Revelation 22:16 - Homilies By D. Thomas

The self declared titles of our Lord Jesus.

"I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things for the Churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright, the Morning Star." Homiletically, we employ these words in fastening attention upon two subjects of thought.

I. HE CALLS HIMSELF THE " ROOT AND OFFSPRING OF DAVID ." What does this mean? Is it to be taken in a lineal sense? We are told that he came from the line of David. He was the "Son of David." He came from the same ancestral line ( Luke 2:4 ; Luke 3:31 ). He was the "Son of David." Or is it to be taken in an official sense? David by the permission of Jehovah became a king. We are told that he was a "man after God's own heart." A misunderstood passage, I trow, meaning only that he was so from Divine permission. In kingly office Christ may be said to have sprung from David. But whilst lineally and officially Christ may be represented as the "Root and Offspring of David," the supposition that he sprang from him morally, or in respect to character, is an idea that must be repudiated with abhorrence. Morally, David was confessedly a very corrupt man. Christ was holy and Divine, and "separate from sinners."

II. HE CALLS HIMSELF THE " BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR ." This is the "light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," reflecting all the rays of him who is the Light, and in whom is no darkness at all. This is a Star whose orbit encircles the moral universe, whose revolutions are without pause or cessation, and whose beams no clouds can obscure, no time can quench. "Christ was the Brightness of his Father's glory."—D.T.