======================================================================== THE BRANCH AND BANNER OF DAVID by John Piper ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon delves into Isaiah chapter 11, focusing on the prophetic fulfillment of the shoot from the stump of Jesse, symbolizing Jesus Christ. It emphasizes the importance of seeking Jesus as the signal for the nations, the need for radical truthfulness and righteousness in judgment, and the ultimate hope of believers in the glory of Christ as their final home in the new heavens and new earth. Topics: "Prophetic Fulfillment", "Hope in Christ" Scripture References: Isaiah 11:1, Isaiah 11:10, John 7:24, Revelation 22:16, Romans 15:12, Isaiah 11:10, 2 Thessalonians 2:8, Luke 4:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon delves into Isaiah chapter 11, focusing on the prophetic fulfillment of the shoot from the stump of Jesse, symbolizing Jesus Christ. It emphasizes the importance of seeking Jesus as the signal for the nations, the need for radical truthfulness and righteousness in judgment, and the ultimate hope of believers in the glory of Christ as their final home in the new heavens and new earth. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let's pray together. Father, I ask now that your name would be exalted, that the signal for the nations would burn brightly and that they would come. I pray that our hearts would be made seeing so that we don't miss the signal that's being lifted up in the world today. The great prophetic fulfillment that is happening in our very day and midst. Don't leave us dead with uncircumcised hearts. Make us live, make us see, make us hear Christ. In His name I pray, Amen. Amen. Please turn to Isaiah chapter 11. Looming on the horizon as Isaiah prophesied to Judah about 700 years before Jesus is the massive empire of Assyria with Sennacherib at the head, huffing and puffing in great arrogance in his threats against Jerusalem. And God responds that you are only an axe and a saw in my hand and when I am done with you I will hew you down. And so you get the climax of the judgment of God on the axe in his hand at the end of verse or at the end of chapter 10. So I hope you're there with me. Isaiah 10 verses 33-34 Behold the Lord of hosts will lap the bowels with terrifying power. The great in height will be hewn down and the lofty will be brought low. He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe and Lebanon will fall by the majestic one. That's God. So with a picture in front of us is a of a forest with no trees left standing but stumps everywhere hewn down by God. The prophecy of the shoot from the stump of Jesse begins. Verse 1 chapter 11. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. A branch from his roots shall bear fruit. Now Jesse is David's father and therefore a shoot or a branch growing out of the stump of Jesse is a son of David in fulfillment of 2nd Samuel chapter 7 that a descendant of David will rise to rule the people and the nations and we know we are on to messianic Messiah territory in chapter 11. The son of David, the shoot of Jesse is here in chapter 11. So God cut down the thickets of the forest. Lebanon laid bare by the majestic one. Here comes the shoot of Jesse. Not a whiff of indication that 700 years might elapse between chapter 10 and 11 or maybe 2700 years. Just take out the chapter break. Read it with me. Verse 34 God will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe. Lebanon will fall by the majestic one. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. This is so typical of the prophets and so mystifying to us. Over and over again in the prophetic books you get prophecies of an event that's going to happen five years out, a year out, 20 years out. Enough the slightest indication that what's coming next might be 700 years out or 2700 years out. When I was in seminary cutting my teeth on prophetic books, one of the really helpful things that I was taught was that the way the prophets look at the future is to see several mountains in a mountain range as one mountain without the distinctions of the ranges in their prophetic reckoning. So here I was standing on East Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, where my little back house was, looking north, and there's Mount Wilson. At least every three weeks you could see it because the smog would go away. And it looked like a mountain. I thought it was a mountain for months. And then if you hike that way or drive that way you realize it's not a mountain. It's a series of about five ridges, each of them higher than the other, and you just can't distinguish the ridges. That's the way I was taught to to see the prophets, and I think that's very helpful. I think that's right. We called it prophetic perspective in those days. So here's Isaiah looking at Mount Wilson, and he's not distinguishing the ridges of Sennacherib's arrival and destruction, and the ridge of the first coming when the when the shooter Jesse shows up. It's just verse 34, verse 1, no chapter break, no time indicators. They're just going to happen. And he is granted to see that some ridges are very close. Chapter 37, he knows what's going to happen to Sennacherib. And when? And