ROOTS
Alistair M Brown
Revelation 22: 16-17 “bride say, Come”
I
was interested in this matter of “the root” that is spoken of in Revelation and
in Isaiah, and also in the matter of being “rooted and built up” and “rooted
and founded” in the scriptures read in Colossians and Ephesians.
In
Revelation it is the Lord Jesus who is speaking; it is not through a prophet or
an angel, but the Lord Jesus Himself. He says, “I Jesus”.
He has sent His angel to testify certain things, but then He says, “I
am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”. The Lord is bringing before us something as
to Himself. We might find the scripture
a little mysterious. What does it mean,
“I am the root and offspring of David”?
If you feel that certain scriptures are mysterious and hard to
understand, seek help from ministry which helps us to understand the
scriptures, and which is a great help to us in building us up and letting us
have things in order in our minds. What
I believe the Lord is referring to - and you can read about this in ministry -
when He speaks of Himself as “the root … of David” is His own deity, that He is
God. He is “the root … of David”. That was there before David ever was; it was
outside the genealogy in which you can trace David's roots, naturally speaking,
back to Adam. God was the Originator of
all of that. In referring to Himself as
“the root … of David”, the Lord Jesus is drawing attention to His deity. The Lord Jesus is wonderful! He is beyond our comprehension. There are scriptures that speak of that. Jesus said at one point, and it is recorded
in John's gospel, “Before Abraham was, I am”, John 8: 58. That was something that the Pharisees who
had gathered round Him were entirely unable to understand: “the root … of
David”. The Lord Jesus speaks of
Himself in a similar way in a passage in Matthew: “And the Pharisees being
gathered together, Jesus demanded of them, saying, What think ye concerning the
Christ? whose son is he? They say to
him, David's”. The Lord says to them,
“How then does David in Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit on my right hand until I put thine enemies under thy feet? If therefore David call him Lord, how is he
his son? And no one was able to answer
him a word”, chap 22: 41 - 46. The Lord
Jesus was drawing the attention of these unbelieving Pharisees to the greatness
of His Person, and they were not able to answer Him a word, indicating that He
was drawing attention to His own deity.
How wonderful His is! How
majestic a Person!
He
is also the true Melchisedec. If you
read in the Hebrews, you will find one “without father, without mother, without
genealogy; having neither beginning of days nor end of life”, Heb 7: 3. What a personage he was, “assimilated to the
Son of God”. Scripture speaks of
Melchisedec in that way, “without father, without mother, without genealogy;
having neither beginning of days nor end of life”. Christ is “the root … of David”.
He was there before beginnings were, and we are able to speak of Him as
the Lord Jesus, the One who spoke of Himself as “I Jesus”. The same eternal majesty was there, whether
as “the root … of David”, or “Before Abraham was, I am”,. What a wonderful
personage, and He would bring Himself before us in all His glory, “I Jesus”,
“I am the root … of David”. He
would do that to fill our hearts with a sense of His majesty and of His
greatness. He was there in all eternal
counsels, the great One. What can we
say about that pre-incarnate period, the immense scope of eternity before the
working out of divine counsels when the Lord Jesus became flesh? In time, the One that we know as the Lord
Jesus became flesh: but He is “the root … of David”. The thought of the root conveys fruit that is going to be
borne. It conveys the thought of life
in potential in the root, and I am sure there is some reference to that
here. It was God's purpose that He
should dwell with men, that He should bring into existence creatures that were
after His image and after His likeness.
He would put hearts in them that were capable of affection and
intelligence, and finally God would dwell with such. That was God's purpose, that creatures would know the blessedness
of His heart of love. His counsels
involve how that should be brought about, how one Person of the Godhead has
come into manhood. That has taken
place. We refer to it as the
incarnation, when one blessed divine Person was found here in manhood's form,
when the Word became flesh. What a
marvellous matter that was; the One who is the Root of David came into
manhood's form. I speak of these
things, not as able to open them out in detail, but to appeal to our hearts and
minds and to bring before us the greatness and wonder and glory of this One who
speaks of Himself as “I Jesus”.
