Rev. David Holwick ZK Christmas Day
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey (this is a newer version of Our Peaceable Kingdom)
December 25, 2005
Isaiah 11:1-9
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I. Tensions with relatives.
A. Show of hands, how many will visit relatives today?
1) How many are dreading it?
2) Household turmoil is a staple of holiday movies.
B. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
1) Famous primitive American painting by Edward Hicks.
Setting looks like autumn in Hudson Valley, New York.
Little boy stands with ox and lion and wolf.
Everyone is getting along just fine.
a) It was inspired by Isaiah 11, today's text.
b) The prophet was predicting what the world would be like
after the Messiah arrived.
1> Everyone will be at peace with one another,
even among the animals.
C. What would your perfect world be like?
In my perfect world people who are 50 would feel as good as
they did when they were 16.
In my perfect world I could eat as much Haagan Daz ice cream
as we wanted, and still lose weight.
In my perfect world I would get a nice fat tax refund,
even though I didn't pay any taxes.
In my perfect world there would be no cancer, poverty, or wars.
Every family would be happy, and the future would hold no fear.
#4787
II. Key to the picture - there is a baby in the center.
A. This is no ordinary child.
1) He is an offshoot of Jesse.
a) Jesse was the father of King David.
b) The phrase is a codeword for "Messiah."
2) This child is the perfect ruler.
3) This child is the absolute judge. Isa 11:4
B. It makes a very nice fit with Christmas!
1) This child is of course Jesus.
III. We aren't quite there.
A. The Messiah has come, but the perfect world hasn't.
1) Even tamed animals often turn on their owners.
2) As Tennyson put it 150 years ago, nature remains cruel,
"red in tooth and claw."
Sir Richard Burton was a famous British explorer of Africa and the
Middle East.
In 1869 he was made the British ambassador in Damascus and moved
there with his wife Isabel.
Isabel had a special dream, and she began to work at it.
Their biographer Edward Rice writes:
The Burtons had stables filled with horses.
Isabel said, "I know everything they say, and think, and feel;
and they know also what I say to them."
Her special forte was rescuing animals.
She had donkeys and a camel, turkeys, bull terriers, as many as
50 stray dogs, lambs, pigeons and goats.
Isabel had a white Persian cat, a pet lamb, chickens, geese,
guinea fowl, a panther so tame it would eat from your hand,
and, as her husband remarked, "other notions."
Isabel spent many hours trying to train natural enemies to love
each other.
But the panther ate the lamb and chased the goats, one of which
jumped into the river and drowned.
The birds ate the seeds and flowers in the garden.
The cat killed the birds, and the dogs worried the cat.
Isabel Burton surveyed the carnage and noted that the survivors
of her zoo became "a really harmonious family."
#4800
B. Isabel may not have been as flaky as she sounds.
1) Salvation is not just "me."
a) We make it very personalized, as it should be.
b) But God's plan is bigger.
1> All of creation will be saved.
2> Even animals will be transformed.
2) All creatures have a stake in God's Kingdom.
Patricia Sullivan's great-grandmother was born in a
rural area of Ireland.
She told Patricia that during the great potato famine,
no matter how poor her parents and their neighbors
were, they always put out "a wee bit for the
beasties" on Christmas Eve.
This gift - this blessing - was given to the animals
in honor of the role they played in the humble
stable in Bethlehem.
It is also a token of the joy they will share with us
in Jesus' kingdom.
#26307
IV. When will it arrive?
A. Animals today aren't the only ones with hostility issues.
1) Ongoing strife in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2) Perhaps you only have to look at your own family this week.
B. The perfect peace did not come in Jesus' lifetime.
1) He didn't think it would.
a) As a matter of fact, he knew he would produce turmoil.
2) He predicted the perfect peace would arrive in the future,
when he returns to earth at his Second Coming.
3) However, he gave us a taste of peace.
a) Broken people believed in Jesus and were made whole.
b) He taught us to forgive our enemies and accept
the outcasts.
c) And he said to receive God's salvation, we must become
like little kids.
V. Little kids go with Christmas.
A. They are a safe focus.
1) Our memories of Christmas as kids are fond and lasting.
a) Dreaded gifts: socks.
b) We opened early this year - I got two bundles of socks.
2) We like to dote on kids (or grandkids).
B. Children have a special way of touching us, too.
Wayne lives in Colorado.
Some fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, Wayne's father was
murdered.
Twenty years later his older brother committed suicide.
So Christmas had turned kind of sour for Wayne.
Wayne and his wife stopped at a mall on the way home from
their son's home in Denver.
While his wife was doing her shopping, Wayne was sitting in
the mall feeling sad and a little sorry for himself.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a little boy of three or
four watching him.
The boy came over to him and gave him a small piece of hard
candy.
Looking deeply into Wayne's eyes, he smiled as he said,
"Merry Christmas."
The boy's father called for him to come back where he belonged.
The little boy smiled slyly and ran back to his parents.
Wayne went out of the store and got into his car and cried.
The look in that child's eyes and that wonderful gesture
touched him more deeply than he can tell you.
It was one of those Itty-Bitty Things but was one of the most
important things anybody had ever done for Wayne.
Wayne remembered his mother telling him when he was young that
"A little child will lead us."
It is true.
Wayne says he is now looking forward to Christmas for the
first time in many years. #26510
C. Little the child of Christmas touch you.
1) He can give you peace and fulfillment.
2) He can give you hope for a better future.
3) You must receive him as Savior.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 4787 "The Perfect World!" sermon by Pastor Vince Gerhardy, St. Luke's
Lutheran Church, Nambour, Queensland, Australia, preached on
December 6, 1998. [modified from his original]
# 4800 "An Unpeaceable Kingdom," Edward Rice in book "Captain Sir Richard
Francis Burton," 1990, page 409.
#26307 "A Wee Bit for the Beasties," Patricia Sullivan of LaFarge,
Wisconsin, Wit and Wisdom daily email, http://www.witandwisdom.org
by Richard G. Wimer, December 19, 2003.
#26510 "A Little Child Will Lead Us," Wit And Wisdom daily email,
http://www.witandwisdom.org by Richard G. Wimer, December 24, 2003.
These and 25,000 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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