August 19, 2012 ADULT SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON GOD PROMISED A RIGHTEOUS BRANCH MINISTRY INVOCATION Hear us as we meditate on this moment in Your Presence. Open our minds that we might understand the joy of knowing You in Your Righteousness and Truth. Amen. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW AND UNDERSTAND To explore the benefits of being under a righteous leader To identify a situation in which they were betrayed by a trusted leader To investigate the way leaders are trained in the church THE APPLIED FULL GOSPEL DISTINCTIVE TEXT: Background Scripture Key Verse Jeremiah 23:1-6, 33:14-18 Key Verse: Jeremiah 23:5 Lesson Scripture Jeremiah 23:1-6, 33:14-18 1 Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture! declares the LORD. 2 Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel concerning the shepherds who are tending My people: You have scattered My flock and driven them away, and have not attended to them; behold, I am about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds, declares the LORD. 3 Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. 4 I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them; and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing, declares the LORD. 5 Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land. 6 In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will dwell securely; And this is His name by which He will be called, The LORD our righteousness. 1
Jeremiah 33:14 18 (NASB95) 14 Behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill the good word which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch of David to spring forth; and He shall execute justice and righteousness on the earth. 16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell in safety; and this is the name by which she will be called: the LORD is our righteousness. 17 For thus says the LORD, David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; 18 and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man before Me to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to prepare sacrifices continually. COMMENTARY Verse. 1. Woe be unto the pastors, etc.! The original form of the verse shows the strong feeling with which the prophet both wrote and spoke: Woe! shepherds who destroy, etc. By shepherds Jeremiah means rather the civil than the spiritual, authorities, especially the kings. This is, in fact, the general Old Testament application of the term (see note on ch. 2:8). That destroy. If it is true of all sin that no one can calculate its issues, this is especially true of the sins of rulers. The leaders of this people became false guides, and those whom they led were lost men (Isa. 9:16). How these evil shepherds destroyed the people we are not here told; but from chapter 22:3, 13, it is clear that sins of injustice, ranging from oppressive exaction to murder, are intended. Scatter; the captivities of the Jews being directly owing to the want of good government and teaching. How could the prophets stem the tide of popular corruption, when the ruling classes opposed their efforts? The sheep of my pasture; or, the sheep of my pasturing the pastors are Jehovah s under-shepherds. Verse 2. The Lord God of Israel; strictly, Jehovah the God of Israel. This national title of Jehovah suggests, in such a connection, that the crime of the kings is nothing short of sacrilege. Ye have scattered, etc.; i.e. been the cause of their scattering. Have not visited them. To visit often, by a natural association of ideas, means to give attention to. By an equally natural association, it means to fall upon, to punish. Hence, in the next clause, I will visit upon you. Verse. 3. Parallel passage, Ezekiel. 34:12 15. I will gather the remnant. For the ill usage of foreign oppressors has supplemented that of home tyrants, so that only a remnant is left. And they shall be fruitful and increase. The fertility of the Jewish race in modern times has been a frequent subject of observation, and supplies the best comment upon Jeremiah s prophecy. Verse. 4. And I will set up shepherds; i.e. rulers, not necessarily kings (see on next verse). Which shall feed them. For the evil shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock (Ezekiel. 34:8). And they shall fear no more. Ezekiel again 2
contributes an essential feature to the description. The neglect of the shepherds left the flock exposed to the ravages of wild beasts (Ezek. 34:8). Neither shall they be lacking. A speaking phrase. Too many of the sheep had fallen down precipices or been carried off by lions. Verses. 5, 6. (Comp. the parallel passage, chapter. 33:15, 16.) Verse. 5. Behold, the days come. The prophet simply means to impress upon us the greatness of the revelation which he is about to communicate. I will raise unto David. The promised Messiah, then, is certainly to be of the family of David (comp. Isa. 9:7; 11:1; Micah 5:2). A righteous Branch; rather, a righteous Plant: the root means to bud, or sprout. This is the first time in which the title the Plant is unmistakably applied to the Messianic King. It indicates that this great personage stands in connection with the divinely ordained and ancient royal family, but that He is in some way unique, and far surpasses His human ancestors. He springs forth; therefore, He is not a sort of meteoric appearance, without any natural home among men, but rather the blossom of the Jewish nation, the embodiment of its highest qualities. There is something extraordinary about Him, for it is needful that Jehovah Himself should raise this Plant from the almost worn-out stock of David. Note that the word rendered here in the Authorized Version Branch is not the same as that in the parallel passage in Isaiah (11:1). It is, however, the word employed in Isa. 4:2, which is taken by many, especially the older interpreters to be a prophecy of the Messiah. It is also the word used by Zechariah (3:8; 6:12), as a proper name of the Messiah. which is one strong reason for rejecting the view mentioned above that the word rendered the Branch, or the Plant, is to be taken collectively as equivalent to branches, or rather plants. It is true that in verse 4 shepherds, in the plural, are spoken of, but there is no reason why this title should be confined to kings it may as fairly be extended to the chief rulers under a king as the term king itself and a continuous succession is promised of Davidic heirs to the throne, but this is not decisive in favor of the collective meaning. All prophecy is conditional; there may have been moral reasons why a continuance of the Davidic dynasty was held out by Jeremiah at one time as a possible prospect. And a King shall reign; rather, and he shall reign as king; i.e. he shall be the realized ideal of an Israelitish king a second David. And prosper; or, and deal wisely. Shall execute judgment; in contrast to the neglectful conduct of Jehoiakim (chapter. 22:3). Ver. 6. Israel shall dwell safely. In the parallel passage (chapter. 33:16) we read Jerusalem, and there can hardly be a doubt that Jerusalem ought to be restored here. And this is his name whereby he shall be called. Read, therefore, as in chapter 33:16, And this is the name where-with she shall be called. THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS; Hebrew, Yahveh (Jehovah Tsidkēnū. The name is 3
