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| The Days are Coming (Jeremiah 33:14-16) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Grace, mercy and peace be to you … “The Days are coming,” declares the Lord, through the prophet Jeremiah … “The Days are coming.” When Jeremiah proclaimed these words to God’s Children in Jerusalem … it was not a time of plenty and leisure. At the very time of this prophecy, in the year 587 BC … the city of Jerusalem was surrounded by the enemy. The Babylonian army. The city was under siege. Nothing and no one went in or out. As the residents of Jerusalem watched from their walls, the beautiful trees that were growing on the Mount of Olives across the valley from Jerusalem were all being cut down by the enemy. … Cut down to be turned into ladders and rams to breach the city’s walls. It was just a matter of time …. the Days were coming! It was a frightful time … and with all the trees gone, so were all the birds that used to nest and sing in them. This might have been the first recorded “Silent Spring.” … And so, what was about to come was being heralded by a strange silence in the air … like the breathless silence before a coming storm. So, against this backdrop of very certain impending doom … something which the prophet Jeremiah had also spoken of loud and long… came this word of consolation from Jeremiah’s lips, this promise from God. “The Days are coming” God said, “… when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah… “In those days (these days to come) Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety,” says the Lord. Imagine the test of faith here. The eye of sight saw a siege works being built on the one hand … and yet, the eye (or the ear) of faith was being given the promise of deliverance on the other. Here we sit 2600 years later, and we know what finally happened. God did not intervene. The siege works was successful… Jerusalem was forced to surrender … and its people, most of them, were hauled off into captivity … into exile in Babylon. The eye of sight was right! … the impending doom did come to pass. So, what about Jeremiah’s Word from the Lord? The Word from the Lord still stood. And all that Jeremiah proclaimed did finally come to pass in God’s time … God’s promise that had been made since the beginning was fulfilled. Deliverance finally came. But not in the year 587 or 586 BC as many might have hoped. God’s deliverance did not come in the form of an army from Egypt … or from a political realignment of power in the Middle East. Not in a form that the eye of sight would hardly take notice of … or might even approve of. God’s salvation, His deliverance, came in a lonely stall in the city of Bethlehem some 600 years later. That baby was born to do all that needed to be done to save God’s people. Born to be their righteousness… So that, in the words of the Prophet …the House of Israel and the House of Judah …meaning all those who are God’s children by Faith… would be saved. God was going to provide a deliverer … a deliverer who would take our place under the demands of God’s Law … a deliverer who would also stand in our place under God’s judgment, who would be our scapegoat… who would die the death our own lack of righteousness before God has earned. This deliverer is the same One who will … according to God’s promise … hand each one of us of faith the Crown of Life. Who will wipe away our every tear … and who will usher us into the kingdom of God forever and ever. The deliverer. Again, the Lord … who is our righteousness. But what may be really interesting is this: The people of Judah, the people living in Jerusalem, the people who originally heard this prophecy … were also the same people seeing and hearing the signs of their impending doom. The trees being cut … the birds no longer singing. They could read the signs of the times. What may seem a bit surprising is that … in both the case of Jerusalem in 587BC and in the case of Jesus’ second coming …the signs are there … but we don’t see those signs causing people to flock to repentance and faith. The hard lesson of signs is this: … that the Law of God and the threat of God’s wrath against lawbreaking does not save. The law itself, the threat of punishment, does not have the power to change the hearts of people. Only the message of God’s love can do that. And that sets the tone for this season of the Church year. The Last Sundays of Pentecost paint pictures for us of trial and tribulation … like the falling trees did once on the Mount of Olives … But the Season of Advent is a season of God’s promises being fulfilled … the words of Jeremiah … speaking to our hearts of faith. And so … we recognize this time as a time of preparation. How? It’s a time for somber self-reflection … a time to recognize our need for the promised deliverer… a time of repentance. A time once symbolized by the color Purple in the church during Advent, for the same reasons that Lent uses that liturgical color. But Advent also embraces the promise that we see in Christ’s coming for our deliverance … both as He came first in the manger to deal with our Sin … and also as He will come again at the end of time, as our righteousness. And so … in that certain hope … the color of the season is now blue. Could we say, the color of love? But again, that the coming of the end of the world, the appearance of a global siege works, if you will, is not going to drive a whole lot of people in through those doors. 9/11 did not swell our churches to overflowing. Fear does not lead people consequently to faith. Quite to the contrary, the encouragement of Jeremiah which we hear today is directed to us, to people of faith, that we not let the things of the world out there nor the things to come … shake the faith which is ours. And that’s the message for us all today: the assurance that God’s good and gracious will is being done here on earth, in spite of all that seems to be going wrong or seems to be out of control. God IS in Control. And Advent is the time to celebrate that reality. The promise made through Jeremiah, of God loving us through the sending of His son, came to pass, as foretold. And now, His promise of Him loving us into His eternal realm, is just as certain. So the question remains for us today, how will we respond? Well, first of all, God calls us to keep personally connected with the reality of His presence, as He is even now in the world. Where do we find Him? Here at His Font … In His word … and in His own Body and Blood as He continues to strengthen us and here at His altar. And secondly, we experience Him and His Love as we respond to His call and join Him in what He is doing all around us. You see it’s very easy to stay in our comfort zones … even while being active at and in the Church. It sort of like going to the gym … here, though, we tone up our spiritual muscles … we feel good about our faith … But what good is that, really, if we don’t use those muscles, use our faith, for what God intended? We learned in Experiencing God that you can’t stay where you are and go with God at the same time. Going with God and comfort zones are sort of mutually exclusive. So, where is He calling you to go with Him? Well, next Sunday Evening we’re going to gather here and talk about that … But we begin, not by meeting, but by praying … and listening … and then seeing if collectively we all aren’t hearing the same thing … Remember the purpose of the church is to Worship God … but the function of the Church is to make disciples… by reaching out and reaching in. So …Worshipping God … Reaching out … and Building each other up in the faith … those are the things God is doing here, or Our Savior wouldn’t be here … and more importantly, He’d have you in another place. So. As the days are at hand … and the time is short … and the night indeed is coming when no one can work … The Lord, Our righteousness, is about to return. How shall He find us? I pray, enjoying His work … by sharing His love. In Him. Amen. |