God So Loved, He Planned

Christmas Celebrates God’s Love Jeremiah 23:5-6 - God So Loved: He Planned Doug Partin – The Christian Church – Dec. 1, 2019 The countdown to Christmas, our celebration of God’s love for the world starts today. Many churches refer to this countdown as the Advent season. Advent is a Latin word that means "the coming." During the four Sundays of Advent, Christians around the globe recall how God planned, announced, revealed, and sent His one and only begotten Son to save the world. We will join this celebration of God’s love, recalling how the prophets shared God’s plan to send His Son well in advance of putting that plan into motion. We will recall how the announcing Angel, Gabriel, was sent to Mary and Joseph and their reaction to how God’s plan would involve them. We will recall how Mary’s cousin Elizabeth would also have a son under, well, “divine” circumstances, who would fulfill the prophesies of one who would prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. And we will recall the night of Jesus’ birth: How Mary and Joseph travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and while there had their son, and we’ll consider those who came to see Him and whether they hoped to help or harm Him. We will also recount the cost that Jesus would pay at the end of His earthly ministry, and thereby demonstrate God’s love. This is a season which we have filled with traditions, like lighting the advent candles each week; and decorating our church and homes with lights, ornaments, and trees. Some of these traditions are well grounded in the biblical story of God’s redemption of man, but others are far removed from it; yet, we strive to use them all to remember and celebrate God’s love. In his study to show that God’s plan revealed in the New Testament was clearly proclaimed in the Old Testament, Dr. Hengstenberg produced four thick volumes which catalogued and examined every reference to God’s plan to redeem the world through His Son, Jesus, the anointed Messiah. From vague mentions like that found in Genesis 3:15 “the seed of a woman would crush the head of Satan” to general promises like Moses saying that “The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me from among your brothers,” which Peter often quoted in sermons (Acts 3:22), to the detailed descriptions of the Messiah who was to be a descendent of Abraham, from the tribe of Judah, heir to the throne of David, born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, and well, I could go on and on, for there are over 40 details that include the time of his birth, His rejection by His own, His being a priest after the order of Melchizedek, the blind receiving sight, the hungry being feed, prisoners being released, the betrayal by a friend for 30 pieces of silver, being accused by false witnesses, being crucified with thieves, being pierced through his hands and feet, soldiers gambling for His clothing, no bones getting broke, his side being pierced, His buried with the rich and resurrected from the dead. All of these prophetic details form a “finger print” that was used by God’s people to judge whether a person who claimed to be the Messiah really was the Messiah. And only Jesus lined up with every one of them. The details of God’s plan being made known in advance was God’s way of evidencing that He would keep His promises in His way at His time. Some people in Jesus’ day hoped that the coming Messiah would reestablish their nation’s sovereignty by running Rome out of town; others hoped that justice would finally be given to those who were oppressed by the rich, and still others that peace with God would finally be established once and for all. As you might expect, they tended to focus their expectations upon their own personal troubles rather than considering that God might have bigger plans. We do the same. We tell ourselves that God can’t be real if He doesn’t answer our specific prayer in the way that we want it answered and when we want in answered. In doing so, we set ourselves up for disappointment because we use unrealistic expectations about things God never promised to do in the first place. Yes, He promised to heal the sick, but some of the sick, maybe even the majority of them, will not be healed until they receive their resurrected body that is designed for eternity. Even though a doctor can get us better for a while, we will all still face death unless Jesus comes first. And God’s plan is to prepare us for that day. His plan provides for the forgiveness of everyone’s sins, so anyone, regardless of tribe or nation, can, by simply trusting God to carry out His plan, accept God’s offer to live with Him in that place that He is preparing for those who believe; that eternal place we have come to call heaven. Among the prophets through whom God announced His plan was Jeremiah. He lived in Judah, which described the southern part of ancient Israel’s divided kingdom. If you don’t recall that part of their history, let me remind you. 10 tribes split off to form their own country in the north. They established their own religion with its own priesthood, built a new capital and selected their own king, and called themselves Israel. For their rebellion, they would later be taken captive by Assyria. The remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin, formed the south along with Levi who were the priestly line and a number of families that fled from the north. But they