Canter Bridge

A sermon delivered to the family of Wethersfield (CT) Evangelical Free Church, 22 December 2025

if you’ve been with us over the last few weeks, you know that we are immersed in a sermon series entitled In God We Trust. Today’s message is the last installment in that series. I’ve given it the title ‘Trustworthy with the whole wide world’.

In the interest of time, I’m going to read just the first ten verses of today’s Bible passage.Is. 11:1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. ² And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, ⁴ but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. ⁵ Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

Is. 11:6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. ⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. ⁹ They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Is. 11:10 In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

Is. 11:11 In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

Is. 11:12 He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. ¹³ The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart, and those who harass Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah, and Judah shall not harass Ephraim. ¹⁴ But they shall swoop down on the shoulder of the Philistines in the west, and together they shall plunder the people of the east. They shall put out their hand against Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites shall obey them. ¹⁵ And the LORD will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt, and will wave his hand over the River with his scorching breath, and strike it into seven channels, and he will lead people across in sandals. ¹⁶ And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that remains of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt.

There are snakes in that passage!

I don’t like snakes. 

Actually, I should probably be a little more specific before I go writing off all 3,400 species of snakes in a couple of words. And I actually love the big Eastern Garter Snakes that appear in our yard and the woods just beyond when the Spring sun warms up their cold, clammy bodies and they begin looking for rodents and toads to fill their tummies.

So let me give you a new version of this opening declaration: I don’t like poisonous snakes. For many years, I had recurring nightmares about them.

You see, I spent five months during my college years living out in the jungles of Costa Rica, way too up close and personal with one kind of poisonous sake. It was called the Terciopelo, a word that in Spanish means ‘velvet’. It’s a pit viper, sometimes known as Fer-de-lance. I knew an indigenous family in our little Assemblies of God church who had lost their young mother one dark night as they made their way home from church along the trail that let to their thatch-roofed house. She felt a little pinprick on her ankle, went home, lay down, and never woke up. She’d been bitten by a Terciopelo.

And I remember some older Bribri indigenous women on a different day, washing their families’ clothes in a deep part of the creek, savagely hacking away with their machetes at a Terciopelo that had dared to invade their washing area. I hope they got him…



Years later, when I moved back to Costa Rica with a young family as missionaries, another snake contributed to one of the most troubling memories of my life.

My boys, Christopher and Johnny, are only thirteen months apart. They’re big dudes now, both wearing the uniform of US Army majors in point-of-the-0spear military vocations, so it feels a little strange to be talking about them as vulnerable little boys. But that’s what they were back then.

We had driven down to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica on a little end-of-year vacation. I had Christopher in my arms out in the surf, which was kind of loud that day. I could see little Johnny, a toddler, walking back and forth on the beach. Then suddenly I could also see a snake on the beach. Johnny was oblivious to the snake, and no adults were paying attention. I watched in horror as Johnny and the snake approached each other. I don’t remember whether I was able to cry out, but nobody would have heard me over the surf anyway. At the last minute, a young man saw what was happening, grabbed Johnny by the hand, and led him to a safe distance. Then a crowd gathered. I suspect the poor snake didn’t live long after that. 

And now Pastor Scott assigns me a text with this verse at its core:

(8) The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

I can feel my snake-related PTSD kicking in, even as we speak.

And now that I’m complaining about things I don’t like, here’s another one: people who dream, even on Christian grounds, of paradise … people who try to call this broken, bleeding world of ours a paradise … people who look away from all that’s wrong because it’s scary out there. And yet this messianic text from the Old Testament book of Isaiah utilizes the language of paradise to describe the Savior we have come to know as Jesus.

Let’s try to figure out what’s going on here and what God would say to us this morning through his Word.

Now, in order to get a grip on this passage, we need to look back in two ways.

First, we have to realize that back in chapter 2, the book of Isaiah gives us its vision of visions. That’s the frame that today’s chapter 11 and a host of other chapters in Isaiah are coloring in. Today’s chapter is not the first look into the Lord’s purpose for his world. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 11 is not the first word in that conversation.

Chapter 2’s vision of visions is that first word. It sets the direction of the book of Isaiah by describing an eventual world that only the God of Israel could create. It’s short, just four very compact verses. I’d like to read Isaiah’s vision of visions for you, and then we’ll come back to our passage for today, Isaiah 11.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the teaching (law), and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

 He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore (Isaiah 2:2-4 ESV)

I mentioned that we need to look back in two ways. Absorbing chapter two’s vision of visions is the first one.

