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33:1 The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah a second time, while he was still shut up in the court of the guard: 2 “Thus says the LORD who made the earth,1 the LORD who formed it to establish it—the LORD is his name: 3 Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. 4 For thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and the houses of the kings of Judah that were torn down to make a defense against the siege mounds and against the sword: 5 They are coming in to fight against the Chaldeans and to fill them2 with the dead bodies of men whom I shall strike down in my anger and my wrath, for I have hidden my face from this city because of all their evil. 6 Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security. 7 I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first. 8 I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me. 9 And this city3 shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them. They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.
10 “Thus says the LORD: In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without man or beast,’ in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man or inhabitant or beast, there shall be heard again 11 the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings to the house of the LORD:
“‘Give thanks to the LORD of hosts,
for the LORD is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!’
For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the LORD.
12 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: In this place that is waste, without man or beast, and in all of its cities, there shall again be habitations of shepherds resting their flocks. 13 In the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the Shephelah, and in the cities of the Negeb, in the land of Benjamin, the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them, says the LORD.
14 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’
[1] 33:2
[2] 33:5
[3] 33:9
(ESV)
Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Jeremiah chapter 33. It's also there in your worship guide. I'm sure that at least most of you have heard the phrase there that there are no atheist in foxholes. Well, we are we are at a point in Israel's history where Israel is they're essentially in a foxhole and Babylonian bombs are exploding all around them. And here, god says, hey, do I have your attention now?
Joel Brooks:And when god speaks to Israel in this moment though, he doesn't give them words of judgment, which is what we've been getting all through Jeremiah. It's in this moment that he promises them and he says, I'll be your God. You will be my people, and I will rescue you, and I will save you. And what you find is God's most hopeful promises to us often come in the darkest, darkest moments. And that's where we are when we reach Jeremiah 33.
Joel Brooks:I'm not gonna read the whole thing here. We'll we'll reference this throughout the sermon, but we're gonna read beginning in verse 14. Behold, the days are coming, declares the lord. When I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time, I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David And he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
Joel Brooks:In those days, Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called, the Lord is our righteousness. This is the word of the Lord. If you would pray with me. Father, I pray that you would open up our hearts that we could truly hear from you.
Joel Brooks:We're not just listen to your word, but that we would obey your word. Lord, pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:Amen. So, the next time that you are downtown, I want you to notice a building. I want you to look at the Thomas Jefferson Building. It's a 19 story building. And on top of it, there is this metal spire.
Joel Brooks:You've probably seen it many times before and you haven't given it a second thought because it just kinda looks like a radio antenna. It's actually a blimp docking station. It's a blimp docking station because back in 1929, when this Thomas Jefferson Building was built, it was originally a hotel. And, of course, the the investors in this building here, they just knew that Birmingham was going to be the next it city. It was gonna be the magic city.
Joel Brooks:It was gonna be the new hip cool place where everybody from all over the country was gonna flock to, and they were also convinced that blimps or or zeppelins, they were the met they were the mode of travel for the future. So they were absolutely convinced of those two things. And so these these investors, they're dreaming about all of these rich cultured people from all over The United States gently just kind of floating to Birmingham, docking at their hotel, and then playing Topgolf or whatever it is you would do downtown. Now, believe it or not, the docking station was never once used. You know, it's it's kinda hard to believe, but Birmingham didn't become the it town.
Joel Brooks:It didn't become the destination of the South, nor did blimps become the way of the future. And not after the Hiddenburg disaster, which happened just a few years after the docking station was built. So now when we look at that building, I mean, it's just kind of a monument for us not knowing the future, and it's a it's a monument to Birmingham's kind of failure. But what if I were to come to you and say, I've got an investment opportunity for you. I would like to rebuild that tower to fix it back up because I believe that Birmingham is gonna beat out Nashville.
Joel Brooks:It is gonna beat out Atlanta and all those towns. And it's gonna become the it place again. And, blimps are the way of the future. And, I just need your money to go towards that. Would you invest?
Joel Brooks:You didn't have to answer so quickly. What if I what if I told you that I had a word from the Lord? The the Lord was telling you to invest in this. I think at that point, you would begin calling up some of my friends, and and you would say, it finally happened. We all knew this day would arrive.
Joel Brooks:Joel has officially lost it. Last week, as we heard Matt preach, we got to see Jeremiah make what would seem to be an even worse investment. Israel was just a a teeny, teeny nation. They're they're surrounded by the most powerful, dominant army on earth, the Babylonian army. He'd already invaded them just a few years earlier quite easily, destroyed some things, sent some people off into exile, and now they were back.
