THE ENSIGN LIFTED UP
One of the key areas of evidences concerning Jesus being the Christ is the fulfillment of prophecies. It would have been impossible for any one person to have fulfilled all that Jesus did unless He was the One the prophets had in mind. Everything from where He would be born to how He would die was all declared before He ever came to this earth. It was planned by the Godhead before Adam was ever created (Titus 1:2). It is called the “eternal purpose” which was purposed in Christ Jesus the Lord (Ephesians 3:11). How beautiful is the truth that Jesus came to do the will of the Father.
One of those prophecies is found in Isaiah 11. In verse one the message is about One from the stem of Jesse. As we come to verse 10, He is called a “root of Jesse”. The defines then what His lineage was to be and where His descendants would be. Matthew opens his account of the gospel by revealing that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David; fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian captivity; and fourteen generations from Babylon to the coming of Jesus (Matthew 1:17). All total some 42 generations with Jesus being the final piece of this genealogical list.
The word “ensign” can mean a flagstaff; a signal; a standard or a sign. In that day this One from the lineage of David would be lifted up as the standard to which the Gentile world would seek. Jesus came as a Jew and therefore was among His people by birth. John tells us how that when Jesus came to His own (the Jews), that they for the most part rejected Him and Who He claimed to be (John 1:11). Isaiah then speaks about the Gentiles coming to this ensign from the lineage of David. Toward the end of the first century it was the Gentile world that was being more affected than the Jewish world.
Jesus declared toward the close of His personal ministry, that the Jews’ house was left unto them, desolate (Matthew 23:38). They, as a whole, rejected the only One who could save them or us (Acts 4:12). This was the second time in which God reached out to the Jewish world as per the words of Isaiah (Isaiah 11:11). Once this ensign was set up for all nations, God would attempt to gather the outcasts of Judah from all nations (Isaiah 11:12). Paul describes the work of Jesus as being the One who gathered together all of God’s people in the last period of man on this earth, called the dispensation of the fullness of times (Ephesians 1:10).
In this dispensation the mystery of God would be finished through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus the Christ (Revelation 10:7). This finishing of the mystery was that the Jew and Gentile would come together in one body, that is the body of Christ which is the church (Ephesians 3:5,6; Ephesians 1:22,23). Jesus was that Ensign lifted up which was extended to the Gentile world. Jesus in speaking about His death would say that if He were lifted up, He would draw all men (not just Jews) (John 12:32). The events of the death of Christ and His resurrection from the dead became the constant theme of gospel preaching (I Corinthians 15:1-4).
I pause, then, at this point to wonder how far we have come from those exciting days when that Ensign was lifted up for all nations to see? Our local politicians have problems not just with prayer but prayer in the name of Jesus. To close a prayer by citing this Man’s name (Jesus), somehow in their minds infringes on the idea of the separation of church and state. My friend it is not the infringing on “church and state” matters rather it is in knowing the effect Jesus has on the lives on individuals for a little over 2000 years. Going all the way back to the beginning we find that even those in Caesar’s household had obeyed Jesus the Christ (Philippians 4:22). Jesus draws politicians and anyone else who is willing to see the Ensign from the root of Jesse.