formed on the analogy of other symbolic names, such as El-elohe-Israel (Gen. 33:20), Jehovah-Nissi (Exod. 17:15), and especially Jehovah-Shammah (Ezek. 48:35), also a name of Jerusalem. These names are, in fact, sentences; Jehovah- Shammah, for instance, means The Lord (is) there; and the name in the present verse, The Lord (is) our Righteousness. Jer. 33:14 18. Vv. 14 18 contain the promise of the restoration of the monarchy and the priesthood. The promise in vv. 14 16 has already been given in substance in Jer. 23:5, 6, and in our verses it is only formally extended, and thereby made more prominent. In v. 14 it is designated as the establishment, i.e., the realization, of the good word, which the Lord has spoken concerning Israel and Judah. The good word is, according to Deut. 28:1 14, the blessing, which the Lord has promised to His people if they obey His commands. Here also must the good word be taken in the same general meaning; for our verse forms the transition from the promise of the restoration and blessing of Israel in the future (vv. 6 13) to the special promise of the renewal and completion of the Davidic monarchy (v. 15ff.). The blessing promised to the people in the good word culminates in the promise, v. 15f., that the Lord will cause a righteous sprout to spring up for David. On the meaning of this promise, see the remarks on 23:5, 6. Besides, in 23:6, Israel is named together with Judah, instead of which, we have here, in v. 16, Jerusalem; accordingly, the name Jahveh Tsidkenu is referred to Jerusalem, while in 23:6 it is predicated of the sprout of David. The mention of Jerusalem instead of Israel is connected with the general scope of our prophecy, viz., to comfort the covenant people over the destruction of Jerusalem (v. 4f.). But that, through the mention simply of Judah and its capital, the ten tribes are not to be excluded from participation in the coming prosperity, may be seen even from v. 14, where the good word is referred to Israel and Judah, and still more plainly from vv. 24, 26, where this promise is made sure to the whole seed of Israel. The transference of the name Jahveh Tsidkenu from the sprout of David to the city of Jerusalem is connected with the fact, that the name only expresses what the Messiah will bring to the people (see 23:6); the righteousness which He works in and on Jerusalem may, without changing the substance of the thought, be attributed to Jerusalem itself, inasmuch as Jerusalem reflects the righteousness which is bestowed on her by the Messiah. This promise is, v. 17, further confirmed by the renewal of that which the Lord had given King David, through Nathan the prophet, 2 Sam. 7:12 16, and that, too, in the form in which David himself had expressed it in his address to Solomon, shortly before his death, 1 Kings 2:4, and in which Solomon had repeated it, 1 Kings 8:25 and 9:5. 4
They shall never want one to bring and prepare an offering before the Lord. Burnt-offering, meat-offering, and sin-offering are the three species of sacrifice which were to be brought, according to the law, as in 17:26. By means of the apposition the Levites, the priests are designated as the legitimate priesthood, established as such in virtue of God s choice of the tribe of Levi, in contrast with priests such as Jeroboam appointed, out of the common people, for the worship set up by him. Not only shall Israel have priests, but priests out of the tribe of Levi, which was chosen by God for the sacerdotal office, as the medium of communicating His gracious gifts. The designation of the priests as the Levites corresponds, accordingly, to the kings of the family of David. The Davidic kingdom and the Levitical priesthood were the two pillars and bases of the Old Testament theocracy, on which its existence and continuance depended. The priesthood formed the medium of approach for the people into divine favor. The kingdom assured them of the divine guidance. Both of these pillars were broken with the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple; the theocracy the appeared to have ceased to exist. At this time, when the kingdom, with its ordinances of justice and of grace, bestowed by God, was being dissolved, the Lord, in order to keep His people from despair, declares that these two institutions, in accordance with His promise, shall not fall to the ground, but shall stand forever. By this, God s own people received a pledge for the re-establishment and renovation of the kingdom of God. Such is the object of this promise. As to the kind and mode of reinstitution of both of these ordinances, which were abolished when the state came to ruin, the prophecy now before us gives no explanation; but in the emphatic confirmation of the prophecy which follows, we find brief indications which clearly show that the restoration spoken of will not be a reinstitution of the old form which is now perishing, but a renovation of it, in its essential features, to a permanent existence. As this covenant of nature cannot be broken by men, so also the covenant of grace of the Lord with David and the Levites cannot be broken, i.e., annulled. The covenant with David consisted in the promise that his kingdom should endure for ever (see v. 17); that with the Levites, in the eternal possession of the right to the priesthood. The institution of the priesthood is certainly not represented in the law as a covenant; it consisted merely in the choice of Aaron and his sons as priests by God, Ex. 28:1. But, inasmuch as they were thereby, brought into a peculiar relation to the Lord, and thus had vouchsafed to them not merely privileges and promises, but also had laid on them duties, the fulfillment of which was a condition of receiving the privileges, this relation might be called a covenant. The general idea contained in the words the Levites, placed first, is 5
more clearly defined by the apposition the priests, and restricted to the priests of the tribe of Levi. RELATED DISCUSSION TOPICS CLOSING PRAYER O, God of Heaven and Earth: Receive our humble petitions before you today that we might be blessed. We give thanks to You for the sending of Your Son that we might have everlasting life in Him. Amen. 6