come from this prophecy, that is a long time to wait for the best Christmas present in the world. I mean that's like forever, I'm really bad when it comes to Christmas presents. I knew that there were some presents that came from Santa, but I also knew that there were some presents that came from mom and dad, and I was really excited during this time, and I even remember thinking like maybe I'm going to get a computer when like it was really cool to get a computer back in the day, which I don't know why I was thinking like they're super expensive, right? And so what I would do was I'd go upstairs in my mom and dad's closet, and I would like peek through all the presents because I knew that they did the Black Friday shopping, and I remember this one particular time where my mom caught me, and they finally knew. So like man I'm really bad at that kind of stuff. So talk about 700 years, like that's impossible. How is that really gonna happen? And then what even happens after that is there's a bunch of prophets that come and share with the people of what the kingdom of God is gonna look like, and how the Savior is going to come into the world, and how he's going to fulfill everything. And then there was a point where Malachi, who was the last prophet, after that there was 400 years, like it was mentioned in the video, where the people of God did not even hear anything. They didn't hear the voice of God. They were there just like what's saying in Isaiah, that they were living in a land of deep darkness, but finally a light has dawned. So during the season, the Christian church has often referred this Christmas season as Advent. It's actually the very beginning of the church calendar, okay? And Advent simply means arrival. We are anticipating the arrival of Jesus. So we get a chance to look at all the things that are being said, and how these things are going to be fulfilled as we work our way to Christmas, as we get ready and are extremely excited for things to come. I'm excited for Christmas. I'm excited to be able to see family and friends. We have a lot of cool Christmas traditions. I get to fly home Christmas Day and be able to be in the cold north of Chicago, you know, sipping on hot chocolate and stuff like that. I'm excited for these things. And so even as a church, we are in Advent. We are awaiting for Jesus Christ to come in the world, the God who came to take away the sins of the world. And so for today, we're going to be looking at Isaiah chapter 11. You can pull that on your Bibles. You can pull that on your smartphones. We also have our notes listed on the Bible app. So if you want to be able to follow along with us there, we have some of the references that are being used and stuff that you can take home with you. And you can be able to look at that. But there's this particular sequence that's happening in this particular poetic passage from Isaiah. First of all, we see what God is going to do, how he's going to do it, and how he's going to do it. And also, it gives us an opportunity to be able to respond to the words of what the prophet is saying and how we, as a church, can live out our faith. So that's the kind of sequence that's going on. Now, oftentimes, when you pick up books like this, I'm just going to say it's really kind of confusing. It's very difficult at times, okay? And so when I was taking some biblical classes, some theological classes at my college, I had a professor, and he was really brilliant. He said the best way to really understand and discern what a prophet is saying, it's like as if you are looking into a mountain range, okay? And so we have the Mount Everest right here, and we know that that's the biggest mountain. And we're always focused on that. We always hear stories about people climbing Mount Everest, making that hike, m...