The First Sunday in Advent

Hymns: 68, 64, 69, 308

Jeremiah 33:14-18 — “In Those Days”

      Grace, mercy, and peace to you all from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

      The sermon text is the Old Testament reading appointed for the First Sunday in Advent, Jeremiah 33:14-18:

     “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah:
     In those days and at that time
     I will cause to grow up to David
     A Branch of righteousness;
     He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.
     In those days Judah will be saved,
     And Jerusalem will dwell safely.
     And this is the name by which she will be called:
     THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”
     For thus says the Lord: “David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.”

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

Introduction

      “Behold! Days come! Declaration Yahweh.”

      In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Then, for the sake of man’s existence, God created days in which man could live in this new cosmos that God created for man. It was a universe full of days for man to enjoy in communion with his Creator. But Man chose to end those days by breaking the Holy Communion that God had established. Yet as soon as Man broke the Holy Communion of the Lord and ended the days of everlasting life and peace, the Lord stepped into time to renew and regenerate those days. Those days would be regenerated through the regeneration of Man through the promised Seed. Until the advent of those great and wonderful days of regeneration, Man has been in waiting, looking for the advent of the days of the Lord with His people. Yet even with the promise, those days of regeneration had begun, and while they were still to be fulfilled, they had come with the approach of the Lord through His Word of promise. And so the fallen race of Man has been continuing in a time of now but not yet, even as today we observe the renewal of the Church calendar with the First Sunday in Advent.

I.      In Those Days

     “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah:
     In those days and at that time
     I will cause to grow up to David
     A Branch of righteousness;
     He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.

      “Behold! Days come! Declaration Yahweh.” This is what Jeremiah wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. “Behold!” “Look and see!” This is simultaneously a word of warning and a word of promise. “Pay attention.” “Observe what is taking place!”

      Yes, indeed. We most certainly need to observe what is going on around us. Days surely do come, whether we want them to or not. We have absolutely no power over the approach of time. Days come. Whether we are busily preparing or whether we are slumbering, days come. Today we count nanoseconds. A nanosecond is one billionth of a second. With our technology and our machines, we keep track of such an unimaginably small unit of time. Yet we cannot control time. The nanoseconds add up to seconds even as we ponder them. The seconds add up to minutes and the minutes to hours and the hours to days and the days to years. We are born into this world and the days come. Before we realize it we have grown older and weaker and our dependence upon time becomes ever more powerfully evident.

      Oh yes! Behold! Days come!

      Yet this is also a word of promise. For while the countdown of time works against us, bringing us nanosecond by nanosecond closer to the day of our judgment of death, the Lord our God makes this His declaration. To this declaration the Lord adds a promise, a wonderful and everlasting promise.

     In those days and at that time, I will cause to grow up to David a Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.

      The Lord has given His Word. Now in this season of Advent, we observe that this gift of the Word can only be comprehended as both now and not yet, or perhaps better stated, now and everlastingly given. For the blessed Word of God has been given from eternity, but in time we receive Him day by day. The Word is from eternity. The Word is God. All things that exist have their existence by the power of the Word. When God approached Man with the promise of the regeneration of the Holy Communion of everlasting blessedness, He did so by means of the Word and gave His Word in connection with the promise of the Seed that would come and restore that which had been destroyed. Yet with the promise, the Word had already been given. As the Man turned to the Woman, he spoke this Word to her, giving her the name of Life. This Word was then given also to the children and has been given to each generation ever since. Adam gave the Word to Seth, and from Seth it was received by Noah and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and so on throughout all the generations of Man.

      Each generation has received the fullness of God’s Word of promise, and each generation has produced people who have lived in the fullness of that promise. All of this is by God’s doing. He is the one who causes the Word to continue among us and to sprout and grow among us. He is the one who causes the righteous branch to grow among us and to execute judgment and righteousness in connection with the promise. And so, even in a world full of unbelief and the chaos of unbelief, God nevertheless produces new children of faith and love and righteousness in His Word.

II.      And this Is the Name by Which She Will Be Called

      And this is not some abstract concept. It is a tangible realization of God’s promise. Throughout the generations, the Lord has provided tangible evidence of the presence of the Word that comes day by day. Thus the people of Israel were set apart to be the people of the Holy Seed, set apart as the body of Christ according to the Old Testament. To them the Torah, the Word, was given. To them the sacrifices and the land of promise were given. To them the testimony was given.

      Yet they continually doubted. They continually needed to be brought back to repentance, to be regenerated day by day in the true faith. The name of Judah was given to the people of inheritance by which they would be kept in connection with the promise of their inheritance, yet they forgot and sought for their future from other sources. The name of Jerusalem, which means “teach peace”, was given for their holy city, yet they sought peace through other means than the Lord had given. Nevertheless, God continued to give His Word for His people.

