“The Prophets Have Foretold It”
Jeremiah 33:14-16

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Christmas Day—December 25, 2016

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

About 20 years ago Terry and I visited the astounding chapel of Kings College in Cambridge, England, which was built mostly by Henry VIII in the 1500’s.  The Kings College chapel is famous for two things: Its extraordinary fan-vaulted, stone ceiling; and the annual Festival of Readings and Carols that is broadcast from there on television around the world on Christmas Eve.  For many, watching this beautiful service has become an annual Christmas tradition.

The Festival of Readings and Carols, which we are observing in our service today, is an old English custom featuring the reading of a prophecy of Christ’s birth from the Old Testament; the fulfillment of that prophecy from the New Testament, and then the singing of a carol related to that prophecy.

But, some years ago the infamously liberal and now emeritus Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong, decreed that he would no longer allow the Festival of Readings and Carols to be celebrated in his diocese.  Why?  He put it very bluntly: Because he no longer believes that there ARE any prophecies about Jesus of Nazareth in the Old Testament, and we Christians are just fooling ourselves if we continue to imagine and pretend that there are.  This same bishop, by the way, called for the creation of a new religion to replace Christianity in the 21st century.  Don’t ask me why this man remains a Christian clergyman, let alone a bishop.  I can’t explain that.

IS IT just a figment of our Christian imagination, as Bishop Spong asserts, when we see prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament?  Well, Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “These are the Scriptures that testify about me.”  Since the New Testament hadn’t been written yet when Jesus spoke those words, he is talking about the OLD Testament.  “These are the Scriptures that testify about me.”  John also says that Jesus declared to the Jews, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for Moses wrote about me.”

The Gospel of Luke reports: “Jesus said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’  Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.  He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations . . .  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

So, despite what John Shelby Spong or anyone else may say, it is NOT just our imagination when we Christians see prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament.  For, Jesus Christ himself said, about the OLD Testament, “Search the Scriptures . . .  These are the Scriptures that testify about me.”

In our Advent and Christmas services this year we have again heard and read some of the familiar yet amazing Old Testament prophecies of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, such as:

Isaiah chapter 7 — “The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

Isaiah chapter 9 — “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given . . .  And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

Micah chapter 5 — “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

And Jeremiah chapter 33, included in our readings this morning — “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to 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. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”

This “gracious promise” was finally fulfilled on the first Christmas with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  The promise of his birth actually goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.  That is why the first reading for a Festival of Readings and Carols is traditionally always from Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve falling into sin and taking the whole human race with them, including you and me.  As Paul says in Romans, “the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men.”  We all deserve the condemnation of eternal separation from God in hell, because of the inherited sin we are born with, and the actual sins we commit in our lives.  But, the Good News is, already in the Garden of Eden, God made the “gracious promise” to send the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, who would redeem us and earn for us forgiveness and salvation.

In today’s first reading the Lord tells the serpent, Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your descendants and her Descendant.  He will crush your head.”  That is called in Latin the “proto evangelion,” the first Gospel, the first promise of the Messiah.  One of Eve’s descendants will be the Savior, who will crush and defeat Satan.  Paul says in Galatians, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.”  That is what we celebrate at Christmas: The fulfillment of God’s ancient, “gracious promise” to send the Savior of the world.

The Lord’s promise in Jeremiah, “I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line” was fulfilled when the angels announced to the shepherds: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

Jeremiah continues, “He will do what is just and right in the land.”  I would translate that: “He will bring justification and righteousness to the world.”  The angels put it this way: “And on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

“He will bring justification and righteousness to the world.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.”  Judah and Jerusalem are here symbolic of you and me and all believers in Christ, the Church in the New Testament era.

“In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.  This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”  In the climax of these verses in Jeremiah, the Lord tells us a great mystery: The Messiah will be both human, the “Branch of David”; and the Messiah will be divine, “The LORD Our Righteousness.”  As Paul says in Colossians, “In Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.”  The mystery of Christmas is that the little Babe of Bethlehem IS “The LORD Our Righteousness.”

“The Lord Our Righteousness,” Jesus Christ, took all your sins upon himself and suffered the condemnation for you on the cross.  When God looks upon you he sees the absence of sin because, as Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross.”  And when God looks upon you he not only sees the absence of sin, he also sees the glorious presence of perfect righteousness and holiness, making you worthy for heaven, because his own Son’s perfect righteousness and holiness is credited to you.  As Paul explains in 2nd Corinthians, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  He is “The Lord Our Righteousness,” because through faith in him his righteousness becomes your righteousness.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will make a righteous branch sprout from David’s line.  He will bring justification and righteousness to the world.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.  This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”

Paul says in 1st Corinthians, “Upon [us] the fulfillment of the ages has come.”  The Good News of Christmas is that the days prophesied by Jeremiah and the other prophets of old have come.  God has raised up the promised righteous branch from David’s family tree.  We are actually living in those days Jeremiah saw only from afar.