1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly
Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. Today we begin the Season
of Advent and a new Church
Year. Advent is a season of contrition,
sorrow over our sins, and hopeful waiting. It invites us to reflect on the
frailty of our fallen nature as we prepare to behold the mystery and wonder of
God becoming flesh for us. Today we’re
looking at the Lord’s words to the Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 33:14-16, which
says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares
the Lord, when I will fulfill the
promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In
those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for
David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16 In
those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is
the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord
is our righteousness.’ The message
is entitled, “The Lord is Coming Again,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
So, it begins.
Another Church Year, another Advent, another Christmas shopping
season, another winter … another time of waiting. Waiting for the Lord Jesus who has promised
to come again to judge the living and the dead. Waiting through the dark days
of early winter is an ideal time to turn to the prophet Jeremiah. The man knew
something about waiting. God had called Jeremiah to his ministry as a Prophet
in the 13th year of King Josiah. And Jeremiah had a long career. It lasted
through the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the exile of Jeremiah’s
people to Babylon. Jeremiah remained in
Palestine after the deportation. Although he was a prophet to the nations, his
primary focus was the Southern Kingdom of Judah. These were times of
catastrophe for Judah. Israel had already been swallowed up by the nation of
Assyria. Babylon had taken her place, and God used her, just as he had used
Assyria, to bring judgment upon his unfaithful people.
3.
Imagine if you were Jeremiah for a
moment. The land lies in waste and the
city streets of Jerusalem are deserted.
The dust swirls in the city square and there’s no one to draw water from
the well. It’s like Armageddon, the End
of Days has taken place, which is so popular in movies right now. Rubble chokes the way and debris is piled
upon the walks of Jerusalem. Jerusalem
and the Temple of the Lord is no more and the people dwell there no more. And amidst all this lamenting and crying Jeremiah
longs for the Lord to come, to come and restore Jerusalem and the temple to its
glory once again. The Lord does promise
here in Jeremiah 33 these things He says, “Call
to Me and I will answer you (vs. 3), I have hidden My face from this city
because of all their evil. Behold, I
will bring to it health and healing (vs. 5-6). I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and
rebellion against Me. And this city
shall be to Me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations (vs.
8-9). Even in the midst of the
rubble there is hope! Jeremiah looks to
the promise that the Lord is coming to save His people.
4.
Our Lord Jesus is coming and we
have hope. But, how often do the streets
of our lives lie waste under the rubble of despair? How often do we look to the right and to the
left and see nothing but darkness and ruin?
How often do we mourn and cry out in anguish at the wreck of our lives
because of our own sinfulness? We have
sinned and it has brought us to the abandoned streets of hopelessness. We’ve piled up sin and its rubble has weighed
us down. The enemies of sin, death, and
the devil have overrun us and we’ve been separated from our holy God and His
Holy City—Jerusalem.
5.
We cry out in our sin and we weep
in the darkness. We have dealt with the
consequences of our sin: divorce, the
murder of little children within their mother’s womb through abortion, addiction
to drugs and alcohol, friendships that have been ruined because of the wrong
thing that we said, or a failure to help our friend out when they needed
us. Our failure to worship the Lord and
serve Him only and to remember His day of worship and keep it holy. We say those swear words we shouldn’t and so
defile the name of the Lord we have been given in our baptism. We covet and desire those possessions that
don’t belong to us. Where is our
hope? The prophet Jeremiah tells us, Behold the days are coming, declares the
Lord, when I will fulfill the promise…In those days and at that time I will
cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David.” (Jer. 33:14-15). The Righteous Branch is our hope! Jesus is our hope!
6.
The Righteous
Branch has sprung forth from the stump of Jesse. Jesus our New David has come and ushered us
into a new kingdom and a new era. Jesus,
our Messiah, has appeared in our midst, bringing us health and healing to the
disease of sin in our world. Jesus has
carried the burden of our sin to the cross.
He has taken the wreck of our lives and applied the healing balm of His
precious blood. Jesus is our
righteousness. He has even given us His
righteous robe through the sacrament of Holy Baptism that makes us holy in God
the Father’s sight. He has redeemed us
His people through His death and resurrection and made us His own. Jesus our Messiah and Savior has come to save
us!
7.
But, this
reading from the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 33 also points us as Christians to
the future and reminds us that “the days” are coming when Jesus will
return. Jeremiah 33:16 tells us that we
as the Lord’s church will bear the name “The
Lord Our Righteousness.” This
name applies to us today because of Christ’s imputed righteousness that you and
I have received in and through our baptisms. Jeremiah’s words remind us that
the days are still coming. We still are looking for our righteousness that will
appear in all its brilliance on the Last Day when Jesus promises to return in
glory to judge the living and the dead.
8.
Living in these days of moral decline in the United States
and the Christian Church in America beginning to lose its influence we can relate to Jeremiah. But maybe we shouldn’t, or at least
maybe we shouldn’t relate quite so easily. We are, after all, living in the
days that Jeremiah longed to see—the days that were the object of his hope.
Jeremiah longed for the days when God’s plan of salvation in Jesus would move
forward, the promise would be kept, and Judah would be saved. All of that has
happened. The “righteous Branch of David” sprang forth and Jesus executed
justice and righteousness on the earth. Following a plan that few could have imagined,
the fulfillment came precisely when the world rejected and executed our Lord
Jesus, who had come to do justice and righteousness. It‘s been
accomplished. Our salvation has been
accomplished through Jesus. “Those days
that are coming”—the very thought of
which that encouraged Jeremiah—are now. Today is one of those days … not a day
of waiting, or dreary routine, or painful endurance, but a day of living in the
reality of the promise fulfilled. We aren’t
waiting for God to do something. He’s already done it for you in Jesus through
His death and resurrection. And He promises to bring your salvation to its
final completion when he comes again in glory on the Last Day.
9.
So, while we know what it is to
wait through Advent and winter and life.
We must also learn the habits of living in the reality that our Lord
Jesus has already come to save us through His death and resurrection. And He promises to come again to take us to
our heavenly home. If we’re only waiting for God to do something else, only
waiting for those better days to come, then we’re failing to live faithfully in
the present reality of now—a reality that would have delighted and maybe even
brought a smile to the hardened face of Jeremiah the weeping prophet. Our Lord Jesus is coming again and we look
forward to it. Amen.
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