In those days Judah will be saved,
And Jerusalem will dwell safely.
And this is the name by which she will be called:
THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

      While Judah turned time and time again to the praise and worship of other gods and while Jerusalem taught peace by virtue of the city rather than by virtue of the promise of the Word of God by which safety and peace are given, the Lord declared that He would save Judah and cause the city of peace to have true peace as it would be restored as a safe refuge in which all could dwell. A name that would ensure this would be given, or actually would be restored day by day. That name of regeneration is, “The Lord our Righteousness.”

      How different this name is from the names that those who profess to be the people of God often choose for themselves. Some of the names that people choose are quite the opposite. Oh, they choose names that sound like “The Lord our Righteousness,” but in their hearts and with their actions the real names come forth. They demonstrate such names as, “My faith will save me,” and “I believe, therefore I am saved,” and “I pray every day and I know that the Lord hears my prayers and takes me by the hand and leads me through each day.”

      But the name of regeneration is “The Lord our Righteousness.” This is what St. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, saying, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Cor 1:30-31)

      Surely it is not by our acts of believing that we become righteous again so that we know that we are safe. Surely it is not our prayers that bring God’s salvation and help. No. It is by grace that we are saved, through faith, and this is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. The Lord, He is our righteousness. The Lord, He is our salvation. The Lord, He is our hope and comfort and everlasting peace. He is the cause and source of our faith. He gives us the faith by which we believe. He is the reason that we believe. He comes to us through the gift of the Word in preaching and in the Sacraments, and having received Him through these means, having received the very breath of life, the Holy Spirit, we live in the faith that He gives through the coming of the Word into our hearts and lives. This is why in addition to the names of “Praise” and “Teach Peace” the Lord gives the name, “The Lord our Righteousness.”

III.      There Will Not Be Cut off to David a Man

      At the close of our text we hear the reason for this being effective for us.

      Here the Lord promises that even though the people are faithless, that even though the leaders of the Church look this way and that way and preach things that are not the literal Gospel, their disobedience and faithless choosing of ways other than the Way of the Lord will not cut off the promise of the Seed. The Word shall continue. The Word shall be victorious. For the Gospel is not dependent upon the faithfulness of those who believe, but those who believe are dependent upon the faithfulness of the Lord.

      Our salvation is the Lord’s doing and not in any way whatsoever our doing. Our faith is His gift, His work, not ours. Even though the priests and the Levites failed many times throughout the history of the people of Israel, the Lord did not fail to maintain the Seed among them. Jesus did come, day by day until finally He was born of the virgin and grew to be a man and offered Himself once and for all as the everlasting sacrifice for sin. Then, having risen from the dead, He ascended bodily to the right hand of the Father, to stand as the eternal sacrifice before the throne of judgement. The sacrifice of Jesus stands as an everlasting sacrifice, even as Jesus stands bodily in our stead and in our name before God with the marks of His crucifixion in His flesh. His suffering and death was offered once for all time and for all mankind. Even today He stands as our sacrifice offered everlastingly for us. Even today He is our priest, offering us forgiveness and peace through His body and blood given and poured out for us.

Conclusion

      Truly we have great comfort poured out from heaven to us with the words, “In those days.” Those days reach into eternity, for those days are fulfilled in the person of Jesus. He is the eternal Word by which we are brought into those days of promise and hope, safety and peace. The Word is given to us this very day, even as He was given to the first two sinners thousands of years ago and even as He was given to the world in Bethlehem. He is the life of the Church, through which we receive Him day after day. We are living in the promise of those days, for those days are the days in which we live. Days come! The days are in the Lord’s hands and He fulfills them by coming to us through the Word by which He gives us forgiveness and peace. He has promised us that in His Church His Word continues to be given day by day as we hear the preaching and gather to the grace with which we have been Baptized and as we gather to be rejoined again and again into the Holy Communion of His body and blood. Truly the promised days do come, and in these days the Lord comes to us as our righteousness. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

      The peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus forever. Amen.

The First Sunday in Advent

Hymns: 68, 64, 69, 308

The Introit       (Ps. 25:1-3a,4)

(The “Gloria in Excelsis” is omitted during the Penitential Season of Advent)

The Collect     

Stir up, we beseech Thee, Thy power, O Lord, and come, that by Thy protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Thy mighty deliverance; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.

The First Lesson      Jeremiah 33:14-18 (NKJV)

      “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah:

The Gradual      (Ps.25:3-4;85:7)

The Epistle      Romans 13:11-14 (NKJV)

      And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

The Sentence for the Season     (Psalm 25:6)

The Holy Gospel       St. Matthew 21:1-9 (NKJV)

      Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to Me. And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.” All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:

Introduction

I.      In Those Days

II.      And this Is the Name by Which She Will Be Called

III.      There Will Not Be Cut off to David a Man

Conclusion