by A. W. Tozer
One of the most beautiful descriptions of our Savior to be found anywhere is that given by Isaiah in the fifty third chapter of his prophecy: "He grew up before him like a tender shoot,/ and like a root out of dry ground" (verse 2).
Those who have at any time been close to the soil will see at once a young shoot just pushing through the ground and will feel the exquisite precision of the word "tender" when applied to it. The delicate sprout appears to be mostly water, held together one scarcely knows how, and so brittle that it will snap asunder at the slightest touch. Only after the passing of several days does it toughen up enough to endure external pressure without damage.
While a newborn babe is not as fragile as the tender plant just emerged from the soil, the likeness is too plain to miss, and the prophet spoke well when he compared the one to the other. The helpless, crying human thing is vulnerable from a thousand directions and is wholly dependent for its very life upon parents, neighbors and friends. No one can pick up a day-old baby and not sense the pathetic frailty of it-a barely conscious blob of sweet, perishable life only now arrived from the ancient void of nonexistence.
So our Lord came to the manger in Bethlehem that first Christmas morning, not out of nonexistence, but from eternal pre-existence; not as a son of man only but as Son of Man and Son of God in the fullest sense of both terms; a tender plant and "a root out of a dry ground."
It is quite in keeping with the ways of God that He should make the hope of the world to hang upon something as weak as a new baby. A slip of the hand could have ended the newborn life. All around the Bethlehem manger flowed dark, destructive forces urged on by that ancient and unbelievably cruel dragon called the devil and Satan. All were in black conspiracy to destroy the tender Man-child before He could offer Himself on an altar for the redemption of the world. From the natural viewpoint nothing could have been easier than to kill the Babe before He had learned to say "Father" or "Mother." No bodyguard had He, and the very soldiers that should have protected Him were sent to murder Him. The quiet and harmless Joseph could not save Him from the cold ferocity of the dragon, nor could the sweet young mother afford Him shelter from the destructive power of an iron empire. Yet He lay in complete security, safer in His frailty than if He had been surrounded by an army of a million men; safer than if He had been another Samson, able to slay at one blow a thousand Philistines.
The prophet, with anointed foresight, saw our Lord as He was after He had emerged into human nature and called Him a tender plant; but he saw also His human origin, and this appeared to him, or at least appears to us, more wonderful still: "a root out of a dry ground."
Now everyone knows that moisture is necessary to the germination of seeds, to the swelling of buds and to the sprouting of the root buried there in the ground. Where there is no water, life lies suspended in sleepy inaction. Even the desert plant must have a minimal quantity of moisture before there can be any growth at all. No slip of vegetable life has yet pushed up out of soil that was totally arid. No root has yet sprung out of the dry ground.
Yet Isaiah saw a tender plant grow out of ground where no moisture was; that is, he saw it in prophetic vision, and he knew a miracle was at work. Nature could not have wrought this wonder by herself. The arm of the Lord had done this, and let all the world marvel and be still. As certainly as the dry soil must remain barren, so must apostate Israel be fruitless, so must a virgin maid be childless. No root could grow out of a dry ground.
The prophet had said before that His name should be called Wonderful; and His very first wonder was to be born above nature. We do not wish to read into Isaiah's strangely beautiful words meanings that are not there; but the believing heart that sees the Bible an organic spiritual unit will have no trouble finding here the truth long held sacred by all Christians, the truth of the virgin birth.
Had Israel been like a young woman at the peak of her reproductive powers, the rising of such a prodigy as Jesus from within her might have had some logic in it; but He was born of Israel when her powers had waned and her strength had withered. By no stretch of fancy could anyone who knew Israel in that day have visioned Jesus as her offspring. Israel was dry ground-politically, morally and spiritually effete. Only the few old saints who still remembered the story of Sarah and Isaac could yet hope. And perhaps even they laughed as Sarah had laughed, half in unbelief and half in expectation.
Whatever Christmas may be today, that first Christmas was the celebration of a miracle. A root had come up out of a dry ground.
( The Size of the Soul, Chapter 40 )
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