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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
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:
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
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.
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