Jeremiah [Part 4] - The Righteous Branch

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. I want to start this lesson with something from a letter of Jacob in the New Testament. In every language, it is called Jacob—Jacob the brother of Jesus, Jacob the Apostle—but in English, he's called James. Why? Because King Jimmy wanted his name in the Bible, and the translators of the King James translation from the Greek, since James started with "J" and Jacob starts with "J," every word that there was a Jacob—Jacob the brother of Jesus, Jacob the Apostle—they put Jimmy in English. And only in English. In French, it is Saint Jacques; in all the other languages, it is Jacob, Jack, Jaco, Santiago, in Spanish. Only in English, it's James. But I am bringing this to you because of the first verse of chapter 3 in the letter of James:

So, this warning is very important, especially for those of us who teach God's word. But the fashion today is everybody becomes an apostle; he becomes a prophet. Some have even become Patriarchs in Brazil. But we need to be very careful—very careful—with the way we treat our relationship to God, to His word, and to the community, to the church. So, I’m now going back to Jeremiah, and I’m going to skip many chapters because we can’t talk about every chapter, and go to chapter 23 of Jeremiah. I’m going to go to verse 1 of chapter 23 of Jeremiah because this corresponds with what I said from the letter of James. It also corresponds with chapter 34 of the Prophet Ezekiel.

Verse 7:

So, this is the text I want to deal with from Jeremiah, and specifically with verse 6. Now, for a start with verse 5:

This idea that the Messiah is a plant, a root—something living that grows, that produces fruit—is a very basic idea that starts from Isaiah chapter 11. Actually, it starts from the law of Moses. If we look at some of the texts, if the law of Moses or in Isaiah or in the New Testament, the Messiah is a living, growing plant, root.

Let me go to Isaiah chapter 11 and read the first verses just so that you believe me about this idea. It's an idea that is not so well known in Christian circles. Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1:

This continues.Just wanted you to see this idea that the Messiah is a plant that comes out from the root of Jesse, and he will do righteous judgment on the earth. He will absolve the poor and bless them, and the evil of this earth he will judge with harsh judgment.

But let’s go back to Jeremiah chapter 23, verse 6. This is important, my dear brothers and sisters. It’s really a teaching that we need to know because, in the New Testament, we have only one text that is dependent on these texts here, on many of these texts here in the prophets. Paul says in Romans chapter 11, verse 25-26, that when the fullness of the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled, "Thus, in the same manner, all Israel shall be saved."

One text, that, one time during the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism, a great meeting of six thousand pastors and church leaders in Manila in 1989, the Bishop of Sydney, Australia, got up to speak about Romans 9, 10, and 11. He took it out completely to a different field—a strange field about, you know, helping the poor and not about Israel at all. He didn’t mention Israel. Well, Martha Stern, David Stern’s wife, who’s still in our congregation—David has gone to be with the Lord, but his son and his wife are still here in our congregation, active—ran down during the intermission to the Bishop of Sydney, who was dressed in the Anglican pink robe, and said, "How could you teach Romans 9, 10, and 11 and not mention Israel?" The Bishop looked at her and said, "Lady, sister, every time I mention something about the Jews, whether it’s good or bad, it doesn’t make a difference. The Jews jump all over me, so I decided not to mention the Jews." But she said, "Do you know that this text is talking about the salvation of Israel?" "I know, but I don’t want to talk about it."

Okay, fine. But this text in Romans 11 is talking about the salvation of Israel. And here, we now come eight centuries earlier, before Christ, to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah is talking about somebody, a Jew, from the family of King David. And this is what it says in verse 5 of chapter 23 of Jeremiah:

Hold it, brothers and sisters. The divinity of Yeshua was not decided in the year 325 in a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey, called Nicaea. It wasn’t decided then. And because they couldn’t make up their minds without killing each other and poisoning each other, they repeated the conference eight years later in the year 333. Then they decided, and whoever disagreed with them, they poisoned him—bingo—bishop or not bishop. Yes, Athanasius of Alexandria was the executioner not only in Nicaea during that time of the year 333 but ten years later. He took his vengeance on Gregory, the bishop of Alexandria, and on Christmas Eve during the Christmas Midnight Mass, cut him to pieces and paraded his body pieces in the streets of Alexandria. Oh, with the love of Christ! For the love of Christ! Yes, not so simple, my dear brothers and sisters, not so simple.

But back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is talking here in chapter 23, in the first part of the chapter, about the salvation of Israel. It was not an invention of the Apostle Paul in Romans. Paul is building his case on Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Amos and the other prophets that all talk about events—and the Book of Leviticus, chapter 25, 26, 27—They talk about the salvation of Israel. Even if they disobey God and He curses them and punishes them with heavy punishments, He’s still going to save them. Because if He doesn’t, He’s the one who fails because He chose the wrong nation.

