The Hope of the Messiah
Advent 2021 • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
Our Advent series this year is going to be a little different than you may have heard before. We’re going to study the four traits of Advent - Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love - entirely from the Old Testament. I want to try to understand how the Jews of Jesus’ day might have understood the savior’s birth. This week, we’ll be in the book of Jeremiah trying to understand the Hope that comes with our Savior’s Birth.
Now I know what you might be thinking - Jeremiah is a strange place to go if you want a hopeful message. He is sometimes called the “Weeping prophet.” He’s the author of Lamentations - a book dedicated to mourning with God about the destruction of Jerusalem and the taking away of the Jewish people into captivity.
The book of Jeremiah itself is actually the longest book in the Bible, and it’s dedicated to the prophetic ministry of Jeremiah while he predicted, witnessed, and mourned the destruction of his home country. It’s a sad book, but some of these prophecies actually point towards the birth of Jesus and all that it would bring. Let’s read starting in Jeremiah 31 and see what it means for Jeremiah to hope in the midst of such turmoil and chaos.
What the Scripture Says
What the Scripture Says
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
This first passage in Jeremiah is talking about a New Covenant God intends to make. This idea is familiar to the Israelites - they were God’s Covenant people. God had made a covenant with Abraham and then with Moses, then again with David. These covenants were promises from God which came with human responsibilities. Abraham was promised that his offspring would outnumber the stars as they inhabit the promised land, but he was expected to circumcise all his men and sons. Moses was told that Israel would receive blessings, but they would have to obey the Law. David was told that his throne would be eternal, but he and his descendants would be punished harshly for disobeying God.
These covenants follow that structure anytime we see them throughout scripture. Covenants happen between two humans sometimes too, like the covenant Laban makes with Jacob in Genesis 31 or that Jonathan makes with David in 1 Samuel 20. But it’s important to note, there are always at least two parties in the covenant and they are not equal. There is always the giver of the Covenant and the Recipient of the covenant. The giver is the one who lays out the terms of the covenant and makes a corresponding promise. The recipient then participates in the covenant based on their adherence to the terms.
So when God made these promises, Israel never had to promise anything back. God was the creator and sustainer of the covenant. He upholds his promises because he is faithful. It all rests on his character. But if the covenant comes with conditions that man must meet, then God is also faithful to do what he said he will do if they disobey the terms of the covenant. God is faithful to uphold the entire covenant, including the part where he promises to punish his people for disobedience.
This New Covenant sounds different though. The problem with the past covenants is that the blessings actually rely on the faithfulness of man. This new covenant will provide blessings based entirely upon the character of God. It involves the writing of the Law on the hearts and minds of God’s people, meaning that this covenant will actually come alive in the people of God. God will write this law into them - marking them as his people and declaring their participation in the covenant.
This word from Jeremiah is promising to fix the problem that has plagued the whole Old Testament - mankind can never be as faithful to God as God is to mankind. There is no covenant given to man which man can be trusted to uphold. This new covenant promises to cut to the root of the problem - the human heart and mind - and actually fix it.
Let’s turn to chapter 33, verse 14 and see what the blessing of this new covenant will look like:
“ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and 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 it will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’
For this is what the Lord says: ‘David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of Israel, nor will the Levitical priests ever fail to have a man to stand before me continually to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings and to present sacrifices.’ ”
This starts like our passage in chapter 31 with the phrase “the days are coming.” It’s a phrase that marks a prophecy of the future, but not just any future. “The days are coming” refers specifically to the “last days” - the period of time leading up to the resurrection and the final judgement. These prophecies are defining the end times and what they will look like, and how they will start. The first prophecy was about the New Covenant that will be formed in the end times, this second one talks about the restoration of David’s throne.
Remember that Davidic covenant mentioned earlier? God promised David that his throne would be eternal. This is the promise God is going to fulfill to Israel and Judah. A “righteous branch” will come out of David’s lineage. This “branch” will “do what is just and right in the land.” What sort of task is that? It’s the task of a King. In fact, the perfect ruler is someone who does what is just and right in the land.
Then the next promise in verse 16 is that Judah and Jerusalem will live in safety and be saved. Again - that’s what a King will do. The reason our culture is so obsessed with politics on both sides of the aisle is because we are always looking for that Just and Rightous King to come and fix the broken things in our society. Imagine how much hope Jeremiah’s audience would have upon hearing this news? That God intends to send a king who will fix all those broken things.
