Jeremiah 23:5-8; St Matthew 21:1-9
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
This prophecy from Jeremiah, that the Lord shall no longer be known as the One who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but shall now be known as The Lord Is Our Righteousness is no small thing. It wasn’t the only event, but it was the chief and defining event of the people of Israel. The prophets certainly knew of the creation, the call of Abraham and his near sacrifice of Isaac. They knew of Noah and his deliverance from the Flood.
But the great event, that which gave birth to a nation and made them God’s people, was the slaughter of the Passover lamb that served as substitute and spared their children from the angel of death, then the passage through the birth canal of the Red Sea on dry ground that delivered them from enslavement, and the leading of God by the pillar to the enactment of the Covenant and the giving of His Law at Mt Sinai.
That was it. And that was huge!
So for God to change His self-description from the Lord who brought us out of the land of Egypt to the Lord is our Righteousness indicates that the Exodus wasn’t to be the chief event anymore. It was only a foreshadowing of what God would do. It was a type, not the fulfillment. Greater things were coming.
This is not to say that the former things are completely forgotten. St Paul reminds us: Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope (Rm 15:4). Israel’s history is your history. You are God’s people, chosen and beloved, called out of darkness into His marvelous light. The voice of the prophets preaches to you. Therefore we do well this Advent season, and at all times, to reflect and mediate upon Christ in the Old Testament.
Allow me to remind you of some of your history tonight. Jeremiah, recall, served in the waning days of the Kingdom of Judah. Israel, the northern Kingdom, had long since succumbed to the Assyrians. It was only a memory. Now Judah was facing imminent destruction. And Jeremiah made no bones about it - Babylon was coming and when she came, she would wipe out the nation.
What brought this wrath of God and His fierce destruction upon His people? They fact that they despised and rejected His Word. In fear of being overtaken they wanted worship like their contemporaries. In fear of being helpless they wanted a king like their neighbors. And to add They listened to the false prophets who preached “Peace, Peace,” when there was no peace. God did not send them, yet they ran. He did not speak to them, but they continued to prophesy; spinning sermons from their own dreams and visions.
To a people who had no future in earthly terms, to a people who faced the loss of everything in their lives that they took for granted, to a people terrified and hopeless, Jeremiah spoke words of hope from God. He spoke of hope because the Lord sent him to preach of the day when salvation for Israel would arrive - salvation for both kingdoms, north and south.
“Behold the days are coming,” declares the Lord. Messianic words from the get go. It is a new kind of day. A different kind of day from all that has gone before. A day that shall re-establish My people around a new event, a central redemptive event unlike ever before. 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 lead the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.”
For out of the House of David the Lord shall raise up a Righteous Branch. And it sounds strange to us - brach. Remember that Jeremiah preached long after Isaiah, but emblazoned on his heart was the image of the prophet who had foretold how the Lord would cut down His people like a tree, until there would nothing left but a stump. Yet the Holy Seed would be in the stump and from the stump God would raise up a Righteous Branch.
From the long cut-down house of Judah, from the royal house of King David, the son of Jesse, a tender branch would spring and bloom. And He would be hope for all Israel, for Judah and the Northern Kingdom. And hope also for the Gentiles, as you will sing again tonight, Savior of the Nations, that is, of the Gentiles, come.
And whereas the false kings of Judah refused to listen to the King of kings and the false priests refused the sacrifice of the Great High Priest, and the false prophets despised the Word of the final Prophet, this King that deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness. This High Priest shall make the final, once for all sacrifice in His Body. This Prophet shall proclaim the coming of the Kingdom in His own flesh and blood.
For many long years, over the course of centuries and millennia, Israel waited, Judah hoped, when in the fullness of time the angel came and spoke to the Virgin, You shall conceive in your womb and bear a Son. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give to Him throne of His father David. And of His Kingdom there will be no end.
No more pretenders to the throne, no more false sons of David. Now, from the Virgin, she of David’s royal line, from that stump that seemed dead, would come the tender Branch, the King who would deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land.
