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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Advent 1



Jeremiah 23:5-8 - Advent 1 Midweek - December 5, 2012
  The Lord our Righteousness

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ gathered here this evening, grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

We are gathered in Jesus name.  We are gathered in Jesus’ name because it is Jesus Himself who gathers us.  He is our Shepherd.  We hear His voice, and follow Him, and no one will snatch us out of His hand.  Scripture frequently compares Jesus to a shepherd tending his sheep.  Psalm 23 comes to mind.  So also, because our Lord leads us by speaking His word, Scripture also calls those men shepherds who speak God’s word on His behalf.  This is where we get the word pastor.  A shepherd’s job is to lead sheep away from danger and into safety – to make sure that they have what they need to live.  If trouble is near, the worst thing for shepherds to do is to pretend that all is safe. 

In the context surrounding our text this evening, God, through the prophet Jeremiah, chastised the shepherds/ pastors, of the day who led the sheep astray by preaching peace when there was no peace.  God said He would destroy these lying pastors.  And He did.  They now await the resurrection of all flesh when they will be judged by the stern pronouncement of Christ whose advent they failed to preach.  Think of that.  What made them unfaithful, what incited God’s wrath against them, was the fact that they did not preach Christ.  They preached about a peace with God apart from Him who reconciles God to sinners: Jesus.  Woe to the preacher who does not preach Jesus.   


The message that the false shepherds had taught the people was a message contrary to plain fact.  There was no peace.  There was war.  Now I’m not just talking here about the spiritual condition of man’s heart.  Although, this is the main point.  They had rejected God’s word, after all, and chased after idols.  They had neglected the true worship of the Temple where God came to them in mercy through the sacrifices offered by the priests – all of which, by the way, pointed to none other than Jesus the coming Savior.  And then, they heaped up for themselves instead false teachers who told them what they wanted to hear.  Yes, we all know that war against God begins in the unbelieving heart.  But there was also, in these days, a literal, physical war that was being waged against Jerusalem.  God visits spiritual rebellion with physical consequences.  And nowhere is this made more clear than with the history of God’s people in the Old Testament. 

Jeremiah was a prophet.  He was a faithful preacher.  He preached the law that condemned sin.  He preached the gospel that covered sin.  He said what God gave him to say. 

The children of Israel had been unfaithful.  They needed to hear the law.  So Jeremiah preached it.  He preached what God was going to do.  But because they were so blind to the war they had waged against God by their sin, so they were also blind to the war that God had waged against them in His justice.  But their blindness did not keep God from doing what He said He would do. 

God allowed foreign kingdoms to surround and besiege His holy city, to conquer and displace His own chosen nation.  They would be scattered like sheep.  None of their kings could save them.  In fact, their kings, who sat on the throne of David, would be utterly cut off, and no one would ever sit on the throne again.  Israel had already long fallen away.  And now the kingdom of Judah was ended.  God’s wrath against sin burned.  This is history.  It happened. 

It looked like God just quit.  It looked like God gave up entirely.  Consider those words of promise that God once spoke to King David centuries earlier: “And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam. 7:16).  Forever.  It looks like forever didn’t last too long.  It looks like the insufferable sin of God’s people caused God to renege on His promises.  But of course we know that this could never be.  It’s true that God sent severe judgment.  But consider again those words from Jeremiah that we just heard:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord our Righteousness.’”
Here was the hope for God’s people.  They could not hope in the strength of their earthly kings.  Their kings were enemies of God.  They could not hope in their status as Israelites or Jews.  There was nothing in their flesh in which they could boast.  They could only hope in Him who was promised to them, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.  This is what God promised to Abraham.  It’s what made them a nation in the first place.  It’s why God gave them a king.  Their hope was Christ.  And that’s exactly who was preached to them throughout the books of the prophets. 

The unrighteousness of God’s people could not undo the faithfulness of God who makes promises.  And so it is for us.  We don’t find God’s promise to save us fulfilled in our own righteousness.  We find it fulfilled in the life of Jesus.  He is the one who was born in Bethlehem, the city of David in order to live the perfect life that we have failed to live.  He is the one who humbled Himself before sinners whom He served and loved, and before God whom He obeyed all the way to the point of death.  He is the one who ascended the throne of His earthly father David.  He ascended the throne not by warding off the bad guys with sword and chariot, but by succumbing to their violence—by suffering in the place of all sinners the wrath and judgment of God as He was condemned to die under Pontius Pilate.  Spiritual rebellion has physical consequences indeed.  The history of God’s people shows us that.  We are God’s people.  We are His new Jerusalem.  We are the daughter of Zion, because we see every consequence of our sin revealed and absorbed and fully punished in the bloody torture and death of our King upon the cross.  This is history.  It happened.  Here our faith begins because here is where our King earns the right to forgive us all our sins, which He bore in our place.     And so as the true Israel, we welcome our King who comes to us lowly through the means of grace to forgive us all our sin.  We do so with shouts of Hosanna, blessing the Son of David who comes to serve His needy subjects in the name of the Lord. 

Under His rule, we dwell safely.  And His kingdom will have no end.  Jeremiah says this of Judah and Israel.  But he is talking about the Church of all time - all true believers - that have gathered and that still gather in the name of Jesus.  He is talking about all those who throughout time have found in the promise of Christ the only hope for salvation from sin, and who have found in the wounds of Christ true safety and peace with God. 

Shepherds warn of danger.  Pastors point out sin.  God sends His ministers to preach repentance.  But you know, anyone can see the wicked things he’s done and regret it.  Anyone can acknowledge that his heart is tainted by selfish ambition.  One would have to be quite deluded to deny it.  But the true repentance of a Christian is the repentance that despairs entirely of all our own righteousness.  We don’t need it.  And we see the sin behind everything we do.  We don’t try to mitigate it.  Because in our works – no matter how good they look, in our thoughts – no matter how pious, we find no peace with God.  But the God who takes on our own flesh to rule us is the God who serves us by giving us His own righteousness.  He is our Lord.  He Himself is our righteousness.  He is the Lord our righteousness.  This means that we measure ourselves solely by what He has accomplished in our place to bring us eternal peace.  It is ours.  He does not deal with us according to our sin, but according to the mercy that He has revealed in Jesus. 

Jeremiah spoke against the nation of Judah.  He declared a hard word.  He did what is hard for preachers to do.  He saw the destruction he prophesied of.  He saw the pain.  He saw the sorrow.  He saw that God’s judgment was real.  But in God’s judgment of sin, there remained God’s promise to gather again His chosen congregation.  His final word was not judgment, but hope: 

“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when they shall no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ Then they shall dwell in their own land.”
As the Lord lives who brought us out of Egypt.  Passover celebration. 
God’s faithfulness was proved and found here. 
God kept His promise by sending Jesus. 

No longer will His promises be recounted according to what He has done for the Jews. 
But according to what He has done for all nations in Christ. 

And He gathers us together here in time, where our King rules us in mercy.  And this same Lord Jesus will gather us outside of time to dwell in a new heaven and a new earth for all eternity, in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

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