Greatly needing the Lord's gracious
help I ask you to turn with me this evening to the second book
of Kings chapter 19 and part of verse 30. Two Kings chapter
19 and verse 30. Now, the words particularly on
my heart are these, take root downward and bear fruit upward. See, these last few words, take
root downward and bear fruit upward. But the whole verse reads,
and the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet
again take root downward and bear fruit upward. We are met this day to thank
the Lord especially for the harvest and we have prayed in our prayers
that the Lord would accept our thanksgiving and we have sung
his praises for the natural harvest. But so often the scriptures use
the analogy the illustration of a
harvest theme of an agricultural theme to teach deep spiritual
truths and we have it here the picture here really is of a fruit
tree and this fruit tree has got good roots that are going
down and because it's got good roots that are going downward harvest time it's going to bear
fruit upwards, it's going to grow up and bear a harvest of
fruit. Now we'll come back with the
Lord's help to the context later on but here in this verse the
remnant that escaped of the house of Judah are going to return. So in the King of Assyria, Sennacherib,
invading Judah, we read in the previous chapter how he drove
them out from the fence cities and many of them fled, they were
scattered. But Isaiah is promising Hezekiah,
despite the fact there's 185,000 soldiers surrounding Jerusalem
waiting to destroy it, that they're not going to succeed.
And these who are the outcasts, the exiles, the remnants, are
going to return to the land of Judah. they're going to be established
there just as a fruit tree puts its roots down and is established
and they're going to flourish and thrive just as a fruit tree
bears fruit upwards that's what it literally means and the remnant
that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take
root downward and bear fruit upward. But for the most part of this
evening this clearly teaches us in our Gospel day of the remnant of Judah representing
Christian believers today, the Lord's people, his remnants,
and in their spiritual state that they by the Lord's blessing
would be like this fruit tree and take root down and bear fruit
up. So firstly to speak to you on
the roots and the root going down, growing down in a believer's
life and secondly to speak to you of the fruit that's born
and the fruits born upwards. And then thirdly to come back
to the context and look at this not as individuals but in the
Church of God because in many ways this here was a corporate
blessing that the people of God together were going to take root
downward and bear fruit upwards. So firstly then to take root
downward, especially thinking personally. This is talking about
none other than the believer's faith. Now, naturally, roots grow down
into the soil, don't they? And even you children, I'm sure,
could tell me that the reason that the plants and the trees'
roots go down into the soil is firstly that they might draw
up water and nutrients to make the plant thrive and to grow
the fruit. And secondly, so the plant, the
tree doesn't fall over or be blown away in the wind, it's
for stability. For a real believer, a real Christian,
Their faith are like roots in the Lord Jesus Christ himself. This is what it really means
to take root downward. If we are a real believer, a
fruitful tree in the analogy, we will have roots of faith growing
down into Christ Jesus himself. And as such, the Lord Jesus Christ
is our only supply of spiritual life. The water of eternal life
and the bread of life to make we the plant flourish. And also,
the analogy stands true, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the
believer's stability. that as the roots grow down into
the Lord Jesus by faith, he is our strength and our stay, and
the storms of life will not blow us away because we're secured
in him. It's a New Testament theme, isn't
it? The Apostle writing to the Colossians
talks about being rooted and built up in him, in Christ. That's the New Testament equivalent
of taking root downward and bearing fruit upward for this remnant.
In Ephesians 3, Paul writes about being rooted and grounded in
love, in the love of Christ. And so for a few minutes, let's
just pause here. and think of the dear Lord Jesus
as our only source of spiritual life and the only grounds of
stability for our faith. And of course, this is a beautiful
subject and a vast subject. But firstly, is he not our life,
our stability in his very person? Our faith isn't believing a set
of creeds or rules or being able to recite them. Our religion,
our hope is in a person, a divine person who is son of God and
son of man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's so beautiful, isn't
it, those seven I am statements of John's gospel. The Lord Jesus,
he said, I am. the way, the truth and the life.
In his very person, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the Bread
of Life. He, in his very person, real
religion is knowing him for ourselves, it's a real relationship with
him. And then in his work, I spoke
to you, didn't I, this morning, this afternoon about redemption.