Verse 16 ends with this strange renaming of the city of Jerusalem to “The Lord Our Righteous Savior.” See Jerusalem means “God’s Peace.” So your english Bible is actually translating the Hebrew pronoun litterally, showing us the city’s new name. The city named for peace is being torn apart by war, so God promises the day is coming when the city of peace will become the permanent home of Israel’s Righteous Savior.
So most of this passage is written in poetic verse, but verse 17 restates Jeremiah’s prophecy in plain language: David’s throne will be eternal. But more than that, The priests will never lack for someone to offer intercession before God. Jeremiah is describing the end times as a time defined by a total and complete rule of God’s annointed over Israel and over the world.
What this Means
What this Means
So we have to remember the people Jeremiah was talking to in this passage. Jeremiah was the same prophet who wrote Lamentations - a book mourning the destruction of Israel at the hands of Babylon. Jeremiah watched as his hometown was pillaged by foreign invaders. He watched as Jerusalem’s temple was ransacked and looted by armed men. What do people want to hear in a time like this? What would you want to hear from God in a time like that?
I would want to hear that God was going to put an end to it, right? That God was going to undo everything and put things back to normal. And really, that’s part of Jeremiah’s message here. God is promising restoration for Israel. But there are two problems with that promise. First, there’s no telling when this prophecy will come true. It’s not a promise for immediate restoration. Second, going back to “normal” for Israel is not actually a good thing.
Prior to it’s destruction, Israel and Judah had a long line of evil and rebellious Kings. Babylon’s conquest actually came as a result of these evil Kings - both as a punishment and a natural consequence of their sinfulness. So if Israel goes back to “normal,” it’s still not going to honor God’s covenants and will likely continue in this evil pattern. This is why there is a promise of a New Covenant immediately followed by the promise of a New Ruler over Israel. This covenant promise is accompanied by the promise of a structural change - the people of Israel will actually be radically changed as a result of this New Covenant and the fulfillment of the Old Covenants.
Okay so let’s review: Israel is experiencing some of its most chaotic and painful years as a nation. Death and destruction are everywhere. Jeremiah is a man from God sent to provide comfort and hope to these people suffering and oppressed, and his message is essentially “God will restore things… eventually.” If you can imagine the terrible things happening around him, Jeremiah’s message probably doesn’t come across as all that comforting to the people around him who were probably a bit jaded to all that was happening.
So where is the hope? What hope does this passage actually provide to those who are suffering? Because honestly, we have all suffered through these past two years. They have been stressful and difficult and we’ve all lost something in this chaotic time. What sort of hope is actually offered here in Jeremiah?
Because I think people who are suffering will instinctively believe that suffering will end eventually. “This too shall pass,” right? So the hope that suffering will end is not really a unique message from God. Of course suffering will end - either the darkness will pass or we will pass. Either way, bad things will eventually stop happening. That is true for the Jews of Jeremiah’s audience, it’s true for Christians, and its even true for an athiest. The bad things will end.
The hope of a New Covenant and a New King is so much better than that. It’s the hope not just that the suffering will end but that the suffering will be worthwhile. It’s the promise that the New Covenant will reshape the way God’s people interact with their creator, and that a New King will come to end suffering and deal ultimate justice for those who have suffered. It’s promising a time when we can look back on suffering with the clarity that this suffering has brought us to the ultimate end of seeing the Good and Just King sitting on the Throne, rulling over a New Covenant people totally surrendered to the Grace of God.
The Hope of Jeremiah is that one day, the cycle of violence and evil, chaos and suffering in this world will be broken. It’s the promise that we will finally have a political leader who simply seeks to do justice and righteousness. It’s the promise that we will finally have a spiritual leader who simply intercedes for the people and doesn’t vie for power and influence. It’s the promise that a Covenant will finally be made with God’s people where the brokenness of those people will be completely rectified.
When we as Christians understand this hope, we understand it through the lens of the incarnate Messiah, Jesus Christ. We see how Jesus became the Son of David and King foretold by Jeremiah, how he became the priest of a new temple people, and how he became the mediator of the New Covenant. We know that much of what Jeremiah was imagining has already happened through Jesus Christ.
But we also see how much of Jeremiah’s vision is incomplete. Christ is not yet the King of the World and not everyone lives under His New Covenant. So the Hope of Jeremiah’s Messiah gains New Life in Jesus Christ. The hope of Christ is what we cling to as we suffer in the chaos of this world, and Jeremiah’s vision of restoration for Israel can be Hope for our future, too.
When we speak of Advent Hope, we are reflecting on what the Old Testament believers must have felt as they longed for their Messiah, because we also have hope in the Advent of Christ’s future coming: when he will return to finalize his reign on earth. Christ Immanuel came in a manger to live with us and suffer in our place. Christ Immanuel will return to sit on his throne and rule over his New Covenant people.
