The Hope of Justice

 

Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16

Focus: Advent

Function: To set the stage for the hope that Christmas brings

¹⁴The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ¹⁵In 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. ¹⁶In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Happy Holidays, or Happy Christmas season! Advent is upon us and it is a time for us to allow ourselves to renew our hope in the promises of our God.

It is time to celebrate our redemption as we rejoice in God’s salvation for the entire world, His own incarnation as Jesus Christ the Nazarene. He came and saved us and every year at the Winter Solstice, just as everything is dying out from the fall season and the bleak winter is soon upon us, we take a whole month to remember that when Jesus Christ was born into the world, hope for salvation was born with Him.

In the midst of that season where everything is dying, we light our houses with celebration of the Hope that God has not forgotten humanity and has chosen to come and walk and live among us.

In our text this morning, we read where the prophet Jeremiah foretells the coming of Jesus to save humanity.

And Jeremiah gives Jesus a particular identity in this passage, he speaks of Jesus being the righteous branch delivering both justice and righteousness.

I have been studying Jeremiah in my morning devotions and I cam across that verse last week and it really struck me. You see, I whenever I read the word “righteous” in the New Testament, I think of its root word, Dike’, and I re translate it to mean justice. It is funny, but all the other language translations do that, because that is what the word means. But for some reason, English translations use the word righteous. I believe that it is a throw back to a form of imperialism set down by the translators of the King James. Now I love the King James and call it a reliable text, but that is what I went to Bible College and Seminary for. To learn the ancient Greek language and get a handle on what the scripture says.

I wrote a paper which I published online 10 years ago about the difference between justice and righteousness.

Remember, Jesus was killed because He spoke out for justice against systems that would keep oppressing anyone who was not deemed fit by the religious authorities.

Jesus spoke out against injustice leveled at others and it upset the leaders so much that they killed Him.

Sometimes His protests even turned violent like when He overthrew the tables in the temple. Even His prophet, John the Baptist, used violent language when he called the religious hypocrites a “generation of vipers.”

When I wrote my paper someone questioned me about the use in Hebrew, where our text comes from this morning. I am not a Hebrew Scholar, but research into biblical languages and roots again is what I studied in college, so I know where to look. I found a source written ten years after mine, from a scholar, Bob Mu eller, who uses the same language. Justice and righteousness are two sides of a single coin, they can’t be separated.

This passage spoke out to me because the author points out that in the Hebrew, different from the Greek of our New Testament, justice and righteousness are also linked. Justice, in the passage speaks of legal justice, like that which is obtained in a court of law. It means that the laws are applied fairly and one group, the wealthy, for example, are not preferred over another group.

Righteousness, on the other hand has to do with the personal state of an individual. This is where understanding the NT helps us. Joseph, was a just, or Righteous man, depending on the translation we are using, and decided not to shame Mary, but to treat her with fairness so he went ahead and married Mary.

Joseph was the kind of person who does the right thing as a matter of practice. He is just in his decisions.

Righteous, or just people, will give us just, or righteous decisions and actions. Always.

It is important to signify that this is what it means. Sadly, we, through our theology, have taken the word righteous to mean that we are saved into the family of God through our conversion experience. Merely. It is a misrepresentation of Jesus’ mission to state that Jesus came merely to make us righteous in the eyes of God. Jesus does much more than that. He changes us. Jesus came to make us “just” people by the power of His Holy Spirit inside of us.

Since we are converted into the family of God, we too, will exemplify the kind of love and forgiveness toward others that Jesus showed toward those who were on the outside.

Jesus didn’t separate Himself by race, religion or class. Remember they condemned Jesus because He was a friend of sinners. The text even mentioned that He celebrated, or partied with them.

I love the thought of Friend of Sinners. That gives me hope. Romans 2:4 tells us that it is God’s kindness that draws us toward repentance and our salvation.

When Jesus was born, the proof of God’s kindness toward humanity was also born.

God’s kindness is one of the reasons why we feel compelled to worship God throughout the Holiday Season.

God saw the suffering of humanity and came among us to save us. God is kind to us.

We exemplify kindness in our own witness as well.

Sometimes I drop off desperate and or suffering women at the clinic. And there is this guy standing out there with a bullhorn shouting into the faces of the women seeking medical care how they are going to burn in hell for walking in the door.

When I hear that guy, my blood starts to boil because of the way that he is misrepresenting the good news that God came into the world to redeem humanity from its brokenness and sorrow.

He appears to have misplaced his zeal for God with his love for God’s people. I believe that abortion breaks God’s heart, but the Bible says that the miscarriage goes straight from the mothers’ womb into the loving arms of God and never knows the pain of living under the sun. God’s love covers the innocent and redeems them. That is the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. Our love for our theology, our church, our religion or our faith can never get in the way of our love for others. If it does, then somehow we have missed the mission of Christ in our lives.

Jesus came so that people can have hope for the future and the gospel should bring them to that hope instead of desperate situations like the killing of their baby.

God weeps at the brokenness of society. And we could weep as well. But remember, God saw the suffering of humanity and joined it in Jesus Christ so that God could redeem us all.

Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we too have the power of the same Spirit that energized Jesus to bring hope to a broken world.

Let our hope resonate as we celebrate the coming of Jesus.