The Coming Days

November 25, 2018
Pastor Clint Ziemer

Audio of the sermon preached on November 25, 2018, at Cable Community Church, Sherrard, IL.

Episode Notes

The Coming Days

Jeremiah 33:14-16 

    Things were looking pretty bad for Jeremiah.  He had stood alone in prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of her people.  Now he stands alone in prison.  Despite the darkness of his situation, today's text from Jeremiah shines a ray of hope into a dark situation.  The promises of chapter 33 are spoken to address a dire situation. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, are advancing on Jerusalem. The streets of Jerusalem will soon be filled with the corpses of her people (33:4-5), and the prophet Jeremiah himself is imprisoned by King Zedekiah (33:1).

    The worst has not yet happened, but it is inevitable. Any reasonable person can see that the city is doomed. Jeremiah's many prophecies of judgment—the same prophecies that have landed him in prison—are coming true. Yet now, in the midst of catastrophe, the prophet finally speaks words of promise! In the previous chapter, he has purchased a piece of land, a foolish thing to do in a country soon to be conquered by invading armies. Nevertheless, he has purchased the land as a pledge, as earnest of God's redemption: "For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land" (32:15). In the midst of impending doom, a sign of hope is enacted.

    Similarly, in chapter 33, the prophet speaks of the coming restoration, the restoration of normal, everyday life. There will come a time in the land of Judah when "there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride" (33:10-11).

    And now, in this passage, Jeremiah speaks of the restoration not simply of daily life (as momentous as that is), but also of one of the chief signs of God's favor, the restoration of the Davidic line. A righteous Branch will sprout from the line of David. A similar image is found in Isaiah 11:1—"A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." The image is one of hope and unexpected joy: new life springing up from what looks like a dead stump.

    As we enter Christmastime, a season of promise, we realize that God isn't yet finished with this world.   At least, we hope that is the case... and that he doesn't leave things broken as they are.  Today's text calls us to remember that God will....

Fulfill His Promises  

Set All Aright , and...

Be Our Righteousness  

  1. Body
    1. Fulfill His Promises 
      1. The days are coming
        1. five to six hundred years until Jesus' birth
      2. Jeremiah 33 is set against the fall of Jerusalem in 586 due precisely to a lack of "righteousness" in Judah and its leadership.
      3. The people are called to cling not to the promises as their secured possession, but to the God who promises!
      4. Promise 
        1. = good word
        2. or BEST word
      5. to David
      6. Keeping One's Promise
      7. One day, President Abraham Lincoln was riding in a coach with a colonel from Kentucky. The colonel took a bottle of whiskey out of his pocket. He offered Lincoln a drink. Lincoln said, “No thank you, Colonel. I never drink whiskey.” After a little while, the colonel took some cigars out of his pocket and offered one to Lincoln. Again Lincoln said, “No, thank you, Colonel.” Then Lincoln said, “I want to tell you a story.”

        “One day, when I was about nine years old, my mother called me to her bed. She was very sick. She said, ‘Abe, the doctor tells me that I am not going to get well. I want you to be a good boy. I want you to promise me before I go that you will never use whiskey or tobacco as long as you live.’ I promised my mother that I never would, and up to this hour, I’ve kept this promise! Would you advise me to break that promise?”

        The colonel put his hand on Lincoln’s shoulder and said, “Mr. Lincoln, I would not have you break that promise for the world! It is one of the best promises you ever made. I would give a thousand dollars today if I had made my mother a promise like that and had kept it like you have done. I would be a much better man than I am!” (Martin M. Hyzer, 15K-WS)

        Lewis Smedes wrote in his book, “A Chorus of Witnesses”.
        "Yes, somewhere people still make and keep promises. They choose not to quit when the going gets rough because they promised once to see it through. They stick to lost causes. They hold on to a love grown cold. They stay with people who have become pains in the neck. They still dare to make promises and care enough to keep the promises they make. I want to say to you that if you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you will not abandon, then you are like God." God is a promise keeper.Set All Aright
      8. By executing justice and righteousness
        1. this is a key Messianic role.
      9. Judgment upon the blind Pharisees
      10. an everlasting righteousness for the justification of His people
      11. Once saw a poster that said, "In order to conserve electricity, we have turned off the light at the end of the tunnel."  But for Christians, the light at the end of the tunnel is not controlled by human beings. It can’t be turned off because it is the light of Jesus Christ. It has been shining for thousands of years and guided the paths of billions of people.

