Isaiah 11:2-5

And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him

The Spirit of the Lord

חריס is the Divine Spirit as the bearer of the whole fulness Divine powers.

Then follow in three pairs the six spirits comprehended by הרוה, the first pair of which relate to the intellectual life, the second to the practical life, and the third to the direct relationship to God. (F. Delitzsch.)

The Spirit of God

The Spirit of God is absolutely the heart of all; it corresponds to the shaft of the seven-flamed candlestick, and the three pairs to the arms that stretched out from it. (F. Delitzsch.)

The great Preacher

Here it is distinctly prophesied that our Saviour, when He should come into the world, would be peculiarly endowed by the Holy Spirit, with wisdom, discernment, and might in speech, such as should make Him a remarkable preacher.

I. WHAT A CONSUMMATE MASTER JESUS WAS OF REAL ELOQUENCE. Of course I do not refer to the petty arts and studied rules of the professional orator and actor. He needed none of these to aid Him; He was infinitely above them all. His whole demeanour was perfectly simple and natural, though earnest, discriminating, and impressive, as the pure love and complete appreciation of truth could make one. Aside from earnestness and naturalness, His great power of eloquence consisted--

1. In the clearness and completeness of His views.

2. In His perfect command, through language, of all the powers and passions of the human soul

II. HOW PLAINLY AND FORCIBLY OUR SAVIOUR PREACHED THE GREAT DOCTRINES OR FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF THE GOSPEL SYSTEM.

III. THE PECULIAR MANNER AND AMAZING POWER OF THE SAVIOUR’S PREACHING. (E. P. Marvin.)

The Spirit of Whitsuntide

This is Isaiah’s description of the Spirit of Whitsuntide; the royal Spirit which was to descend, and did descend without measure, on the ideal and perfect King. Let us consider what that Spirit is.

1. He is the Spirit of love. God is love; and He is the Spirit of God.

2. He is the Spirit of wisdom. Now, is the spirit of wisdom the same as the spirit of love?

(1) Sound theology, which is the highest reason, tells us that it must be so. To suppose that God’s wisdom and God’s love, or that God’s justice and God’s love, are different from each other, or limit each other, or oppose each other, or are anything but one and the same eternally, is to divide God’s substance; to deny that God is one.

(2) But more; experience will show us that the spirit of love is the same as the spirit of wisdom; that if any man wishes to be truly wise and prudent, his only way is to be loving and charitable. The experience of the apostles proves it. They had the most enormous practical success that men ever had. They, twelve poor men, set out to convert mankind by loving them: and they succeeded. Remember, moreover, that the text speaks of this Spirit of the Lord being given to One who was to be a King, a Ruler, a Guide, and a Judge of men; who was to exercise influence over men for their good. This prophecy was fulfilled first in the King of kings, our Lord Jesus Christ: but it was fulfilled also in His apostles, who were, in their own way and measure, kings of men, exercising a vast influence over them. And how? By the royal Spirit of love. Our own experience will be the same as the apostles’ experience. If we do not understand our fellow creatures we shall never love them. But it is equally true that if we do not love them we shall never understand them.

3. Next, this royal Spirit is described as the “spirit of counsel and might,” i.e., the spirit of prudence and practical power the spirit which sees how to deal with human beings, and has the practical power of making them obey. Now that power, again, can only be got by loving human beings. My experience is this: that whensoever in my past life I have been angry and scornful, I have said or done an unwise thing, I have more or less injured my own cause; weakened my own influence on my fellow men; repelled them instead of attracting them.

4. And next: this Spirit is “the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord.” They both begin and end in love.

(1) If you wish for knowledge, you must begin by loving knowledge for its own sake. And the more knowledge you gain, the more you will long to know. And if this be true of things earthly and temporary, how much more of things heavenly and eternal? We must begin by loving whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, honest, and of good report. We must begin by loving them with a sort of child’s love, without understanding them. But as we go on, as St. Paul bids us, to meditate on them; and “if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, to think on such things,” and feed our minds daily with purifying, elevating, sobering, humanising, enlightening thoughts: then we shall get to love goodness with “a reasonable and manly love,” to see the beauty of holiness; the strength of self-sacrifice; the glory of justice; the divineness of love; and in a word--to love God for His own sake, and to give Him thanks for His great glory, which is: that He is a good God.

