Sermon for Advent 1, November 28, 2021
Mercy, peace,
and love be multiplied to you from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Jeremiah
33:14-18
14Listen, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will
fulfill the good promises that I have spoken to the house of Israel and
concerning the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time, I will cause a righteous
Branch to grow up from David’s line. He
will establish justice and righteousness on earth. 16In those days Judah will be
saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely.
This is what she will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness. 17This is what the Lord says. David will never fail to have a man to sit on
the throne of the house of Israel. 18Neither
will the priests, who are Levites, fail to have a man to stand before me to
offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to offer sacrifices
continually. (EHV)
The
Lord our Righteousness reigns.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
At a time
when God’s people had turned their back to Him, God sent a messenger to call
them to repentance. At a time when God’s
people refused to listen, God spoke of judgment, but also of promise. Though the people had turned away from the
covenant their forefathers had made with God, God refused to abandon the
covenant He had made first with the world, but especially with His people. For you and me, today, the result is that The Lord our Righteousness reigns.
As the people of Judah were under attack, and
finally, carted off into exile, surely many of those rebellious ones felt that
if the God of their fathers existed, He had certainly abandoned them. Yet, God never abandoned those He pledged to
love. He never withheld His love from us
either. The problem for the people of
Judah was that they had abandoned God.
They chose to chase after the idols of their neighbors and to seek help
from human solutions. No longer did they
turn to the God of their forefathers for help in times of distress of danger, nor
with thanks in times of blessing.
When we consider those long-ago tribes, though,
we dare not judge them more harshly than ourselves. We too have our moments when we forget to
seek God’s help. Maybe that is when we
are tempted to sin against one of His commands, or perhaps when we question His
plan for our lives. There are moments
when we too forget to give proper thanks to the Lord our God. Oh yes, we just celebrated Thanksgiving Day
like most others in our nation. Yet, ask
yourself, how often do you give thanks to God in your daily life? Do you thank God for health when illness or
pain reminds you of the blessings we normally enjoy? Do you thank God for the rain when drought,
or flood, reminds us that our existence depends on the fact that God waters the
ground from the skies? Furthermore, how
often are we tempted with ideas of earning some small sliver of our salvation
through our own efforts or obedience to laws?
How often do we look down at others as greater sinners than ourselves?
What should blow our minds is that through even
Israel’s great rebellion, God did not forget them, nor did He forget His
promises to their forefathers, or to us.
If you are racking your brain wondering what promises God made to Israel
for your benefit, remember the word of our God through the prophet, Isaiah; speaking
about the promised Savior, the Lord said, “It is too small a thing that you
should just be my servant to raise up only the tribes of Jacob and to restore
the ones I have preserved in Israel, so I will appoint you to be a light for
the nations, so that my salvation will be known to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah
49:6) Before He created the world and
everything in it, God knew He wanted to save you from the destructive power of
sin.
Here through Jeremiah, God said, “Listen,
the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the good promises
that I have spoken to the house of Israel and concerning the house of Judah.” What promises you might ask? Promises of a Redeemer and Savior, one Son of
David who would ransom God’s people from the devil’s schemes. A seed of the woman who would wrest the
fallen race from the devil’s grasp. A
Son of Man would restore hope, righteousness, and life to all those who would
believe in Him. All these promises, and
more, God was bringing to pass in Jesus.
“In those days and at that time, I will cause a
righteous Branch to grow up from David’s line.
He will establish justice and righteousness on earth.” A righteous Branch,
a holy Child, born from the line of David, entering our world to bring peace
between God and mankind. We had nothing
to do with that birth except our sin that made it necessary, but God knew our
trouble and despair. God knew only He
could rectify our desperate situation.
Therefore, God had a plan, and it would be followed perfectly. As we draw closer to celebrating the birth of
our Savior, I hope you will take time to reread the accounts in the gospels
detailing just how our King entered this world in human flesh. There is so much more for us to remember than
the few short readings we get on Sunday mornings.
That Righteous One “will establish justice
and righteousness on earth.” Jesus
established righteousness by living a perfectly holy life in our place. I know you hear me tell you that quite often,
but it cannot be emphasized too much.