No, He didn’t choose the wrong nation. We stubborn, stiff-necked Jews were chosen by God because God knows that we’re not going to give up, no matter how hard it becomes and no matter how much the world is going to hate us., and the Germans will put us in concentration camps and burn us and gas us. God knew that this nation, stiff-necked and stubborn, is going to live up and fulfill His promises for the world, for the salvation of the world. Paul says that very clearly in Romans 10 and 11. There are Gentiles that were part of a wild olive tree that doesn’t give good fruit. They were taken out of that tree, plucked out of the tree, and grafted onto the natural tree—the olive tree that brings good fruit. The olive tree is Israel. That’s what Paul teaches in Romans 11.

Yes, sir. And Jeremiah, 800 years earlier, says: "In the days, Judah and Israel will be saved, and the name of the Savior will be called 'Jehovah our righteousness'." It’s a big teaching. There are lots of parallels even in the book of Jeremiah of this text. But let me read on to verse 7. After he says that his name will be 'Jehovah our righteousness', that means that this character from the House of David, a branch from David, will be 'Jehovah righteousness', divine.

Verse 7:

The Exodus, the Passover—no, the Passover will remain, but our identity with our relationship with God is not going to be the Passover. It’s going to be something else. We will no longer say, "Long live the Lord who brought us out of the land of Egypt," but we should say:

The land of Canaan that was given to Abraham, our father, as an eternal inheritance. Read it in chapter 12 and chapter 15 of the Book of Genesis.

Yes, my dear brothers and sisters. The Messiah appears in the prophets—in Isaiah 53, Isaiah 63, Isaiah 66, and in Jeremiah chapter 23, and in Jeremiah chapter 31, and in Jeremiah onward and in Ezekiel 39. Oh, the prophets talk about the Messiah in many ways and many times. God’s heart in Jeremiah 23 is broken. Why?

—downhill it means, grazed and downhill, like the word of Yeshua about the two highways: the highway that is hard—you’re going uphill; you have to pull up, you have to make a big effort, you can get tired, you lose breath going uphill; the broad and easy way—downhill, it’s even greased so you slide down quicker to the pits of hell.

Yes, the Prophet Jeremiah is talking because his word wasn’t received in his day. He was beaten, thrown into a well, put in prison, slapped in public by the other prophets that were prophets of no faith in God—idolatrous prophets that served in his day. He was alone, like Isaiah, like Amos—rejected, beaten for speaking the word of God, for speaking the truth from God. Yes, it wasn’t easy to be a prophet. But look at the promises that he brings to Israel that are alive today.

We are witnessing. We are witnessing that the words that Jeremiah spoke in the 8th century BC are true. You walk in the streets of Jerusalem, you can see all kinds of Jews: white Jews, black Jews, red-headed Jews, blonde Jews. From 103 countries, Jews have immigrated to this country of Israel. And in this country, they have blessed the world. If you eat cherry tomatoes, we’ve got yellow ones, orange ones, green ones, red ones, big ones, small ones, elongated like cucumbers, round like marbles. We’ve got all kinds of tomatoes that were developed here in the city of Rehovot, the city that’s mentioned in Egyptian annals from 3000 BC.

Yes, we’ve got it. If you’re wearing glasses like mine that in the sunshine become dark like sunglasses, it was developed in kibbutz in the Galilee, Shamir. If you’re using waze to guide you in the cities around the world, whether in Thailand or in Zimbabwe, you’re using a product that was developed by Jewish young men and women. Yes, Israel is alive, and it’s alive not because of our righteousness but because God promised, and He’s keeping His promises. The way He’s keeping His promises of bringing the Jews back home, He will keep the promises of saving Israel through the Prince of Peace, an everlasting Father, the Son of the Almighty God. That’s what Isaiah says in chapter 9, verses 6-7.

Yes, God’s word is complete, and His fulfillment of His word will be complete. You join us, pray for Israel’s salvation, pray for the Messianic Jewish community in Israel, stand with Netiviah and the Roeh Israel congregation, because we are here. We’re going nowhere. We’re here serving God, serving the people of Jerusalem, the people of Israel—feeding the poor, helping young Israeli believers to go to university with scholarships, blessing the soldiers of the believing families who go to the army. We’re doing a lot of things. We need your prayers and we need your help because we are a part of the fulfillment of these words of the prophet that were spoken 2,800 years ago and are being fulfilled right now as we’re talking.

God bless you who stand with Israel and with the Jewish people because our King, the King of the Jews, is also your Savior and Messiah.Shalom from Netiviah, from the Roeh Israel congregation, and from Jerusalem.