(2) This Spirit is also the “spirit of the fear of the Lord.” That, too, must be a spirit of love not only to God, but to our fellow creatures. For if we but consider that God the Father loves all; that His mercy is over all His works; and that He hateth nothing that He has made: then, how dare we hate anything that He has made, as long as we have any rational fear of Him, awe and respect for Him, true faith in His infinite majesty and power? If we but consider that God the Son actually came down on earth to die, and to die, too, on the Cross, for all mankind: then, how dare we hate a human being for whom He died! (C. Kingsley, M. A.)

Gifts of the Spirit from Christ to His Church

It was as Head of His Church that the Spirit was shed forth upon Him, and from Him descends upon His members. If we would, then, know what are the graces we are to expect of this kind, we must inquire what our Lord received.

I. THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT UPON CHRIST, FITTING HIM FOR HIS MEDIATORIAL OFFICE. Three several branches of grace seem intended: wisdom, might, intelligent devotion to God’s Word.

II. HOW THE GRACES OF SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE FLOW FROM CHRIST TO HIS PEOPLE.

1. They first descended on the apostles when, assembled at Jerusalem, they waited for the promise of the Father.

2. These gifts were not confined to the apostles. Multitudes, through their preaching, were turned from the idolatry of the Gentiles or the superstition of the Jews to serve the living God; and on them, too, the Spirit was bestowed.

3. Neither are these rich streams exhausted. The Saviour still bestows with liberal hand the spiritual influences we need. (J. Ayre, M. A.)

The Spirit of the Lord has always been in human history

It accounts for all heroisms, noble darings, self-sacrifices, for all labours meant, not for the blessedness of the labourer himself, but for the gratification and progress of other ages. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Spiritual endowments for earthly rulers

Modern expositors have often restricted this gracious description of royal enrichment to the ideal King of Israel, the coming Messiah. This application is, no doubt, its ultimate designation, but there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the discrimination of mediaeval teachers, who boldly selected this heroic passage concerning the seven Spirits of God as a perfect epitome of the gifts that might be rightly claimed for those, and by those, who are Divinely called to wear an earthly crown, and to rule in temporal affairs. Dean Plumptre has suggested that these verses may well represent the programme which Isaiah himself set before his pupil, Hezekiah, on his accession to the throne, which his weak predecessor had suffered to degenerate into a vantage ground for abuse of justice and laxity of morals such as had deteriorated the faith and moral fibre of his people. And, as Dr. George Adam Smith points out, in the theology, art, and worship of the Middle Ages, this text was constantly and consistently associated with the assumption of royal responsibilities, and with the judicial administration of magistrates. It was known as “the mirror for magistrates,” and was commonly employed at the coronation of kings and the fencing of tribunals of justice. “What Isaiah wrote for Hezekiah of Judah became the official prayer, song or ensample of the earliest Christian kings in Europe. It is evidently the model of that royal hymn--not by Charlemagne, as is usually supposed, but by his grandson, Charles the Bald--the Veni Creator Spiritus.” So deeply did this sense of the need and privilege of the gifts of the Spirit for the ruling class pervade the life of the times that Henry III’s order of knighthood, “Du Saint Esprit,” was restricted to political men, and particularly to magistrates. (F. Platt, B. D.)

Coronation gifts

We may, there fore, claim abundant precedent in using the text to correct two perilous tendencies in the national and religious thought of our own day--one brought about by a mistake made by men of the world in the affairs of State, and the other the result of a misapprehension by men of God in the affairs of the Spirit.

1. The first tendency, which is to depreciate the operation of the Spirit of God in civic life and duty, may be illustrated by a simple fact. In the Speech from the throne, at the opening of Queen Victoria’s last Parliament, the customary reference at the close to the blessing of Almighty God upon the labours of her faithful Commons was omitted. It was afterwards explained by a responsible Minister of the Crown that the omission was accidental, but the omission marks nevertheless a tendency. The recognition of the Divine in political life has become formal. Its symbols linger, but it is assumed that thoughtful men smile at them and lay the burthen of their survival upon the substantial emoluments of office, or upon the popular love of the spectacular symbols of dignity. In depreciating the “Divine right” of kings, have we diminished the assurance, “By Me kings reign and princes decree justice”? Do the splendours of a coronation impress us more than its solemnities! Does the sense of widening empire attract us more than a growing sensitiveness to the supremacy of spiritual obligation! Are we more responsive in national movements to the solicitations of sensual excitement than to the inward suggestions of the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord! It was in the midst of social and political conditions strangely analogous to our own that Isaiah set forth his inspired conception of the spiritual qualifications of true kingship amongst men.