 Here’s the second one: we have to realize that a conversation about a mysterious survivor that will crawl out of the ashes of God’s exiled people is also a conversation that started some time ago in this book. Scripture loves to talk about t his re-born remnant by using the image of a tree that’s been felled and is presumed dead. And then a tiny shoot emerges from it that will be for the blessing of the whole world. If we were reading consecutively through Isaiah, we’d realize this. We would have already gathered those threads together. But we don’t have that privilege, so part of my job this morning is to bring us up to speed so we can be good hearers of this passage, Isaiah 11.

Now, fast forward to Isaiah 11 and here comes that image again: 

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. (Isaiah 11:1 ESV)

Isaiah is looking forward to something like a Holocaust for Israel, a national tragedy so horrifying that it buy all right should have exterminated this chosen people. Yet out of the national mutilation that we call the Babylonian exile, the prophet says, some little bud of life will emerge and will grow up to become a blessing to all nations … to all flesh … to many peoples.

Now hang in with me here, because this is not easy stuff: Over centuries, the writers of Christian Scripture came to the conclusion that in addition to speaking of a re-born nation, this image of a shoot out of a dead tree also captured the essence of Jesus our Messiah, our anointed Savior.

Let’s look at a few of our passage’s most compelling claims about him.

First … He is absolutely saturated with the Lord’s Spirit:

(2) And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

This resting of the Spirit of the Lord upon his anointed savior is like the resting of a heavy snowfall upon the landscape. Or like a layer of thick fog that comes to rest on the Connecticut River. You look down on it as you driver over a bridge or descend into Bradley Airport and you realize how lush and full the covering is. Close readers of this passage over the centuries have not missed the fact that the Spirit of the Lord is mentioned here seven times … seven being the perfect number. Jesus, we are invited to understand, is perfectly saturated with God’s Spirit.

We should also understand that the presence of the Lord’s Spirit is not primarily ornamental or aesthetic. Rather, it equips him, it empowers him to see reality and respond to reality and then shape reality with tremendous perception. 

Do you see it there in verses 3-5?

And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, ⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. ⁵Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

This anointed agent of God’s redemption gets reality. He sees through charades and distractions. He is committed to justice even when human beings become very adept at disguising injustice as justice … and lies as truth … and self-interest as just the way things are. And he’s clearly on the side of and involved in the fate of the most vulnerable. He gets involved with the poor and the meek (v. 4). He is a lethal enemy of the wicked.

So not exactly Jesus meek and mild here, though certainly a kind of meekness will be apparent in the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth. This is our Christmas season’s baby Jesus, that much is true, but Jesus ‘all growed up’—as my Father would have said—and serving as his Father’s own anointed Son in this world, forging a world that aligns with God’s own purpose rather than lurching bloodily off in its own directions.

Now let’s get to that paradise scene­—snakes and all—that is the result of this Spirit-anointed person’s work … this survivor of devastation … this shoot out of a dead, fallen tree:

 6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. ⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. ⁹ They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Now in a moment I’m going to ask you to take on faith something that’s not evident in this paradise package itself. However, it would become very clear if we had the time for me to take you back into that vision of visions of chapter 2. If in some other space and time we had that luxury, I’d be able to show you the subtle connections between chapter 2 and chapter 11. One after the other, they pile up on each other to make it all but indisputable that … here comes the thing I want to tell you: this is not about animals!!!

These are nations. This is metaphor. It’s a kind of little parable. It’s not really about wolves and lambs, it’s about Russia and Ukraine. It’s not really about leopards and goats, it’s about the US and Venezuela. It’s not really about a nursing child and a cobra, it’s Palestine and Israel. It’s not really about cows and bears, it’s about Democrats and Republicans. It’s not really about calves and lions, it’s about progressives and conservatives.

Something about this anointed figure’s engagement with the nations will create a kind of just peace that is scarcely imaginable on this 21^st of December, 2025, in this familiar place of ours, Wethersfield, Connecticut.

But Scripture is not trafficking in illusions or false paradises or spiritual abstractions that have nothing to do with the real world. This is not as mystical and other-worldly as you might imagine. Rather, it is fleshing out the Lord’s purpose for his messiah and his world. The messiah whose birth we celebrate on Thursday of this week, the world in which you and I love our brief but critically important lives.

This passage culminates in what may for me be the most meaningful declaration in all of Scripture:

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9 ESV)

Here, in verse 9, Isaiah drops his guard. He steps outside of his parable of the animal paradise and speaks about people openly. More accurately, he speaks about nations. It tells us that in some undated future, these nations will no longer oppose the God of Israel, hurting and destroying on his holy mountain. This is a glance back to the vision of visions in Isaiah 2, where they become eager students of his teaching upon that holy mountain.