Wonderful Person!
Then
He refers to Himself as the “offspring of David”, the One who is the true Son
of David, 'Great David's greater Son!' (Hymn 36). He is the One that we sang about; He is the One whom Israel will
come to know in a day to come, the “offspring of David”. The “offspring of David” would bring before
us His royalty. David was the king, and
even now people in Israel know about King David and call things after him. As far as an Israeli is concerned, David was
the
king. Well, there was One greater
than David and He was here. When He was
here His own to whom He came did not receive Him. The Light was there, and it shone on them, and they turned their
backs on Him. In general, as a mass,
that was true. There were those that
did receive Him and there was one man who said, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of
God, thou art the King of Israel”, John 1: 49.
There was one man in that scripture who recognised the greatness of this
One, the “offspring of David”. He
recognised His true royalty, His moral right to be king. You might say there was no king in Israel at
that time. They were bound to the Roman
yoke, and the Romans allowed a governor to be over the Jews, but there was one
Man who had the right, and the sway was His, the sceptre was His, and He was
not recognised, He was rejected.
You
see that in Isaiah 53, but there will come a time when the One who is the
Offspring of David, great David's greater Son, will be on the throne. That is the day that we know as the
millennium, the day to come. It says,
“the habitable world which is to come, of which we speak”, Heb 2: 5. Maybe we could speak about it more. That is when the Lord will hold sway, and He
will hold sway on this earth. He will
do that through the assembly, which is not of the earth; and through His
people, Israel. It says at the beginning
of Isaiah, “that the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established on the top
of the mountains … and all the nations shall flow unto it”, Isa 2: 2. There will be a recognition that there is
blessing which has its source in the Offspring of David, the true King, and it
will be available to men through His people who are now the tail of the nations
and who will become the head. That
blessed One who speaks of Himself here as “I Jesus ... the root and
offspring of David” will exercise benign sway.
It will be for the blessing of men from shore to shore. What a wonderful time it will be! If you read Isaiah you get some idea of
it. Isaiah is full of references to how
wonderful His reign will be. The
government will be on the shoulder of One who is “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty
God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace”, Isa 9: 6. How could it not be a wonderful time when such a One is in the
ascendancy; when that One, the true Offspring of David, is on the throne? It goes on to say, “And there shall come
forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall be
fruitful; and the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him”, Isa 11: 1-2. This is a reference clearly to the Lord
Jesus. Later in that passage you can
see the Lord in His pathway here brought out, but you can also see the
greatness of His millennial rule, “And righteousness shall be the girdle of his
reins, and faithfulness the girdle of his loins”, v 5. Then it goes on to say in verse 10, “And in
that day there shall be a root of Jesse, standing as a banner of the peoples:
the nations shall seek it; and his resting-place shall be glory”. What a wonderful matter that is, this
blessed One who speaks of Himself as “offspring of David”, the One whose right
it is to reign and who will reign. He
will reign actually over this earth. He
will stand “as a banner of the peoples:
the nations shall seek it”. The
nations do not know what to seek at the moment. They seek peace and they find destruction and they find war, and
somebody was quoting a scriptural expression earlier - the Psalms speak of that
as to the sailors, “they are at their wits' end”, Ps 107: 27. Men are like that, and there is one Man who
has the answer. He will have the answer
and He will reign in righteousness. It
will be a wonderful time when that One who is the true “offspring of David” exercises
His blessed rule.
Thinking
of these things enhances the glory of the Lord Jesus in the heart of the
believer. The day to come will be a day
of majestic and wonderful rule.
Righteousness will rule and things will be in order. People will invite each other under their
own vine and their own fig-tree, the families on the earth will do that. But these things are available in their
principle and in their characteristics to the believer now, because Jesus must
reign in my heart and He must reign in your heart; and as He does so, there
will be peace and order, grace will be known, and neighbourly relations will be
rightly worked out. What the Jews and
those on the earth will do in the day to come, when they invite one another
under their own vine and their own fig-tree( Zech 3: 10), believers to whom
Christ is Lord can do now. They can
know these felicitous conditions now.