2. Between the tendency to depreciate the place of the Divine in national life, and the further tendency in religious thought to limit the sphere of the activities of the Spirit of God unduly to what are termed spiritual as opposed to temporal affairs, there is an inner correspondence that is very significant. There is a mode, popular amongst the religious, of speaking of the work of the Spirit of God as “supernatural,” and as thus excluding processes known as natural or rational, that is distinctly perilous. This distinction implies that we may feel and know the presence of the Spirit of God at the Keswick Convention, but fails to expect His influence in the Convention at Bloemfontein. It asserts His inspiration in Holy Scripture, but has no sure place for His control or suggestion in the leading articles of the “secular” press. His gifts may be possessed by the “spiritually minded,” but the man immersed in political affairs thinks and toils in quite another sphere. His presence is invoked at the councils of the Church, but at the councils of industry it is regarded as a negligible quality. In the problems of the soul His guidance as the Spirit of truth may be consciously expected, but in the problems of science men must follow the light of nature. It was against a similar conception in his time that Isaiah’s declaration of the Spirit’s seven-fold gifts was announced. Israel had made the fatal distinction between secular and sacred that is at the root of so much of our own disregard of God. We do not wonder that with national emergencies and necessities such as these pressing upon him, Isaiah reveals the source and strength of political sagacity and regal authority as dwelling with these august prerogatives of the Spirit of the Lord that are prevailingly intellectual, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” They display a marvellous coordination of the intellectual and practical life with the sense of the direct relation of the life to God. They cannot be too closely studied and applied as the Divine provision for the governing and political mind, and the scientific temper of our own day. “‘Wisdom’ is the power of discerning the nature of things through the appearance; ‘understanding’ the power of discerning the difference of things in their appearance; ‘counsel’ is the gift of forming right conclusions, and might’ the ability to carry them through with energy. ‘The knowledge of the Lord’ is knowledge founded on the fellowship of love; and ‘the fear of the Lord’ is fear absorbed in reverence.” These are the hidden springs of the genius for statesmanship. The Spirit is the true historic glory of royalty, and the secret of citizenship in all abiding developments of popular liberties and imperial expansion; and to accept any statute of limitations in the opulence of His energies in national life is as fatal to permanence as to progress. (F. Platt, B. D.)

The Spirit of God in patriotism and judicial administration

True patriotism is an inspiring variation of the work of the Spirit of God. Judicial administration is a part of religious life and faith. “The Lord of hosts is for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate.” (F. Platt, B. D.)

The hallowing of the secular life

Whilst we are heedful of the richer revelation of the grace of the Holy Spirit disclosed in the New Testament, the Old Testament interpretation of His gifts is of essential importance. This may be summed up generally as the hallowing of the secular life, the fertilising contact of the Spirit of God with matter and mind in their organisation in nature and in human society. Joseph as an administrator is recognised as His product--“a man in whom the Spirit of God is.” It was the equipment of Moses’ colleagues in the judicature, “God took of the Spirit which was upon him and gave it unto them.” Of Bezaleel and his weavers and craftsmen the record runs, “I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom and understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship to devise cunning work.” Samson’s might was the Spirit of the Lord, and “the Spirit of the Lord clothed itself with Gideon” for the prowess of his great military enterprise. The story of the coronation of Saul, Israel’s earliest king, is the progressive history of the movements and endowments of the Spirit of God. And time would fail to tell of David and the long line of kings whom the same Spirit anointed and established in government. (F. Platt, B. D.)

Christ is full of light

Going into a village at night, with the lights gleaming on each side of the street, in some houses they will be in the basement and nowhere else, and in others in the attic and nowhere else, and in others in some middle chamber; but in no house will every window gleam from top to bottom. So it is with men’s faculties. Most of them are in darkness. One shines here, and another there; but there is no man whose soul is luminous throughout. But Christ presented a perfect character. Every room in His soul was filled with light. He is light. (H. W. Beecher.)