And it's his work of redemption, his righteous life, and his substitutionary
atonement on the cross. His work at Calvary, his glorious
work. And we are, if we are to be a
flourishing believer, to bear fruit up, is we have to be rooted
and grounded in his glorious work. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness are my only hope. My hope is
built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. That's
being roots growing downward. And in his glorious offices,
we speak of him in his glorious offices as prophet, priest and
king. Do we need to be taught? There's
so much we don't understand. Our roots go into him as our
prophet, our teacher. Do we need someone to stand in
heaven's high court above and plead for us, to intercede for
us? We need our roots in his priesthood.
Do we need a king to reign over our sinful hearts and subdue
our sins? Our roots need to go into his
office as king. And then in all his titles, glorious,
beautiful titles and characters. Do we need a solid foundation?
He is our cornerstone. Do we need a fragrance of love
and mercy in our souls? He is the lily of the valley.
Do we need our hearts warming? He is our son of righteousness. And so take root downward, our roots
downward into the dear Saviour of sinners. Now, when I was at school, we
used to, in biology, do an experiment with, it was some sort of bean
and it was in a sort of Petri dish and there
was some moisture there and we'd have to fix the bean one way
and upside down and another way and we'd come back at the next
lesson And whichever way the beam was put, whether it was
upside down, the early route was always going the same way
downward, towards the water, towards the source of life. And that's how it should be and how
it is with the true believer, that whatever position life puts
us in, our roots of our faith must seek out the dear Lord Jesus. Hampton Court Palace, there's
the biggest vine in the world, isn't it? I once looked up how
many kilograms of grapes it produces every year, it's a vast amount.
Now if you go to Hampton Court Palace, the secret to the fruitfulness
of that vine is that its roots go deep down into the River Thames,
which runs by. The roots are going down. You
can't see the roots, but they're seeking out the water of life. And the scriptures themselves
use that illustration. And that's why we read in Psalm
1 and Jeremiah 17, The blessed man, the happy man,
is the one that has faith in the Lord. And
so with Jeremiah 17, blessed is the man that trusteth in the
Lord. This is the man with faith. For he shall be as a tree planted
by the waters and that spreadeth out her roots by the river. Now, This is the man, the person,
the boy, the girl, the woman, with a God-given faith, with
roots going into the river which is Christ Jesus. Now a drought's coming, it's
a hot, arid summer, perhaps a bit like the summer we've just had.
But this tree isn't dying. The scripture says her leaf shall
be green. and shall not be careful in the
year of drought. And when the autumn comes, that
tree's still yielding fruit. For he shall be as a tree planted
by the waters that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and
shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green,
and she shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither
shall cease from yielding fruit. That is the blessed situation. of the believer whose roots are
grounded in Christ Jesus. And we had it there in the first
psalm, very similar, didn't we? In Psalm 1, blessed is the man
who walketh not in the way of the ungodly, and he shall be like a tree planted
by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season,
his leaf shall not wither. I don't know whether any of you
have read, there's a book called Green Leaf in Time of Drought.
It was written by the missionary Isabel Kuhn and she actually
wrote it about some China inland missionaries. I think they were
called Arthur and Wilder Matthews and there in the 1950s they felt
the Lord had led them to a very remote part of China. and it
was at the time when the communist state was taking over and persecuting
Christians and apparently China in that mission withdrew most
of their missionaries but this missionary couple could not get
out and the book describes how Spiritually
it was really a time of drought because they were cut off from
other believers, they were persecuted, they feared for their life, their
hardship. But wonderfully, because they
were rooted and grounded in Christ, their leaf remained green. Their
faith remained steadfast in the Saviour. They were not blown
away and green leaf in time of drought. My father used to tell a story
of a man who was planting an orchard
and there were two labourers he employed for the work and
at the end of the day one man had planted there were ten trees
in a row they were told to plant and he just planted one row and
this other man had planted four or five rows and he was angry
and sacked the man who'd only planted one row many years later
in that field there was one row of productive, fruitful trees,
the others had long withered and died. And the teaching is that, oh,
how careful we need to be by the blessing of the Spirit to
be found properly rooted and grounded in Christ Jesus. So secondly, we come on to the
fruits, to take root downward and now to bear fruit upward. Now we can't see the roots. The roots are down, they're hidden,
they're under the soil. So how do we know if the fruit
tree is healthy? Only by when autumn comes, if
it's producing good fruit. Because the fruit is borne up,
it's visible. And it's like that spiritually. The scripture says by their fruit
ye shall know them. Is that visible? fruit in their
lives, in their hearts. And the New Testament talks of
the fruit of the Spirit, it's in Galatians 5. And Paul there
writes that by the blessing of the Spirit, Christ in you the
hope of glory, as rooted and grounded in him, that there will
be this fruit, love, joy, peace, meekness, patience, long-suffering. And it's visible. Now, that will be evidence in
a true believer's life. And that spiritual fruit is an
evidence of their spiritual life. It's an evidence that things
are well with their soul. And it is a testimony to the
wonderful grace of the Lord Jesus. I've had a friend when I was
at, she's still a friend, but when I was at Bethel Chapel Luton,
a lady my age who I was at Sunday school with, and you know she'd
always come to chapel and yet she really had never made a profession
of faith. She had the fear of the Lord
but had never really come to saving faith. and it was a real
shock because she was diagnosed not with one but with two cancers. She went through major surgeries
one after the other and the Lord used that to cause
her to take root in him, to confess her sin and come trusting
in him alone because she faced her own mortality and when she
came before the church there was not a few of us who could
not hold back the tears because she said this, she said, the
Lord has so blessed me in my illness that I would not be without
my cancer for the blessings he has given me. That is taking
root down and bearing fruit up. And it's to the glory of God.