according to 1st Peter, prophets wanted to understand what they were saying about what sort of person or time they were predicting by the Spirit of Christ in them as they spoke of the sufferings and the glories. And they didn't understand how it all fit together, and we have a hard time understanding too. It might perplex us since it perplexed them. However, we do have a few advantages over the prophets, which sounds strange because they were inspired and we're not. But consider that we have all the prophets and can compare them. Consider that we have the New Testament perspective on how the prophets were fulfilled, and consider that we have 2,700 years of watching it all play out so that we can, in retrospect, make some comments about what has happened. So we do have some advantages over them, do we not, and therefore perhaps should be able to draw inferences out which they couldn't see. That certainly is the case with regard to Jesus' first arrival, which inclines me to pause here and and make my own prophecy and give you an exhortation in response to my prophecy. Many in my generation—I'm 69—many in my—so is Don Carson. Tim is younger. Many in my generation, and I'm talking 60 years or so now, of evangelicals have held dispensational eschatological chart drawing in such derision that we have been virtually paralyzed in studying prophecy. For two generations, perhaps, we have failed to study prophecy with anything like the rigor that it deserves. We have been so afraid of being viewed as one of those Zionist, right- wing, Antichrist-sniffing, culture-denying, alarmist leftovers from the Schofield prophecy conference era that we give hardly any attention whatsoever to putting the pieces together. Here's my prophecy. I prophesy that younger evangelicals who take the Bible seriously will start to feel—already are— that the paralysis of my generation was an overreaction to prophetic studies. Chris Tomlin and others will write more worship songs about the second coming. And younger scholars will not be embarrassed to write doctoral dissertations on Daniel 9 and Matthew 24 and 2 Thessalonians 2, unintimidated by the academic scorn of futuristic possibilities. End of prophecy. The exhortation now is go for it. However, in the process, don't lose the real gains of the last 60 years. The chastening of our capacities to predict the end. Late great planet Earth got it wrong. So did the billboards in Minneapolis two years ago. And the full-blooded engagement with the challenges of the present day. If anything is clear from the prophets, it is that their prophecies were intended to empower present God-centered, get-centered righteousness and sacrifice for the sake of alleviating the suffering of the poor and others. And now we know eternal suffering. End of exhortation. So as we walk through Isaiah 11, as far as we can get in the time we have, is to see four sections. So here they are. Let's take them one at a time. Hope your Bibles are open. Test all things. Hold fast to what is biblical. Verses 1 to 5 is the first section and it is the character of the shoot of Jesse and the son of David and how he rules. Character of the son of David and how he rules. Verse 1, There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. Now that should sound familiar. Almost the same as chapter 61 where Jesus quotes Isaiah in Luke 418, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I'm him. I am the one. I am the shoot of Jesse. So we know from the way Jesus handled Isaiah 61, which is parallel to 11.1 that Jesus self-consciously saw himself as the fulfillment of this prophecy. Verse 2, the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Three pairs describing the Spirit that is upon the shoot of Jesse Jesus Christ. Wisdom and understanding are the foundation of the next two, counsel and might. If you're going to give counsel and wield might, what do you need? Wisdom, understanding. And the third pair, that's where we're going. The earth filled with knowledge and fear of the Lord. That comes in verse 9. So the point of this Spirit upon the shoot of Jesse is he is totally equipped to rescue the world with counsel and might and knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He's totally equipped to fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and rescue this creation from its suppression of knowledge and truth in sin. Verse 3, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. What a statement! So absolutely contrary to everybody's experience. I love to be afraid. I delight. It is my central all-satisfying delight to fear my God. Strange statement. Glorious statement. His joy is to stand in awe of God, is yours, is your central bottom joy, stand in awe of God. Fear is more than that. His joy is to tremble at the terrible prospect of displeasing God. And that makes him utterly reliable in his judgments among men. Come back to this a little more later to unpack. Whoa, how does that work? My delight is totally in the fear of the Lord. I judge justly. What's that connection? Verse 3, middle of the verse, he shall not judge by what he sees. This is flowing out of his delight in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what he sees or decide disputes by