Outsiders
Today we’re going to start with a movie from 1983…that’s right, we are back in the 80s today, and it just feels right doesn’t it? The movie in question is The Outsiders…do you remember that one? It’s actually debuted as a musical on Broadway last year too. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a classic. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who directed some other small films you might have heard of The Godfather 1, 2, and 3, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He’s an OK director, but more impressive is the young cast of The Outsiders. It stars: Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio (the original Karate Kid), Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Diane Lane. Read those names again…it’s a ridiculous list really. It’s a movie set in the 50s about a group of kids from the wrong side of town, the poor kids, who were called the Greasers, and they get into it with their rich rivals from the nice part of town, who were called the Socials or “Socs” (pronounced “soshes” with a long o). The Socs drive around in new mustangs and wear their letterman sweaters, and they harass some of the younger Greasers after they befriend two girls from the wealthier part of town…a young Diane Lane being one of them. Fights begin, accidents happen and drama ensues that carries you throughout the film. The tagline for the movie was, “They grew up on the outside of society. They weren't looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.”
Theatrical release poster
Why do I bring up The Outsiders? Well, because it offers a perfect illustration of a common human tendency, something that we do universally, across cultures, across time periods…and that is to form categories for all of us to fit in. We put each other into categories. The “us” and “them”…essentially, in-group and out-group thinking. We put each other into groups, categories…we label each other in society because we think it keeps order. It gives us some sort of grip on reality. Rich, poor, Socs, Greasers, cool, nerdy, popular, unpopular, etc. In-group, out-group thinking. I am sure we all have examples in our lives when we felt like the Greasers, when we felt like the Outsiders and were just looking to belong. If you went to High School, then you definitely have felt this at some time. The truth is that most of the world never gets past high school. We get older, but we just find new categories for everyone and new ways to judge each other and decide who is in and who is out. Fashion or style are always categories we like to use to judge. Or, like in The Outsiders, where you live puts you into a category, or your socio-economic status…gives you a reputation before anyone even takes the time to get to know you. People have formed opinions about you. What clubs do you belong to? What schools do your children attend? Or maybe it’s your obscure knowledge of movies from the 80s and 90s that makes you feel like you are in a superior category to others…nah no one would be that superficial and shallow, right?
The people of Israel were no exception to this categorical way of thinking. In fact, in the Old Testament in-group, out-group was God ordained in many ways. God chose a small people group in the Jews to be His people. Abraham and his descendants were in and everyone else was out. At least that’s the way it was seen on the surface.
But, if you look closely, you see something happen. There is a counterpoint throughout the Old Testament where the us and them way of thinking runs onto the rocks. And it is because of a different kind of Judge. We all tend to judge according to the externals, right? At least initially…as we have seen we put each other into categories based on external realities…wealth, popularity, athleticism, where you live, etc. But in Isaiah 11 we read that a different kind of Judge is coming. A different kind of Judge that, as Isaiah says, “shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge…” (vv. 3-4). I want to unpack that more. What does Isaiah mean? What is this Judge about then?
Let me remind us of some context here. Isaiah was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah, which included Jerusalem, and it was during a time when the Assyrians were taking over the northern kingdom of Israel and were about to do the same to Judah. Isaiah prophesied about the impending judgment that was coming as a result of the two kingdoms of the Jews repeatedly breaking the covenant with God. They were unfaithful and turned to other gods and therefore were taken into exile by the Assyrians as judgment. Isaiah also prophesied about the fact that God would not abandon them. He would not leave them in exile, but would bring them back and restore them and give them peace. SO, it’s in this context that we hear of this new kind of Judge. And right off the bat Isaiah paints this person in a very hopeful way. The imagery is of him being a shoot from the stump of Jesse – a little branch growing out of a cut down tree. That is a picture that Isaiah uses in previous chapters to describe the fate of Israel and Judah…they will be like a forest that has been cut down and burned out. It’s a picture of desolation. We saw this just months ago in LA. It leaves a path of death, which is always what judgment brings about…it puts things to death.
And here Isaiah says that a shoot will spring forth, a branch will grow out of Jesse’s line, who was the father of David…this is a messianic prophecy. It is a true picture of hope because it is saying that not only will Israel not stay dead…the cut down tree…but out of that humbled place will come new life. And not just any life, but the Messiah himself! He is the new branch. And Isaiah describes what he will be like:
“He shall bear fruit. 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. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord….Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins” (vv. 1,2,3, and 5).