It also says this: 

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Now again, I have to ask you to take something I’m going to say on faith: as a forty-year student of the Hebrew Bible—our Old Testament—I can tell you what this does not mean and suggest to you what it does mean.

It doesn’t mean that some abstract spiritual reality—the knowledge of God—will cover this earth as the waters cover the sea. The Hebrew Bible doesn’t talk like that … in mystical attractions. Those are not its native tongue. It means that people who know the Lord … nations who know the Lord … will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

But sometimes we don’t see that so much…

If you can back away from the current moment and take in the wide scope of human history since Pentecost, you can glimpse quite a bit of it. I recommend you read Tom Holland’s book Dominion. Holland, who does not claim Christian faith, is an historian who documents the way Christianity that during twenty centuries has nourished and sustained the values that most of us in the Western world would affirm as just and beautiful. Values that generate and sustain things like … democracy … hospitals … orphanges … respect for women and children … the crazy notion that every human being is a reflection, an image of Creator God and should be treated as such.

These ideas, these values, these practices do not occur in nature. They are not features of the jungle. No, they reside downstream from centuries of Christianity’s leavening and even redeeming influence upon cultures.

Because of Karen’s and my particular calling to emerging Christian leaders in the Global South, we regularly find ourselves as observes of the promise in today’s passage. May I tell you about Mohammed, Lifa, and Miryam?

These are not their real names because this message is being recorded. In October they were three of my students at a seminary in Beirut, Lebanon, where I teach a class every year. Mohammed is Moroccan, a Muslim-background follower of Jesus. Lifa, also a Muslim-background follower of Jesus, is a Kurdish woman from Syria who’s been forcibly displaced with her family to Lebanon, courtesy of the Sunni extremists who we short-hand as ISIS. Miryam is an Armenian Christian believer, also from Syria. All of them have suffered.

Mohammed looks so much like the Celtics’ injured Jason Tatum that, when I put a picture of JT up on the screen in October, we all laughed for two minutes. At a certain poignant moment in our Isaiah class, I asked my students—again, these are people who have suffered at the hands of others—if they hate, Mohammed said ‘I used to’. Jesus has drained the hate from his heart, and he is an evangelist among both his Muslim neighbors and online conversation partners.

Lifa is a thirty-something mother and wife, shy and unassuming. She describes without any sense of pride the group of 80 Muslim women whom she shepherds in Beirut, many of them already followers of Jesus, some of them on their way to embracing Jesus, all of them from Muslim backgrounds as she is.

To understand Miryam, it would help if you know something of the Armenian Genocide, one of the twentieth century’s most awful experiences of ethnic cleansing. Miryam spoke with me about how her church fed and housed Turkish-speaking refugees when the ISIS-inspired violence in her region became particularly brutal. I asked her how that happened. She said quietly, ‘Well, we were both suffering the same way. We used to hate the Turks because of what they did to our people, but not anymore. Jesus changed us.’

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. ⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. ⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. ⁹ They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

But we don’t live in Syria or Morocco or Lebanon …. or Colombia or Venezuela. What are we to do with Isaiah 11?

I have just a few suggestions to leave with you today in the face of that question. The gospel of course is all of grace. But it’s not cheap grace, not an inert, passive grace. It’s a grace that empowers and shapes our lives. It points us in a certain direction and then promises the power of God so that we can follow through. In that spirit, I’ll allow myself three ‘musts’.

1. We must not lose hope based on any momentary darkness.
   1. Jewish theology is correct when it says that despair is the sin of all sins. It demolishes our perspective. It captivates our hope. It quenches our love.
      
2. We must believe that the Lord has not relented on his purpose to see all nations redeemed.
   1. If it’s tempting to think so from our perspective, then we need somehow to broaden our perspective. We need to look around at believers who are different than us or from other parts of the world. We need to sit at their feet and learn from them. They have often suffered so much and maintained their confidence in the triumph of God’s redeeming love.
      
3. We must become gritty, tenacious, resilient peacemakers.
   1. We must identify and call out hatred in our own hearts and, sometimes, in the hearts of our brothers and sisters. When it occurs, we must name it. The Proverbs assure us that the rebuke of a friend is like a kiss on the lips.
   1. Ours are difficult times. But they are not uniquely difficult, they are just difficult. We flatter ourselves if we think our circumstances are that special. It has not become impossible to be a peacemaking follower of our Messiah. It’s just hard.
   1. Our task, as the apostle Paul puts it, is to be God’s own co-workers in a day that brings with it a certain darkness. We can do this. And it’s worth doing it. Because one day … in God’s own way … the earth will be full of those who know the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

May it be so. And merry Christmas.

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