what his ears hear. Why is justice blindfolded? Might come from this text. Verse 4, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with 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. God's, the shoot of Jesse's judgments in the world are not based on appearance and opinion of others. His joy is in the fear of the Lord, not the fear of man. He receives nobody's face. He is impartial. He knows where his joy comes from and he doesn't need your smile in the courtroom or your approval or your disapproval does he fear. He doesn't look at people's faces. He looks to God and he's totally satisfied in God. Therefore, he judges with perfect justice. Paul uses the words of the end of verse 4 in 2nd Thessalonians. The words I'm referring to in verse 4 are with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 2nd Thessalonians 2.8 Then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth. So now we know that Paul saw a fulfillment of verse 4 of Isaiah 11 at the second coming and Jesus saw a fulfillment of verses 1 to 5 at the first coming. I am here and this text today is being fulfilled in your hearing. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Which means again the Mount Wilson of verses 1 to 5 has at least these two ranges in it. Here's the first period of redemptive history with Christ coming to offer himself as a ransom for all. Here's another mountain range. He's gonna kill all the wicked with the breath of his mouth. Both of them undistinguished in verses 1 through 4 or 1 through 5. End of section 1. A description of the Messiah and a description of his reign. Part 2 verses 6 through 9. The peace of God's Christ's global kingdom. Verse 6. The wolf no time signature at all. 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 fatted calf together and the little child shall lead them and the cow and the bear shall graze. The young shall lie down together and the lion shall eat straw like an ox. The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adders den and they shall not hurt or destroy. In all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That's radically new. That's really new. The summary in verse 9. Are you with me? Verse 9. The summary in verse 9 has a negative and then a positive. Negative. They shall not hurt all these animals that kill kids and kill each other. Probably could throw viruses and bacteria in there. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain. No, they will not. Hurting forces and destructive forces that touch animals and children gone. How are they gone? Next half of the verse. It really does begin with because. Key in Hebrew. Because the animals will not kill each other. Because the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So now we know that the kingdom is global. Not just Israel. It's global. And we know it's an earthly kingdom. Got animals. Little children playing. And these animals act according to the knowledge of God. I don't know what that means. I mean, I don't know how it works. I know the outcome. The outcome is that when the knowledge of the Lord is no longer suppressed like it is in Romans 1 18, but explosively filling it changes the animals. Animals right now are not acting in accord with the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is not filling the earth the way it's supposed to. It's being suppressed even by the animals. They're not acting the way they're supposed to. Remarkable. There are more things that are beyond us than we can count. So the spirit of the King, spirit of knowledge in the fear of the Lord, is so powerful and so present. Remember, we've got the King here. The shoot of Jesse is here. And moving out from the King in the presence and this power is a knowledge of God and a fear of God that is so powerfully filling the earth the animals are changed by. When is that going to happen? Don Carson, when he gave me this assignment, put a princess in deal with Isaiah 65. This is my sermon. No, no, this is Don Carson. I would have done it anyway, Don. I think. It made things very hard. When will this happen? In Isaiah 65 25, you might want to go there. This is real controversial. I might even name some names here. We'll see, depends on. Verse 25 of Isaiah 65 is a quote more or less, almost exact, from Isaiah 11 9. The wolf, I'm reading Isaiah 65 25, the wolf and the lamb shall graze together, skip a few words, they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain says the Lord. That's a quote straight out of Isaiah 11 9. So we're dealing with the same period. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. Isaiah 11 6 to 9 and Isaiah 65 the paragraph 17 to 25, same description of reality. The beginning of the paragraph in Isaiah 65 at verse 17 says, behold, I create or I am creating new heavens and new earth and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. So we are reading a description of the new heavens and the new earth in both Isaiah 65 17 to 25 and Isaiah 11 6 to 9. The wolf is lying down with the lamb grazing together. The child totally free from harm has walked away from home a half a mile playing with snakes. Not a problem. There's a glitch and the glitch is that in verse 20, use your eyes, of chapter 65, this child lives a long happy life, grows up and dies in the new earth. No more shall there be in it, that is Jerusalem in the new earth, an infant who lives but a few days or an old man who does not fill out his days. For the young man shall die a hundred years old. Not as young, won't get killed by a snake, won't have a car wreck or anything like that. He'll, he will die in a ripe old age and the sinner, whoa, where'd he come from, a hundred years old benefiting from all of this newness will die and go to hell, shall be cursed. So we have a new earth with animals that don't kill each other, children that don't die in infancy, but they grow up, live a long happy fruitful life, and they die when they're old and so do sinners and they die and get judged. What are we to make of that? One solution, namely the solution of amillennialism is, I suppose postmillennialism too, although I haven't read their take on this, is to say these words are metaphorical in chapter 65 about the death of the young man growing old and dying at a hundred and the reference in the chapter really is to the final state where there's no death and there is no sin. So that's, that's one solution. Metaphorical. The other solution, another solution, is a premillennial take which says that this is another ridge in the mountain range that pops up, called the millennium, after the second coming. And there is real newness in the millennium. Animals do what they're supposed to do in God's knowledge and children don't die and everybody lives to a ripe old age and then some die and sinners are there and they are judged afterwards. Now, I've read what I hope are the best efforts of the amillennialists to help me understand how this is a metaphor of not dying. Here's what one of them says, and that person is not in this room. What we have no capacity to understand, what we have no capacity to understand can be grasped only through what we know. We are dealing with metaphor. And I say, the problem is I do have a capacity to understand, you will never die. That's not a complex sentence and it doesn't embrace any realities that are beyond my grasp. A young man will never die is understandable. I don't need any metaphors to help me grasp it, especially metaphors that say he's going to die communicates that he won't die. Sorry, I'm just having a hard time, all you amillennialists, and I know most of you are that. So I'm not yet persuaded, yet willing to change. Don't see it yet. My suggestion is verse 17 of chapter 65 when it says, Behold, I create, it's the Cal participle of Barah, Boreh, Cal participle. I am creating, I'm creating newness. I'm creating a new heaven. I'm creating a new earth. First, Christ, the Messiah, the shooter of justice, breaks into the world in the incarnation. That's the beginning of the new earth, the beginning of the new heavens. Things happen there that weren't supposed to happen until the last day. I get forgiven of my sins. We'll get healed. Some are rising from the dead. This is an astonishing arrival of the new heavens and the new earth. And then the second coming, it initiates another one of those ridges. Things go up in their glory and newness, but not all the way up because you got death and you got sin. And then, and then at the end, the final victory. So that's, that's the way I take it. Now, let's see if we can be fair here. It may be fair to say, historic premillennialism, that's me, sometimes uses fanciful speculation for how to make the conditions of the millennium work. And our millennialism sometimes uses fanciful exegesis to show how it can't work. So pick your fancy. Which is one of the reasons, among others, that millennial views are not in the gospel coalition documents as who we are, and that's a good decision. I help write that stuff. That's a good decision. So that my friend Sam, there he sits, he's even smiling back at me. He wrote the book on our millennialism. Sam, I count you as one of my very best precious friends. Isn't that good? I just feel so happy about that. I'm glad you're here. So go to Sam and ask him what he would do. I told him over lunch I was gonna say this and he said, here's a problem text for both of us, you know. I said, I know. End of section two. In the last two, I have to go more quickly. Verse 10 is the third section. So maybe I didn't summarize. Verses six to nine, line lying down with the Lamb and the earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, is a description of the new heavens and the new earth in the making in their millennial expression or their metaphorical, somehow, which I don't see yet. However, let's just let's end on this note for that section. Though we may not all agree on how to solve those troubling, that problem of how many ridges are in Mount Wilson, we are thrilled. I hope this is true right across this room. We are thrilled to agree. There'll be no death. When redemptive history is done, and all the ridges are done, there will be no death. There will be no sin. Lions will be lying down with the Lamb in the new earth and Jesus will be king. That's glorious. Verse 10, the nations of the world are streaming to this messianic kingdom right across its ridges, I'll argue, for a real easy reason. Verse 10, in that day the root of Jesse will stand as a signal for the peoples. Of him shall the nations seek or inquire, and his resting place shall be literally glory. Not glorious. I don't like that. Glory. His resting place shall be kavod. Glory. Paul quotes this verse. It is the clearest quotation in all the New Testament of Isaiah 11. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 15, verse 12, to show that his mission to the Gentiles, to the nations, to those who have not yet named the name, is a fulfillment of that verse. I know at least that dimension of chapter 11 is being fulfilled in Paul's mission. Wherever else it'll be fulfilled, fine, it's being fulfilled by Paul. So come, nations. The signal is up. Come. Seek Messiah. Rest in the glory of the Messiah. He will welcome you. He will let you be joined to his people. And the last section of this chapter 11 is verses 11 to 16, which I have to pass over. It would be even more controversial, but 13 minutes. That's just 13 minutes. And so we got to get to application. And all, I would just say this, what these verses do, 11 to 16, is predict the in-gathering of the remnant of Israel. Indistinction from the nations. Pretty clear distinction from the nations. Verse 11. In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time. Probably referring to the Exodus, because the word recover here is the word that was used back in Exodus 15. The Lord will extend his hand a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people. Verse 12. I will raise a signal for the nations, and they will, and we'll assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. In other words, the signal goes up. Come, nations. The signal goes up. Go get in my people's way. I'm gonna flatten your mountains. I'm gonna dry up your rivers, and I am bringing the remnant of my people back. That's the way I read Romans 11, but we won't go there. Let's do three applications in conclusion. Number one. Jesus Christ, the shoot of the stump of Jesse, is God's saving signal to the nations. Today. So we've already seen Paul quote it. Romans 15, verse 9. The Messiah became a servant to Israel in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written Isaiah 11 10. The entire mission of the church to gather in the nations is Isaiah 11 10. The 20th century. These are thrilling days to be alive. The 20th century — I know it's the 21st century — the 20th century was the century of the greatest expansion of the Christian Church in the history of the world. No century came close. Europe, Canada, Australia went totally backward. The beginning of the 20th century, in those areas, massive influence of Christian cultural influence. Today, almost nothing. Whether America will follow in the almost complete secularization of the world, I do not know. What I know is that while Europe was going backward, and Canada was going backward, and Australia was going backward, Asia, Africa, and Latin America surged so far beyond where they were at the beginning of the 20th century, in the ingathering of people who named the name of Christ, that it completely, tenfold, compensated for the losses in Europe, and Canada, and Australia. It was an amazing century. Read the books by Mark Knowles, his New Memoir, or Philip Jenkins, or Andrew Walls. Read the story of the 20th century. Absolutely off the charts what God did. While all around us it looked like everything's going backwards, that's not what God's doing. God's got another plan than that backward movement. So whether America... That's awesome. I know there's hundreds and hundreds of you from Latin America here, and oh how I rejoice in that conference, that pre-conference, and what God's doing. I'm just talking about those of us who more or less live here now. Whether God will follow, let us follow, cause us to follow, give us up to follow the Western powers in secularization, and the irrelevance, the irrelevance historically, it will bring. For God's purposes among the nations, I don't know, will he find ten men in Sodom? I don't know. But this I know, this I know, if you have any strength left in your church, give it to the nations. Give it to the nations, because the signal is being lifted. We live in a day of stunning fulfillment of Isaiah 11. God is gathering his people from all the nations. Oh, to be a part of that with our last breath. That's point one of application. Number two, the suit of Jesse judges with truth and calls his people to be a people of righteousness and truthfulness. Verse three, the suit of Jesse shall not judge by what his eyes see, but with righteousness he will judge. Jesus quotes, let's just say, alludes to, uses the words of this verse three in John 724 like this, do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. In other words, Jesus is willing to take a word from the prophet of the kind of person he was going to be and use it to describe what his people ought to be. That's what he's doing. Justice, righteousness, delighting in the fear of the Lord, not cowed by appearances, doing what's right at any cost. That's the way Jesus handles this. This is not moralizing. Don't be afraid to use prophets that way. Don't feel like you just got to do all big biblical theological arc drawing and