New Growth for You

Read Isaiah 10 – 14
 
Isaiah 10:34-11:5 He will cut down the forest thickets with an ax; Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One. 11:1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. 2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD – 3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; 4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. 5 Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
 
IN the late 1980’s Yellowstone National Park suffered a devastating series of fires. Ancient trees and acres of grass and brush burned to a charred landscape. It seemed nothing would ever grow again in those severely burned acres.
    Then in the 1990’s, I often traveled to Yellowstone. Through the decade, I saw that, incredibly, the fire’s intense heat had given new trees the opportunity to grow. Seeds from long ago had lay dormant in the ground until the fire. They needed the heat of a fire to cleanse the old growth that was less vibrant to bring them to life. The hot fire was a tool of God’s marvelous creation to renew this grand national park with a way of “salvation” to new life. By 2000 new life had resurrected Yellowstone’s “dead” forest into a new dwelling place for many more plants and animals than before.
    Isaiah’s imagery is similar. The nation is pictured as a forest. God cuts it down, not as a harvest of good wood, but as the cleansing of a hot fire. Still, God is merciful. Out of the sin God activated his salvation promise. Isaiah 11 is about new growth and life. Out of God’s purifying judgment will come God’s own Son to be the new seed that dies. The fruit of life rises from the ashes of destruction through the power of his resurrection.
    The gospels and epistles have many references to the image of Jesus as the seed of new life. Jesus says in John 12:24 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Paul writes of Jesus as the Seed fulfilling God’s law: Galatians 3:19 What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator.
    You can thank God today for his Seed of Eternal Life. God’s law teaches you his righteous truth. His Seed has come to die, so the gospel will regenerate you and countless people into a fruitful, abundant life with him forever.
 
Consider This: 1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.