Grace and peace to you all from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Transcription

1 Sermon on Jeremiah 33: st Sunday of Advent December 1 st /2 nd, 2012 Grace and peace to you all from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The passage I want to focus on today is our Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah. And throughout Advent, I m primarily going to stick with the OT readings as our focus. Like I said earlier in the announcements, the focus for each Sunday will be a little different too. This week the focus is on the Promise, next week, Prepare, then Proclaim, Peace, and on Christmas Eve, Praise. And so this week is all about the Promise. Now, first of all, what is a promise? A promise is, basically some spoken or written words that are between two people or between someone and a group. But not only are promises words, but they are words that do something, they are words that create meaning and purpose. They are words that provide hope and clarity. They are words that can create new life where all there was before was death or loneliness. One place where you all see promises being made over and over again is at the altar when two people get married and they promise to be with each other no matter what. Two people have promised themselves to one another, and because of that promise, they have started to live into a new future of lifelong faithfulness, love, and respect. Another place where you all see, hear, and make promises is when someone is baptized parents and sponsors promise to raise a child in the Faith, and the people of God promise to help raise this child in the Faith too. But more importantly, in Baptism, God makes a promise that this child, this person, now belongs to him apart from their worthiness, even if they don t fully understand it. Because God has promised to be your God in baptism, you are stuck with God and God is stuck with you. But before we get into all those promises God makes in the new covenant, the new relationship God has with us and this world because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, we need to also understand the 1

2 promises God made to Israel in the old covenant, because if we don t have that Old Testament background, then what happens in the New Testament with Jesus Christ won t make any sense. For example, If I asked you, why did God the Father send his Son to redeem all creation, all of humanity, what might you say? Maybe some of you would say, well, John 3:16, God did that because he loves the world. Well, how do we know that God loves the world? What s at stake if God doesn t go about the business of loving the world by sending his only begotten son? For that, we need to turn to the Old Testament. And not only that, but if we don t understand what God was up to in Old Testament times, what God was promising way back when, we can easily fall into one of the earliest heresies the Church had to face called Marcionism, so named after Marcion who taught that the God of the Old Testament is a bad and angry god and isn t the God of the New Testament. So in our passage from Jeremiah we hear about a two promises that were made by God to his people. One was to the whole house of Israel; the other was more specific and to the house of Judah, one of the tribes of Israel (but benefited Israel). The promise to the house of Israel goes way to back to Genesis and to father Abraham when God promised to Abraham that through him the nations of this world would be blessed, that he would have descendants, and that he would inherit something called the Promised Land what we would call today modern Israel and Palestine. So this promise God made to Abraham continued to his son Isaac, and to Issac s son Jacob, and to Jacob s ancestors the entire house of Israel, all twelve tribes. This promise was not only for people, for descendants, for children, but this promise also looks forward to the inclusion of the Gentiles, people like you and me, as part of God s family too. Isaiah and the 2

3 other prophets mentioned this as well, that God wasn t only concerned with redeeming the tiny nation of Israel, but God was concerned with redeeming all of humanity and all of creation from the power of sin, death, and the devil. So the promises made to Israel pointed to God s ultimate plan to have a people from every tribe and nation. In Revelation 7:9-10, in a vision John of Patmos is having, he writes, I looked and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb! Or we read of this promise again in Philippians 2:9-11, this time from St. Paul, God has highly exalted [Jesus] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name (that he is God), so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. In addition to this, if God is going to have a people for himself, then God is going to need to provide a place for those people to live. So then comes the promise for land. But again, this promise for land, doesn t just include the tiny geographic space of what we call Israel or Palestine today that promise of land, the Promised Land, includes the entirety of creation as well. This is why we read, again in Isaiah, in other prophets, and also in Revelation that God is going to bring about a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth that will look pretty much like the world as we know it, but there will be no more pain, no more death, no more darkness, no more powers opposed to God. So the original promises of people and land God made to 3

4 Israel points forward to the bigger promise that God wants everyone and everything to be redeemed by his love, compassion, mercy, by the work and person of his Son Jesus Christ. The next promise, made specifically to the house of Judah, but is for all of Israel and for all of creation ultimately, was the promise to always have a king of the line of David, since David comes from the royal house of Judah. And like those other promises I just mentioned, this promise of a king, of the King, points to the work of redemption God is about to do in Jesus Christ. How is this so? In 1 Samuel 8, we read about Israel crying out for a king because their pagan neighbors had a king too. The prophet Samuel doesn t want to do this, but God tells Samuel to find a king anyways. God tells Samuel, Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me form being king over them By saying this, God is basically saying, I should be their only King, but because they can t trust me, give them a king anyways. And so Samuel finds Saul to be a king, who does a good job at first, but flies off the handle later. After Saul then comes David, one of the best kings Israel ever had, though he was not without his faults. And so David becomes the essential model for a king ruling with justice and mercy, and his kingship was burned in the memories of Israel. However, as Scripture tells us what happens in history here, most of the kings of Israel after David were terrible. But God was committed to Israel having a king, and this king was to be from the house of David, of the house of Judah and that s what you ll read in those long, boring genealogies at the beginning of Matthew and Luke s gospels; that Jesus descends from David by the flesh. But again, the promise of a king of the house of Judah has it s background in 4

5 God wanting to be the only King. And so we turn to Jesus who is the King of kings, the one who is of the house of Judah, but also the one who is God himself in human skin and bones. And how does this King rule? Not with military might, but suffering. In Revelation 5, John of Patmos hears one of the elders of the heavenly host say, Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered And later in chapter 5 we read how this Lion has conquered: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain... We read something similar to this in Isaiah 53: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. So far we have covered two of those promises made to Israel that pointed to and was fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the one who came to give himself as a ransom for many, the one who came claim for God a rebellious people guilty of cosmic treason against your Creator, the one who came to bring heaven to earth, the kingdom of God, with him. Really quickly, let s also touch on the last verse we read in Jeremiah which states, In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will life in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: The LORD is our righteousness. You probably know who this promise is pointing to Jesus of Nazareth. What this verse is witnessing to is that God always has and always will demand of you perfect righteousness, perfect obedience, a perfect life where your morals and actions are in line with God s will and commandments. The problem though, is that you can t. You won t. Because of this, God embarked on the most one sided rescue mission in history by 5

6 sending Jesus, to take on your sin, to take on himself all of your unrighteousness and in return, because you believe in him, because you have been reclaimed as a child of God, you have received Christ s righteousness and perfect life in return. So when that final day, which will be the first day of the new creation comes, and God raises your dead body from the ground and asks you, What have you done to earn everlasting life? You can respond, I have done nothing to earn everlasting life. In fact, I have done the opposite and if anything I have earned eternal separation and condemnation. But, heavenly Father, I belong to you. In baptism you made me your own, you promised me to be my God, and you promised that my sin was washed clean. Not only that, but you have given me your son s righteousness. Judge me not according to my sins, judge me according to what Jesus, your Son did for me and on my behalf. And then God will say to you, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have understood my work and my will and my Son well. Come, enter in. Enjoy this new creation. Enjoy the company of your sisters and brothers who have also confessed My name. And enjoy being in my presence forever and always, for where I am there is always life, light, and peace. Thanks be to God for God, and thanks be to God for all his promises that we can cling to for dear life. Amen. 6