that's all you can do. Go for what Jesus went for. Be Jesus-like. He's calling us to be people of radical truthfulness here. Jesus is, Isaiah is. People who do not judge by appearances, racial differences don't make a person guilty or innocent. High-standing in corporate life or wearing a blue uniform on the police force doesn't justify or indict at all. You don't look at appearances. You don't make judgments on appearances. We are people of truth. We write letters to people to get the facts before we run to Twitter and Facebook and blogging. We are truth-driven Messiah people. He didn't look at people's appearances. He didn't judge by what he saw, but he judged with justice and rightness. He was blindfolded to what doesn't matter. That's what the word impartial means, not the lifting up of the face, cowing the judge as though some defendant or prosecutor out there could make the judge feel a little bit squirmy. He is totally committed to truth. Let the chips fall where they will. That's what he's calling us to be in America today and to be people of meticulous truth about where we put our names. If you write it, put your name on it. If you don't write it, don't put your name on it. And if somebody else writes it with you, put both your names on it. We do not use the ways of the world in dishonesty to make a buck or win a soul. The prophets are for now. We have a great shoot of justice. He reigns over the world. He looks down and he has expectations of his people to be like him in this world. Oh, how free he was. How did he get to be so free? His delight was in the fear of the Lord. Verse 3, Therefore he will judge not by what his eyes see. He doesn't care what people look like when he's making a judgment. Not by what he hears. Human appearances, human opinions. He's not intimidated. They don't entice him. They don't intimidate him. He's absolutely free. Are you free? Are you free to just say the truth at the PTA meeting, in front of the camera, let the chips fall where they will? I know where my delight is. I know where my satisfaction is, and it is in your approval. It's his approval. I will speak the truth because I have the shoot of Jesse who reigns over the world. My delight is in the fear of the Lord, not the fear of man. Last application, number three. The glory of Jesus Christ is our final home. Coming home. New heavens and new earth. I didn't have to work hard to make that fit here. In fact, I almost saw it without the word home before I thought about it. Question, what did Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation do with Isaiah 11 concerning himself? Here's what he did. He took the identification of himself in verse 1, shoot from the stump of Jesse, and the identification of himself in verse 10, root of Jesse. Shoot, root. Stump, shoot, root. Here's what he said. Revelation 22, 16. I, Jesus, am the root and the descendant of David. Bright and morning star. Not just descendant, root, source, offspring. Father, son. Beginning, end. And is that not how Jesus stumped the Pharisees? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son? End of conversation. Pre- existence, before Abraham was, I am. Incarnation, born of a virgin in the line of David. We have a great king. What was his destiny according to Isaiah 11? What was his destiny? Verse 10. In that day, the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples, of him the nation shall inquire, they shall seek, they'll come. And his resting place, that's where I'm getting home, his resting place shall be glory. When all the work of redemption and salvation is done, Jesus will enter his rest, his final home, and one word will describe him and it, glory. And that means that the sum of the beauties of all of his person will be glory, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of might, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of the fear of the Lord, the delight in the fear of the Lord, the delight in the fear of the Lord. This whole panorama of the beauties of this person will be the glory of that home, and it will be the beauties, the sum of the beauties of all of his work. The work, what are they? Nations gathered, Israel restored, curse removed, new heaven, new earth, no harm, no destruction anymore. That's his resting place, and its name will be glory. And therefore, all who have come to the signal, you, all who have come to the signal of the shoot of Jesse will sorrow no more, ever, and every imaginable joy will be satisfied, and you will be finally home. Father, I feel so thankful that the kinds of disagreements we are obliged in this fallen world of imperfection and finitude to live with don't diminish the glory. You are so stunning. So Jesus, be exalted now. Grant that we would all in a few days go and put our hands to the cause of justice and put our hands to the cause of missions among the nations because we have a home that is completely secure, and it is you and your glory. I ask this for your great name's sake. Amen. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/2B5OzlKXC4A.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/john-piper/the-branch-and-banner-of-david/ ========================================================================