We were speaking of some of these conditions in our reading
together. These matters are real. What will be in the day to come has its
reflex, has its imprint, as it were, now.
We have to be interested in these things, in “the habitable world which
is to come, of which we speak”. All of
this is to enhance our appreciation of the glory of, “I Jesus ...I
am the root and offspring of David”.
Isaiah
53 speaks of Christ prophetically, and most wonderfully prophetically, coming
in as Man. The fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah is truly remarkable. If you
wanted proof for your mind of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, you
could read the fifty-third of Isaiah.
It is undeniable. It was
written, I suppose, about seven hundred and fifty years before Christ was here,
and it speaks about Him so wondrously accurately in every respect. It speaks of Him growing up before God “as a
tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground”, and this is that blessed One
whom we have read about as “the root ... of David” now coming to manhood, now
as a real Man on this earth. He grew up “as a root out of dry ground”. There was that root character in Him as a
tremendous source of life. There was
the potential there to cover the earth in life that is according to God, but He
grew up out of dry ground, that is that the earth naturally conveyed nothing to
Him, He drew nothing from it. He drew
nothing from the human race after nature because He was a different kind of Man
altogether. You read the rest of this
chapter and you see how different He was.
He was not like you and me. He
was not like any other kind of man. He
was God's Man, but He and is God Himself. He is the Centre and the Object of the faith
and love of every believer, I trust of everyone in this room. It is very significant that He grew up
before God ”as a root out of dry ground”.
This would remind us that there is nothing in this world that is for
Christ, nothing that He can draw from or identify with in this world in its
fallen moral state. What a sad
condition the world is in. I do not
want to occupy you with that, but there was nothing that Christ could draw from
here. The established religious orders
cold-shouldered Him; they would rather that He was not there. He made them feel uncomfortable. They were worried that if Christ's teaching
and preaching went on the Romans would take away their place and their nation. But there were some that found Him, people
who were able to say that He spoke like no-one else could speak, who did things
that no-one else did.
I
wonder if you have found Him like that, friend, Somebody who you feel that you
could not do without. How blessed it
is! Read the rest of this chapter. I do not think any believer can read it
without being affected. He was
“despised and left alone of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,
and like one from whom men hide their faces; - despised”, and then it says,
“and we esteemed him not”. How sad and
sober that is, and how true. Unless the
Spirit of God had worked in my heart and stirred up something there that
appreciated something of the glory and wonder of the Lord Jesus Christ, I would
not esteem Him. Naturally we would not
esteem Him were it not for God's sovereign work in our souls. This remains the case today, but thanks be
to God, there are those who do esteem Him, there are those who appreciate that
“root out of dry ground”. He is One who
grew up before God, who went on to glorify God in all His pathway here, One who
brought out the fulness of committal to God's will, obedience in all its
fulness, even to the cross. It speaks
later of His sufferings, as being “stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted”. I suppose that is what the
orthodox Jews thought, that the Lord Jesus was being smitten of God. Well He was, but not in the way that they thought:
in Him being smitten He was bearing your sins and my sins on that cross at
Calvary. This One was doing that, One
who grew up before God “as a root out of dry ground”. He is the One who is the Saviour for every one of us. Do we love Him? Do we hold ourselves for Him?
Are we loyal to Him? Is there
none like Him in our eyes? There is
none like Him in God's eyes. This One
is now exalted. He was “raised up from
among the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom 6: 4), and He exalted Him and
sat Him down at His right hand, having given Him a place that is higher than
the heavens. Wonderful Person that He
is, He is now rightly crowned; the One who was once that “tender sapling ... a
root out of dry ground” is now crowned with glory and honour. How worthy and how wonderful an Object for
our hearts and for our lives, dear brethren!
He is a wonderful Person.