Joel Brooks:But this time, they were ticked off. This time, they were really angry. And God has Jeremiah, who's in prison at the time, says, I want you to look out the window. See where that entire Babylonian army is sitting over there? See that piece of land?
Joel Brooks:I want you to buy it. I want you to invest in that. Would you do that? I mean, that that would be like someone asking you to buy beachfront property as the tidal wave sirens are going off. It'd like asking you to invest in a new blimp docking station.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you'd be a fool. An absolute fool to do something like that. And make no mistake, everyone thought Jeremiah was a fool for doing it. I mean, but the Lord had given Jeremiah this promise. He said that someday he was going to come and he was to deal with the Babylonians.
Joel Brooks:They would be destroyed. He would return all the exiles. And once again, people would live on the land and Israel would flourish. So Jeremiah, at this point, he had a choice. Was he going to invest in the promises of God?
Joel Brooks:Or was he going to invest in what his eyes could clearly see? Was he gonna invest in what God's word says is true? Or was he going to invest in what everyone else around him said was absolutely, clearly, obviously true? Which would it be? If you were a betting man at this time, I I can imagine that without a doubt, you'd be betting on the Babylonians.
Joel Brooks:I would have. But you know, I was thinking of this the other day. I I have I've never been like going around doing errands in Birmingham really anywhere, and ever run into a Babylonian. Have you? I've never run into an Assyrian for that matter.
Joel Brooks:But I have run into many Jewish people. The Lord kept His promise. The mighty Babylonian empire, gone. The mighty Assyrian empire, gone. Little old Israel, He brought back seventy years later, and He preserved.
Joel Brooks:God's word always proves true no matter what the odds are against it. So what would you have done if you were Jeremiah? Or maybe a better question is to ask this. What are you doing? Because every single day, you are given the opportunity to invest in the promises of God.
Joel Brooks:How are you investing your money? How are you investing your time? How are you investing your emotions? Every day, you're given the opportunity to invest those things into what God says is true or what the rest of the world says is true. All of Jeremiah has actually been leading us to this one question.
Joel Brooks:Will you actually believe God and take Him at His word? All the prophets really have been leading to that one question. And that's what this chapter here is about, and it's actually what all the chapters that follow Jeremiah are about. Before we look specifically at this this advent promise here that's given to us in this chapter, I'm actually I think it's a good idea for me to just go ahead and summarize the rest of Jeremiah and just finish the book for you. Okay?
Joel Brooks:Because the rest of this book is about Israel's failure to listen to God's word. In particular, it's about the failure of two kings. Jeremiah is not written in chronological order. None of the prophets are. It's what makes them so tricky.
Joel Brooks:But, chapters 36 through 39, they give us the story of two kings and their failure to listen to God's word. Chapter 36 begins with King Jehoiakim. He receives a scroll from Isaiah, and the scroll reads, you need to repent. If you don't repent, God's gonna judge you through the Babylonians. He laughs at that because the Babylonians at this time weren't even around.
Joel Brooks:The whole army was back in Babylon. They were not an immediate threat. And so you know what he does with Jeremiah's scroll? He literally reads a line, rips it off, burns it. Reads the next line, rips it off, burns it.
Joel Brooks:He does this until the entire scroll is gone. He burned the Bible. I mean, that's the kind of king that Israel had at this moment. I don't even know maybe you all struggle with this too. Like, you have a really old Bible, you no longer use it anymore, you don't know what to do with it.
Joel Brooks:You can't throw it away. I mean, how do you dispose of a Bible? Well, he's just burning it. And you realize how ridiculous this is? For one, we're reading Jeremiah's scroll.
Joel Brooks:So God just told Jeremiah to write it over. God's word remains. And it's not like you could ever get rid of the word of God. Remember when you were a child? Did you ever used to close your ears like this?
Joel Brooks:If there's somebody was telling you something you didn't wanna hear, and you would, like, kinda do this, so you you just you couldn't hear anything? I I would do that when my parents. They they would tell me to do something. I didn't wanna hear it, and I would be like, I can't hear you. I can't hear you.
Joel Brooks:And you know what? That never once stopped judgment. Ever. If anything, it hastened judgment. It's ridiculous to think that stopping your ears means that God's Word is somehow invalid and He won't do what He has said.
