A Rod of Jesse

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 
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 of the fear of the LORD; Isa 11:1-2
​THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD

This is declared concerning the Messiah. Short as this declaration is, some of the profoundest of all truths are involved in it. It is implied that God is a person, that from Him there goes forth an influence by which the character of other persons is affected, and that all that qualified Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah came from God. Let us think of these things. Do not be deterred from doing so by the idea that they are transcendental, far away from our daily life. They need not be so; we shall be very blameworthy if we make them so.

God is a person. There are those who would have us put away this faith. In their view, God is merely the great controlling Force behind all other forces, the life of the universe, diffused through it, manifesting itself in innumerable forms. As it is the same life in the tree that manifests itself in root, trunk, branch, spray, twig, leaf, blossom, fruit, so all things that exist are not the creations of a personal will, but the manifestations of an impersonal and all-pervading life; all forces, convertible the one into the other, are but varying forms of the one underlying force. Every individual life is but a wave that seems for a moment to be separated from the one universal ocean of life; it leaps up from it, falls back into it, is absorbed by it. True, these waves are often strangely diverse—Nero and St. Paul, John Howard and Napoleon, the Virgin Mary and Lucrezia Borgia; but in that great Unity of which they are all manifestations, there is an all-comprehensive reconciliation, though it may elude our grasp. For Pantheism, many would have us put away the doctrine of a personal God. But this exchange, if it could be forced upon us by some logical necessity (which it is not), would not be a gain, but a tremendous loss. For:
1. There would be a tremendous loss to the heart. A force may be feared, but not loved. To gravitation we owe much, but no one ever professed to love it. A force cannot be loved, because it does not love. Strike out of our life all that comes to us from the confidence that God loves us, and from the responsive love that springs up in our hearts towards Him, and how much is lost! Then there is no longer any assurance amid the mysteries of life, nor consolation in its sorrows. In a word, we are orphaned: we can no longer say, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” There is no longer a Father, knowing us, loving us, causing all things to work together for our good; there is only a Force, to which it is useless to appeal, against which it is impossible to contend.
2. We should also lose one of the greatest of all helps to a noble life. Not to dwell on the fact that to speak of virtue or vice would then be absurd,—then we should no longer sin, we should merely make mistakes,—consider how much the world owes to the aspiration to be like God which has stirred so many noble souls. Through them the average morality of the world has been marvelously raised; but this would have been impossible but for the stimulus these inspiring souls found in the character of God. That is the first fact of which this text reminds us, that God is a person from whom a spirit—an influence—can go forth affecting the character of other persons.

To the influence exerted upon Him by the Spirit of the Lord, Jesus of Nazareth owed all that qualified Him to be the Messiah (Isa_11:2-5). That which was born of the Virgin Mary was a true human child. A sinless child, yet sinless not as the result of the sinlessness of the mother (as Rome teaches), but of the influence of the Spirit of the Lord resting upon Him from the beginning of His earthly life. His was a real humanity—our humanity sanctified. All that was pure, noble, Godlike in Him was “born not of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” How full of comfort and hope is this truth also! To us also is offered the same Spirit. Nothing can be more express than the declarations that we may have it if we will, and that, if we have it, the ultimate result will be that we shall be found partakers of the holiness of God. Let us not be unwisely cast down by the frailty and pollution of our nature; if the Spirit of the Lord rest upon us, the purity and the strength of God will become ours, and at length the Father will say of each of us, as He did of Jesus of Nazareth, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
​See also: Jer_23:5-6; Jer_33:15 Isa_4:2, Isa_11:1-5, Isa_53:2; Eze_17:22-23; Zec_3:8, Zec_6:12-13
(Preacher's Homiletical)

THE KINGDOM OF THE MESSIAH

The advance of the Assyrian along the great north road is graphically described. It was marked by raided villages and towns. The night sky was lurid with flames. But his collapse would be as sudden and irretrievable as the felling of forest timber. As the one chapter closes we can almost hear the crash of the Assyrian tree to the ground, and there is no sprout from his roots. But in the next the prophet descries a fair and healthy branch uprising from the trunk of Jesse’s line. The vision of the King is then presented, who can be none other than the divine Redeemer on whom rests the sevenfold Spirit of God. The second verse defines the work of the Comforter, and is evidently the model of that royal hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus. But remember that He on whom this divine unction rested longs to share the Pentecostal gift with the least of His disciples, 1Jn_2:27. Note that as man’s sin brought travail and groaning on all creation, so will His redemption deliver it, Rom_8:19-25.  (F.B. Meyer)

Jer 33:15  In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. 
Jer 33:16  In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness. 
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​Rom 8:19  For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 
Rom 8:20  For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 
Rom 8:21  Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
Rom 8:22  For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 
Rom 8:23  And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 
Rom 8:24  For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 
Rom 8:25  But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.