Christ’s Witness to Himself

I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.—Revelation 22:16.

1. This is the last place in Scripture where the Redeemer bears witness to Himself. A few verses below He once more promises to return—“I come quickly”—but of His own words regarding His own excellence and majesty, this is the last: “I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.”

2. The hours of the great Vision were almost over. The Apostle, who had walked long ago with Jesus as His daily friend, had been entranced for awhile into immediate experience of His presence in the mode of endless life; and now the trance was closing. An influence wholly from above had been imprinting on his soul the message to the Churches, and the order of the future of the Church; and now, at the end, the spiritual Voice has still this word to say; the Lord speaks of Himself once more. Perhaps the cloud of literal night was rolling from the rock of Patmos, and the literal day-star shone above the region of the dawn. But the spiritual view and the inner word were all of the light and of the day. There came a sound full of immortality, “I am the bright, the morning star.”

3. The Lord speaks here, indeed, in a manner that is all His own. Nothing is more profoundly characteristic in His words, from first to last, than His witness to Himself. It is one of the main phenomena of the gospel, most perplexing on the theory of unbelief, most truthlike on the theory of belief—this self-witness of the Man of humility and sorrows. He, the sacred exemplar of all self-denial, yet always and immovably presents Himself in terms of self-assertion, and such self-assertion as must mean either Deity or a delusion, moral as well as mental, of infinite depth. “I am the truth; I am the life; I am the bread of life; I am the true vine; I am the good shepherd.” We have but this same tone, perfectly retained, when here the same Voice speaks from amid the realities of the unseen. The imagery, indeed, is lifted to the scenery of the firmament; He who is the genial Vine, and the laborious Shepherd, now also reveals Himself as the Star of Stars in a spiritual sky. But the new splendour of the term only conveys the truth which had always stood in the very front of the testimony of Jesus; the truth of His own sacredness and glory; the doctrine that He, the Son of the Father, is the ultimate peace, and hope, and joy, of the soul of man.

I

The Root and the Offspring of David

“I am the root and the offspring of David.”

1. In these words Jesus speaks to us as the historic Christ, the Messiah so long expected, who entered human life in connexion with a definite human family and race in a definite part of the world. The root of Jesse in time produced the branch; in His human nature He was the descendant of Israel’s famous king. Independently of all theories and interpretations, the Church must continually be going back to the historic Christ if she would keep true to the original gospel. And the facts recorded in the Gospels—we must grow familiar with them, meditate on them, search their significance until they become living truths to us. “I am the root and the offspring of David”; so He speaks, using the language of men, revealing Himself to us in the terms of a perfect human life. We think about Jesus Christ, and, guided by St. John and St. Paul, our thoughts travel wide and high, until, please God, we find that all things are by Him and in Him and unto Him; He is the Centre, as He is the Beginning and the End of all; we cannot explain the universe apart from Him. So the Church has built up her Divine philosophy on the foundation of the incarnate Word, the Reason, and the Utterance of Almighty God. But the Church throughout her history has found it necessary to balance her high and large philosophy by laying equal emphasis on the facts of Christ’s earthly life. Dearly as she values the philosophy of the Incarnation, the Church can never afford to lose touch with Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in Galilee and Judæa and died upon the cross.

There is one lecture, delivered at this period, in 1874, which contains much that is original and powerful, on the all-important subject of our Lord’s Divinity. It was the first of a series given to the students of the English Presbyterian College. As a Jew, Dr. Saphir throws himself into the very period and circumstances of his fathers at the advent of Christ.… He concluded his lecture with this very touching personal testimony:

“I was brought up in my childhood in the synagogue, and was taught that there was one God, infinite, incomprehensible, holy Spirit; high above us and omnipresent. Much stress was laid on the unity and unicity of God. But this bare, vague, and abstract Monotheism leaves the mind in darkness, while the heart is chilly and desolate. There was another and a better current which then influenced me. It was the national history, as recorded in the books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and commemorated in the festivals. There I was met by no abstract idea of unicity, but by a loving God, who appeared unto Abraham and spoke to him; who led Israel through the wilderness and dwelt among them; and after, when I thought of the friendly, kind, concrete, and human way in which the Lord God then appeared unto His people and dwelt with them, I wondered why He was not now with us, known, loved, and followed.

