Shared Advent sermon series with Pastor Tim Klein from Faith, Warradale and Pastor Tim Ebbs from St Paul’s Glenelg
Week 1: The promise of safety
Promises, promises!
When someone has placed their trust in another who has promised so much, but failed to keep their promise, these words are usually muttered in disappointment: “Promises, promises.”
People make all kinds of promises. Politicians make promises, usually to win themselves votes when election time looms. Retailers make promises—that if you purchase their products and services you will have greater happiness, increased popularity, and more success. People entering relationships make promises to each other, but often with qualifications around them, so that they’re not personally disadvantaged.
Often the promises people make with each other are broken. And broken promises have painful consequences.
Today’s short text comes at a pivotal place in the book of Jeremiah, and at a crisis point in the history of God’s own people. God had demanded their undivided loyalty because only he is the giver of true life, blessing and fulfilment, which cheap imitations cannot give. But God’s people had broken the promises they had made with him. These stone-hearted people had consistently turned away from him, desiring the lifestyle of their pagan neighbours instead.
Hmmm. Promises, promises.
It is in this context that God called Jeremiah to preach a message of repentance:
“I warned you when you felt secure,
but you said, ‘I will not listen!’
This has been your way from your youth; you have not obeyed me.” (Jeremiah 22:21).
God’s demands are to be taken seriously, and God was about to show his people just how seriously. They would be carried away into exile and their land devastated. Just before today’s text, God said: “People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?’ And the answer will be: ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’” (Jeremiah 22:8-9).
It seemed as though God had gone back on the promise he had made hundreds of years before, when he promised King David that the throne of his kingdom would never end (2 Samuel 7). But in today’s text, God reaffirmed that promise: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king.”
God says this before he brings about his judgment. God was determined that the broken promises of his people would not stop his plan for the world to have a future with him. He promised a victorious King would still come from one of King David’s own descendants.
The image of a righteous branch seems a strange image for a king. It is likely a picture of a sucker rising up. Suckers are a tree’s attempt to grow more branches, often in response to injury or disease. If the roots have been damaged, suckers may grow from the base of the trunk. A good friend of mine shared this picture of a tree growing out of the original stump in their paddock.
But in the imagery in Jeremiah, it is not the tree that is growing a new branch. It is God who is doing the raising up. That’s because the tree in the image is incapable of doing that itself. The tree had not just been pruned, but completely felled, and the roots of the monarchy were dead with the virus of sin. The context of these verses in Jeremiah is that the shepherds of Israel have not been faithful. At the beginning of chapter 23 of Jeremiah, God says: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!”
When the Kingdom of Israel had become divided after the death of David’s son, Solomon, the kings largely turned away from God and led God’s people to the religious cults and the moral depravity of the pagan nations surrounding them, embracing foreign idols that brought enslavement and death, rather than true life, peace, security, fulfilment and blessing. They established as religious duty cultic fertility orgies, astrology and magic, and even child sacrifice. How far they had run from God’s word, with devastating consequences! The idolatry and disobedience rampant throughout the land brought God’s wrath on Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The Assyrian Empire conquered and destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, and in 587 BC the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. Zedekiah, who did evil in the sight of the Lord, was the last king of Judah.
Without a king from the line of David in Israel or Judah, how then would there always be a king on David’s throne?
That’s why today’s text is such good news for a people who would have feared about their safety! This righteous branch will be the Lord’s doing. His promise of David’s throne ruling forever will stand. next slide A righteous king will reign with justice. In the beginning verses of chapter 23, God promises: “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord.”
God had not written his people off. Even though they would be carried away in exile, not even this disastrous event would sever his relationship with them. Through God’s promise of a righteous branch, there is also his promise of restoration for his people, in which they will have a place of belonging; a place to dwell in safety—with him. Who would have thought, after such rebellion!!! How sweet this promise would have sounded—despite all the calamity of being overthrown, ultimately they would be safe and sound with God—the merciful, gracious and faithful God.
God not only anticipated a future with his ancient people. He anticipated a future with you, and made that a reality through his Son Jesus. It is Jesus who fulfilled the promise of a righteous Branch; a King on the throne of David, whose kingdom will never end. He is the righteous King who has secured your future with God that you might dwell in safety with him all your days.
How wonderful that fulfilled promise is, for we see evil all around us, and long for it to end. How wonderful a king is, who will bring an end to wickedness and injustice; to those who hate and hurt, damage and destroy, robbing people of safety, peace and dignity, tearing down and tearing apart rather than building up in love.
Yet we, who tend to think of ourselves as good, and the sinners as only those who do the really bad stuff like blowing up buildings or stealing and killing, have ourselves transgressed God’s holy law too. Like the Kings of Israel and Judah we turn away from our God every time we turn to ourselves. Our heart is imprinted with the DNA of original sin. Longing for a king to rule with justice and bring an end to evil would be longing for our own end. No matter how sincere our attempts at obedience and holiness, or how often we pray or come to church, or how charitable we are—our efforts at righteousness are as filthy rags in God’s sight.
But God is not like us human beings who make promises based on what benefits us, placing limits and conditions on what we vow. He is not like us who change like the winds, making promises one moment and breaking them the next. The King whom God promises through Jeremiah will not only rule with righteousness—he will be the righteousness of his people—“the Lord is our righteousness.”
Our news bulletins show us that it is never long between moments of violence and destruction, pain and heartache. Perhaps things closer to home raise anxiety and cause you to long for safety—your own health condition, or aggressive neighbours, work colleagues that are intimidating and threaten emotional peace and security. Here in South Australia as the borders are opened and the threat of community transmission of COVID increases, we might be feeling fearful, unsafe and out of control as to what might happen next, afraid for ourselves, our families, our workplaces, the church.
That is why the world can never be our safe place. Today’s readings tell of God’s determination to unfold his plan of salvation for the world, and nothing has thwarted it. God holds all things in his powerful hands. He sustains everything by his powerful word, and he is in control. God is not derailed by mere mortals, or the forces of evil. Through Jesus his kingdom constantly reigns in the world and he is constantly seeking lost sinners to share in his life, giving them a safe place in his kingdom, ruling over them not harshly, but with grace. And even though Satan menaces and troubles us, and even though, in the words of Paul, we cannot do the good we want to do, but the evil we do not want to do is what we keep on doing, God in Christ has made the way for you be his very own and have a future with him.
When circumstances cause you to feel God’s attitude towards you has wavered, and when it feels as though God couldn’t, or doesn’t love you, look to the manger and the Cross of Christ, where God demonstrated how much he loves you. For there is the gospel; the forgiveness of all your sins and your righteousness in flesh and bone.
For God’s people of old to hope in the righteous branch was to believe in tomorrow—safe and secure as God’s people, sharing in his life of grace, no matter what tomorrow would bring.
Through faith in Christ we are able to stand before God in righteousness—his own righteousness—which we definitely do not deserve, but which he has freely given to us by grace. His wounds swallow all our broken promises. Because of his precious blood he shed for you, nothing will separate you from the love and safety of God. Because Jesus is your Immanuel, God with you in the present, you can be sure you are safe in him no matter what.
May your hope always lie in the branch of David, the righteous King Jesus, in whom the promise of God’s safety for you, his people, is fulfilled. Amen.