Joel Brooks:Everything the Lord told King Jehoiakim He was going do, He did. The Babylonians came in. They destroyed the army of Israel. They sent many of the citizens off into captivity. King Jehoiakim was one of those.
Joel Brooks:Because God's word is true whether he believed it or not. Now, I think we we often do what King Jehoiakim has done. I mean, we don't actually rip out, you know, the pages and burn them. How many times have you kind of squinted your eyes and just kind of skipped over a few parts? Or convinced yourself that they don't don't really say what they the words clearly say?
Joel Brooks:I mean, I was officiating a wedding one time here in Birmingham. And, when I went in to do this wedding at this church, I won't name this church, but the pastor there, he gave me a list of scripture, and he said, you are not allowed to even read from these scriptures when you, do the wedding. It's like, what? Because we have found these passages to be unhelpful. Unhelpful.
Joel Brooks:It's King Jehoiakim. Well, this passage is unhelpful. Burn it. This passage is unhelpful. Burn it.
Joel Brooks:Burn all you want. God's word still remains. So after King Jehoiakim was carted off into Babylon, they install the Babylonians install his uncle as king over Israel, but he would just be this puppet king. He would do Babylon's bidding, and he was no better than Jehoachim, Zedekiah. He was just as bad as his nephew.
Joel Brooks:He he he didn't literally plug up his ears or burn the word of god, but he never obeyed it. And so what would happen is this happens over and over these next couple of chapters. Jeremiah would come to King Zedekiah and give him a word. And Zedekiah would be like, I don't like that. And he sends Jeremiah to prison.
Joel Brooks:Then he'd feel bad about it. He's like, let's pull Jeremiah back out of prison. Why don't you give me another word? Try again this time. Jeremiah gives him another word from the Lord.
Joel Brooks:He's like, not a good word. Back to prison. Feel bad about it. Oh, come on, Jeremiah. This time, give me another word.
Joel Brooks:He wouldn't like the word of the Lord. This and then he throw into a cistern. Just a muddy cistern where he was to starve to death. Later, he feel a little bad about them. He's like, okay, pull him back out.
Joel Brooks:Jeremiah, give me another word. And he wouldn't like it. Prison. It's just like over and over. The climax of these stories is at one point, Zedekiah, he sneaks Jeremiah in through a backdoor of the palace because he doesn't want people to know that he's like even seeing Jeremiah.
Joel Brooks:Sneaks him in. He says, okay. I want you to give me a word from the Lord. And Jeremiah's like, seriously? You just threw me in a cistern.
Joel Brooks:You think I'm gonna tell you a word from the Lord? What's next? Throw me to the lions? Just chop off my head? And he's not gonna do it.
Joel Brooks:The king says, no. No. No. This time, scouts honor. I I'm not gonna hurt you.
Joel Brooks:I'll listen this time. So Jeremiah tells him what he has to do. You have to obey the lord and tells him. He says, and if you don't obey, you know what's gonna happen? Your wives are gonna be gang raped in front of you.
Joel Brooks:Your children, your sons are gonna be executed in front of you, and then you are gonna die. So he clearly gets this word from the Lord and warning of what will happen if he doesn't obey. And you know what? Zedekiah actually thinks this is a better plan than listening to Jeremiah's words. He sneaks out the back of Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:We don't know, maybe in disguise or not, but he thinks he can actually sneak out through the hoards of Babylonian soldiers, sneak out and somehow escape. That that was a better plan than trusting God in his word. Of course, he was caught. His wives were gang raped. His sons were brought before him.
Joel Brooks:One by one, cut off. Heads cut off. Executed. Until when the last son was executed, they gouged out his eyes. So the last thing Zedekiah ever saw was all of his children being slaughtered in front of him.
Joel Brooks:I mean, do do you ever just like wonder when you read these stories like, why didn't you listen? I mean, come on. Do you think how different Israel's history would have been if they had just had a king that listened to the word of god? That's all they needed. Was just a king that would that actually hear and would obey the Lord.
Joel Brooks:But they never had that. You know, when back in Deuteronomy 17, the Lord, he spoke to Moses and he said, hey, you're not a kingdom yet, but you will become a kingdom. And when you have a king, this is the first thing I want that king to do. He says, it's it's not things that we would typically think of. It's it's not I want I need you to count all the people to see how big of a nation you are.
