In Jeremiah you cannot have comfort and consolation without a clear understanding of judgement.
We start off Advent this year with the anticipation of the usual tension over whether to emphasize the eschatological themes of our pericopes or cave to the demand for pre-Christmas programming that opens our Christmas present of Christ too early. Usually, pastors concede to the pressure, but a rare few remain steadfast and hold the line of the liturgical calendar. I am happy to announce that we finally have a text which can bring these two estranged views together again for the holidays.
Our pericope is taken from book three of Jeremiah’s work. This range of texts, from chapters 30-33, are known as the book of comfort or consolation. In actuality, the theme here is restoration. Chapter 30 begins with an anticipation of the judgement of 586 BC (the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians), which matches chapters 22-23:5-6. Now, you might be wondering if I am contradicting myself. I just said it was about restoration, comfort, and consolation. What is all this talk of judgement? To be quite honest, in Jeremiah you cannot have comfort and consolation without a clear understanding of judgement. It may be a helpful thing to keep in mind when preaching Jeremiah that you really do not get the Gospel until you get the Law. In Jeremiah, in order to get to Easter, you have to go through Good Friday. Therefore, you cannot have the Law without the Gospel and vice versa.
All three verses of our text have wonderful moments of Gospel development for preaching.
In verse 14, we hear the promise that God is going to “raise up” the good word or rather the Good News. Of course, developing this in the sermon can lead you to proclaim the comfort that God has good news to share. He has kept His promise to His people. This is the Good News in the coming days, that God will “raise up” not just a people but a person from the grave. This word finds its ultimate fulfillment in the promises kept for us in Jesus Christ!
This is the Good News in the coming days, that God will “raise up” not just a people but a person from the grave.
In verse 15, God will cause to sprout for David a “righteous branch” or a “green shoot” who will do justice and righteousness in the Land. Jeremiah describes the perfect King who is fulfilled in the coming of Christ in Christmas and also on the last day. This is the opportunity to finally create a positive bridge between liturgical seasons. Here, we can have peace between pre-Christmas preppers and stalwart Advent observers. Jesus’ coming, whether His Advent on Christmas or His Advent at the end of all time, is described as the “raising up” (resurrection imagery) of a green branch. To further this idea, we may want to hold before people as a useful practice or tradition the annual festive “Hanging of the Greens.”1 When we are hanging the greens at church, we are connecting two seasons in one Messiah. As we raise the branches of the Christmas tree, it reminds us of the righteous branch God has raised up in Jesus the Nazarene. As we lay our evergreen garlands around the sanctuary, we remember the body of Jesus laid in the tomb, where He would raise up to everlasting life again on the third day. We are reminded that our hope is eternal as we look for the light of the Final Day when Christ will return to take us home.
Verse 16 has three great moments of Gospel development for preaching. The first is in the term “saved.” It contains the root for the name of Jesus in Hebrew. Hidden in this text is the name “Yeshua,” which is how we say “Jesus” in the language of Jeremiah. But wait, there is more! The word often translated “reside” in this verse is also the Qal Imperfect of “Shekan,” which is the same word as Tabernacle. The idea here is of something with semi-permanence. But we cannot help but run to John 1:14, where “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” did that in a particular way. The Greek term for “dwelt” in John is “skene,” and it is also the same word in the Septuagint for Tabernacle. So, here we have the promise that God’s people will be saved (Jesus style) as God tabernacles among them (incarnation). This is where all our hope comes from! As if all that was not enough gospel potential for just one verse, you close out with a great truth. God calls His people (referred to as feminine) something amazing. He calls her, He names her, He declares her, the Lord is our righteousness! They wear the same name as the Lord. In Jeremiah 23:6, this is the name the Lord has, and now, in 33:16, that name is declared and imputed onto His people. This “declared righteousness” is the divine exchange we have from Christ to us, and from us to Christ. What wonderful news! The restored Judah and Jerusalem are now credited with what belongs to the Davidic Messiah. This happens with His shed blood and third day resurrection. This is no less good news even as we await the coming of our righteous King, given in a manger, and arriving at the end to take us home.
Since there are multiple moments to develop the connections between Jeremiah’s context and the Gospel proclamation of this text, we will use the “Multiple Image”2 structure to guide the ordering of our thoughts on the text:
“This sermon structure uses two or more images in the sermon to signal movement or development to the hearers during the course of the sermon. Each image is associated with a particular thought or experience for the hearers and the sermon moves from one section to another by moving from one image to another.
In working with more than one image, the preacher needs to determine how the images hold together as a set of images. Do they have a thematic or stylistic coherence? Working with images that are too widely varied in style or subject matter can create confusion for the hearers, as the images work to break apart the sermon rather than hold the experience together as one intentional meditation upon God’s Word. Also, the preacher will want a coherent movement between images during the sermon. That is, as the preacher moves from one image to another, there should be a logical or experiential appropriateness to such movement. This could involve movement within a metaphorical field, typological, a dynamic reversal, the development of a theme, or the contextualization of God’s mission.
Finally, as the preacher integrates the images into the sermon, he can choose to work inductively, leading from an image to the statement of an idea (that connects to the text, to the theological confession, to evangelical proclamation, or to the lives of the hearers), or deductively, beginning first with a statement of the idea and then entering into the image as a way of developing it for the hearers. A variety of inductive and deductive movements can generate a continuing interest in the flow of the sermon.”
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Craft of Preaching-Check out out 1517’s resources on Jeremiah 33:14-16.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Jeremiah 33:14-16.
Text Week-A treasury of resources from various traditions to help you preach Jeremiah 33:14-16.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
Lectionary Podcast- Prof. Walter A. Maier III of Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, IN walks us through Jeremiah 33:14-16.
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1. You can reference the practice here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_of_the_greens
2. https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/imagistic-structures/multiple-image/
