The Perfect Nature of Christ’s Glorious Kingdom

Isaiah 11

On that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will look to him for guidance, and his resting place will be glorious. (Isa 11:10)

Main Idea: The perfect future reign of Jesus Christ is described, with its humble beginnings, its irresistible power, its absolute justice, its perfect peace, and its universal reach to the ends of the earth.

1. The Humble Beginning of Christ’s Kingdom (11:1)
2. The Divine Power of Christ’s Kingdom (11:2-3)
3. The Absolute Justice of Christ’s Kingdom (11:3-5)
4. The Perfect Peace of Christ’s Kingdom (11:6-9)
5. The Universal Reach of Christ’s Kingdom (11:10-16)

Every four years American voters have to weigh and evaluate a new array of grandiose promises made by candidates aspiring to the office of president. Those with a sense of history will be familiar with the broken promises made in these campaigns:

• Woodrow Wilson’s pledge in 1916 to keep the US out of the “Great War” (World War I), broken in 1917 with the declaration of war on Germany.
• Hebert Hoover’s pledge in 1928 to end poverty in America, famously promising to put “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” This promise was broken within one year by the worst economic depression in the history of this country.
• Franklin Roosevelt’s pledges in 1932 to maintain balanced budgets and to decrease government spending by 25 percent, as well as his pledge in 1940 to keep the US out of World War II—all of them broken.
• George H. W. Bush’s campaign pledge, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” The pledge was famously broken in his 1990 budget compromise to reduce the federal deficit.

Throughout history people have sought the perfect society and the perfect government to rule it. The yearning for this explains why people so consistently believe new promises of a grand vision of government. But the amazing promises of Isaiah 11 for the kingdom of Jesus Christ are far more glorious, and certainly more eternal, than all of the governmental promises in history.

The Humble Beginning of Christ’s Kingdom

Isaiah 11:1

The perfect kingdom and its perfect King emerged from quite a humble origin. Nothing could be more bleak than the picture of a stump where once a mighty tree flourished. Verse 1 speaks of a shoot coming up from the stump of Jesse, who was King David’s father. So the tree of Jesse refers to the promise made to David to have his descendent sit on an eternal throne (2 Sam 7:12-13). But because of their sins, God exiled Judah, and the promises made to David seemed to have come to nothing. After the exile to Babylon, the names in Jesus’s kingly genealogy in Matthew 1 are obscure. The tree of Jesse had become a stump. But God willed that there be life in the roots of that stump, as he said he would in Isaiah 6:13. And out of this totally humbled obscurity would come a “shoot” and a “branch” to fulfill the promises to David. This prophecy will be restated plainly in Isaiah 53:2: “He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.” The humble origins of the most glorious King and kingdom in history were these: a conquered people in a lowly backwater of the Roman Empire—obscure, poor, powerless.

The Divine Power of Christ’s Kingdom

Isaiah 11:2-3

However humble were the origins of this supernatural Branch coming from the lineage of Jesse, yet he would be perfectly anointed with the Spirit of God for his task as King. The word “Christ” (Hb “Messiah”) literally means “Anointed One,” and the oil poured on the head of a king represented the outpouring of the Spirit on him for his task. Jesus was perfectly and completely anointed by the Spirit. It can be observed that there is a sevenfold description of the Spirit in these verses: he is the Spirit of the Lord, of wisdom and of understanding, of counsel and of strength, of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord (v. 2). This sevenfold Spirit represents the perfection of Christ’s anointing, and it is repeated in the Trinitarian vision in Revelation 1:4 (“the seven spirits before his throne”). This anointing of Jesus shows comprehensive wisdom and power—the two attributes an effective king needs.

Yet all of this wisdom and power does not in any way challenge the overarching authority of almighty God, as human kings usually do in their arrogance. Rather, King Jesus will “delight . . . in the fear of the Lord” (v. 3). That means that the exaltation of Christ is actually an exaltation of God himself.

The Absolute Justice of Christ’s Kingdom

Isaiah 11:3-5

Jesus judges perfectly, not relying on his five senses but reading people’s hearts by the standard of absolute truth. Therefore his judgment will always be perfectly righteous because he seeks to please the Father (John 5:30). Because Jesus delights in the fear of the Lord, he has wrapped righteousness and faithfulness as a sash around his waist (v. 5); and by this wisdom and power he will judge the poor righteously and slay the wicked powerfully—with merely the command from his lips. Thus, in Christ’s kingdom righteousness will be perfect and crime will be gone forever. Scripture teaches that Jesus will be the Judge of the whole earth, and every human being who has ever lived will stand before him to be judged (Matt 25:31-32; John 5:22; 2 Cor 5:10). At that judgment, Christ will weed out of his kingdom all those guilty of lawlessness and will destroy them eternally in hell (Matt 13:41). Those saved by his grace will shine in perfect righteousness forever.

