The King Who Gathers His Scattered People

Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch. He shall reign as King and deal wisely, and execute justice. In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.”

Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet.” He has two books in the Old Testament: the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations. What happens between those two books is exactly what Jeremiah kept warning the people about—that their apostasy would bring God’s judgment upon the kingdom of Judah, just as it had brought God’s judgment upon the kingdom of Israel when the ten northern tribes were taken by the Assyrians and lost to history.

And so the Babylonians came and conquered the kingdom of Judah. They conquered Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was kidnapped and taken down to Egypt with the ark—which was lost until an enterprising archaeologist found it in the 1930s. That’s a joke. If you read Revelation, the ark is in heaven. But Jeremiah was taken to Egypt, and there he wrote the Book of Lamentations, weeping over the judgment of the Lord.

Yet in the midst of all this, there is the promise that God would raise up a faithful King. And that promise is what we celebrated in our Gospel lesson—the triumphal entry—which we also hear on Palm Sunday: the King coming to save us.

This faithful King would not only save Judah. He would not only be the Lord God who was known for drawing His people out of their slavery in Egypt in the Exodus. He would be the great King who would call the faithful out of all the nations, from the diaspora scattered throughout the whole world.

And we are living in the diaspora right now. Because if you look at a map, Oklahoma and Jerusalem are a few thousand miles apart. And yes, I realize there is a Palestine, Texas—there’s probably a Palestine, Oklahoma too—but that should not be confused with the Roman province of Palestine.

We live in the diaspora. We live beset by the world and by our own flesh. We live in a world opposed to God because we live in a sinful world. A world that chooses sin, that glorifies sin, that tries to teach us—and to teach our children—to choose other things besides God. And to make matters worse, our own old Adam, our sinful flesh, works against us as well, causing us not to choose the good but the bad—the evil, the wrong. We want to do the right. We want to choose the good. But we don’t. Our old Adam is enslaved to sin.

And so we need a rescuer. We need a great King—a King who comes to save us, to bring us out of this great diaspora, and to bring us into His land.

I made some jokes in the early service about this, but Debbie wasn’t going to like hearing it. Some of you are laughing because you know the wonderful hymn “Heaven Is My Home.” Which… is not entirely accurate, because if you read Revelation, God comes down to earth and His people dwell with Him eternally on earth. The old heavens and the old earth pass away, and a new heaven and new earth are made, joined together. This is our home. Not Oklahoma—but earth renewed, restored. Heaven is the waiting room while the construction company finishes the work.

There are roughly one billion Christians in the world out of seven billion people. That seems like a lot, until you realize how scattered they are. But the Lord promises to gather us up—to pluck us out of our graves, out of the jaws of death, out of the grasp of Satan, and away from our own sinful hearts—and to place us in the land flowing with milk and honey. The land where the waters of life pour from His altar. Where the trees of life line that river, and the leaves are for the healing of the nations—to restore us. Where the victorious Lamb, our King, will reign forever and watch over His people. And there will be sin no more, death no more.

Hosanna indeed—“Lord, save us”—and we will dwell in our own land.

This is what Advent is about: preparing for the King to come. Preparing for the Lord, the God who lives to bring us—and all His offspring—out of the diaspora, out of the north country and all the countries, out of all the places where we are afflicted, chased, and harassed.

This is the promise of the Gospel. He came once to save us—though you have only 26 days left to shop. Well, actually no—you can’t shop on Christmas Day, so you have 24.

He came once to save us, and He will come again to restore us.

This past week, sitting at an early morning meeting at the community center—we needed coffee—I got a text from Paula. She had gone to bed around 3:00 a.m. Tuesday morning because Hal had finally quieted down. By the time she woke up at 8:00, the Lord had called him home.

There are millions of Christians we will never meet on this side of eternity. There are Christians we will never see again on this side of eternity. And yet, when Christ comes again, we all will be raised to new life. When Christ comes again, He will rob the grave. He will give us back our friends, and He will give us to our friends. He will restore us to our families, and restore our families to us. And all the generations before us, whom we never met, will be our brothers and sisters. And if the Lord continues to tarry, all the generations after us, whom we will never meet on this side of eternity, will be our brothers and sisters in His holy city.

And His name will be upon all our hearts, upon all our tongues, and upon all our brows.

This is what Christ came to do. This is what He will accomplish when He returns. This is what the “healing of the nations” means—that those we mourn will be joined to us. That our tears will be wiped away. And that our sins, which have grieved the heart of God, are forgiven in the blood of the Lamb.

I didn’t mean to bring the mood down. I realize we just celebrated Thanksgiving. We’re getting ready for Christmas. And there really aren’t many sad Christmas hymns—outside of that one about the boy buying the shoes, whose name I can’t even remember.

But the joy of Christmas is this: that all the wrongs are righted, and all the pains are healed, and that our Lord has not forgotten us—but has forgiven us. And we await that glorious day when He shall come again.

In Christ’s name. Amen.