The Promised Messiah: The Stump of Jesse

Scripture Meditation: Isaiah 11:1-10; Zechariah 3:8; 6:12-13; John 15:1-5 

Isaiah 10 ends in hopelessness with an axe swung by the LORD God Himself cutting down the forest. Judgment against a sinful people. And now the line of Jesse, the father of David, is nothing more than a dead stump. And if the line of Jesse is a dead stump then the promises of God for His Messiah surely must also be dead. 

Not so fast. Planted in the midst of this picture of hopelessness, we are surprised by another promise of the Messiah. A stump. A shoot. A branch. A root. The LORD’s Messiah is them all! 

This One that would come out of the stump of Jesse would be a humble shoot that will become the righteous Branch of the Lord and from His roots there will be much fruit.  He will have the Spirit of the Lord upon Him and he will be full of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will judge in righteousness and His reign will be glorious!

The fruit of this stump is the nations. This Messiah is not just for Israel, but is open to all those who would hear of this God Man, Jesus, the Savior of the world, and come to Him by faith. They will be from every tongue and every tribe and every nation. It is through this shoot that God would bless the entire world. This is good news for the Gentiles! Paul tells us in Romans 11 that God’s plan all along was to graft Gentiles into this Righteous Branch from the stump of Jesse. And the root of this branch is holy, and therefore, the branches are holy (Romans 11:16)! 

I am reminded of Jesus’ words in John 15. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” By faith in Jesus, the Promised Messiah, we have been grafted in to Him. We are in Him and He is in us. His life-giving nourishment works its way through our minds, our hearts, our wills and our actions. Because He is holy, we too are being made holy!