“One day I was looking at some books, and the title of one arrested my eye. It was Die Menschwerdung Gottes—God becoming man. The thought went through my mind like a flash of lightning; it thrilled my soul with a most joyous solemnity. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘this would be the most beautiful thing, if God were to become man and visit us!’ Not many years after I heard about Jesus, and read the Gospels. I felt here the same presence, the same loving, condescending, redeeming, and sanctifying God, that appeared unto the Fathers. I felt that here was Jehovah; that all darkness had disappeared, and that the grand but inconceivable glory here shone upon us in the perfect, peaceful, and holy countenance of the man Christ Jesus. Peniel! I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.… To believe in Jesus, the Son of God, is not an abstract dogma, or a theosophic speculation, but a soul-experience, a new heart-life. It is the mystery of godliness. May the result of all we learn and experience on earth be summed up in this: By God’s spirit I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”1 [Note: G. Carlyle, A Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 228.]

2. Christ is at once the Root and the Offshoot, the Beginning and the End of the whole economy associated with the Davidic family. In the Messiah, the latest Scion of the House of David, its earliest ideals and hopes are realized. He is the “Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,” the substance of ancient prophecy, the long-promised and looked-for King. Thus He is connected on the one side with earth, on the other with heaven, “Immanuel, God with us,” touched with a feeling of our infirmities, mighty to save. The root of David? Yes, the source of David’s humanity, that of God from which David and all else that we call human has come forth. What an astounding claim, yet unmistakable! Before David was, Christ is, the very Christ who in the course of ages became manifest to the world as the Jesus born of David’s line, Alpha and Omega, first and last. If, in any sense, Jesus is the root of human nature, as well as the flower thereof, it is evident that we are of lofty lineage, whether we realize it or not.

These New Testament applications of the title, Son of David, are in close harmony with the Old Testament description of the Messiah. David was the founder of the kingdom of Israel. Whenever in later centuries the nation and its welfare were in the mind, the thought naturally turned to David. When the house of David no longer ruled, and the kingdom was shattered, prophets and singers lamented the misfortunes that had overtaken David and his house. When their hopefulness and faith in God expressed itself in visions of a bright future, they naturally spoke of a second David, a branch of his house, who should restore the nation to its former prosperity. As the past, and especially David’s rule, grew fairer by contrast with the dismal present, so the new kingdom of David in the future was pictured in extravagant colours. The Kingdom should extend over the whole earth, irresistibly, triumphantly. But this conquest was not conquest for conquest’s sake. It was a process without which the longedfor prosperity could, in their imagination, not be realized. It was but an incident in the larger blessedness of the future.2 [Note: O. H. Gates, in The Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ii. 653.]

As you look full at the façade of Amiens Cathedral in front, the statues which fill the minor porches are either obscured in their narrower recesses or withdrawn behind each other so as to be unseen. And the entire mass of the front is seen, literally, as built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. Literally that; for the receding Porch is a deep “angulus,” and its mid-pillar is the “Head of the Corner.”

Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that is to say of the Prophets who foretold Christ, and the Apostles who declared Him. Though Moses was an Apostle, of God, he is not here—though Elijah was a Prophet, of God, he is not here. The voice of the entire building is that of the Heaven at the Transfiguration. “This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.”

There is yet another and a greater prophet still, who, as it seems at first, is not here. Shall the people enter the gates of the temple, singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David”; and see no image of His father, then?—Christ Himself declare, “I am the root and the offspring of David”; and yet the Root have no sign near it of its Earth?

Not so. David and his Son are together. David is the pedestal of the Christ. The statue of David is only two-thirds life-size, occupying the niche in front of the pedestal. He holds his sceptre in his right hand, the scroll in his left. King and Prophet, type of all Divinely right doing, and right claiming, and right proclaiming, kinghood, for ever. The entire monolith is one of the noblest pieces of Christian sculpture in the world.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens, ch. iv. § 30 (Works, xxxiii. 144).]