were not faithful either, just in less obvious ways. For 40 years Jeremiah warned the inhabitants of Judah that a catastrophe would fall upon them if they did not repent. The problem with repentance is that you have to come to the realization that you are not living right, not making the best choices, not experiencing life as it was meant to be. Most people who come to this realization still have a hard time implementing the change that they want to make. Change is hard. Others are content with the way that they are living. They feel that life is pretty good and don’t see any real need to change. God’s isn’t striking them dead, so He must be okay with their choices. So, they keep on living as if nothing is wrong, and would probably get offended if you were to tell them otherwise, at least that is what happed in Jeremiah’s day. The people in Judah didn’t want to change, so in 587 BC the consequences that Jeremiah prophesied about came to pass. Babylon’s armies destroyed Jerusalem and took its people captive. But Jeremiah did not rub their noses in it. He didn’t gloat over their demise, saying, “I told you so,” instead he offered them yet another hope. Asking them to turn back to God so they would be ready for that day when their nation would be restored and their relationship with God would be renewed. They were to look forward to a time when that relationship would be based on a new covenant written on their hearts instead of one being written on tablets of stone. It is hard enough as an individual, and nearly impossible for a nation, even a small nation like Judah in which everyone claimed to desire what God wanted in their life to admit that they are in the wrong and need to change. So, it’s not too hard to imagine that Jeremiah was an unpopular prophet when he called for repentance. He had to endure cruel persecution for speaking the truth to God’s people. He suffered because of their resistance against God’s truth. They did not want to hear, and did not want to believe that they needed to repent; yet, that truth burned passionately within Jeremiah. He could not keep himself from speaking about it boldly to those who needed to hear it, whether they wanted to hear it or not. You may not realize this, but every prophet that God raised up to call His people to repent were not only ignored or opposed but most of them were killed for the message they proclaimed. We don’t mind hearing God’s word until it calls our behavior into question. We get so offended at what God says about us that we take it out on the messenger. Chapter 22 records the time when Jeremiah delivered this truth to the Kings of Judah. The current king, and those who went before him, were guilty of building luxurious palaces at the expense of oppressing, exploiting and neglecting the poor. They felt no remorse, no guilt and sought only to silence Jeremiah. They did not think that there was anything wrong with how they were living. They had come to feel that they were being blessed by God to do these things because of their righteousness and the poor were suffering because of their unrighteousness. But that was not the case at all. They were deceiving themselves. They may have been following the right rituals, but they had hearts of stone. What we read earlier in our service came from the next chapter, where it was made clear that the “shepherds” of God’s people were destroying and scattering God’s flock by their ungodly behavior and they would be held accountable by God. It was while telling this truth to them that Jeremiah revealed God’s plan to love His flock by gathering them back together. But He would do it in His time. He promised to do so by sending them a shepherd from King David’s royal line. A shepherd who would be wise and righteous. A Messiah shepherd, who would not only deliver them, and restore them, but who would take care of them. Jeremiah said that just as their own generation looked back upon Israel’s deliverance from Egypt for inspiration, their own ancestors would look back upon Judah’s coming deliverance from Babylon for inspiration. That would not take place for another 70 years. But their ancestors, when wondering whether God keeps His promises, would remember not only the deliverance from Egypt, but their deliverance from Babylon and would affirm that yes, God keeps His promises. We do the same, but we also look back to the cross. That moment in time when God’s Messiah atoned for the sins of the world. We celebrate His victory over death through the power of His resurrection, and we affirm that just as God raised Him up from the grave, He will one day raise us up as well. The only part of God’s plan that we don’t like to hear is our part. We don’t mind the faith part, though we sometimes struggle with that as well. We don’t mind the deliverance part either. But like ancient Judah, it is the repentance part that trips us up. It was Jesus, God’s one and only Son, who said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” It might not come tomorrow, it might not come until we take our last breath, but the last day is at hand, it is coming, and God’s love has put a plan in motion through which we can be saved when it arrives. Jesus said, “God so loved the world that He gave He only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” It is true. God’s light will expose our deeds, but we need not fear, for by God’s grace, they will also be forgiven, which is why we celebrate God’s love.