“The Lord Our Righteousness”
Jeremiah 33:14-16

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
First Sunday in Advent—November 28, 2021

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

For the first three Sundays in Advent this year we will be considering prophecies of three Old Testament prophets, predicting the coming of the Messiah.

Isaiah foretells the forerunner of the Messiah, John the Baptist, heralding his coming into our world: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord!’”

In the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi uses imagery familiar in the ancient near east of a “winged sun disk” to give the final prophecy of the spiritual light and life that the Messiah will bring into our world, darkened by sin: “But for you who revere my name, the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings.”

We begin today, on the First Sunday in Advent, with the appointed Old Testament Reading from the prophet Jeremiah.  The countdown today is only 27 days until Christmas.  However, Jeremiah was looking ahead and counting down over 600 years, when he predicted the first Christmas, and the Messiah’s birth into our world:

“‘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.’”

I’m on the email list of the Biblical Archaeology Society, and a few days ago when I was preparing this sermon I got a message about a recent discovery in the Holy Land, with the sad subject line: “Canaanite Idol in a Judahite Temple?  Pagan God Baal Possibly Worshipped Near Jerusalem.”  The message went on to report: “Archaeologists may have discovered . . . evidence that early Judeans worshiped Canaanite idols—at a site less than four miles outside of the Temple Mount. What appears to be . . . part of a stone statue of the Canaanite god Baal came to light this past summer . . . The limestone fragment was. . . a remarkably rare find that . . . would mean that Judahites worshiped a pantheon of gods . . .”

Sadly, this latest archaeological discovery confirms what the Bible itself reports, that the ancient people of God fell away from the faith.  By Jeremiah’s time they no longer worshiped and served the only true God.  They forgot his blessings and his mercies; they did not put their trust in the Lord Almighty; they doubted his promises—especially his greatest promise of all, to send the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

Jeremiah’s job was to preach repentance.  The people must turn from their sin; they must worship the true God; they must trust in him; they must serve the Lord Almighty, and put their faith in his promises; and, especially, they must look forward in faith to the coming of the promised Messiah.

For, they were they chosen people of God—chosen out of all the peoples of the earth to be those from whom the Messiah would be born. “‘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.’”

But, though they were the chosen people, at the time Jeremiah was writing this beautiful prophecy, 600 years before it was fulfilled, they were experiencing terrible, troubled times.  It all culminated on July 10th, 586 BC, when the Babylonians besieging Jerusalem broke through the walls of the city.  Soon, their conquered capital and its ancient Temple built by Solomon were utterly destroyed, the sacred treasure of the Temple carted off as booty by the Babylonians, and much of the Hebrew population deported into exile in Babylon.  Jeremiah was an eyewitness of the fall of Jerusalem, and recounts all of these disasters in devastating detail.

Because of this terrible devastation that their country suffered at the hands of their enemies, the chosen people thought that God had forgotten and deserted them.  Jeremiah’s message was: God has not forgotten and deserted you, you have forgotten and deserted God!  Their own rebellion against God was the cause of all their troubles.  They failed to listen to God’s warnings, they failed to heed his calls for repentance and obedience, they brought this devastation—that they deserved because of their wickedness and unfaithfulness—upon themselves.

We too live in terrible, troubled times.  The daily news can be so depressing these days, one study found that news consumption in America plunged in the past year by 20%.  An article in the Columbia Journalism Review a few weeks ago said that, because of all the political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and most of all the worldwide pandemic: “Americans have turned OFF the news—on television, online, and in print.”

The ROOT cause of the terrible, troubled times we live in today is actually the same as in Jeremiah’s day.  It all goes back to the beginning, to the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  As Paul says in Romans: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men . . . Consequently . . . the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men . . . the whole creation groans and suffers . . .”

The root cause of our terrible, troubled times is SIN.  First of all, the ORIGINAL sin that spoiled our world, and introduced pain and suffering, sorrow and death: “the whole creation groans and suffers.”

And, in addition to living now in a fallen, sinful world, another cause of our terrible, troubled times isn’t anything out there, but right here, in our sinful hearts, and the ACTUAL sins we all commit in our lives as a result of this original sin that we were born with.  For, like the ancient people of God, we too are guilty of falling away from the faith; we too have not worshiped and served God as we ought; we too have forgotten his blessings; we too do not put our total trust in the Lord Almighty; we too doubt his precious promises.

Some 2,600 years later, the message of the prophet Jeremiah rings out to us loud and clear: God has not forgotten and deserted you, you have forgotten and deserted God!  Repent of your sins and return to the Lord your God! For, he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

For, in the midst of our own terrible, troubled times, the GOOD NEWS is that Jeremiah not only preached doom and gloom, sin, and repentance, and judgment.  He also proclaimed the GOSPEL, the CURE for sin, in the coming advent of the Messiah, the Savior of the world: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made . . . In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line . . . This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’”

Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy, the fulfillment of God’s greatest promise.  He is the Righteous Branch, sprouting from the chosen people, and David’s family tree.  He entered our troubled, fallen world, and though he was sinless, he suffered FOR us the most troubled life of all.  Taking the sins of the whole world upon himself, suffering and dying as a punishment for the sins of all humankind, as our substitute, in our place.  As Paul concludes in Romans: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

That is the first part of what we could call “God’s Great Exchange.”  God placed all your sins upon his Son, as John the Baptist declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

However, he does more than take away your sin.  For, God not only placed all your sins upon his Son, to be suffered and paid for by him on the cross.  The second part of “God’s Great Exchange” is that he also bestows upon you the holiness of Christ, credits to you the righteousness of the Son of God.  As Paul says 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.”

So, when God looks upon you, he sees not only a negative, an absence of sin; he also sees the most perfect, glorious, positive: the perfect holiness and righteousness of his own Son.  That is why Jeremiah calls the coming Savior the mystical Hebrew name “Yahweh Tsidkenu,” “The Lord Our Righteousness.”

Because, in God’s eyes, all the righteousness of CHRIST THE LORD is YOUR righteousness, for it has all been credited to you.  God does not count your sins against you, because in “God’s Great Exchange” Christ bore your sins in his body on the cross, and God bestows upon you the righteousness of his own Son.

When God looks upon you he does not see your sin, for your sin has been entirely paid by Jesus Christ—“Yahweh Tsidkenu,” “The Lord Our Righteousness.” When God looks upon you, he sees only the righteousness of Christ, covering your sins and making you holy in his sight.  As the Lord declares in Isaiah, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m dreaming of a “White Christmas.”  Like a fresh blanket of snow covering the ground, Christ righteousness covers you, covers all your sin, so that in God’s sight you are pure, clean, holy—righteous in his sight, not with your own righteousness, but with the perfect righteousness of Christ your Savior—“The Lord Our Righteousness.”

That is the meaning of Advent, that is the meaning of Christmas, that is the meaning of this ancient prophecy of Jeremiah: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made . . . In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line . . . This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”

Now are the days fulfilled! “Yahweh Tsidkenu” is here!  “The Lord Our Righteousness has come”—for YOU!