II

The Morning Star

Both in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation, when our Lord uses symbolical language about Himself, He uses such symbols as all can understand; they are universal in their range and common to all men. “The morning star” is one of them; it shines for all, and all men know it, and recognize it with a greeting of welcome. The light by which we live is the true light of the universe. It is not for us alone, but for all who do not acknowledge it as yet.

1. Why should Christ speak of Himself as the Star? We may be perfectly sure that the word, with all its radiant beauty is no mere flight of fancy. Prophecy, not poetry, underlies these last oracles of the Bible; and among the prophecies in which stars form the imagery there is but one which can be thought to point to Messiah—the prophecy of Balaam (Numbers 24:17). Balaam had heard, among “the words of God,” of a mysterious Person, or at least of a mysterious Power, strong to destroy and save; figured to his soul in vision as a Star, destined in other days to appear out of Israel; and the belief of the Jewish Church, in the lifetime of Jesus, certainly was that the Star of that prediction was the King Messiah. No doubt the import of Balaam’s words has been variously explained; but if we believe this utterance in the Apocalypse to be a Divine reality, we are safe in believing along with it, under guidance of the fact that no other similar prediction fairly offers, that it was of Messiah that Balaam had heard in “the words of God,” and that he had seen Messiah, in “the vision of the Almighty,” as the Star of Jacob.

Prophecy, then, spoke of Messiah as the Star. The word indicated, probably, the royal dignity, touched and glorified with the light of Deity, or of Divinity at least.

There is good evidence that in the time of Christ the “Star” of Numbers 24:17 was popularly identified with the Messianic King. This idea may have influenced those New Testament passages where Jesus is represented as the “Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16; Revelation 2:28), though it must be remembered that the angels are described symbolically in the Book of Enoch (86:1, 3) as “stars”—a metaphor which helps to explain the symbolism by which Jesus is here described as “the Morning Star.” … The essential idea of the conception is present in all those passages of the New Testament which speak of the spiritual illumination that accompanies the revelation of the Messiah.… The remarkable description of the Messiah as the “Dayspring from on high” in the Song of Zacharias (Luke 1:78), may possibly have been associated in thought with the Messianic Star.1 [Note: G. H. Box.]

2. But the Voice at Patmos not only claims the primeval prophecy for Jesus, as the King of the new Israel. It expands that prophecy, and discloses truth within truth treasured there. For the Lord does not only assert Himself to be the Star, the bright Star; as of course His brightness must be surpassing if He is in any sense at all a Star. His own presentation of the metaphor has in it something new and special—“I am the morning star.” Why was not the word Star left alone in the utterance? In pointing to Messiah as the Star, were not the ideas of brilliancy, and elevation, and all that is ethereal, sufficient? No; it was not to be so. Christ Himself so qualifies the word by this one bright epithet as to show Himself, not as the King merely, but as the King of Morning, around whom gathered, and should gather for ever, all that is real in tenderest hope, and youngest vigour, and most cheerful aspiration, and such beginnings as shall eternally develop and never contract into fixity and decline.

Some traveller of the Norman times is passing along an old English valley as the night begins to deepen. On the hillside facing him groups of peasants are returning from their fields, and they have kindled torches to frighten away the wolves. Through the open doors of the distant hamlet the faint glow of fire comes, and dim tapers flicker in the casements. By and by the valley becomes one long, unbroken shadow. And now at last the curfew sounds from the lowly church on the hill. The peasants have reached their homes, the lights in the casements are quenched, and the scattered habitations are shrouded in darkness. In the clear sky behind the shoulder of the hill a star shines which obeys no sound of curfew. It glittered over the triremes of the Romans as they crossed to Britain’s shores. It will hang undimmed over the grave of the youngest child cradled in the hamlet, and will watch the long procession of Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, to their last resting-places.

