In a time of darkness, light.  In a time of loss, hope.  In a time of sorrow, confusion, frustration, grace.  Grace is the sure sign of the presence of God; grace is the love of God breaking every barrier down, overcoming every obstacle, all to fulfill a promise of love made for love: love for the beloved, love that makes God known.

Advent must needs come when the days grow shorter, colder, when the darkness feels deeper.  I’m not just talking about the hours of sunlight.  The darkness has many ways, uzes many ways, of getting deeper.  God reminds us, gently as the candlelight, dazzlingly as lightning over snow, that He sees; He is there.  He will save.  He will fulfill.  We are not abandoned; we are not forgotten.  We are loved, and held very close.  Oh, how we want to feel that!  People love those Christmas images of Mary holding baby Jesus—you parents specially know that closeness and loving wonder.  God always has a way of turning things around.  It isn’t we who cradle sweet little baby Jesus in our arms: it is Jesus who holds us, toddlers and infants in the faith.  He is the branch, the shoot from the stem (11:1).  He gives it to us to be his fruit: oh, let us pray to be good fruit, full clusters on the vine!

God has Isaiah tell God’s people about the impending judgment coming, judgment sent by God for casual, callous living.  God has expectations and standards.  He knows even His own people won’t live up to these perfectly—God is most tolerant and understanding of His broken work.  And God looks for loving obedience, doing what God asks for love of God, for the sake of the one who provides us with all things.  Another word for loving obedience is faith; another word is trust.

The people whom God had called for Himself saw that things were good, sometimes.  The problem was that they also saw things could be bad, hard, unfulfilling, unrewarding, and that other people, who never gave the least indication of having any love for God at all, seemed to get along just fine: plenty to eat, nice homes, happy vacations to fun places.  Loving God didn’t necessarily result in good things in this life.  Ignoring God didn’t often seem to result in suffering in this life.  Yes, there was always a core of faithful people, stubborn people, trusting God’s Word and His promise to them, no matter what, who held on and held out, no matter what.  There were also those nominally among the covenant community who never quite got around to dedicating themselves to God.  There were those who drifted off, helplessly drawn by what could be had here and now, though there was a cost.  Neither steadfast obedience nor flabby faith were exclusive to one class or occupation: you could find the stubborn faithful in all walks of life; you could find, high and low, near and far, those who preferred what could be had here and now.

God’s Word had been and remained consistent, constant: there would be a reckoning for disobedience, straying, for dismissing God and God’s Word.  There would also be restoration, reconciliation, salvation.  Reckoning and restoration would both come from God; both were expressions of God’s righteous lovingkindness.

Today, this first Sunday of our awaiting Christmas, we hear Isaiah singing about an especially powerful expression of God’s righteous lovingkindness.  One will arise for us, from the line of David.  David was as full-blooded and faulty a human being as any of us.  He’s never praised for his special virtue, or charity, or chastity, or purity!  David is praised for his unshakeable trust in God.  David made a mess of things, oh yes, often: shockingly!  And he turned to God, shame-faced, shattered, each time, trusting that God, in His righteousness and in His lovingkindness, would not utterly cast David away.  David trusted that, as he confessed his sin and helplessness apart from God, God would forgive and show David God’s way, put David back on that way, and continue to guide David, faithfully.  God was David’s only hope, and he knew it.

One will arise from that stock, that red-blooded trust.  Isaiah tells us remarkable, lovely things about this one.  “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him” (11:2).  Like a crown or a royal robe.  Like a warm blanket, a favorite sweater.  Like gleaming armor.  The Spirit will comfort and give courage in the struggle.  The Spirit will not agitate or trouble but “rest on” this one—peace.  He will have peace and bring peace.  Peace brings prosperity, flourishing life: the opportunity and time in which to grow, develop, learn, and become wise, and kind.  There is no wisdom without kindness.  Kindness without wisdom is not kind, just lax.

Isaiah continues to paint the picture of this Spirit of the Lord, calling him “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” (11:2).  Wisdom from God—not the wisdom before which the world bows, but God’s wisdom: creation wisdom, salvation wisdom, understanding beyond what man-un-kind is able to conceive, because the one whom God sends will be conceived by God.  And he will reveal God to those who had been languishing in darkness of despair, and ignorance.  The wisdom from God discerns the way: the way out, through, forward.  The wisdom that is love and the love that is grace pulls us out of the pit, shines light into the darkness, so that we may see, see help, see life, and reach out for him.

This promised one will come in the spirit “of counsel and strength.”  Wisdom and understanding must be applied to be of use.  In the one whom He will send, God will offer His holy counsel—let’s take God’s advice!  Let us heed God’s wisdom!  Applied wisdom is for strength, strength to do what God’s wisdom directs us to do.  He will bless us, and we will bless others, in God’s wisdom.

