Isaiah 37:31-32 And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward:… This is a promise for the encouragement of a downcast people. It is the seer's way of looking through the clouds and finding the sunshine. Judah had stood like a splendid tree, with roots deep and branches wide. The hurricane had struck it, and it was plucked up by the roots. The kings of Assyria had swept down on the people of God like a very besom of destruction. Their cry to God brought back the assurance that His hand was still on the kings of Assyria and that He had a large hope to offer Judah, the hope that the remnant should grow again, taking root downward and bearing fruit upward. It does not take a large start to come to large growth. Rooting. for the sake of fruiting — it is a familiar scriptural thought. "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which bringeth forth his fruit in his season." In the parable, the seed that grew so quickly withered away because it had no root. The fig-tree which bore no fruit was dried up from the very root. And so on, probably twenty times in Scripture, where rooting and fruiting are connected. Of course you observe the simple naturalness of it. That is what we are accustomed to everywhere else. That is what we are to expect in the spiritual life. Trees and plants take root downward and bear fruit upward. So do souls; each in its appropriate soil and each in its appropriate fruit, but by processes that are as natural in one case as in the other. You cannot explain the process in either case without God; you need Him at the start of it, and in the progress of it, and at the end of it. And you find Him working through the laws He has made. The spiritual life is not an exception to the rest of the round of life; it is the same natural life, has its laws as native to it as the natural laws are native to the rest of life. Then you observe how the rooting is unseen, underground, unthought of, and the fruiting is above ground, in evidence, out in the light. Here is a laying bare of the necessity of the inner life and the outer life as well. Neither is indifferent to the other. You do not want roots for their own sake, and you cannot have fruit Without them. If you are going to improve the quality of the fruit, you must often start in a better care of the root. In that fact lies one of the puzzles of history and of human life. It is not difficult to find when the fruit began to appear, but the root is always baffling. So it is difficult to find the influence of the fruit already borne on the fruit that is riper and richer. Take the sphere of education. It is not difficult to find when the first school that might fairly be called a public school appeared; but it is quite impossible to find who first originated the idea of which it is the fruit — the idea of the equality of the mental rights of men. It is quite certain that there was a time when that idea was not fruit-bearing, if it existed. And it is evident, too, that the fruit borne through the years of the schools has reacted on the root idea, enlarging it and making it better. We have better schools now because we have a better root idea out of which to grow them. And so we come to a word about the two parts of our personal lives — this unseen root-life we are living, and the seen fruit-life we are meant to live. There is always peril that one may be neglected in the care of the other. On the one hand there are many who are seeking to develop the inner life, as though for its Own sake, seeking to gain new inner beauty and grace and assurance, without letting that inner life assert itself in outer seen life. On the other, there are some who are caring well for the outer life, doing much for the Master, active in every good work, but caring little for the inner life, the root-life, out of which must grow the seen life if it be a secure life. Both are to be commended for what they do; each is to be warned for what he does not do. The life that is hid with Christ in God is meant to be seen of men for the glory of Christ. There is to be, do you not see, a measure of concealment and a measure of publicity, a certain hiding of life and a certain revealing of life, a degree of secrecy and a degree of openness? The men whom you most admire, I suspect, are men who always seem to have a measure of reserve power, but they are not men who live behind barriers, whom you never approach with any sense of companionship. They have an inner life, a taking root downward, out of your sight, and you do not forget it in your dealing with them; but they have also an outer, assertive life, the fruit of that inner life. Carry it just a little farther in the personal life into the fundamentals of religion. Every man of us carries about with him a certain bundle of convictions, a certain set of creed-articles, which are his personal and inviolable property. They may be like or unlike anybody else's bundle. There are some of us whose possessions in this way are very small, and we tend to think that creeds and doctrines are not important; we go in for action, for conduct. We say that the world does not judge you by what you believe, but by what you do. And there is a measure of truth in it, of course: But are we so ignorant as not to know the power of a mighty conviction? Do we not realise the tremendous energy of a fruit-yielding root of belief? It is not enough, therefore, that we say we do this or that that is good. That is bearing fruit upward; hut the power to bear fruit and the quality of the fruit, its power to feed and refresh the world, will be limited, be sure of it, by the amount of strength the roots of the life have gathered. They must go deep and far, or the branches will soon be stunted and starved. This same principle of root and fruit applies to the church of Christ. There have been times of a mistaken accent on either of the two phases of life. Sometimes the church has seemed to exist for its own sake, caring for itself, counting its task ended when it had done so, and careless of that true fruit-bearing which is meant to be its glory. Then there have been times when, in the joy of fruit-bearing, the inner strength of the church has been neglected. That is a strong accent on the root of the church, its creed, its inner life. On the other hand, who has not observed the weakness of the mere gathering together of people around no particular standard? That is one extreme. There are not a few churches which touch the other extreme. The preaching is faithful and truthful, the people are well indoctrinated in the faith, they hold the great truths of the gospel without wavering, but they make no successful onslaught on the world. And the same need and the same danger are not only in the pulpit, but also in the pew. I suppose there are few churches whose people are not called to constant care in maintaining the balance between the demands of their own church, which is root-work, and the demands of the kingdom at large, which is fruit-work. It appears markedly in the matter of benevolence. There are always a few to whom it is almost positive pain to see money going away from the church. Some resent all that goes to foreign missions; some all that goes out anywhere. They rejoice far more in a large gift for local expenses than they do in a large gift for charity or missions. On the other hand, there are some who neglect the demands of the home church, chafe under calls for it, are attracted by the outlying thing. I have not described the rank and file of any church in these extremes, but I have stated the two brood lines of peril to which a church is subject. For each is a peril. One is a magnifying of the root and a stunting of the fruit; the other is a magnifying of the fruit and a neglect of the root. But you cannot express the essential fact of rooting and fruit-bearing in terms of money. It yields to no terms except that of life. Leaving the church as an organisation, let your mind turn again to yourself as a living Christian, meant to take root downward and bear fruit upward. The Word makes plain what the rooting soil of the Christian must be "That ye being rooted and grounded in love, may grow up into Him in all things." Of the early Christians it was said, "See how they love one another." The strength of the church in history has been the intimate fellowship that has bound its people together and made them one body. Its inner power has been in large part in its being rooted in love. But not in that alone. The Word again bids us be rooted and built up in Christ Himself. Therein lies real power, the sending of the life root down deeper and deeper into Him, until the nourishment of life comes from Him. We have seen numberless enterprises start in the name of religion, flourish as did the seed of the parable and presently wither away, their root not running down into feeding soil. And what has thus appeared in a large way appears in many a life in the small way. Men individually also are striving to bear fruit without rooting in Christ, without drawing the very life sap of their beings from Him. God keep His church true to its soil, rooting it in love, rooting it in Him who is the very life of God revealed to us men for our salvation. (C. B. McAfee, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward: |
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