What really makes Christmas meaningful to you? What images, what ornaments of cheer? We do so much want this season to cheer us. What images will help us the most?
Interestingly, when God spoke to the people of old to cheer them with the message of Christmas, it was not a TREE He spoke of nor its LIGHTS. He spoke of a BRANCH and its LINEAGE. It is a peculiar image because God presented it thru the prophet Jeremiah, whom He sent to Judah in order to let them know they would be cut down by Babylon due to their sin.
Jeremiah hated to tell the people that message. He is often called the weeping prophet as a result. Yet thru his tears a hope still glistened in the image of this branch. When you understand that image you can know some of the special cheer and grace that this season holds for all the year and all our lives, even when our sin and failures would threaten to make us weep as well.
At the intersection of Coldwater and Coliseum in Fort Wayne, there is a tree growing. It is not a very grand tree. It really is just a sprout growing out of the concrete. On the little triangular island of raised curb where they mounted the street sign, this twig has somehow taken root in a crack. It is a forlorn-looking thing, particularly at this time of year. It is surrounded by yards and yards of barren concrete, dwarfed by the traffic signs that tower above it; long since deleafed by the on coming of winter cold, it is whipped by the winds of passing cars. It is the most ignorable little stick you could possibly happen to notice. And yet I noticed it.
A year ago at Christmas time we drove home from a shopping trip to the mall where the lights glittered and the music blared, and the twig caught my eye. A piece of tinsel had been blown from some neighboring trash can or outdoor display and had entwined in the tiny branches of the twig. And as the winter wind lashed the sprout into a frenzied flutter, it seemed to wave the tinsel as a banner that spoke to me more clearly of Christmas than any of the glitz we had spent the day enjoying.
The tinsel was really just a cast-off of the season, yet its very presence signalled that it was Christmas again. The tinsel was a token of the time of year and all it represented. It was again time for rejoicing that the Christ Child had been born. It was just tinsel, but I thought it was so special that out of all His creation that day God had chosen to decorate this insignificant, ugly little sprout with a shred of tinsel.
God had picked up that discarded sliver of silver and put it in the hair of an ugly twig for any of us who would notice. Though the branch was insignificant it signalled the time of year and reminded of the Child who came to save.
It is so typical of our God to act this way--to make the forlorn glorious. Ultimately it's the message of Christmas, and the message of this passage, that God provides tinsel for twigs; (the ignored, the ugly) the despised of this world He decorates with a special beauty. We need to see this message again this time of year, for all the times of every year when we feel ignored, ugly and despicable. God can provide tinsel for us twigs too.
HE DRAPES US WITH HIS PURPOSE, HE COVERS US WITH HIS LOVE, AND, HE MAKES US SHINE WITH HIS GLORY.
By using us. The importance of this passage is that it shows us GOD CAN DRAPE EVEN THE DESPICABLE WITH DIVINE PURPOSE.
At the end of verse 15 God promises that He will bring forth His own that will do what is just and right in the land. He is promising the Messiah. But from where will the Messiah come?
God says at the beginning of verse 15, that He will make this Messiah, the one He calls "a righteous 'Branch', sprout forth from David's line." The wording is important because it illustrates how God can use the INSIGNIFICANT and FAILED things of this world to accomplish His ends:
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GOD USES THE INSIGNIFICANT THINGS OF THIS WORLD FOR WONDERFUL PURPOSES
"A shoot (or twig) would come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit" (Isa. 11:1)
The Savior of the world is going to come from this stump of a nation, because God can use the despised things of this world for His purposes. (Jeremiah himself is an example of one despised but used for a noble purpose as a prophet.) God is always doing this sort of thing. The Apostle Paul says God uses the lowly things of this world and the things that are not (significant) to nullify the things that are" (1 Cor. 1:28). To display who He really is, God uses the insignificant things of this world to do amazing things for heaven's purposes.
Think of how God works: Jesus, the king of the universe, is born as a spitting baby, in a dirty stable, in an obscure village called Bethlehem. Regardless of what we may know now, this was not an auspicious beginning.
In his bestseller, ALL I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN, Robert Fulghum ends a section on his seasonal cynicism about Christmas by saying "What's the big deal about this infant in a manger thing. Babies and stables both stink. I've been around both and I know. Bethlehem is a pit according to those who have been there [sic]." We may not like the words but they're true. God did not pick the great things to glorify His Son. He used His Son to glorify the insignificant things.
With His Son He brought glory to Bethlehem and heaven to a stable, and that which is insignificant and smelly He made so beautiful that we sing songs about it. In a later time He would even make a despicable branch of thorns into a crown of glory, and save souls by it. God drapes the sparkling tinsel of holy purpose on the most insignificant things. The Christmas images remind us how beautiful His designs can be for that which the world would reject.
GOD ALSO USES THE FAILED THINGS OF THIS WORLD FOR WONDERFUL PURPOSES.
