During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth, pointed in the direction of the wind. The air and the sky darkened, and through them the sun shown redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. "The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones carried up straws and old leaves, even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. Listen to some of Steinbeck's prose that skillfully captures this desperation. John Steinbeck wrote a classic on this era in American history called Grapes of Wrath, and it powerfully depicts the desperation of farmers in this Midwestern Dust Bowl, seeing the Dust Bowl emerge, dust storms ravaging their crops and their hopes, nothing left but stunning poverty, desolation, emptiness and despair. In the American Prairie in the 1930s during the Depression was a terrible era of drought and erosion and wind resulting in overpowering clouds of dust that destroyed all crops and drove a mass migration of poverty stricken farmers westward just to survive. But there is in the center of that desert, a tiny shoot, a little root with a small amount of activity of life, of power, but not apparently amounting to anything at all, that's the image.Īs I meditated on it my mind went to a part of American history, relatively recent, called the Dust Bowl. No power, no glory, no prospects, a dry and weary land with nothing alive, that's the image. His culture, his people, his nation were fruitless, dry, sterile, like a desert. That is the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, grew up in the presence of almighty God, with God watching over his growth.īut the growth was like, it says, a tender shoot, meaning apparently weak, frail, and impressive, and like a root out of dry ground. This is a powerful agricultural metaphor, as so many are in the Bible, speaking of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, growing, which He did, from infancy to manhood. He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. We're going to speak more in detail about this marvelous prophecy later in the message, but let me zero in on this image that has captivated my mind. Nothing in his appearance, he'll be underwhelming to the untrained eye, there'd be no radiant glory, no obvious display. The powerful image in that prophecy is that the Messiah, the savior of the world, will be completely physically, visibly, unimpressive. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Isaiah 53:1-3, "Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. Isaiah the prophet spoke these words of prophecy over seven centuries before they were fulfilled. I want to begin with this phrase “like a shoot out of dry ground.” It comes from Isaiah's prophecy. It was predicted in the prophets, it was worked by the hand of God, it was decreed, personally worked by almighty God for his purposes, and then the infinite glory to which He will rise and bring us with him, that's the message today. My focus in this message today will be on the God ordained obscurity of his birth. This one born so low would be exalted to infinite glory by the hand of God, born to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Today we're going to peer into the darkness of a stable where animals were feeding, and standing and resting and lowing and mooing and bleating, and a tiny baby is born, weak, small, unknown, the seed of a formerly glorious lineage that had fallen for almost six centuries into total obscurity. Today we celebrate the birth of our King, the King of Glory, Jesus Christ, into the humblest and most obscure of circumstances. So I'll be really old by then, so this is the last opportunity I have as a young man to preach on Christmas Sunday, so grateful to share it with you all. Because of leap year it happens irregularly and the next time it's going to happen is 11 years from now. It feels like it's been a while, but we looked it up, I thought it's got to be every seven years, but it isn't. My weird statistical analytical mind this morning wanted to know how often this happens, this Christmas on Sunday thing. I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas. Jesus was born in obscurity and raised to glory in his death and resurrection, fulfilling the prophets' prophecies.
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