A Tender Plant in Dry Ground

“For He shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2).

“… Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? …” (John 1:46).

Those were the words of Nathaniel in response to the invitation of Philip to “come and see” Immanuel, God with us. This man, along with John and James and Andrew, was convinced that he had found Him, the Messiah, the One promised by Moses and the prophets. It was Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph.

Nathaniel had to tell the news. He sought his friend. He compelled him. He did just as the angels did in singing praises above the shepherds in the fields at night.

How could such holiness and righteousness choose to enter this world at such a time and at such a place? Nazareth?

To a backwater highway community and a carpenter’s house was where Christ came to live. Actually, this place was a sort of step up from where He was born – in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem.

Sin and Error

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining” until that Holy Night as the Christmas carol goes.  Nothing new in those words – see Genesis 18 and 19 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Go back even further to Genesis 6 when the Lord grieved over the state of a world in which every imagination of men’s hearts was only evil continually.

Once, with water God washed the earth and rescued one family led by Noah, who in obedience constructed an ark according to Heaven’s design. Another time with fire did God burn away cities whose scoffing and scorn and evil practices produced a society of such decadence that the sounds of its cries resounded to the throne of the Lord. “Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door. She was proud and committed detestable sins, so I wiped her out … “(Ezekiel 16:49-50).

So pervasive and controlling was the atmosphere of sin in Sodom that the only “righteous” ones – Lot and his daughters – had to be pulled literally out of the way of destruction. Lot’s wife refused to break free from the city she’d come to identify with and looked behind her and in judgment was turned to a pillar of salt.

Alas, flames and floods only did so much to get people to pay attention to the One who made them. The motion and muscle of iniquity continued to progress fast and furiously, gaining strong grip and hold as far as the curse is found.

What was left for God to do? He had to get to the very bottom of things. The fullness of time arrived and the Son had to take on flesh and bone. The Word became Man.

Into our world, He came as one of us. Deity entered dust. To feel what we feel and to die like we die. Share on X

Psalm 58 describes how the ways of sin captured the world. It says that we “go astray from the womb.” This is a song that longs for the Lord to manifest His vengeance and victory. The righteous long to see the blood of the wicked flow in their destruction.

However, the final words of Psalm 58 are these: “Verily, He is a God who judges in the earth” (Psalm 58:11).

Into our world, He came as one of us. Deity entered dust. To feel what we feel and to die like we die. The Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (see Ezekiel 18:23: 2 Peter 3:9).

The Lord took the judgment of sin upon Himself. How did He do it? As a tender plant growing in dry ground, the Son came to a world hardened by sin.

Facing the Giants

Everything about the social structures of the days that the Son spent on earth was corrupted. The Roman government was brutal and oppressive. The religious system was all law and no mercy. The legal proceedings were ruled by bribes and injustice.

Jesus faced all of this. He kept the vow the He made to His own hurt. The wages of sin is death. He did die, and He suffered everything that led to the death He died.

Water washed the earth once. Flames burnt away the uncleanness in Sodom. Death and sin continue, however.

The secret to defeating these things is found in the Passover story of Exodus. The substance that shields any of us from death is the Blood of the Lamb.

Bethlehem was a shepherd’s town and so all who were there knew of the lambs. It was where David was raised. There in its outskirts, this ruddy youngster developed a heart that sang the praises of the Lord. Those praises made him a warrior of a different kind.

Goliath showed up and thought Israel would send out its tallest and most renowned man to engage in hand-to-hand combat. That man should have been King Saul, by the way. He was a whole head taller than anyone else in Israel (see 1 Samuel 9:2).

Gripped by fear, Saul stayed on the sidelines. And then young, small David arrived.

He ran to the giant in the Name of the Lord. He slung one smooth stone and brought the monstrous mocker down on his face and sliced off his head with his own sword.

Rome was a goliath of an empire, a representation of the world system ruled by the wicked one. The Temple organization was also a societal giant that bullied people and scooped up a good bit of money doing so. Jesus chided those in religious leadership with devouring widows’ houses and livelihoods.

Power trips – the world has reveled in them since the Fall. Hell stimulates the selfish ambition rooted in the sin natures that seek to dominate the earth.

Jesus hung with His arms wide open. He made no fists. He offered the other cheek when He took a punch. He asked for forgiveness for those who hammered Him to the tree at Golgotha. Share on X

Who finds the way to victory over these things?

The Tender Plant, that’s who does it. He allowed Himself to be battered and bruised, slighted and ignored, betrayed and belittled.

Look at the manger scenes. What do we see there? A Baby with His mother, swaddled in cloth was the Word made flesh.

He came so small to speak for the smallest of us all. Going the way of weakness was something that the devil never accounted for. Hell’s mode of operation involves the pushes and the shoves.

Jesus hung with His arms wide open. He made no fists. He offered the other cheek when He took a punch. He asked for forgiveness for those who hammered Him to the tree at Golgotha.

He came small. He lived among the small and marginalized.

We sing of Him this season, the one that marks the start of His mission on earth.

Our Savior, was the Tender Plant who rooted Himself in our dry ground, the One from Nazareth. Now, let us give glory to God in the Highest for His Peace shall come to His people on earth.