Joel Brooks:It's not you need to go assess the power or the strength of your army, so you so you can know your military strength and might. It's not go to the treasury. See how much money you have in there. Says, no, no, no, no. That's not how my kingdom operates.
Joel Brooks:First thing your king needs to do, is needs to get out a pen and paper, or scroll and quill, and needs to write down in his own hand the entire Torah. He needs to write down my word. The law. There's no more pressing thing. As a king and and the the point is this, when you when you have to slow down, you have to physically write it out.
Joel Brooks:You know, you remember those things. And as he's writing out the law of god, those things were supposed to start to seep into his heart. But when Jehoachim and Zedekiah, when they came into power, that's not what they did. They thought that they had more pressing issues at hand. I mean, they don't have the time to do something like that.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask you, is is that been an excuse for you too that there's maybe some more pressing things at hand than for you to just slow down and read God's word? You know, maybe when you get up in the morning, there's pressing things they hit. You know, you you've gotta check all the texts that you've missed throughout the night because they're so important. Gotta scroll through all the news headlines because that's the first thing you need to flood your mind with. Maybe somebody sends you, you know, funny reel.
Joel Brooks:You look at it and like, that's hilarious. And then also you find yourself just scrolling and scrolling because you got pressing things happening. You don't wanna waste that time, that precious time just sitting and lingering with the word of God and writing those things on your heart. And God is saying, there is nothing more pressing. I mean, there's there's armies out there.
Joel Brooks:Nothing is more pressing than you taking the time to write out my law. Put it in your heart. Think how different history would have played out if these kings had just done that. Think how different your life would be if you do that. One of God's promises that he gives to Jeremiah is that he is going to raise up a king that will do this.
Joel Brooks:He's gonna get he's gonna raise up a king who who embodies the word, who truly obeys the Lord. And we read about this king in chapter 33. Now that you know the the history of the rest of Jeremiah, you know the history of the rest of the last two kings, I want us to look at these this one promise that we were given through Jeremiah that he's given in the midst of all of this turmoil. Start by looking at verse three. The first thing that God promises to Jeremiah is that if Jeremiah calls to him, He will answer him and he will tell him great and hidden things.
Joel Brooks:Jeremiah calls to him, God's gonna answer him and will tell him great and hidden things. In other words, this the the picture is this. God's like just dying to tell Jeremiah something. Dying to tell all of Israel something. He's like, just I'm I really want you to know these these secret things that that I'm about to do and I'm doing around the world.
Joel Brooks:So, just ask me. So, if if you guys didn't know, Lauren and I, we just found out a few weeks ago that we're going to be grandparents which is which wow. You know, this is kinda hard to to think myself as a granddad, but I'm about to be a granddad. Super exciting news. Lauren found out before me.
Joel Brooks:So she went to go visit Caroline, and, Caroline had just found out she was pregnant, and so she couldn't contain herself. So she just told her mom, hey, I'm pregnant. But you can't tell dad. Can't tell him. It's like, I'm gonna you know, I'll I'll be in Birmingham in just over two weeks.
Joel Brooks:I really, really want to tell him in person. Now, a lot of you know my wife. She is an amazing person. So many incredible qualities. Keeping secrets is not one of them.
Joel Brooks:She she cannot keep a secret. And so, she knew this would be really hard. And so, she she came back to Birmingham, she didn't tell me. But she was mean as you could get. I I mean, like, it's just just something was wrong.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I we would sit down on the couch at night and she would just kinda sit away from Our conversations became just very short and terse. We didn't go on any walks. Like, it it finally, after two weeks, I said, hey, Lauren. Honey, we got we gotta sit. We gotta have a conversation.
Joel Brooks:Our marriage is in shambles. I mean, I told her that. I was like, what is wrong with us? I was like, we're we're leading marriage retreats. I wouldn't want any this marriage on anybody.
Joel Brooks:I I actually the point, I said, we have an affectionless marriage. I don't know what's going on. Can so I was like, can you just talk to me? And and her answer was, She didn't tell anything because she couldn't. Then she talked about something about hormone stage of life.
Joel Brooks:Who knows? Like, there's some red herring there. She kept her word, but she just knew. Like, she wanted to tell me so badly. The only thing she knew to do was just like to be distant from me.
Joel Brooks:To kinda push me off. God is like, I've got news I want to tell you. And he can. He will if you just ask him. He's like, do you know what I'm doing in this world?