Many people have many conceptions about God: some are more correct than incorrect, others are more incorrect, even far more incorrect, than correct.  We know God rightly when we receive the gift of His Spirit.  When we receive the gift of His Spirit, we find ourselves walking in the fear of the Lord.  This does not mean we are terrified of the Lord, doing all we can to avoid the Lord, like Adam and Eve there in the garden.  That’s not fear of the Lord; that’s terror of the Lord.  The fear of the Lord is the fruit of the gift of God’s wisdom, heeding the counsel of God.  The fear of the Lord is to know God rightly: an awesome God, beyond our furthest conception and near as our breath, near as the love that governs our hearts to glorify God.

The fear of the Lord goes in company with God, humbly, obediently, lovingly, fearing to do anything that might do harm to the relationship.  The last one you and I want to hurt is the one whom we love best—yes, it happens!  It rips us up when it does happen, but we also know—by grace!—that love provides a way to restoration; love forgives.  The one whom God will send brings God’s forgiveness; he is restoration.  Let us never allow ourselves to forget how he makes the way open for us.

Remembering how our Savior opens the way to God, let what Isaiah next says have its effect: The one who will come “will delight in the fear of the Lord” (11:3).  Obedient even unto death, death on a cross, for fear of the Lord.  No, the fear of the Lord is not to be afraid of God.  Jesus did not go to the cross afraid of God.  He went to the cross delighting in his Father in heaven.  He went to the cross glad to glorify his Father in heaven.  He knew that to glorify his Father in heaven was to make it possible for his Father to glorify him: God delights in obedience, and the obedient shall by no means lose their reward.  Let us, also, delight in the fear of the Lord—oh the wonders of joy and peace God has in store for those who love and honor His holy name!

The one whom God sends “will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make decisions by what His ears hear” (11:3).  So, he will judge; he will discern.  He will get to the heart of the matter, reveal the truth, and decide.  His decision will be perfectly correct, perfectly good.  His decision—his judgment—will glorify God.  God tells His prophet Samuel, no fool, that “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7); John says of Jesus that he “knew what was in each person” (Jn 2:25).  He sees down and as far as there is to go in every heart; he sees everything there is to see along the way there.

This is why, when Isaiah says the one whom God is sending “will judge the poor” “with righteousness” (11:4), we can have full confidence that he truly shall: he knows each of us through and through.  The one who sees down to the deepest depths, with wisdom and understanding, is the one who will judge with righteousness, giving God’s own judgment in Spirit, truth, and love.

No, you and I are not judges, not anyone’s judges, and we are called to judge: to recognize good and what is not good, to perceive what is true and what is false, to understand what honors God and what dishonors God.  Judicious as serpents, pure as doves, Jesus said (Mt 10:16).  All this is life with judgment, good judgment, God-given judgment, born of God-given wisdom, the light of the Spirit.  Recognizing, let us act in the fear of the Lord for the blessing of those around us.  To judge with righteousness is to “decide with fairness” (11:4).  Fairness relies upon facts, upon the truth.  We know truth when we know God, when we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word.

“With righteousness He will judge the poor” (11:4).  Judge the poor?  Don’t the poor have it hard enough, already?  He will decide in their favor.  Oh, to be poor, then!  Blessed are the poor—Jesus isn’t limiting that to those who lack the financial means to afford a home like we have or a car like we have, or what we have in our refrigerators and freezers.  The poor in spirit, the humble: those who, like David, know their entire need for God.  “He will judge the poor, / And decide with fairness for the humble of the earth” (11:4).  Blessed are the poor; blessed are the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Our Lord will judge with righteousness.  Jesus comes to do God’s will, on earth as it is in heaven, showing us the power of righteousness, making that power available for us.  This is the judgment, judgment for us, for God’s faithful people.

“And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked” (11:4).  Sweet baby Jesus?  We don’t like to associate Jesus with violence, though we did enough violence to him and still do.  We just don’t want our Jesus to be violent, forceful, but it seems as if the only language some people will understand is the righteous, firm, and strong chastisement of God, who says, Don’t do what you are doing!  Stop, now!  Has the sudden crack of lightning ever gotten your attention?  Has the immediate boom of thunder ever shaken you along with the windows and teacups?  Maybe God is saying something through the thunder: remember, reflect, think.

The rod of his mouth, the breath of his lips.  What is the breath of the lips of the Lord?  His Spirit, His Word.  What is the rod of His mouth?  What He says, the discipline—the discipling—of His Word.  Isaiah is singing, poetically, vividly, arrestingly, of the power of God’s Word.  The one God sends comes in the Spirit-power of the Word.  He shall speak the Word, he shall be the Word, and he shall judge, making righteous decisions for the poor, the humble, the faithful.  Not the perfect!  Not the flawless!  For the faithful.  Only have faith, and faith will do its life-giving work, in you and through you, to the praise of the glory of God.