Deo Gloria
Sermon for November 28, 2021
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16
Theme: Wait for the Good News to Come True!
- A righteous Branch will sprout.
- God’s people will be saved.
A friend of yours called the other night with some good news: she was pregnant and expecting a baby. She and her husband had been married for 6 years already and had been hoping to start a family. And now it looked like it was finally going to happen. Naturally, she was excited, and you were excited for her. But both of you still had to wait. She wasn’t due for another 6 months. You would have to wait a while yet for the good news to come true.
Or maybe it was your cousins who called, your cousins from Montana. They called and said they were planning to come for Christmas. Naturally, you were excited. You could hardly wait to see them again and catch up on things. After all, it’s been like 3 or 4 years since the last time you saw them. But you still have to wait, don’t you? Christmas is still several weeks away. So you have to wait for the good news to come true.
This morning we find a similar message in the verses of our text. Jeremiah has some good news for God’s Old Testament people and some good news for us as well. He says that one day a righteous Branch will sprout from David’s line. And when he does, he says that God’s people will be saved. But that was still a ways off in the future. So they would have to wait. And we do too. We too have to be patient and wait for the good news to come true.
Imagine your car was going to be repossessed. Imagine you were going to be evicted from your home. And imagine that you lost your citizenship and were going to be deported from our country—all within the next 30 days. I think it would be safe to say, if that were true, that you’d be having a pretty bad day. The people of Israel didn’t have to imagine, because that’s pretty much what the prophet Jeremiah had told them. At that very moment the Babylonian army had the city of Jerusalem surrounded. They were using battering rams and other equipment to try to break through the walls and capture the city. The Israelite army, of course, was fighting back and doing its best to keep them from breaking through. But Jeremiah had told the king and he had told the people that it wouldn’t do any good. They were going to lose this battle. Before long the Babylonians would break through the walls and capture their city. Their homes would be destroyed. Their possessions—their fine china and silverware, their dining room table and chairs, the beautiful quilt their grandma had made, the new toys they got for their birthday—they’d all be smashed and burned or taken away by the enemy soldiers. And they—if they survived—they and their families would be deported and taken away into captivity in Babylon. Obviously, there were some dark and difficult days ahead for God’s people.
And yet, God didn’t want his people to be without hope. Yes, they were going to experience suffering and sadness and heartache and loss in the days ahead—all meant to discipline them and lead them to repent of their sins. But God didn’t want them to despair or feel like there wasn’t any hope. So he sent them good news. Even as the battle was raging just outside the city, even as they could hear the sound of battering rams pounding against the walls, God had the prophet Jeremiah proclaim good news to his people:
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land”(vv. 14+15).
When God says, “The days are coming,” he is not being vague or indefinite. He is not saying what people sometimes say, “Yeah, some day I might get around to fixing the screen on the back porch.” And then they never get around to fixing it. No, when God says, “The days are coming,” that’s exactly what he means. The days are coming. It may still be a ways off in the future, but the days are coming. It is going to happen. God will keep his promise and do exactly what he said.
And look at the wonderful thing he said was going to happen: a righteous branch was going to sprout from David’s line! In a matter of days David’s line was going to be cut off. The king of Jerusalem would be captured and taken away into captivity. No longer would there be a descendant of David sitting on the throne in Jerusalem. But one day a branch would sprout from the stump of David’s line. One day a king would rise up among God’s people, a very special king, a righteous king.
The kings of Judah were hardly righteous, especially the more recent ones. Even David himself could not claim to be righteous. Who can forget about the sordid affair he had with Bathsheba? And yet, this king would be righteous, truly righteous. He would live a sinless life, a perfect life. He would always say the right thing and do the right thing. As Jeremiah says, “He will do what is just and right in the land.” Literally he says, “He will do judgment and righteousness in the land.” How much different this king would be from the recent kings of Judah! Instead of taking bribes and kickbacks from the wealthy, instead of showing favoritism to his friends and allowing the rich to take advantage of the poor, this king would do what’s just and right. He would see to it that the guilty are punished and that the righteous are rewarded. He would bring about judgment and righteousness for his people.
You and I know who this righteous branch was, don’t we? The people of Jeremiah’s day had to wait another 600 years for this good news to come true; but not us. We know who this special king was who sprouted up from David’s line. We know that he was indeed righteous, that he always did the right thing and said the right thing. He never showed partiality to the rich or favoritism to his friends. Those who did right he commended. Those who did wrong he rebuked and called to repentance. He truly did what was just and right in the land.
And yet, his life ended on a cross. Why? Because that was his way, God’s way, of bringing about judgment and righteousness for his people. You see, the people of Israel were sinners just like us. They had sinned and broken God’s laws just as we do. In fact, it was because of their sinfulness and their rebellion against him that God had brought the Babylonians against them, to attack their city and destroy it and carry them away into captivity. And yet as awful as that was, it was nothing compared to the punishment they deserved for their sins. Instead of 70 years of captivity in Babylon, what they deserved is 70 million, billion years of captivity in hell. And that’s what we deserve as well. Remember, this king is righteous. He always does the right thing. He doesn’t take bribes and doesn’t show favoritism. If you have sinned and broken his laws, you deserve to be punished. You don’t deserve to live with him in his holy, glorious city. You deserve to be banished from his presence for the rest of forever.
Thank God this king was more than just a righteous king, but also a loving and merciful king. It was his love and mercy that led him to lay down his life on the cross. There on the cross he suffered the punishment you and I deserved. There on the cross he allowed the terrible judgment of God against sin to fall on him instead of us, so that we might be forgiven, so we might be holy and righteous in his sight, so we might not spend eternity in exile in hell, but might live forever with him in heaven. Yes, that righteous and loving King was none other than Jesus Christ our Savior.
In a way, though, you and I are still waiting too, still waiting for the good news to come true. You see, the days are coming when that righteous Branch will sprout again, when he will spring up very suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. On that day, he will come back in all his glory and all his power. And he will bring judgment and righteousness on the land, on the whole earth. All people will be judged. And he will see to it that they get what they deserve. The wicked–those who rejected him and his Word, those who felt no need for the righteousness he had to offer–will be condemned, condemned as the sinners they are and banished to eternal captivity in hell. On the other hand, the righteous, those who by faith are righteous in his sight, will receive what he had promised: eternal life in the new Jerusalem, the glorious city of God. Of course, we don’t know when that will happen, do we? So we have to wait. We too have to wait for the good news to come true and that righteous Branch to sprout.
And when he does, God’s people will be saved. “In those days,” Jeremiah says, “Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: the LORD Our Righteousness”(v. 16). I’m sure there were people who heard those words and thought in physical or earthly terms. They thought this righteous king who would sprout from David’s line would be a mighty warrior like King David was, a warrior who would help them defeat their earthly enemies like the Babylonians and later on the Romans, a warrior who would drive out those enemies and make them a free and independent nation again and allow them to live in peace. There were many people in Jesus’ day who were hoping for a king like that. But that’s not the kind of king Jesus came to be. Oh yes, Jesus was a warrior—make no mistake about that. He was a warrior far greater than David and defeated enemies far worse than the Babylonians or the Romans. He defeated sin and death and Satan, the very enemies who would drag our souls away into eternal captivity in hell. By his death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day, Jesus saved his people. He rescued them from the power of sin and death and hell. He set them free so they might live in peace, in perfect peace forever.
In a way, it reminds me of the story of the three little pigs. The first two pigs weren’t very smart. They built flimsy houses out of straw and sticks, houses that offered little protection against the big, bad wolf. In fact, all the wolf had to do was huff and puff and their houses came tumbling down. It wasn’t until they took refuge in the brick house the third pig had built that they were safe. Many people today do the same thing. They seek refuge in straw houses, things like their own money, their own power, their own wisdom, their own strength, thinking that those things will keep them safe. But then the big, bad wolf comes along. Satan huffs on one side. Death puffs on the other side and they suddenly find out that their flimsy houses offer no protection at all. Their houses come tumbling down, and the wolves carry them away. In Jesus, however, you and I have a solid house where we can live in safety. We have a mighty fortress that Satan and death can never blow down no matter how much huffing and puffing they do. That place is the new Jerusalem, the city of God.
Look at how safe we are there! Look at the name God gives this city: the LORD Our Righteousness. Back in ch. 23 that title is used for Jesus. He, the righteous Branch from David’s line, is called the LORD Our Righteousness. Here that very same title is given to God’s people. They are called the LORD Our Righteousness. It’s similar to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians, ch. 5. In v. 21 he writes: “God made him who had no sin….” There’s that righteous Branch again. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Jesus you and I become the righteousness of God. We become his righteous ones, and we are called by the same title he is: the LORD Our Righteousness. Can we get anymore secure than that? Does sin have any power over those who are righteous? Can Satan accuse or condemn the righteous? Can death hold the righteous in its icy grasp? Not a chance. We are safe, eternally safe and secure in the home of our victorious King.
But we aren’t there yet, are we? Oh yes, through faith in Jesus we are already righteous and are heirs of God’s eternal kingdom. But we’re not physically there yet. So we have to wait. We still have to wait for the day of our redemption, the day when we and all God’s people will finally be delivered from all our enemies and will live forever in safety. Until then, like God’s people back in Jeremiah’s day, we need to be patient and wait for the good news to come true. Amen.