A Season of WaitingSample

Our Gracious Saviour

The promise to Israel that was fulfilled by the coming of Christ. A beautiful picture of our Saviour and His anointing in the Spirit.

The stump of Jesse refers to the family line of Jesse, the father of King David. According to scholars, there was a 600-year period after the royal authority in the line of David before Jesus was born, a true vision of a branch growing from a stump that has been cut down. Jesus was the King who was awaited by a nation that had been oppressed, scattered, and banished by its neighbouring countries.

The second verse describes the characteristics of the Spirit that abide in Him – interestingly there are seven statements around the spirit. The Spirit of the Lord, of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel, of might, of knowledge, and of fear of the Lord. It creates a picture that all the latter elements are completed in the first – that the Spirit of the Lord is perfect, lacking nothing.

Our gracious Saviour whom this Spirit rested upon became the personification of all these elements of God’s character and nature.

Jesus truly was the ultimate gift to us, a physical reminder of the characteristics of God, and of the nature we too may have when we abide in Him.

Written by Emma Barron