It is clear from Isaiah’s description that this Messiah, this Judge will be trustworthy, he will be good…he will be full of the Spirit of the Lord, wise and understanding…but there’s a different dimension to Him. Isaiah says he will judge with his word. He will simply speak, and it will happen. There is another moment in Scripture when such power is seen and that is at creation. God speaks everything into existence. He breaks the silence with his word and brings order out of chaos, brings new life out of nothing (Gen. 1). That imagery is being brought in here…the branch out of the stump, new life out of death, this person who carries the same power as God himself. We hear Isaiah’s implication that this Messiah will not just be any man…He will be God.
And as we said, the thing that this Messiah will do according to this passage is judge. There are a few categories given in the passage too. The poor, the meek, and the wicked. Now, if you were a Jew living in Jerusalem at this time, who do you think you would put into those categories? Remember, the Jews were like the rest of us in that they saw things according to the “us and them” categories and probably more than most because of their history of being the chosen people of God. And here they are under the threat of invasion and exile…I am sure when they heard Isaiah’s prophecy they thought of themselves as the poor and meek…they were the ones being invaded and conquered after all. And I am sure they thought the Assyrians were the wicked ones. At first glance, that seems pretty accurate, and from one angle I think this prophecy did go there, but it doesn’t stay there. The key to understanding this passage and to really understanding what this different kind of Judge is about is the part that says he will not judge according to what he sees and hears, but rather he will judge with righteousness.
We read this passage the same way as the Jews just with a different context…we read it and put ourselves into the poor and meek category and we put others in the wicked category. We judge according to the external. We are the favored people and others are the excluded ones. On the geo-political level we might think of the wicked as Putin, North Korea, Communists, etc. Or depending on where you sat in this last election the wicked might have been liberals…or conservatives. It happens in the church too…any student of church history will tell you that there have been many times when Christians have seen other Christians as the enemy, the wicked. But an even simpler reading of this passage I have heard is that unbelievers are the wicked. However you slice it, we read this passage with the in-group out-group lens. But as we have already hinted, that totally misses the point. Isaiah debunks that interpretation right off the bat with the fact that this Messiah will not judge according to externals…He will not pay attention to what his eyes see and what his ears hear…he will judge according to righteousness.
Now it’s no secret that the Bible tells us who the Messiah is…Isaiah is talking about Jesus. But how does his ministry fit with what Isaiah is saying here? How do we see him fulfill this prophecy? How does he judge with righteousness and not according to externals? It is actually the very core of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels. In his most famous teaching moment, the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5 we see Jesus do exactly what this prophecy says. He teaches on the law, and he does so as one with authority over it. He says, “You have heard it said thou shall not commit adultery” referring to Moses and the 10 Commandments. And then he does this amazing thing and says, “But I say to you…” He is showing that he has the authority to reinterpret God’s law, to correct their thinking on it, he appeals to no authority other than himself, “I say to you…” He’s revealing that He is God here…remember “he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and he shall kill the wicked with the breath of his lips.” And what does he say? He says, “I say to you any of you that look at another with lust has already committed adultery” (Matt. 5:28). He does the same with murder. “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say to you any of you that says “Racca,” (which just means ‘you fool’) about another has already committed murder in your heart” (5:21-22). He applies the law on the heart level. He raises it to the highest degree…making righteousness a matter of the heart and not the external. Not according to what he sees or hears. The external simply follows what’s going on internally. Jesus teaches very clearly multiple times that it is out of the heart that comes slander, malice, lust, greed, covetousness, etc., etc. (Mark 7, Matt. 15). Sin comes from the heart. Our sinful actions (the externals) are simply the outpouring of our sinful hearts.
Jesus shows us that wickedness is not some outside reality. It is not some other group that is doing bad things to us…rather it is in each one of us.
Now think of the people that responded to Jesus. Think of the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the lepers, the sick, the lame, think of Zaccheus…what did they all have in common? They were all judged as sinners. They had already been excluded by the law. The Pharisees and the rest of the regular Jews who were working really hard to be good looked at this crowd and knew they were sinners, the wicked, the judged. There was no question about their situation. They knew they were in trouble, desperate, and that meant that when they heard this guy was out there healing and offering mercy and grace to people like them, to outsiders, they came running. They were adulterers, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and they came running because the law had done its work on them. They knew they needed to be saved and they could not save themselves. As Jesus said, “it’s not the healthy that need a physician, but the sick”…he came for the sick (Luke 5:31-32).
