Most of us like to complain about our
leaders. It does not matter who’s in power or what they’re doing, the
chances are we’re going to complain about it somehow. It’s just what we
do. And it’s not just what we do in this
country. In pretty much every country in
the world, people have complaints about their leaders. And whoever’s at
the top, whether you call him a king or a president or a prime minister or
whatever, is going to be the one complained about the most. It’s just human nature to do that.
So let me ask you--what would a perfect leader be
like? Whether it’s a perfect king or a perfect president or a perfect
prime minister or whatever. What would he or she be like? What are the qualities that this perfect
leader would have?
Well, it would be someone with credibility, right? I
mean, we don’t want some nobody off the street to be our leader. We want
someone who’s respected, someone who has the resume a leader should have.
Someone whose background makes them appear qualified to be a leader.
This person would probably need to be wise, don’t you
think? That might be the one of the biggest qualities we’d want from this
perfect leader--wisdom. They’d be someone who understood people. Our wants, our needs, our fears, our desires,
all of that and more. They’d understand what we go through in our lives.
They’d probably be someone who knew how to help
people. I’m not necessarily talking about help by giving away
things--that might or might not be part of it. I’m talking about helping
people by teaching them to live a good life.
A life that does not just make them happy but helps their family and
their friends and their town and society at large. A perfect leader would
probably be able to do that.
They’d also have strength of character, right? They’d
be someone you could trust. Someone who
meant what they said and said what they meant. Someone who you knew had
your best interests at heart, and not their own. Someone who’d never let you down.
They’d not be easily fooled, either. You would not be
able to pull the wool over their eyes. A bright smile and a slick line of
BS would not impress them a bit. They’d know better. They’d make their decisions based on what was
right and on nothing else.
And they’d be someone who had faith in God. Someone
who believed in God, who loved God, who tried to live a life pleasing to
God. Our perfect leader would be someone who loved the Lord with all his
heart and soul and mind and strength, and who loved their neighbor as themself.
So, why am I going through all this? Because that’s
the person Isaiah described in our reading for today.
Isaiah starts by saying this person would be “a
shoot...from the stump of Jesse.” That means this person would be a
descendant of Jesse, who was the father of King David. King David, of
course, was the greatest leader Israel ever had. So, the descendant of King David would have instant
credibility.
Isaiah describes someone who has “the Spirit of the Lord”
resting on him. And what kind of a spirit will that be? It will be a Spirit of wisdom. It will be a Spirit of understanding.
It will be a Spirit of counsel and of might.
It will be a Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. In other words, the Spirit of the Lord will
give this person all the qualities we talked about--wisdom, understanding,
helping people, strength of character, all of that. And you cannot fool
this person. He will not judge by what
he sees or by what he hears, he will judge with righteousness and with
justice.
And this person will be a person of faith. In fact,
this person will “delight” in the fear of the Lord. And with the Lord’s
Spirit resting on them, how could they not?
As many of you know, the person Isaiah is talking about is
Jesus Christ. Jesus is that perfect leader. Jesus, in his earthly lineage, was descended
from King David. In fact, that’s why a couple of the gospels go through
the ancestry of Jesus--to show that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah that
Isaiah, and later some others in the Old Testament, had predicted. And of
course, Jesus has all those other qualities that Isaiah said the Messiah would
have.
Isaiah was the first of the Old Testament prophets to
predict the coming of the Messiah. God gave Isaiah this prediction at a
time when things were not looking good for Israel. They had enemies on just about every side,
enemies who were all more powerful than Israel was. They were in constant
fear of being taken over by one of those enemies. This prediction God gave Isaiah would’ve
given a lot of hope to the people who believed it. It would’ve told them that things were not
going to be like this forever, that there would come a day when God would raise
up a leader who would save them. And God gave Isaiah a description of
what that leader would be like, so they’d all be able to recognize him when he
came.
And yet. And yet so many of them did not. There
were a lot of reasons why. One of them
was probably just the passage of time. The book of Isaiah, as far as we
can tell, was written somewhere around 700 to 750 B. C. In other words,
it was written between seven hundred and seven hundred fifty years before Jesus
the Savior actually came.
Think about how long that
is. Seven hundred years ago was the year 1319. That’s before the
coming of Christopher Columbus. That’s before the invention of the
printing press. It’s before Newton
discovered gravity.
Think about believing in a
prophecy that long. Since 1319 until today. Is it any wonder some people gave up?
When you think of it that way, it’s probably more amazing that some people
actually still believed in the prophecy. It takes a lot of faith to
believe that something that was predicted seven hundred years ago will actually
happen.
But even among some of those
who believed in the prophecy, there were people who did not recognize Jesus
when he came. Think of how sad that would be. To have believed in something all your life,
something that your parents had told you, and their parents had told them, and
their parents had told them, and on and on and on back seven hundred
years. And then, it comes in your lifetime--and you miss it. You don’t see it, even though it’s right in
front of your eyes. There are not a lot
of things that would be sadder than that.
We cannot do anything about
those people who missed out two thousand years ago, of course. But here’s
something to think about. How many
people are missing out on the Savior right now? How many people have the
ability to read Isaiah’s description of the perfect leader, the Savior?
And how many people have the ability to read about Jesus in the gospels, and
see how what Isaiah wrote fits Jesus perfectly? How many people have the
ability to do that--and yet don’t do it?
How many people are missing out on knowing Jesus as the Savior, even
though he’s right in front of their eyes?
That’s a sad thing. There
are not a lot of things sadder than that. I trust, and I pray, that none
of us here are missing out like that. If anyone is, please come and talk
to me. But what’s also sad is that I do
know some people who are missing out. And so do you. If you get out and about in this community at
all, you know some people who do not know Jesus as the Savior. In fact,
some of us have people in our own families--either our immediate family or our
extended family--who do not know Jesus as the Savior. At the very least, you
know some people whom you’re not sure know Jesus as the Savior.
That’s a sad thing. If we
believe the words of Jesus Christ--that no one comes to God the Father except
through him--then this is a matter of eternal life and death.
And here’s the thing. And
I’m not saying this is how it works, but just think about it. What if,
someday, we stand before the Lord. And
the Lord goes through the names of all the people we know who do not know Jesus
as the Savior. And then the Lord asks, “What did you do about that?”
What would you answer?
What would I answer? Do we have a good
answer?
If it seems like I talk about
this sort of thing a lot, this is why. Now, don’t get me wrong. We cannot force anyone to accept Jesus. Each person makes up their own mind.
But I think God expects us to do what we can.
Jesus said to go and make disciples.
And as we’ve said before, Jesus did not make that optional, and he did
not give out exceptions. He said do it.
Period.
I don’t mean to imply that no
one is. Maybe you have a good answer to that question. I’m not here
to judge you. I just know I could do
more. And I suspect I’m not the only one who could.
Now, we’ve talked before about
how we need to be careful in doing this, that we don’t want to come on too
strong and turn people off. And that’s still true. But at the same time, that’s not an excuse
for doing nothing. For a lot of us, our
problem is not that we come on too strong. For a lot of us, including me,
our problem is that we don’t say enough, and we don’t do enough. And so, if the Lord asks us that
question--what did you do about that--we may not have much of an answer.
Isaiah gave everyone a
description of the perfect leader, the Messiah. A lot of people back then
missed it. A lot of people are missing
it now, too. We have the ability to show them that perfect leader, Jesus
Christ. So, what are we going to do
about it?
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