And is it not thus with One who is described as the Bright and Morning Star? Prophet, apostle, and evangelist hold out to the dark and erring world the light of life, and by and by the solemn curfew sounds across the heavens, and the light in which we were “willing to walk for a season” has passed from our pathway. The apostles are gone. The reformers have long since followed in their steps. The evangelists of the last century, of imperishable work and memory, do they live for ever? The twilight knell is heard again, and the men who were the lights and guides of our spiritual childhood are no longer with us. But the Lord of the Church abides when His servants vanish; and from His celestial enthronement an unchanged Christ looks down upon each succeeding generation of men, to guide their feet into the way of peace.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Unheeding God, 381.]

3. This last self-witness of Jesus Christ reminds the disciple that his blessed Lord is no mere name of tender recollection, no dear relic of a perished past, to be drawn sometimes in silence from its casket and clasped with the aching fondness, and sprinkled with the hot tears, of hopeless memory. He is not Hesperus that sets, but Phosphorus that rises, springing into the sky through the earliest dawn; the pledge of reviving life, and growing light, and all the energies and all the pleasures of the happy day. And the word speaks of a kind of joy for which the open day would not be so true a simile. It indicates the delights of hope along with those of fruition; a happiness in which one of the deep elements is always the thought of something yet to be revealed; light with more light to follow, joy to develop into further joy, as the dawn passes into the morning and then into the day.

Do you say, But is this all that Christ is to His Church now—only a “star”? Yes, all—in comparison with what He will be. But remember, “the morning star” makes the daybreak quite sure—it always precedes it—they are never divided—and it is itself brilliant to the midnight that would be without it. Four thousand years, in contrast, our earth was very dark. Nearly two thousand years “the morning star” has shone; and many and many a child of the day has looked on it—been guided by it safe, and recognized its note of hope, and waited the more, with quiet patience, for the morning. And many of those children of the day are still looking on it, and say, as they look out for its coming, in their quiet resting-places, “How long? How long?” And surely it cannot be now very long till the “star” of our faith shall melt away into the sun of our sight; and risen souls shall rise again to bask in its lustre.1 [Note: J. Vaughan, Sermons, iv. 4.]

4. The metaphor of Christ as the Morning Star suggests—(1) the Distinction He has; (2) the Light He gives; (3) the Cheer He imparts; (4) the Hope He inspires.

(1) The distinction Christ has.—The morning star is pre-eminently the star of distinction. It is larger and brighter to view than any other; it is the only star that has light enough to cast a shadow; it is indeed so dazzlingly bright that on this very account we know less about its material surface than about other planets; the light cannot be penetrated to make research. It is, as astronomers tell us, the most brilliant of all the planets, and the most beautiful object to us in the heavens. No one can mistake the morning star in the firmament, or confound it with any other orb. It shines pre-eminent and alone. In the words of Milton, it “flames in the forehead of the morning sky.” Thus is it with Christ. He is the “bright” as well as the Morning Star. He is without a rival in time, and He will be, even more gloriously, without a rival in eternity. “In all things he has the pre-eminence.”

The morning star is what is known in astronomy as the planet Venus. The Greeks and Romans named the planets after their gods and goddesses; but, as old Thomas Adams says, “we need not trouble our heads about such matters, Christ is our morning star.”1 [Note: R. Cowan, The Weakness of God, 278.]

(2) The light Christ gives.—The classical names for the morning star mean light-bearer or light-bringer. And this is what Christ is. In Him is the light of truth, of wisdom and knowledge, of righteousness and holiness, of consolation and joy; in Him, above all, is the light of our salvation. That light is in Him, and in Him only; in Him in contrast to the darkness that is everywhere else, and that would always have been but for His rising. It belongs to the day star to appear in the midst of gloom when the shades of night are still thick and heavy, and to announce their departure. It was in this sense that Christ came as the Light of the world.