The Perfect Peace of Christ’s Kingdom

Isaiah 11:6-9

Human governments and societies cannot be characterized by perfect peace because of the seething wickedness of the natural heart (Isa 57:20-21). Because of the righteousness and power of Christ’s judgments, there will only be perfect peace forever in his kingdom. Verses 6-9 capture that peace in powerful imagery. These well-known verses are favorites for those who teach a literal millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ physically on earth. The doctrine of the millennium comes from Revelation 20:1-7; it is distinct from the eternal state (the new heaven and new earth) in that there is still natural life, including births, sin, and death.^[6] This passage speaks of infants playing beside the cobra’s pit and not being harmed (v. 8). So also animals that would naturally have been enemies (wolves and lambs, leopards and goats, calves and lions) will live in complete harmony with each other, the predator no longer consuming the prey. However, all of these things could still be true in the eternal state as well—all except the existence of infants. So whether these verses refer to the millennium or the eternal state, they will most certainly be literally fulfilled in Christ’s future kingdom—a kingdom of almost indescribable tranquility. The consummation of that kingdom is captured powerfully in verse 9: “The land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water.” No longer studying how to kill one another or feed their own lusts, redeemed sinners will study the Lord’s glory in all aspects of a magnificent creation.

The Universal Reach of Christ’s Kingdom

Isaiah 11:10-16

Verse 10 stands as a pinnacle for the glorious spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth: this humble King, the Root of Jesse, will stand prominently before the eyes of all the nations on the face of the earth; and his resting place will be glorious. As we’ve seen in Isaiah 2, people from all over the earth will stream to that banner, loving and worshiping Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all their aspirations for a perfect king and a perfect society. The land he rules will radiate with his glory, and all creation will glow with astonishing beauty. Christ will reach out his sovereign hand to gather the scattered children of God and make them one (John 11:52). In Isaiah 11:11-16 their nations of origin are listed as “Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the coasts and islands of the west.” These localities symbolize the geographical extent of the spread of the gospel, beginning in Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). The streaming of “his people” will be like the original exodus of Israel from Egypt (vv. 15-16), only this time it will include Jews and Gentiles alike.

Application

We must learn not to judge God’s work by mere external appearance. The Jews and the lineage of Jesse seemed to be completely cut off, but God ordained an infinite glory to arise from the stump of Jesse. So also Christ’s kingdom, so silently and imperceptibly advancing among the meek and lowly of the earth, cannot be assessed by the five senses. We who have embraced Christ and entered his kingdom should be fully dedicated to advancing the gospel by proclamation, not looking for utopian societies to come by flawed human governments. Every presidential campaign carries the usual promises, and most of them fail in the end. Christ’s promised kingdom is far more glorious and can never fail.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How does this chapter address the hopes of all humanity for a perfect government and a perfect society?
2. Why is it impossible for human governments (kings) to make good on their grand visions for a perfect society? Why are Christ’s promises different and better than theirs?
3. What is the significance of the image of a shoot coming up from the stump of Jesse? How is it easy for us to underestimate what God is doing in the world when we judge by mere appearance?
4. How does Isaiah 11:1 relate to Isaiah 53:2? How does Christ fulfill each of these verses by his humble birth and absence of physical splendor?
5. How does the sevenfold Spirit of God perfectly endow Jesus to reign over his kingdom? How do these words point to a perfect combination of wisdom and power?
6. Why are wisdom and power indispensable for a perfect King? How would love fit into those attributes?
7. How do you understand the promises of verses 6-9? Do you see a description of the millennial reign of Christ here? Or could this be the eternal state? The problem with the first: there seems to be no end mentioned in the text, but the millennium will come to an end; the problem with the second: how can there be infants in the eternal state?
8. What does it mean to delight in the fear of the Lord? How do these words seem contradictory? How does Jesus perfectly harmonize them and make the fear of the Lord delightful?
9. How does the promise that the earth will be “as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water” point to the glories of life in Christ’s eternal kingdom?
10. How does verse 10 point to the advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth? What details come in verses 11-16 that help us understand the spread of the gospel among Gentile nations?