It's upward, it's heavenward, isn't it? It resounds to the
glory of God. It's to God be the glory, great
things he has done. Because that's not man's work. You can't work that one up. It's none other than the work
of God in our day. and it is taking root downward
and bearing fruit upward. Now, if we see a tree, a fruit tree
that's only got, say, an apple tree, it's only got two apples
on it at autumn time, there's something wrong, isn't there?
And It might be that you have a person
who attends chapel every Sunday and perhaps they talk the talk
and they can speak about the things of God but they're living an ungodly
life and there isn't any fruit to the Lord Jesus Christ and
there's something wrong with the root. Now, oh that we might have more
fruit, more love, more patience, more joy, more peace. Now, perhaps some of you young
people, you children, you think well these ministers are... good men. Well I trust we are
made good by God's grace but we fail and we get things wrong
at times and I share this failing because it taught me about having
a wrong route. The Bible talks about a route
of bitterness and there was once a church meeting and I spoke
very harshly and sharply and hastily and I then had to go on holiday the
next day and it was the most miserable holiday I ever had
because the Lord smoked my conscience and I couldn't wait to get back
to say I was sorry and I begged and begged the Lord he'd forgive
me and wash me in his precious blood. But the thing that made
me most sorry was not just that It was a behaviour that was not
right and it was offensive to God but it showed me that that was not the fruit of the
spirit, it was the fruit of the flesh. And my root, where was
my root? My root was not grounded and
deep in the Lord Jesus Christ in his love and mercy and patience
and meekness, was it? It was a root of bitterness that
had sprung up And that's why the scriptures say, beware lest
the root of bitterness spring up and by you many be defiled.
It can cause damage. Oh, to always speak in love and
have that fruit in our lives. Now, the word of God, it talks
about the believer being the branch of a vine. and the fruit,
the grapes, and the Lord Jesus, the vine. It's a similar analogy,
but not the same. And there in John's Gospel, the
Lord says that he will purge the branch, that they would be
more fruitful, prune them. And that hurts, doesn't it? That
holiday I had was a painful time. But he does it that we might
bring forth more fruit. You know in our last house we
only had a really small garden and there was only really room
to grow one bed of and we planted roses and we loved these roses
and every spring and the summer they flowered two or three times.
But one year, my wife pruned those roses so hard I thought
she'd killed them. I was upset with her. They looked
dead. But you know, that summer they
produce the most abundant blooms, beautiful. In fact, so much that
I collected the petals and dried them in the summer and they were
confetti for my daughter's wedding for 140 people to throw. And
it just shows, doesn't it, that sometimes the Lord will deal
with you. It seems to you harsh, but it's in love that you might
be more fruitful. But oh, to be found abiding without,
some of that root in the analogy here roots down that fruit might
come up and it's to be as in that vine analogy to be abiding
as a branch in the true vine he that abideth in me and I in
him the same bringeth forth much fruit but we need to hasten on
now to the final point third point the context here Because
in the context here, and the remnant that has escaped of the
house of Judah shall yet again take root downward and bear fruit
upward, as I said in the beginning, it's talking, isn't it, not just
about one individual believer and their personal faith, it's
talking about the children of Israel or children
of Judah here. It's a corporate taking root
and bearing fruit upward. Now I briefly in the reading
explained the background but here the Lord through Isaiah
is promising that there's going to be this restoration and this
remnant which represent the church of God is once more going to
be established again and prosperous again. Now how we long do we
not that in this our day that the local churches, many of you
represented here at Hastings, my own flock up in Attleborough,
do we not long that the church would be established and fruitful
and prosperous? It will only, only happen as
we together take root downward. Nothing in self, everything in
Christ, and that fruit will be born upwards. And what does that look like? Well, the roots are in Christ,
watered by the Spirit, through the Word, My doctrine
shall come down as the rain, my speech shall distill as the
dew. So it's in Christ, by the Spirit,
through the word, and then there will be that fruit. The fruit is honour and glory.