There was a general sense in which the whole world sat in darkness, as it does still where Christ is not known. “Darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the people.” When Christ came, the world was in the darkness of guilt, with only light enough to read the sentence of conscience, but none to see how it could be reversed. There was the darkness of depravity—a darkness of untold misery; but when Christ came into the world, a Morning Star appeared upon the brow of night. He scattered the darkness of ignorance by revealing God, salvation, and immortality. He removed the darkness of guilt by atoning for it. He met the darkness of depravity by sending down the effectual beams of truth, purity, and spiritual life, into hearts the most degraded; and He dispelled the darkness of misery by lifting upon the world the light of God’s countenance, by solving the mystery of the grave, and by assuring the children of sorrow that trouble, pain, and death work together for good to them that love God. Thus was Christ the Light of the world when He came; thus is He the Light of the world still; and to His appearing, as to that of the day star amidst the long-enduring gloom, the words of the prophecy may be applied: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”

Of the morning star, as light-bringer, herald and harbinger of day, the beauty and transcendent brightness is being continually celebrated by poets, as by Homer (Il. xxii. 317); by Virgil (Æn. viii. 389); by Ovid (Trist. i. 3. 71); and by Milton (Par. Lost, iv. 605: “Hesperus, that led the starry host, rode brightest”). Thus does He who is “fairer than the children of men” claim all that is fairest and loveliest in creation as the faint shadow and image of His perfections.1 [Note: R. C. Trench.]

In the Apocalypse Christ is called the Morning Star, but in the Gospels He is the Sun. The comparison in the Apocalypse belongs to a different period and another circle of thought. Its meaning may be illustrated by the expression in the letter to the Church at Thyatira, “he that overcometh … I will give him the Morning Star” (Revelation 2:28). We must understand that the Star is the dawn of a brighter day and a new career. To the victor there shall be given the brightness and splendour and power that outshine the great Empire, and the promise of and entrance upon a higher life. It is the same thought as afterwards suggested the term dies natalis for the day on which a martyr died: this day was his birthday, on which he entered into a nobler life. After the same fashion Christ calls Himself in Revelation 22:16 the Morning Star, as the beginner and introducer of a new era.2 [Note: W. M. Ramsay.]

(3) The cheer Christ imparts.—Light is cheering; all light is, and not least that of the morning star. It cheers by its present light and beauty, and by its prophecy: “The day cometh.” Christ’s aim when on earth was always to impart cheer. To the paralytic, laid a wreck at His feet, He said, “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven.” To the woman who touched His garment and feared she might be chid for presumption, His reply was, “Daughter, be of good cheer; thy faith hath made thee whole.” To the storm-tossed disciples in the dark night, He, appearing as their Morning Star, exclaimed, “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” To St. Paul in prison, looking anxiously out on the future, He said, “Be of good cheer: for as thou hast testified concerning me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.” To all disciples in all trouble that arises, He says, “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And thus, to the end of time, for all His people, He has the word of cheer and the power to work it.

I once said to an old sick-nurse, “You must have often seen the morning star?” “Yes,” she said, “and it was always a cheering sight; and then, a little after, the larks would begin to sing, and I thought they were praising God; and when I looked at the buds on the trees and the grass twinkling with the dew, it just seemed as if all nature were full of His presence.” Perhaps it is in sickness, or when watching with the sick, that the morning is most longed for and tokens of its coming most welcome. Jonathan Edwards tells of a sickness he had when a youth, shortly after his conversion, and how, when he saw those that watched with him looking wistfully out for the morning, it brought to mind the psalmist’s words: “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning.” “And then,” he says, “when the light of day came in at the window, it refreshed my soul from one morning to another; it seemed to be some image of the light of God’s glory.”1 [Note: R. Cowan, The Weakness of God, 284.]