Execute how? Not by paying the wicked back for their wickedness, not by making us measure up, but another kind of righteousness altogether. He shall execute righteousness by being our righteousness in Himself. In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely, and this is the Name by which He will be called: YHWH Zedekenu, the LORD is our righteousness. Behold it stands written, Christ Jesus became to us wisdom of God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1:30). And elsewhere, For our sake God made Him to be Sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).
Peace and security comes in Him who is our righteousness. Consider this history: all the days of your life, even on the day of your death, when you stand before the All Holy One, whose holiness is terror to all unrighteousness, you need have no fear if you have Him as your righteousness, the Lord Himself.
In the Branch of David’s house, the royal child of the Virgin, you have the one whom God made for you wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. He is your shield before the All-Holy One, God in your flesh come to take your sin upon Himself, to suffer and die for you, to rise from the grave for you, that you might stand before the All-Holy one as holy yourself, holy in Him, and so serve and worship the Blessed Trinity forever. That is life!
Zacharias upon the birth of the Baptist had his tongue loosed and he sang a song of praise: “That we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hands of our enemies might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.”
If you can stand before the all-holy one without fear because you stand in holiness and righteousness then you know the fulfillment of the promises of God. Such holiness and righteousness is yours in the Branch, in Child of the Virgin. He IS your righteousness. You either stand before God robed in His righteousness as gift; or you presume to stand before God in the tattered and spotted garment of your own righteousness. That is to despise the gift He gives and to think you don’t need it.
But you do. As the Psalmist says, The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of men to see if they were any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one (Ps 14). None except for that One who is the Lord of heaven come down to earth in human and flesh and blood, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, to be for us what we could never be in ourselves, to give to us what we could never achieve for ourselves.
The Lord is our Righteousness.
Here is something you can hold tight to when everything in your world is collapsing around you. It holds in the good times and in the bad, in youth and middle age and when we are old and gray. It holds because it is certain and sure in Him.
The Lord is our Righteousness.
Having Him, we need no other righteousness with which to stand before God but the Righteousness which IS the Child of Mary, the Branch of David, the Son of God, given into the flesh to be our brother and our Savior. To Him with the Father and the Spirit be all glory and honor, now and forever. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
This prophecy from Jeremiah, that the Lord shall no longer be known as the One who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but shall now be known as The Lord Is Our Righteousness is no small thing. It wasn’t the only event, but it was the chief and defining event of the people of Israel. The prophets certainly knew of the creation, the call of Abraham and his near sacrifice of Isaac. They knew of Noah and his deliverance from the Flood.
But the great event, that which gave birth to a nation and made them God’s people, was the slaughter of the Passover lamb that served as substitute and spared their children from the angel of death, then the passage through the birth canal of the Red Sea on dry ground that delivered them from enslavement, and the leading of God by the pillar to the enactment of the Covenant and the giving of His Law at Mt Sinai.
That was it. And that was huge!
So for God to change His self-description from the Lord who brought us out of the land of Egypt to the Lord is our Righteousness indicates that the Exodus wasn’t to be the chief event anymore. It was only a foreshadowing of what God would do. It was a type, not the fulfillment. Greater things were coming.
This is not to say that the former things are completely forgotten. St Paul reminds us: Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope (Rm 15:4). Israel’s history is your history. You are God’s people, chosen and beloved, called out of darkness into His marvelous light. The voice of the prophets preaches to you. Therefore we do well this Advent season, and at all times, to reflect and mediate upon Christ in the Old Testament.
Allow me to remind you of some of your history tonight. Jeremiah, recall, served in the waning days of the Kingdom of Judah. Israel, the northern Kingdom, had long since succumbed to the Assyrians. It was only a memory. Now Judah was facing imminent destruction. And Jeremiah made no bones about it - Babylon was coming and when she came, she would wipe out the nation.
What brought this wrath of God and His fierce destruction upon His people? They fact that they despised and rejected His Word. In fear of being overtaken they wanted worship like their contemporaries. In fear of being helpless they wanted a king like their neighbors. And to add They listened to the false prophets who preached “Peace, Peace,” when there was no peace. God did not send them, yet they ran. He did not speak to them, but they continued to prophesy; spinning sermons from their own dreams and visions.
