The Holy Seed

“Then I said, ‘How long, O LORD?’ And he said: ‘Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste,'”
Isaiah 6:11

Isaiah chapter 6 is a portion of scripture I have heard many, many times, but it’s mostly the beginning of the chapter that people dwell on. The magnificent vision of I AM, the LORD of hosts, seated on His throne with His robe train billowing out and filling the temple. The sight brings Isaiah trembling to his knees at the full weight of his sin before this holy and mighty God. A many winged seraphim glides to him and uses tongs to place a burning hot coal to Isaiah’s lips, searing them and thus purging him from sin. Then the LORD’s voice thunders, “Whom shall I send?” To which a newly cleansed Isaiah humbly replies, “Here I am! Send me.”

This picture of salvation, of the cleansing of our sin and guilt by the atonement of sacrifice, and the humble example of Isaiah’s willingness to serve, is both exciting and encouraging. It makes sense that this is the part where we tend to dwell. Especially when you look down to the rest of the chapter to read the message that Isaiah is sent to preach.

It is a message of destruction and judgement. It is a warning to a people that their time is up. That God has given them chance after chance after chance to repent, but now the multiplication of their sin and hardened hearts and left him so disgusted that He will now lay waste to their safety and prosperity. They chose to turn away from His call to return to Him. Now they will blindly and deafly stumble until all the things they placed their hope in are ripped from underneath them. Until they are plundered and enslaved.

These are Isaiah’s kin. His friends and relatives. His neighbors and fellow countrymen. Heartsick, he asks God, “how long must I preach this message?”

“Until there’s nothing left. Nothing but the stump of a nation, like a once magnificent tree that’s felled.”

And at the end of all this heaviness, comes a sentence that almost seems out of place. That almost makes no sense without the wider context of scripture. A sentence that I’ve missed over and over until this last reading:

“The holy seed is its stump.”

Another passage came to mind where the word “seed” interrupts the heavy, depressing weight of God’s message. This story takes place in a magnificent garden just as night is about to collapse over its trembling inhabitants.

Adam and Eve stand naked and ashamed before their Creator-God. They now intimately know the difference between good and evil through their own experience of sin. They rejected their loving father. They rebelled against his rule and the Just Judge is laying on them curses and condemnation. In the midst of this list of broken relationships and banishment from the peace and comfort of the only home they have ever known, God speaks words of hope.

“I will put enmity between [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Genesis 3:15, ESV

Hope for the banished and sinful race of Adam is placed in the seed of the woman. Her offspring will save them. A day of redemption will come. One day, they will be able to come home.

God whispers a reminder of this promise to Isaiah. Yes, the tree is felled. It has been hacked to pieces and dragged off to another country. But the stump remains. And from that stump, that small remnant of what once was, will burst new life. The root of the tree will bring forth a godly seed that will live in the land and perfectly obey God’s call. So perfectly will this seed obey, that should the wicked try to cut him down, God will bring him back to life.

The Holy Seed will crush the serpent and burst forth from the grave, a tree of everlasting life.