How We Live it Out
How We Live it Out
There are two ways I think this Hope will shape the way we live just like it shaped the Israelites lives as they were taken away into captivity. First, I think that the Hope of Advent is that hope that suffering and chaos will not only end, but be made right. They will not just stop happening, but they will be remade for good. And I actually think that will shape the way we see this world while we are here and waiting for our hope to be fulfilled.
This means that we actually have hope that the evil we see in this world and the suffering we face can be used for good in spite of the evil. The Hope of the Messiah is that evil will be redeemed. Suffering and evil will be transformed so that “what the enemy means for evil, God uses for good.”
If you imagine the fear the Israelites must have experienced as they were being attacked by Babylon, Jeremiah’s hope for them is that this isn’t the end of God’s plan. This isn’t outside of what God is able to redeem. This terrible evil does not mark the end because there is hope that the Messiah will come to set things right.
So the Hope we have is that when things get bad, God is still on our side. He has the power to take this terrible evil that is happening and still bring about the return of Jesus. God still wants to use you to grow his Kingdom. Yes, you, the one with all the brokenness and all the trauma who feels like they have nothing they can contribute to the Kingdom. God still wants you to follow his son and do ministry alongside the other people in His church.
That’s the Hope that we have in Jesus Christ - that even those of us who have been totally trampled and beaten down by the world can still be used for God’s good. There is no evil the enemy could inflict upon you which would make you useless to God. Let me say that another way: God wants to use you to grow his Kingdom, not just in spite of your brokenness, but because of your brokenness. God actually seeks to use those who are broken because broken humans cannot do anything apart from their God. When he uses the most broken and humble of us, we show the power of God.
That power is our advent hope, it’s the hope that nomatter what sort of evil and brokenness we face, God will always be greater. He will always be able to use it for good.
The second way this Hope shapes the way we live is by changing the way we see the evil of this world between now and the second coming. See, when you are anticipating that the evils of this world will be redeemed and transformed, you wonder if there is not something we can do to redeem and transform our world here and now. Because I think too many Christians have an “I’ll fly away” mentality about this world: If this world is not my home, why should I care about the evil being done? Why should I try to make the world around me better if God is just going to wipe it all out?
But that idea flys in the face of the mission of the early church. The great commission is to actually go into the world and make disciples out of every people group and ethnicity, not to sit around and pray for Jesus’ return while talking about how bad the world is getting. If we believe that first point - that God can use us nomatter how broken we are - then why would we not believe the same thing about this broken world?
See, if we truly believe the Hope of Jesus’ first coming, then our hope for his Second Coming will be a hope for the day when the world will finally be submitted to the same king. In the meantime, our task is to be filled with this Hope as we seek to make disciples of all nations. Our job in the meantime is to work diligently to see disciples made and redeemed away from the evil of this world. So Christmas Hope means hoping for the day when people of every tribe, tongue, and nation are worshiping our King, then playing our part in seeing people from every tribe, tongue, and nation come to follow Jesus.
So Hope does not only motivate us to persevere, but to see suffering as a chance to serve all the more. The prophets encouraged the Jews to serve Babylon faithfully and represent their God in their daily lives of captivity, not to simply sit around and complain while they wait for their Messiah. Likewise, Paul had to encourage the Thessalonians to work faithfully for the Gospel while they awaited Christ’s return.
So if the first hope of advent is that Christ came and is coming to redeem the brokenness of the world - even you - then the second hope of advent is that we know we can spread that redemption to the world around us. That’s what I think the apostle Peter meant when he wrote about Christ as a “Living Hope” - our hope is not meant to be a “sit around and twiddle your thumbs” hope while we wait for Christ to come back. It’s meant to be an active and living hope that spreads.
And the cool part is that when we see people around us transformed by the Gospel of Jesus, we actually get to see Hope Come alive! How many awesome testimonies have you heard where someone is able to display exactly how much evil and suffering Christ has redeemed them from? That’s the amazing thing about Christmas hope, y’all - it’s a living hope alive in our resurrected savior and alive in the transformed lives of those around us. That’s the hope we celebrate at Christmas! How cool is that? We get to celebrate Jesus being incarnated not just in the manger but in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ!
That’s what we celebrate this Christmas season - the hope of Jesus first coming shining through to his second coming and living in all of us. If you haven’t experienced that hope yet, come see me after service. We are all seeking to know this hope and live this hope out in the lives of those who profess Jesus as their savior, and we’d love to have you come alongside us on this journey of faith in hope.