        When you are without hope, LOOK, look at the cross. The cross is empty. An empty cross represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It means there is life on the other side of suffering and death. And that life not only the real life because it is a perfect life full of joy; no more tears, no more pain, no more suffering. What you are dealing with right here, right now is just temporary.Be Our Righteousness
      12. Christ is the end of Law  Rom. 10:4
      13. Our righteousness comes from God  Phil 3:9
      14. Christ has become our righteousness  1 Cor. 1:30
      15. Now is the day of salvation  2 Cor. 6:2
      16. One of the universal stress generators is self-righteousness. That is because we want to earn our way to heaven by being righteous, doing the right thing, saying the right words, making the right choices, giving the right gifts, and eating the right amount during this holiday season. But, you can’t do it. It will add up a great deal of stress on you. The Bible says, we are fallen beings, and in Romans 3:10 it says, "There is no one who is righteous, not even one."
      17. The good news is that you don’t have to be righteous by yourself. You are already righteous because you believe in Jesus Christ, and his name is "Jehovah Tsikenue - The Lord is our Righteousness." Isaiah also says,

        "Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
        are righteousness and strength;" (Isaiah 45:24)
      18. The people will be so changed that they will be known by the name given to the Messiah  (v. 23:6)
  2. Conclusion 
    1. During the Second World War the US Army was forced to retreat from the Philippines. Some of their soldiers were left behind, and became prisoners of the Japanese. The men called themselves "ghosts", souls unseen by their nation, and were forced on the infamous Bhutan Death March, forced to walk over 70 miles, knowing that those who were slow or weak would be bayoneted by their captors or die from dysentery and lack of water. Those who made it through the march spent the next three years in a hellish prisoner-of-war camp. By early 1945, 513 men were still alive at the Cabanatuan prison camp, but they were giving up hope. The US Army was on its way back, but the POW’s had heard the frightening news that prisoners were being executed as the Japanese retreated from the advancing U.S. Army. Their wavering hope was however met by one of the most magnificent rescues of wartime history. In an astonishing feat 120 US Army soldiers and 200 Filipino guerrillas outflanked 8000 Japanese soldiers to rescue the POW’s. Alvie Robbins was one of the rescuers. He describes how he found a prisoner muttering in a darkened corner of his barracks, tears coursing down his face. "I thought we’d been forgotten," the prisoner said. "No, you’re not forgotten," Robbins said softly. "You’re heroes. We’ve come for you." 
    2. It would have been easy for the believers in Jeremiah’s time to have given up hope. Often in life we can start to give up hope, to feel that God has forgotten us, abandoned us to dark and hurtful experiences, but the cross of Christ reminds us, "No, you’re not forgotten" and the resurrection gives us the assurance that some day we too will see our rescuer face to face and be liberated from the distresses of this life. When he returns we too will hear him say, "I’ve come for you."
    3. Advent is not just about waiting for God to fulfill his promise. It is also about our being transformed through waiting.
    4. In the New Testament, we find Paul, another of God’s messengers writing from prison. From his cell, Jeremiah wrote these verses of hope.  Yes, the kingdom would fall. Jerusalem would be left desolate. But these events would not stop God's plan to restore the nation and the royal line. In fact, the righteous king would be the source of national revival.
    5. True to his vision, Jeremiah witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile in 586 B.C. But, Jeremiah would not live to see God's people return to their homeland. Nonetheless, his words gave the people hope. God would restore the royal line, the king would rule justly, and the nation would be renewed. This, however, would happen in God's time and in God's way.
    6. How do you find hope in this season of hurry?

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