Jesus taught His disciples, “Do not think that I came to destroy the
Law or the Prophets. I did not come to
destroy them but to fulfill them. Amen I
tell you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest letter, or
even part of a letter, will in any way pass away from the Law until everything
is fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Nothing was left to chance. Jesus
obeyed every law perfectly. Every
promise and prophecy about the coming Savior had to be lived out in real time
exactly as God had foretold, so that there would be no doubt that Jesus is
God’s Son and our Redeemer and Savior.
The will of the Father in heaven was also perfectly
fulfilled, and it was that will that drove Jesus to the cross. To establish justice on earth, the debt of
sin had to be paid. The law demanded
death for sin. God’s pure holiness
required that no sin and no sinner could enter His presence. Therefore, the sin had to be dealt with forever. St. Paul explained, “Christ redeemed us
from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. As it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who
hangs on a tree.’ He redeemed us in
order that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles through Christ
Jesus, so that we would receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (Galatians
3:13-14)
Only by being perfectly holy in Himself could
our Savior substitute for us. If Jesus
had sinned, He would have died only for Himself, but we know that the Father in
heaven was perfectly pleased with the life and work of His Son, Jesus. The Father declared it from heaven
Himself. Therefore, Jesus was sentenced
to death not for sins He committed, but for ours, and just as sin had been
placed symbolically on the heads of countless lambs in the temple, our sins
were poured on Jesus, once for all people, so that “you were redeemed from
your empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, not with
things that pass away, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of
Christ, like a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Peter 1:18-19)
The Lord declared, “In those days Judah will
be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely.” Judah stands in here representing all God’s
people. That includes all those descendants
of Abraham who walked in his faith in the Messiah, and it includes all those in
the Christian Church who believe in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. As St. Paul wrote, “The promise is by
faith, so that it may be according to grace and may be guaranteed to all of
Abraham’s descendants—not only to the one who is a descendant by law, but also
to the one who has the faith of Abraham.
He is the father of us all.” (Romans 4:16) Jeremiah also pictures Jerusalem as that
assembly of believers upon whom the Lord has placed His name. “This is what she will be called: The Lord Our
Righteousness.”
Finally, “This is what the Lord says. David will never fail to have a man to sit on
the throne of the house of Israel.
Neither will the priests, who are Levites, fail to have a man to stand
before me to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to offer
sacrifices continually.” There are
many challenges to the Christian faith in this world, but we are never left defenseless. We have a King who cares about our eternal
wellbeing. We have a King who has lived in
our skin and walked in our paths, who like us has felt sorrow and pain, endured
the scorn of enemies and the betrayal of friends, who on our behalf, faced the
demons head on and came out victorious in every way.
This Jesus is the one and only, true God-Man
who not only died in our place, but rose again from the grave bursting the
gates of death to live triumphant evermore in heaven. Since Jesus willingly bore the sins of the
world unto death, “God worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and
seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule,
authority, power, and dominion, and above every name that is given, not only in
this age but also in the one to come.
God also placed all things under his feet and made him head over
everything for the church.” (Ephesians 1:20-22) At His Father’s side Jesus reigns over all
things for our everlasting good. There
too, Jesus intercedes for us, offering His own righteous life in exchange for
ours so that when the Father looks over His adopted children of faith, He sees
only the good of His Son. Likewise,
Jesus is the one High Priest unlike any who came before Him. “Unlike the other high priests, he does
not need to offer sacrifices on a daily basis, first for his own sins and then
for the sins of the people. In fact, he
sacrificed for sins once and for all when he offered himself.” (Hebrews
7:27)
Dear friends, in a time of great trouble and
trial caused by a rebellious, idolatrous nation, Jeremiah was given a message
of hope, a hope for his time and for ours.
It pointed forward to the coming Christ.
It shows us that Jesus is exactly the Savior we need—the Savior-God who
willingly entered our world to rescue us from darkness and death at the cost of
His own precious blood—who, risen from the dead, promises that He will never leave
us nor abandon us, and that all things will be worked out for our everlasting
good because The Lord our Righteousness reigns. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life
everlasting. Amen.
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