On the flip side were all the other folks who were still in, they were still included because they had managed to keep it together, at least on the outside. They had worked hard to keep their head down and not get caught for stuff they shouldn’t be doing…or they were simply lucky enough not to be sick or leprous. The Pharisees essentially represented this crowd…they were the professionally good…they were the clergy of the time. And how did Jesus regularly interact with them? He bumped heads with them constantly. He made them uncomfortable because he would not play by their rules. They wanted him to judge with his eyes and with his ears…they wanted him to exclude people on the same basis as they did, but he never did. In fact, he always to seemed to come against the people that they thought we doing ok. He always seemed to accuse them of being the wicked, which made no sense. He was always exposing their hearts as the problem because they thought they were good, they were the in-group. And Jesus kept on blowing up their paradigm.
Isaiah paints a picture of a judge who would be truly righteous…concerned with what God was concerned with…matters of the heart…righteousness from the heart. And when that is the standard, no one measures up. No one is in except God himself. He is the only one who is truly righteous inside and out. And that means that all of us are on a level playing field. There are no more categories for us. As U2 sings, “There is no them, there is no them…there’s only us” (Invisible). We are all outsiders when compared with God…we are all the poor, the meek, and the wicked.
The miracle is that Jesus did in fact come to kill the wicked. He exposes our sin for what it is with his word, his teaching about true righteousness, and then he takes it all upon himself. He takes our sin and says, “This is mine now. It’s not yours any more. I own it.” And he nails it to the cross in his own body, so that it might be judged once and for all…so that sin might be killed once and for all. He kills our wickedness…he brings it to death like a burned out forest. And out of those ashes he brings something new. A new root that will bear new fruit. And new heart that will love instead of judge. That stops putting each other into categories and instead sees us all in the same boat in need of the same grace, needing the same salvation. That’s the beautiful picture we get as Isaiah goes on. The fruit of Jesus’ judgment will be:
“The wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear grazing; their young lying down together; and the lion eating straw like the ox. The nursing child playing over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child putting his hand on the adder's den. 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” (11:6-9).
He will bring peace. His judgment will result in peace. These are pictures of radical transformation.
This is not some vegan nirvana that Isaiah is describing here. That may literally happen when Jesus returns, but that is not what is being said primarily. This is a picture of us…our internal reality. Remember the poor, the meek, the wickedness was all inside us. We see a picture here of our healing, our transformation as humans. The predatory side of us that used to spend all of its time trying to kill to survive, trying to one-up everyone else, trying to be better than others, trying to keep the weaker parts of ourselves hidden, the vulnerable parts of us out of the public eye…the Darwinian side of us that lived according to survival of the fittest is completely changed. It’s not wiped out, it’s not erased from existence…the predators are all still there, but they are fundamentally different. They are at peace with their former prey. What we would normally see as a picture of threat…a baby playing over the hole of a cobra…that is super threatening and scary, but Isaiah is telling us that’s how radical the transformation will be as a result of Jesus’ judgment. The threat will be completely gone because there will be peace where there once was war. The predator will not be a predator any more; the prey will not be prey any more. Instead of enemies the two will be seen as complimentary parts of the same whole.
Isaiah is giving us a picture of wholeness…healing…new life…freedom. We can allow the weaker parts of us space. We can be vulnerable and share our whole self with others now because he has taken our wickedness, he has taken our brokenness. Remember the women at the well after she encountered Jesus? At the start of the story she goes to the well in the heat of the day, which no one did because she knew then she wouldn’t have to see anyone…she was so ashamed about her reputation. She was trying to hide her weakness. But after she meets Jesus, and he addresses her shame of having been married five times and now shacking up with some guy…and he accepts her, giving her grace…she goes out to the neighborhood and says, “Come hear a man who told me all I ever did.” She is not hiding any more. She is not ashamed any more. She was transformed and now was boasting in her weakness (John 4 and 2 Cor. 12:1-10).
This is the radical fruit of this different kind of Judge…we find that we are all outsiders, we are all in the same boat, and we are all welcomed in. He comes to us, takes our sin from us, puts it to death in himself so that he could bring new life for us…and now all of us get to belong. Amen.
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