Joel Brooks:I'm doing like these things you don't know about. I'm doing some secret things over here, some things over here. I'm bringing new life and healing to this world. Just tell me or just ask me. I'll tell you what I'm doing and how you could be a part of it.
Joel Brooks:So so when it comes time of prayer before the Lord, yes, it's important to ask him for things. It's important to like give him a list of all the things going wrong in your life. That's fine. You should do that. But take time to listen.
Joel Brooks:God knows all your needs before you even mention them. So so why occupy all of the conversation with you speaking? Ask. Listen. He'll tell you how to be a part of what he's doing in this world.
Joel Brooks:The Lord tells Jeremiah, he's going to undo all of the damage of the Babylonians. He's gonna forgive Israel of all of their sins. And on top of this, he is gonna so restore Jerusalem. He said they're gonna be so glorious that the rest of the nations are just gonna be in awe. Part of this was fulfilled seventy years later when God brought back the the Israelites from exile, but not all of it.
Joel Brooks:God says he's gonna do all of this in full by raising up a new and a righteous king who would finally obey him. A king that, well, just wouldn't obey God's word, perhaps a king who would be God's word. Verse 15, the Lord tells Jeremiah, says, I'm gonna cause a righteous branch to spring up for David. A righteous branch to spring up for David. Any of you during Christmas, do you put up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?
Joel Brooks:You know what I'm talking about? You know, it's just a pathetic little tree. It's it's pretty much a twig, you know, with a couple of leaves on it that you decorate. If you don't do that, I'd encourage you to maybe make that part of your new Christmas tradition to put up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree because it is actually a great image of what Jeremiah is talking about here. When he says, God will cause a branch to spring up.
Joel Brooks:Someone's gonna come in the line of David. A king's gonna come. He's gonna be a branch. He's not gonna be an oak tree. He's gonna be a branch, or you could translate this like a a twig or a a small little green shoot.
Joel Brooks:Isaiah had spoken these words earlier in chapter 11 of Isaiah when he said, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from the roots shall bear fruit. The picture is this. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah were in similar situations, and they're looking out, and they just see a land that's devastated in which an army has come in and has knocked down all the trees and has burned them. So there's just these smoldering stumps out there. And that's a picture of Israel.
Joel Brooks:They're dead. Cut off, burned, dead. And God says, want you to come look at this little little stump here. Look at it. Yes, dead.
Joel Brooks:But, do you see there's a little shoot? There's a little branch breaking through. That's the King who's going to come and make everything right. Life is going to emerge from this death. This branch is Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Jesus was descended from David. He's the king that will listen to God. He will not just embody the word of God. He will literally be the word made flesh. And He is gonna be the one who finally executes justice and righteousness in the land.
Joel Brooks:And when God sent His son into the world, He did not send him like an oak tree. No. He sent him as a branch, the smallest shoot. The King of Kings came to this world as a fragile baby, born into what we would call a stable in an obscure little village called Bethlehem to poor Jewish parents who were absolute nobodies. In Matthew chapter two, we we read that Jesus, he grew up in the countryside in a place called Nazareth.
Joel Brooks:Matthew makes a makes a point to tell us this, that Jesus would be called or the Messiah would be called a Nazarene, thus fulfilling what the prophets have said about him. One problem. Read your old testaments, and you will not find any prophet calling the Messiah a Nazarene. You're not gonna find how the Messiah is supposed to grow up in Nazareth. And yet, Matthew clearly says this, Thus fulfilling what the prophets say about him that he'll be called a Nazarene.
Joel Brooks:And and at first when you read this, you're thinking, gosh, he's gotta is he mistaken? Is this one of those things I'm supposed to squint and just kinda jump over? So you need to understand this. The Hebrew word for the word branch is the word. It's where we get the word Nazareth.
Joel Brooks:So when we sing the song, Jesus the Nazarene, which we sing often here as a church, we're not just singing about where Jesus grew up, where he lived. We're singing about who he is. He's the branch. This is Jesus, the Nazareth. This is Jesus, the Nazarene.
Joel Brooks:By the first century, when when Jesus was around, that word, branch, It was just kind of this slang word that was being used to describe a nobody. A pathetic failure. A person who's just a little twig. Nothing. Which is why in John chapter one when Philip goes to Nathaniel and says, I found the Messiah.
Joel Brooks:He's he's Jesus from Nazareth. Nathaniel's like Nazareth? You mean he lives out there in the Styx? You know, part of that's still translated over. The Styx, the Nazareth?