Now of course that will be individual members of the congregation bringing
forth that love and peace in their hearts but how is it manifest
in the church? Well in unity and that doesn't
mean that uniformity, it doesn't mean we're all going to look
like one another. We may be from very different backgrounds, with
very different personalities, with very different views on
some things. But because if we are rooted
in Christ together, feeding together in him, the fruit that we bear
together will be one of peace and love and long-suffering and
meekness. esteeming other better than ourselves. And so there will be that unity,
how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in
unity. It's like the oil that ran, Psalm 133, it's like the
Jew of Hermon. But there will also be that establishing
in the truth, that longing for the true honor and glory of God
and to to meet as we read in the Word,
to worship the Lord in reverence and holy fear. And that congregation will glorify
God. And there will be that growth
in grace, that fruit of the Spirit. And I believe that even in these
day of small things, Where is the faithful preaching of Christ
and Him crucified? And we come as nothing in ourselves,
praying and begging for the watering of the Holy Spirit, that there
still will be that growth in numbers again. We long for it. We look for it. We pray for it.
The Lord is sovereign in these things. But we read there, don't we,
in the Acts of the Apostles, then had the churches rest through
all Judea and Galilee and Samaria. They were at peace with one another.
And they were edified, built up, walking in the fear of God
and the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multiplied. Well, we are
thankful for the harvest. And at harvest time, we think
of the crops and we think of the analogies in Scripture. And
here before us tonight we have the remnant that has escaped
to the house of Judah, shall yet again, maybe it hasn't happened
yet, but if by grace there is that route downward, then there
will be some fruit upward, amen, so let it be. Well, let us sing the hymn from
Hymns for Worship, number 102, to the tune Zion Woods. And we will sing the refrain
after each verse. And then after the benediction,
we'll sing the doxology to the tune Old Hundredth. Come we that
love the Lord, Come, let our joys be known, join in a song
with sweet accord, and thus surround the throne. We're marching to
Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. Number 102. And let our joys be known. Join in a song with sweet accord. Join in a song with sweet accord. And thus surround the throne. And thus surround the throne. We're marching to Zion, beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. The scorers of the night, they
vanish from the plain. Religion never was designed Religion
never was designed To make our pleasure less To make our pleasure
less We're marching to Zion Beautiful, beautiful Zion We're marching
to Zion beautiful city of God. Let us make use to sing an anthem
new and proud. The children of the heavenly
King, ? Speak their joys abroad ? ? We're
marching to Zion ? ? Beautiful, beautiful Zion ? ? We're marching
upward to Zion ? ? Beautiful city of God ? ? The people praise the God ? Celestial
fruits on earthly ground Celestial fruits on earthly ground From
faith and love they grow From faith and love they grow We're
marching to Zion Beautiful, beautiful Zion ? Raising up the desire ? ? For
a beautiful city of God ? ? The year of Zion years ? ? A thousand
sacred spheres ? ? Before we reach the heavenly fields ? ?
Before we reach the heavenly fields ? We're marching to Zion, beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
our beautiful city of God. See His face, a never, never
sin. And from the rivers of His grace,
And from the rivers of His grace, Drink endless pleasures, We're marching to Zion, beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. And let our songs abound, and
every tale we find. We're marching through Emmanuel's
ground, We're marching through Emmanuel's ground, To fairer
worlds on high, To fairer worlds on high. We're marching to Zion,
Beautiful, beautiful Zion, We're marching upward to Zion, the
beautiful city of God. May the God of hope fill you
with all peace and joy in believing that ye may abound in hope through
the power of the Holy Ghost. And now may the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit be with us now and for evermore. Amen. God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures filled
with love. Praise Him, above the heavenly
host. ? Great Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost ?