Jeremiah 33:14-16

The Tree of Hope

We’ve entered the season of Advent and there are four big themes that we will focus on: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Today we are going to look at the theme of hope. I don’t think it would be an exagerration to say that we are in a time and place where we are in need of hope. Spend just a few minutes talking to a neighbor, or going on social media and there is a resounding theme of hopelessness. Or maybe not so much hopelessness, but putting hope in the wrong things. It sounds like, man if people would just be nicer to each other, our society would be better. Or if we could just have a justice system, a political system, an economic system, and an eduction system that treated everyone fairly, then our society would be so much better. Or maybe more personally, if I just had the right job, that paid just a little bit more, my life would be so much better. If my spouse would just help out a little bit more, if my kids would listen. These are slivers of hope that we hold on to. If only....fill in the blank....then....x would be so much better. The problem with these hopes, is that they are fleeting. They don’t last.

So where can we turn and find lasting hope?

This is the question of the passage. In the context here, the people of God are in desperate need of hope. The prophet Jeremiah has come and is delivering bad news. Here is the bottom line to the message is that the long-suffering, the slow to anger God has reached its fullness. God’s people and their leaders have had a history of chasing false gods. Of disobeying the law that God had used to set up their society. Jeremiah holds out that there is an opportunity for repentance. That is more than just saying I’m sorry, but to acknowledge their sin before God. And also receiving the forgiveness that God offers. This is why we have a pattern of remembering God’s grace each week. Each week, each day, we sin and fall short, but we don’t stay there, we ask God for forgiveness. And we here the blessing of God’s forgiveness. It’s truly a beautiful moment in our service where we create space in our lives to ask for God’s grace and rest in his grace and mercy.

Going back to Jeremiah’s message, if the people don’t repent, and we see over the prophetic career of Jeremiah, that they don’t repent, that they are going to face the consequences of their waywardness, namely, exile and the destruction of Jerusalem. Exile means they will be forcibly taken from their land.

Just to give you a picture, imagine with me for a moment that instead of the united states, Arizona was a sovereign Nation. The exile then would be similar to people from Atlanta, GA, coming over here and forcibly removing us from our homes and bringing us back over there. Now our impulse would be to resist that. Jeremiah presents a different option. Instead of fighting it, don’t.

But the prophet Jeremiah says to not fight it. Its’ going to happen because you aren’t going to repent, but God is still going to keep his promises. Jeremiah holds out hope for God’s people, that though God is going to judge them for their sin, he is not going to forsake his promises.

Hope of fulfilled promise

The Promise

In this section Jeremiah has just laid out a great promise, that there was going to be a new covenant. A covenant is an agreement between God and his people. If the agreement is kept, there will be blessings, if the agreement is broken, there will be curses. In Jeremiah 31:31 ““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” Now the term here new does not mean brand new.

Jonty Rhodes in his book Covenants Made Simple, he gives a helpful illustration between 2 types of new. If I were to say I bought a new car, you would think brand new. But if I were to say, after I had a near death experience, I was new man, you would think renewed. That there was a change within me. The new covenant concept is the second example. It takes what God promised in his previous covenants and expands it.

Jeremiah is entering into a fulfilled promise section after talking about judgment. So let’s look quickly at some of the promises that is referring to in this kind of catchall phrase.

Gen 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.””

Gen 12:1-3 “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””

A people

A place

Presence

This is what God is promising in his covenants.

When God’s people are freed from Egypt, the promises continue.

They are promised a land, a place.

They are formed into a nation.

His presence is also promised Exodus 6:7 “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”

So when the Lord says through Jeremiah that I will fulfill the promises that were made, this is what is in the back of their minds.

Your city is going to be decimated, the temple is going to be destroyed, but don’t lose hope.

Hold on to hope, but what is hope. We touched on it earlier, and we use it our vernacular, but what do we mean by it.

Hope can be thought of as a settled conviction about the future.

I will

One of the encouraging things about this hope, that Jeremiah is talking about is that it is not based on me. In other words, if I was responsible to fulfill hope, that is a crushing burden to put on anyone. I can’t even find my wallet half the time, how in the world can I, or anyone else be the focal point of anyones ultimate hope. I can’t, and neither can you. But we see here that God is the one who will take on the role of fulfilling the promises as only he can do. He is the God who is in control of the whole universe. What we refer to as sovereingty. That he has might, and the right to accomplish his purposes.

And we need to take comfort in the hope that is offered to us in the gospel. There are many in our churches and in our communities who have given up hope. I have a dear friend, and older brother in the Lord who says that the church in the west is dead. I am not so pessimistic, but I am also not wanting to be naive. The challenge for us is not to find the next program, the next ministry, the next great leader. The hardest thing for me and maybe for you is to hold on to the hope of the promises of God.

And for those in the church, the hope is that God will fulfill his promises to the church. The church cannot die, because the head of the church Jesus Christ, is alive and well. And he promises to never leave or forsake his church. Not the building, but his people! This of course takes great faith, especially as our surrounding culture continues to shift and the cultural underpinnings we once had continue to crumble, we must hold on to the hope of God fulfilling his promises. As he promised the people of God here, Israel and Judah, so we too take part in the those promises. As those grafted in, those who are now part of the people of God are now able to share in the promises that God has offeered his people.

Hope means that promises are unfilled, yet. We wait patiently! It takes tremendous faith. But we first see that hope is a settled conviction about a future fuliffled promise.

Hope of justice and righteousness

As God speaks through his prophet, his spokesperson he uses language that has been used previously in Jeremiah and in other prophetic literature like Isaiah. If verse 14, answers the when, verse 15 answers the how and the who. Now Jeremiah doesn’t come right out and say, this crazy thing is going to happen in about 600 years. This women who is unmarried and is a virgin will become pregnant. And the man who she was to marry decided to stay with her anyway. And there are going to be angels and shepherds, and people from far off lands are going to bring him gifts. Oh and he is not going to be wealthy, and we are going to end up killing him, but don’t worry he will be alive in three days. That’s not how prophetic literature works.

God the divine author, the one who ensures that the Word of God from beginning to end is coherent, and authoratives, uses the language of a righteous branch . This is also used in Isaiah 11:1 “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”

Zech 3:8 “Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch.”

Jeremiah 23:5-6 ““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”

Jeremiah 30:9 “But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.”

Jeremiah 30:21 Their prince shall be one of themselves; their ruler shall come out from their midst; I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me, for who would dare of himself to approach me? declares the Lord.”

Now Irsael had a whole bunch of kings, and they were utter failures. They did not obey God, they turned aside and chased after false gods. The kings of Judah, in the southern kingdom did not fare much better. Yes there were some good kings, but none of them were able to do what this Righteous branch was promised to do. It is important that this branch is going to spring up from David, because that goes back to the promises instituted by God.

2 Sam 7:12-14 “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men,”

So this is God’s way of saying again, I am going to keep my promises. Just you watch.

What the Branch will Do

He will execute justice and righteousness. This hope is fulfilled in the righteous branch, Jesus Christ. The justice of God is satisfied because Jesus has taken the place of sinners. And the king rules in righteousness in and through our lives as the king rules in our hearts and transforms and conforms us into his image.

Are you submitting to the righteous rule of Christ in your life? When you step out of the healthy bounds he has set for you, are you quick to repent?

Illustration: boundaries can be hard right? Not that this has ever happened to me, but I know that there are times when I am driving too fast, and I see a cop and my heart goes in my throat for a second, because I don’t want to get pulled over. I don’t want the shame of getting caught, or hassle of being told I should drive more carefully, or having to go to traffic school. Well God is not a cop, but he does hold us accountable and does want us to live according to his righteous reign, and does want us to repent when we step outside of his boundaries.