I
want just to speak about some of the ways that we are to be affected by Him,
brought out in the scriptures that we read in Colossians and in Ephesians. In Colossians 2 the apostle says, “I am …
rejoicing”. He was rejoicing in the
Colossian brethren, “and seeing your order, and the firmness of your faith in
Christ”, and then he says, “As therefore ye have received the Christ, Jesus the
Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him”. What does it mean to be “rooted and built up”? One thing that being rooted in Him conveys
to my mind is that He is the Source of our life. That is what a root is.
We do not need to do much gardening to know that the root is that from
which a plant or a tree or a shrub derives its life, and if the roots get
damaged, or if the plant or shrub is separated from its roots by rough
handling, or by a spade going in, then it dies. It can no longer derive its life from its root, and the root is
deep down. Being rooted also leads to
steadfastness, firmness and permanence, and a believer is to be rooted and
founded in Him. ”Founded” would be more
the idea of building, the foundation, what is permanently laid, and we had
something of that in the reading. That
is very interesting too. It is interesting
to see how what is organic or agricultural
runs along with what relates to building.
The apostle Paul often uses these metaphors, but we are occupied for the
moment with this matter of “rooted”, and Paul is exhorting the Colossian
brethren to be rooted in Christ. “As
therefore ye have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and
built up in him”. I appeal to all of us
to be exercised to be rooted in Christ.
Where do we derive our life from?
Where are my roots? The
conditions of the roots of a plant become manifest in its leaves and its
shoots. You can read about that in Mr
Stoney, whose ministry is always very interesting and who uses many of these
horticultural or agricultural metaphors.
He was interested in things that grew.
He indicates (vol 12 p505) that the state of the plant, and the state of
the believer, as to our connections with the root
will become apparent. The root may be
hidden, but what we are and our connection with Christ as rooted in Him will
become apparent. If we want to be
flourishing and growing in the courts of God, then we need to lay hold of that
Root, the One whom Paul is exhorting the Colossians to be rooted in. And who is He? He is the Christ, Jesus the Lord.
So
I appeal to all of us, we want to be here as believers who are in life,
manifesting something before God and before men as to the life of Christ. That is what the believer is to be, and in
order to do that we must be rooted in Him.
We are not going to be blown about by things, as this chapter speaks
about being deluded by persuasive speech, and then being led away “as a prey
through philosophy and vain deceit”.
None of us would want to be like that.
Being rooted in Christ is the antidote; it is the solution to being
blown about. Christ is the solution for
everything. Thinking as we are about
being rooted, and referring to what is firm and unchanging and immovable, then
Christ is the antidote to having a change of mind or being unsure about things
or feeling your testimony is not really worth very much because you do not feel
you can be firm for Christ. He is the
solution to that. Be rooted in Him,
love Him, and derive your life from Him.
Put your roots down to that One, be occupied with Him. I speak to myself more than any.
Then
this will become apparent, because a third aspect that roots make us think of
is fruit-bearing. If the root is good,
the fruit will be good; and the Lord speaks of Himself as “the true vine” (John
15: 1), which would, I think, include the roots of that Vine, and He speaks
about fruit-bearing for God. Christ
Himself bears fruit. He went into death
that He might bear much fruit, and there is much fruit being borne now all over
the world to God because of what Christ has done, and some of that blessed
fruit is in this room this afternoon, and we thank God for it. John 15 speaks about bearing more fruit, and
the Lord says, “In this is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit”, v 8. What is in mind is a cornucopia, a large
harvest of fruit, a plentiful return for One who died so that much fruit might
be borne, a horn of plenty. What God
has in mind is that you and I should bear much fruit. How are we going to bear it?
We are going to bear it as being rooted and founded in the Christ, Jesus
our Lord. There is no other way, but
what a blessed way it is, and as we find Him and draw from that real and living
Man in glory, then we will find firmness, we will find that we are immovable,
we will find that Christian life is real and vigorous and bears testimony, and
we will find that there is fruit, and the fruit is for God. The fruit is not for me to eat, the fruit is
for God. Then, as God is satisfied and
pleased with what He sees in me, there is blessing for me. God does not leave us out of that. As He is satisfied in the fruit that is
borne to Him, there is blessing for us, there is peace, there is satisfaction,
there is joy, there is company, there is everything that your heart desires as
a believer in that blessed Christ, in being “rooted and built up in him”.
