Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “Put it in writing”?  Get it in black and white: not just words in the air, but something we can hold on to, show others—a guarantee, a promise.  We have all these words, beloved, all the words in this book, this testimony of God’s promise to His people, His promise to all whom He brings to Himself out of all the nations among which His own are now scattered.  He’s put it in writing.  We trust He will fulfill His promise.  He told His prophets, long ago.  He wants His people to know.  He wants us to hold Him to His promise.  Who demands, insists, that we hold them to their promises?  What a wonderful Savior!

We speak of love as a feeling.  We love the feeling of love!  Oh, it is that, but love isn’t just a feeling, not even primarily.  Do you love only when you feel it, or feel like it?  Hot and cold, on and off?  That’s the stuff of soap operas and songs on the radio.  We speak of love as a feeling, but we know love is much more: conviction, devotion.  Love is labor.  Love is a promise, being lived out, being fulfilled, hour after hour, day by day.  No wonder Paul tells us that love never ends, though we may yet wonder.

God gives us His Word.  “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah’” (33:14).  “[W]hen I will fulfill the good word which I have spoken,” as the New American Standard Bible has it.  The NASB keeps closer to a literal translation.  The good promise; the good word.  How good, God’s Word.  God’s Word is a promise.  God will fulfill His Word.

It’s worth noting that the translations differ with respect to the verb, also: “made” in one, “have spoken” in the other.  Like an oath or a vow, we make a promise by speaking it.  Our words have power.  How much more God’s Word!  For God uniquely, to speak is to make, to create.  God creates by His Word, as John so mysteriously, wonderfully tells us.  God’s promise is the power of creation, and how shall God not then fulfill?  For God, to have spoken is to have accomplished.  It is done.

If we’ve heard the phrase “put it in writing,” we are probably also familiar with the phrase “as good as his word.”  Oh, people make pretty promises to us, but we’re not so naïve as to believe them, much as we may want to.  Were you ever burned by a promise not fulfilled, or worse, a promise broken?  Won’t get fooled again.  We want people to live up to what they promise, or else just don’t make promises.  Maybe that’s best, but what is life without promise?  Promise gives birth to hope and nurtures it; promises are like messages of love, assurances of love, which is why it hurts when promises are broken.

God does not break His promise.  He is always at work to fulfill what He has said He will do.  Through Jeremiah, God told His people of a day when “‘I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.  This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’” (33:15-16).  A branch from a dead stump—seems unlikely.  The kings were cut off, done.  Scripture tells us a bit about the descendants of the kings of Judah, the descendants of David, after the Babylonian exile, but after a generation or two, the story seems to end.  A professor in seminary shared with us that she was the last in her branch.  Isn’t that how it is in our own families, branches that just end, fade out in silence and darkness?

There is much silence and darkness in this world, beloved, especially in this season of the year, these days of brief light and long darkness.  Those of you who have lived further north during the end of the year have an even keener sense of that.  The silence and darkness can foster feelings of fear, sorrow, and hopelessness.  Some find themselves becoming depressed each winter: seasonal affective disorder, some call the malady.  What some of these suffering people find helpful is a light nearby, a very bright light.  Beloved, God gives us a light in the darkness, very bright, very welcome.  Into the silence, God speaks, and there is light; He speaks, and there is life.  This is not just the creation story of untold ages gone by, it is also the resurrection story.  Into the silence, God speaks, and there is light; He speaks, and there is life.  It is the Christmas story, for which we are preparing ourselves, for which God prepares us, by reminding us that He is as good as His Word; we have it in writing.  In English, most happily, God and good are akin to one another.  In the earliest form of our language, the two words were spelled the same way.

This branch, the offspring of David, “will do what is just and right in the land”: the Hebrew word is erets, which can, more widely, mean earth.  This Son of David “will do what is just and right on the earth.”  How this earth needs justice.  Not justice according to the power-hungry schemes of any politics of administrative expertise, promising much and consistently delivering little, the self-serving laws of self-interested lawmakers, but God’s justice.  Beloved, let us not confuse what angry people say about justice with what God says.

How this earth needs righteousness, God-devotion.  We need someone to lead us in that way, lead us to God devotion.  We need someone to show us how and to assure us, constantly, continually, that we also really can live that way, too.  We found no one here below who can do that for us, God knows.  God will provide.  God is as good as His Word; we have it in writing.  God will find us.  God will guide.  God will assure: He will send His branch, this offshoot of David, who will do what is just, who will do what is right upon this earth locked in wintry silence and darkness.

“In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety” (33:16).  These words were spoken to people living in exile, living with the bitter memory of all they had lost.  Safety?  Salvation?  Can there be any such thing on this earth?  “And in despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said.”  God promises restoration.  In the darkest part of the year, the darkest stage of the journey, a light.  When we feel as if we no longer know how to go on, or how we possibly could—hope, sudden, bright, like a star? a candle in the window? a Christmas tree?  Like a Word in the wilderness.

God knows your heart, its strength and its weakness.  He knows your courage and your fear.  He knows your hope and your sorrow.  He knows what you’ve lost, and He says, “I will restore.”  I will save.  I will save, and you shall be safe.  Is that possible?  In this world, in this life?  Would you save your life on this earth, or are you willing for your life to be saved for a new earth?  Safety, beloved, is in salvation.  Without salvation there is no safety.  All the prophets are agreed upon this.  John the Baptist proclaimed it.  It is the proclamation of Christ.  No safety apart from salvation.

People outside, if they ask at all, if they wonder at all, ask what is salvation.  They’ll never know, then.  Salvation, beloved, is not a what.  Salvation is a who: “This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.”  The Lord is our Righteousness.  Our righteousness is the Lord.  When we point to anything other than Jesus Christ, we do not point to our righteousness.  When we point to our good hearts, we miss our righteousness.  When we point to our good deeds, we miss our righteousness.  When we point to our perfectly aligned political opinions, we miss our righteousness.  We are righteous if and only if the name of salvation is in us.  God looks for righteousness, looks all over this earth.  We know what He finds, what He sees, all too often: and how it breaks His heart.  We know also, here and there, He finds that holy name, and such joy it gives Him!  The seed He planted, that He watered, has become a sprout; it’s green and growing!

Advent is a season for remembering God’s joy: the joy He finds in his only-begotten Son; the joy He finds in fulfilling His Word; the joy He takes in us, whom He fills with His Word, in whom He finds His Son: the Lord Our Righteous Savior.  He fills us with His Word, His promise, His power of creation, His light in the darkness.  The darkness has not nor ever shall overcome it.  Want that light.  Pray for that light.  Weep for that light.  Sing joyfully for that light.  Be filled with his light, with his life, and you shall know, truly, that the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Now, to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.