Where are you holding on and not submitting? Are you sabatthing? Taking a day off from your daily labors. Are you being unloving to your spouse? Are you being impatient with your children? Are you holding onto bitterness? Have you been looking at pornography? Whatever it is, I encourage you repent and submit to the to righteous and just king, and enjoy the blessings of his grace and mercy.

Furthermore that king is reigning now and his kingdom is one of justice and rightouesness. Now when ever we talk about justice, people begin to get a squirmy. But the some of the fruits of the gospel call us to love others, calls us to care for the widow and orphans, and the poor. The early church did this when they rescued discarded babies from Roman trash heaps. As God has ushered his kingdom in Christ, Christ as the head of the church has called us to live under his rule of justice and righteousness. To live properly under his reign.

What we have seen the church accomplish over the years is remarkable, hospitals, orphanages, universities, etc. But the hope is there will be a day when King Jesus returns and he ushers in his justice and righteousness fully and completely. For those in Christ, that day is one of great hope. For those outside of Christ, that is a day of dred and terror.

Hope of salvation and security

Now we we come to the what? When in the last days, who - the branch of righteousness, how through justice and righteousness, and then what are the results of that?

Salvation. In this turn there will be rescue and salvation for God’s people. It could easily be contrued that the salvation needed here was from babylon. They were going to conquer. And while it is true that they would indeed need saving and rescue from them, but there is a greater saving that is needed.There is a more radical rescue that is required for God’s people. Because the greatest enemies that God’s people faced, was not the enemy out there. It was not the Babylonians, or the Egyptians, or the Assyrians. And our greatest enemy is not the secular culture or the people that vote differently than you do. The greatest enemy, what they needed rescue from, and what we needed rescue from is here. IT is the human heart. Another prophet, Ezekiel, speaks to this enemy, he says this 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

You see through and through it is the Lord’s work. He is the one who changes our heart. Our heart is the problem, the stony heart that is like a dog chasing a new shiny object. The dog who disobeys your masters commands because they see something better. Something they think in the moment will help. Don’ miss what is being promised here, it is salvation for God’s people.

And in this salvation we have tremendous security. It is not just a temporary state. It is not a promise that will fade. It is not something that will dwindle because God gets tired of having to continually forgive you.

How many of you are in a relationship where the other person, whether it is spouse or a friend, or relative continues to let us down. And we are pushed to the brink where we feel like giving up on them. You may have been there before.

But don’t take your own feelings and frustrations and attribute them to God. God is not like us. He is not fickle. In fact, we can rest securely because God is rich in mercy. As Dane Ortlund says in his book Gentle and Lowly “ That God is rich in mercy means that your regions of deepest shame and regret are not hotels through which divine mercy passes, but homes in which divine mercy abides. It means the things that make you cringe the most, make him hug hardest. It means his mercy is not calculating and cautious, like ours, It is unrestrained, flood-like, sweeping, magnanimous.”

We can dwell securely in salvation, not because we are so great, but because God’s grace is so good. He keeps us secure. He through His indwelling Spirit holds on to you and will never let you go. Like the child that is tempted to run off into the street at times with wreckless abandon, God holds on to his children. Just as God has promised security for the people in this passage, he promises is for you. 2cor 1:20 “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”

How can God promise such things. How can we salvation and security, righteousness, and justice.

Notice what the passage doesn’t say. It doensn’t say, well God’s people will finally get there act together. They will finally figure it out. They will read enough self help books, they will learn from their mistakes and they will finally get it right. No!!! Read what it says. The Lord is our righteousness. This is the hope of our salvation and security. This is the gospel as simple as it can get. The Lord is our rightoeusness. Jesus Christ the righteous branch, did it the right way for us. So now we can be declared rightous by God. When we are found in Christ, he shares his righteous perfection with us. That is the good news of the gospel friends.

1 Tim 3:16 “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

Rom 3:21-22 “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:”

Promise for us:

Conclusion:

Lasting hope is found only in Jesus. As we think about advent. As we prepare our hearts for Christmas.