We
should look at Ephesians. You could say
that in Colossians we are to be in Christ, our roots are to be in Christ; and
then in Ephesians Christ is to be in us.
He is to be in our hearts and He is to dwell there through faith, “being
rooted and founded in love”. I think
that refers to us being rooted and founded, Christ being in our hearts, being
rooted and founded in Him within us. It
seems that what we have read in Colossians relates to moral exercises, as to doing
what is right and drawing our lives from Christ, being found in testimony true
to Him and pleasing to Him, with a view to bearing fruit. This chapter in Ephesians has to do with
spiritual matters. Being rooted in
Christ is the source of spiritual life so that there might be response to God,
as we get at the end of this section, and so that there might be growth in the
apprehension of the breadth and the length and the depth and the height, and
growth, too, in the knowledge of the love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge. It says “and to know the
love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”, and then the apostle adds, “that
ye may be filled even to all the fulness of God”. What blessedness! Could
anyone encompass that? I do not think
we can comprehend it. Scripture says,
“apprehend”. Mr Darby translated this
with great spiritual sensitivity, I believe, in using the words “fully able to
apprehend with all the saints”. These
are spiritual matters, and saints are prepared for the full apprehension of the
greatness of God's thoughts by having Christ dwelling in our hearts, “that the
Christ may dwell, through faith, in your hearts, being rooted and founded in
love”. This is to be our experience, it
is to come off the pages of Scripture and to go into your heart and my heart,
and be real there. Thank God that these
thoughts are in the pages of Scripture.
We have been reading Ephesians on Lord's day afternoon in Grangemouth,
and if these thoughts were not conveyed by the Holy Spirit through the words that
have been written in the pages of Scripture, no one could ever have formulated
them. They could never proceed from
man's heart or man's mind. They could
only proceed from God's heart and God's mind.
They have been made known to us by the Spirit-indited Holy Scriptures,
and they are wonderful. They have to
come off the pages of Scripture and be in my heart, as blessed, living,
spiritual realities. The way to them is
to have Christ in our hearts through faith, and to be rooted and founded in
love. What that goes on to is the
capacity to “be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth
and length and depth and height”. What
scope God has in mind for us. He wants
that sphere to be populated by people, by believers, who are become like
Christ. That love of His embraces a
whole living realm that is populated, and will be populated for eternity, by
those among whom He finds His rest. God
is preparing for that now, and there are many being gathered in who will form
that rest of God.
Then
it says, “and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”. You might say that is a contradiction in
terms. How can you know something that
surpasses knowledge? Well, the Spirit
will help us to know that blessed love.
It is God's love and Christ's love and the Spirit's love, and the Spirit
sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts, and every day, as we let Him, He
increases our capacity, “to know the love of the Christ which surpasses
knowledge”, and to the end “that ye may be filled even to all the fulness of
God”, even to that. What grace, what
matchless, glorious grace that this should be so, that God should so operate
that we should be filled even to His fulness, so that our hearts should be
filled, and so that we should be full vessels who are able to respond to God.
The
One who is “the root and offspring of David” is also “the bright and morning
star”; and He records, because they are His words in the end of Revelation,
that “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”.
This brings us in a great circuit, because what is being worked out in
the hearts of individual believers is Christ.
He is the One who operates in our hearts, who works there, who desires
to dwell in our hearts through faith, that we might be rooted and founded in
love in Him. He is gathering you and me
among the personnel of His assembly, His bride; and the time is coming soon
when that One who has made Himself known as “the root … of David” and who is
the “offspring of David”, and who is Head to the church - its blessed living
Head, will be seen as its Bridegroom, and the church His bride. What a wonderful culmination of all this
wonderful process that has being going on through these two thousand years. Well, may we be in it livingly, dear brethren
and friends. We are at the close,
waiting for and hastening that day. For
His Name's sake.
Edinburgh