Far from the term being one of distinction, it was a mark of shame to be from branch town or "twig-dom" because the name was reminiscent of Israel's shame. That is why when Jesus said He was from Nazareth the people snickered and said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth, twig-city?" (John 1:45-46) Yet by weaving His life into Nazareth, Jesus made the two special, to say the least.
How important it is for all of us to know that God can use insignificant failures to yet accomplish His glorious purposes, for these same failures can come from so many directions in life. On one occasion I travelled to another city to speak at a conference at the local church. I stayed at the home of the pastor -- by all accounts a very devoted man.
One afternoon as I was preparing my message for that evening I could not help hearing the sounds of the pastor's children playing outside. I guess you could call it playing. One child, the 9 year old son of the pastor, dominated the rest of the children with cruelty, profanity and intimidation.
It was hard to listen to and even harder to study thru, so after a while I walked out of my study to take a break. My room opened at the bottom of a stairway and I looked up to see the mother of the boy watching him out of the window at the top of the stairs.
She was almost a silhouette against the window which made her obvious pain a more moving picture. She was watching him with shoulders drooped and head down, and when she heard me she turned and I realized she was crying. She knew I also had heard her son, and thru her tears she said, "I don't know what to do with him. John doesn't know either, all we know is that we have failed. He's only 9 years old and we have already failed."
Do you know the pain of failure -- with children, with a marriage, with a career, or with your walk with Jesus? More than once in my life I have heard the haunting lyrics of a 60's pop song, "I've had beautiful beginnings, but beautiful beginnings are all I've had."
To have had beautiful beginnings and painful ending?! To have been like Israel?! To begin with promise and joyful expectation and then to face desolating failure?! Do you know the feeling?
Whether it's in your family, or in your career, or even in your faith, I would guess most of you also know what it is to have begun well and then to have had things go wrong. I will not tell you that what I am about to say will make the problems melt away, but you need to listen: God can use insignificant failures for His purposes.
Nothing is more true of Him. You may have given up on yourself, but as long as the God of Israel lives, so do His purposes. He has not given up on you. If He had no purpose for you, you would not be here with the ability to learn from His Word today. If you are here it is because He is preparing you for His purposes tomorrow. I do not know what they will be, but I do know this: in a new day is new hope.
In new days there will be new responsibilities, and new opportunities to serve Him -- possibly, to address past failures. But even if past failures cannot be addressed we are able to move on from those negative experiences with greater wisdom for positive contributions to the people and purposes God will yet put in our lives.
Our God encourages us in this passage by showing He uses earth's failures for heaven's purposes.
God underscores His ability to use that which may even be despicable to itself by showing that He can even use those whose shame is their own fault -- draping the despicable with His purposes.
II. GOD COVERS THE UNFAITHFUL WITH UNFAILING LOVE
III. GOD MAKES THE SHAMEFUL SHINE WITH HEAVEN'S GLORY.
The prophet has made a crucial point with this little pronoun. A few chapters before when these very same words were used, the promised Messiah is called the Lord of Righteousness (cf.23:6). But now the despised and sinful nation is called the Lord our Righteousness; to emphasize the point the prophet actually changed that little pronoun "IT" to the feminine so that we cannot mistake his point.
This despicable nation will be saved and HER name will be the Lord our Righteousness. God plans to give His own name to His people. It sounds impossible that these people who are such a mix of sin and failure could be special to God, but to tell them that they are, He gives them a wonderful name.
HE GIVES HIS PEOPLE HIS NAME. But He gives them even more than that to make them shine with His glory. HE ALSO GIVES HIS PEOPLE HIS NATURE. What a wonderful thought this is. We cover our Christmas trees with tinsel that is supposed to look like silver but it's really just tin-foil; tinsel is not really what it is supposed to represent. God represents us to the world by calling us by the name of His Son, but then He actually makes us what He calls us. He gives us the nature of His own Son and, thereby, makes us His own sons and daughters.
The glory He puts on us is not just tin-foil; it is the pure gold righteousness of His own Son whereby we now shine like stars. It can change the way we look at others and ourselves to recognize that God allows us to bear the name and the nature of His own Son.
Has your sin made you flee from Him, made you turn away from Him in shame, made you doubt that His power can again enter your life to try to straighten out what you have botched so badly?
Don't you believe it! He who decorates twigs with tinsel can yet have a design for your life, and in this Christmas season He tells you so again. He gives tinsel to twigs, and forgiveness to the twisted and shattered. Our God loves to decorate. He loves you enough to tell you so in the message of Christmas He spreads across the world again this year for all to see in the obvious symbols of glory, but also in His special care of the lowly -- which He would also have you see.
As tinsel can decorate even a twig with beauty, our heavenly Father covers our shame with His glory. In the images of the season He puts His Son within our reach -- even in your hands again.
Our God loves you so much that He puts His precious Son into your hands again to receive and to cherish. If your faults and failures shame you it may seem unlikely that He would deals so beautifully with you -- improbable, even impossible. But then you must remember the message of Christmas that is blowing 'round again this year. Ours is the God who loves to decorate. He sent His Son for sinners. He even puts tinsel on twigs.
