Sticks: Root Your Decisions in Godly Wisdomಮಾದರಿ

Branching Out from Your Shady Family Tree

Nestled in the branches of our faith-family tree is a long history of poor decision-making. What we see through all the patriarchs in the Old Testament, and all the kings, and all the judges, through all the covenants, is that God’s people need a Savior. Like us, they tried their best (or didn’t) and came up short.

God didn’t leave his people in despair. The book of Isaiah tells the story of a new reality. A world where a small root of hope, Jesus, shoots out of an old stump, Israel.

As we see how far God’s people can branch out from their faith history, we can also branch out from our shady family trees.

Imagine the Israelites hearing the Isaiah 1 sermon for the first time, listening to the stern warning that without repentance, Israel is destined to be firewood and eventually just ashes. I wonder if their memory jumped back to the Garden of Eden—God’s primordial vision of the world as a flourishing garden where people chose to live wisely and obediently. Would the Israelites connect Isaiah’s image of burnt firewood to the fire of the cherubim guarding the Garden of Eden?

Isaiah’s book starts with a jolting message from God but little information about who Isaiah is and how he came into his role as a herald of God’s judgment. We don’t learn more about Isaiah’s call into ministry until chapter six. As Isaiah describes his vision of God in his temple and his encounter with God himself, notice the unifying patterns of Isaiah’s setting. Literary threads connect this throne-room scene to the trees in the Garden of Eden and the Burning Bush. Even after this judgment - a fire consuming a city, a stump will survive, and a holy seed inside it will sprout to life.

Notice the connection between Isaiah’s moment of calling to the prophetic ministry and the way the Messiah is talked about as a stump.

Isaiah says that a Messiah is coming to Israel who will be wholly devoted to God, unlike the rebellious Israelites. The Savior will have the spirit of the Lord resting on him so that he is full of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might and knowledge, and fear of the Lord. This shoot from the stump of Jesse will be everything the people of God are currently not. Whatever they lack, the Messiah will fulfill. The promise of the suffering servant, the shoot of Jesse, the branch coming out of the stump of Israel, will one day be fulfilled in Jesus.

Isaiah spoke his words to hurting people experiencing the consequences of unfaithfulness. As the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus show us, though, that exile is never the end of God’s story. We are never abandoned.

Prayer: God, sometimes I feel condemned by my shady family tree. Help me to remember that your Son is my seed of hope—the one whose faithfulness to me makes it possible for me to be faithful to you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.