To a people who had no future in earthly terms, to a people who faced the loss of everything in their lives that they took for granted, to a people terrified and hopeless, Jeremiah spoke words of hope from God. He spoke of hope because the Lord sent him to preach of the day when salvation for Israel would arrive - salvation for both kingdoms, north and south.
“Behold the days are coming,” declares the Lord. Messianic words from the get go. It is a new kind of day. A different kind of day from all that has gone before. A day that shall re-establish My people around a new event, a central redemptive event unlike ever before. 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 lead the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.”
For out of the House of David the Lord shall raise up a Righteous Branch. And it sounds strange to us - brach. Remember that Jeremiah preached long after Isaiah, but emblazoned on his heart was the image of the prophet who had foretold how the Lord would cut down His people like a tree, until there would nothing left but a stump. Yet the Holy Seed would be in the stump and from the stump God would raise up a Righteous Branch.
From the long cut-down house of Judah, from the royal house of King David, the son of Jesse, a tender branch would spring and bloom. And He would be hope for all Israel, for Judah and the Northern Kingdom. And hope also for the Gentiles, as you will sing again tonight, Savior of the Nations, that is, of the Gentiles, come.
And whereas the false kings of Judah refused to listen to the King of kings and the false priests refused the sacrifice of the Great High Priest, and the false prophets despised the Word of the final Prophet, this King that deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness. This High Priest shall make the final, once for all sacrifice in His Body. This Prophet shall proclaim the coming of the Kingdom in His own flesh and blood.
For many long years, over the course of centuries and millennia, Israel waited, Judah hoped, when in the fullness of time the angel came and spoke to the Virgin, You shall conceive in your womb and bear a Son. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give to Him throne of His father David. And of His Kingdom there will be no end.
No more pretenders to the throne, no more false sons of David. Now, from the Virgin, she of David’s royal line, from that stump that seemed dead, would come the tender Branch, the King who would deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land.
Execute how? Not by paying the wicked back for their wickedness, not by making us measure up, but another kind of righteousness altogether. He shall execute righteousness by being our righteousness in Himself. In His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely, and this is the Name by which He will be called: YHWH Zedekenu, the LORD is our righteousness. Behold it stands written, Christ Jesus became to us wisdom of God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1:30). And elsewhere, For our sake God made Him to be Sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).
Peace and security comes in Him who is our righteousness. Consider this history: all the days of your life, even on the day of your death, when you stand before the All Holy One, whose holiness is terror to all unrighteousness, you need have no fear if you have Him as your righteousness, the Lord Himself.
In the Branch of David’s house, the royal child of the Virgin, you have the one whom God made for you wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. He is your shield before the All-Holy One, God in your flesh come to take your sin upon Himself, to suffer and die for you, to rise from the grave for you, that you might stand before the All-Holy one as holy yourself, holy in Him, and so serve and worship the Blessed Trinity forever. That is life!
Zacharias upon the birth of the Baptist had his tongue loosed and he sang a song of praise: “That we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hands of our enemies might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.”
If you can stand before the all-holy one without fear because you stand in holiness and righteousness then you know the fulfillment of the promises of God. Such holiness and righteousness is yours in the Branch, in Child of the Virgin. He IS your righteousness. You either stand before God robed in His righteousness as gift; or you presume to stand before God in the tattered and spotted garment of your own righteousness. That is to despise the gift He gives and to think you don’t need it.
But you do. As the Psalmist says, The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of men to see if they were any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one (Ps 14). None except for that One who is the Lord of heaven come down to earth in human and flesh and blood, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, to be for us what we could never be in ourselves, to give to us what we could never achieve for ourselves.
The Lord is our Righteousness.
Here is something you can hold tight to when everything in your world is collapsing around you. It holds in the good times and in the bad, in youth and middle age and when we are old and gray. It holds because it is certain and sure in Him.
The Lord is our Righteousness.
Having Him, we need no other righteousness with which to stand before God but the Righteousness which IS the Child of Mary, the Branch of David, the Son of God, given into the flesh to be our brother and our Savior. To Him with the Father and the Spirit be all glory and honor, now and forever. Amen.
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