Joel Brooks:What good could come from Twigtown, if you will? But that is how our savior comes to us. Small, like he's nothing. Jesus was so branch like, if you will, that when he stood on trial before Pilate, who wasn't even like a huge government official, he's not a king or anything, but he's been around kings. Pilate certainly didn't think of Jesus as a king because he looked so branch like.
Joel Brooks:We looked at this when we went through the gospel of Mark. But when Jesus was on trial and he was standing before Pilate, Jesus is asked for the first time a question about his political identity. It's it's a question, are you the king of the Jews? He's never been asked anything. Does is he ascribing to a political position?
Joel Brooks:Is he actually the king of the Jews? This is the only time he was ever asked that. And I love Jesus' answer. It's brilliant. He goes, you say?
Joel Brooks:Like, what? What does that mean you say? It's not really a yes. It's not really a no. It's just kind of a you say.
Joel Brooks:It's it's Jesus' way of of saying this, well, if that's the best word you could come up with, sure. Sure. I'm the king of the Jews. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:According to you. You you say. Sure. But that term king of the Jews, it it in no way can capture the kind of kingdom he really wants to bring to this world and who he really is. That title king of the Jews, it it'd be like asking if you if you came up and you saw Mozart here, and then you then you saw a little kid playing the kazoo, and you're like, you guys musicians?
Joel Brooks:And you know, Mozart's like, well, I mean, I guess you could use that term. You say, sure. But I'm not a musician like a kazoo musician. And Jesus, He's like, you say fine. That but King of the Jews, that doesn't encapsulate what I actually am going to do in this world.
Joel Brooks:Do you realize the sweeping changes that I'm gonna bring? It's something that no army can do, no laws can do, no amount of wealth can do. You are thinking way too small. But sure, if that's the best title you have, yeah. He's a king of the Jews in the same way that Mozart and that little boy are both musicians.
Joel Brooks:He's a branch. But a branch is going to grow into something huge. Pilate, you could tell in that conversation, he began to think a little differently about Jesus, realizing Jesus was something a little more than he initially thought. But ultimately, Pilate became just like Zedekiah, just like Jehoachim. He might have had the word of God in front of him, but ultimately, he rejected it.
Joel Brooks:It's the fascinating thing about Jesus here. Jesus was in a far worse position than Jeremiah or any of those kings ever were. They had dark moments, literally armies coming in about to crush them. It's dark days when they were asked to hold on to the word, and they didn't. Jesus was in a worse situation.
Joel Brooks:Literally, when Jesus is hanging on the cross after being abandoned by all of His friends, by being abandoned by everyone, Jesus held to the promises of God. Despite everything He could see, despite everything he felt, when all he had was the word of God to hold on to, he said, that's what I will hold on to. God, you have said in your word that your holy one will not undergo decay. So no matter what I'm seeing, no matter what I am feeling, I am trusting in your word at this moment. And sure enough, even after death, God kept His word.
Joel Brooks:God didn't just raise up a branch. He raised up a branch from the dead. The tomb? I mean, the tomb was that stump, burned, deadness. And yet out of it, new life came.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the branch. And now it's through Jesus that we receive all the benefits of the prophets. Every one of the the the promises that came to us through the prophets, we now receive this. We are forgiven through Jesus. We are given new life through Him and through His spirit.
Joel Brooks:These are things that came to us through the first advent of Jesus. But we're told that those are nothing more than the first fruits. Those things will come in full when He comes again at the second advent. When Jesus comes again, He made us a promise. He will come to judge.
Joel Brooks:So you could count on that. I will come to judge, and I will come to redeem and heal those who have placed their trust in my word. Do you believe that promise? And by that, I mean, where are you investing? I know you have the theological rubber in your head, but is it actually meeting the road in your life?
Joel Brooks:Where are you investing your time, your emotions, your finances? When the world looks at the way that you're investing all those things, do they see that your trust is in something radically different than what they trust in? Remember, all of God's promises prove to be true. Let's pray, church. Lord Jesus, I pray that we would take you at your word, that we would hold fast to you.
Joel Brooks:Despite what our eyes see, despite what we feel, despite what everyone else is telling us, if it's contrary to your word, it's wrong, and it will fade away. So Lord, I pray that we will build our entire lives on your word. As Isaiah told us, those who place their hope in you will not be disappointed. So Lord, would you produce that in us? We pray this all in the name of our present and our future king.
Joel Brooks:In Jesus' name, amen.