(4) The hope Christ inspires.—The morning star is the star of hope. When we see it in the sky we know that morning is near, light will grow, the sun will soon be up, the day begun. Christ is in this sense also our morning Star. With reference to the life to come He is so; and with reference also to the life that now is. We get light when we first believe on Him, the light of a full salvation; if not all of it at once in possession, all in sure hope. But there is more light to follow—light of truth, of holiness, of joy. Christ is ever pointing forward, beckoning us on, saying, “Ye shall see greater things.” It is the property of the morning star to be the day’s harbinger. Other stars rise and shine and set, and leave the darkness still behind them. They belong to the night; and night wraps her mantle around her own children that cannot pass beyond the sombre shadow. But the morning star is not a child of night but of the day. With Christ as the Morning Star the victory over darkness is decided from the first, and night can never resume her ancient empire. If we abide in Him, and let His words abide in us, our light will grow. Difficulties will be overcome, temptations vanquished, sin subdued, consolation in Him will more and more abound. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning.

In ancient times it used to be imagined that the morning star was different from the evening star; we know, of course, that the two are simply different manifestations of the same planet. So the words of the text gain a fuller meaning. The star that shines at the day’s dawn shines also at the day’s close. That which has been our beacon of hope and blessing in life’s day, will be with us in all its brightness at life’s evening, when, in God’s mercy, we pass into a state of clearer light, the light not of lamp or sun or star, but the unveiled glory of the Lord God Himself.1 [Note: G. A. Cooke, The Progress of Revelation, 169.]

Sept. 18, 1849: This morning early I had awakened and looked out. It was about four o’clock. The morning star was shining directly before our window in a bright sky. One part of the window was misty with frost, the other clear, and through the clear part the star shone most beautifully. I thought of Christ’s words, ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ λαμπρὸς ὁ πρωϊνός (Revelation 22:16). Christ is all this in this world to me till the day break. I fell asleep, and when I next awoke the sun was shining through my room. Shall it not be thus at the Resurrection? Our shadowy views of Christ are passed, and now He is the Sun of Righteousness.2 [Note: Andrew A. Bonar, D.D.: Diary and Letters.]

Our Lord is designated as the “Sun of Righteousness” by a Prophet: the sun without peer rules over the planetary system. But Christ with lips full of grace deigns to call Himself “the Bright and Morning Star”: which star solitary in office and in dignity lights up hope for the darkened world and promises and ushers in day after night. Yet is it a veritable star amid fellow stars; incomparably the Chiefest, but among ten thousand.3 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 540.]

And when, refreshed, the soul once more puts on new life and power,

Oh, let Thine image, Lord, alone, gild the first waking hour!

Let that dear Presence rise and glow fairer than morn’s first ray,

And Thy pure radiance overflow the splendour of the day.

So in the hastening evening, so in the coming morn,

When deeper slumber shall be given, and fresher life be born,

Shine out, true Light! to guide my way amid that deepening gloom,

And rise, O Morning Star, the first that dayspring to illume.

I cannot dread the darkness, where Thou wilt watch o’er me,

Nor smile to greet the sunrise, unless Thy smile I see;

Creator, Saviour, Comforter! on Thee my soul is cast;

At morn, at night, in earth, in heaven, be Thou my First and Last.1 [Note: Eliza Scudder.]

Christ’s Witness to Himself

Literature

Bellew (J. C. M.), Sermons, i. 15.

Blackley (T.), Practical Sermons, i. 1.

Brown (A. G.), Forty Sermons, No. 37.

Cairns (J.), Christ the Morning Star, 1.

Cooke (G. A.), The Progress of Revelation, 164.

Cowan (R.), The Weakness of God, 277.

Hort (F. J. A.), Sermons on the Books of the Bible, 131.

Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, 257.

King (D.), Memoir and Sermons, 317.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., v. 10.

Mitchell (J.), Stones for Sermon Builders, 42.

Norton (J. N.), Golden Truths, 59.

Trench (R. C.), Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia, 155.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), iv. (1864), No. 489; xii. (1874), No. 7.

Wilkes (H.), The Bright and Morning Star, 1.

Williams (I.), Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels, i. 83.

Cambridge Review, ii., Supplement No. 27 (H. C. G. Moule).

Christian Commonwealth, xxxi. (1911) 441 (R. J. Campbell).

Church of England Pulpit, xli. 149 (J. Silvester).

Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ii. 675 (G. H. Box).

Expositor, 7th Ser., v. 14 (W. M. Ramsay).