Messianic Metaphors | The Righteous Branch (Jeremiah 33:14-16)

Lineage matters. Family trees tell us of the values and strengths. We might look at family members of the past to gain an understanding of a person in the present, and especially their pedigree when it comes to leadership. What if the family tree leaves much to be desired. What if there is weakness and immorality and brokenness there. This was the case with the family tree of the royal line of David and the ruling family of God’s people. A tree that seemed to begin so strong, became filled with weak, diseased, and broken branches. Yet, God promised to raise up a righteous branch in that tree. One who would serve his people well, and this righteous branch is also your righteous Savior.

Transcript

I have vivid memories of walking into my Grandpa Lehmann’s office, old pictures and genealogies covering his desk. In his retirement years, he set out to uncover our family story. I remember how giddy he was to share pieces of that story. Yet not every tale had a happy ending. The deeper you dig into any family tree, the more brokenness you’ll find—fractured branches, severed connections, and sometimes a stump where there once was a thriving trunk. Broken families have become the norm today, but such fracturing doesn’t happen overnight. It revolves around the leaders of the family, whom God intends to strengthen the tree. It’s why it shatters us when family leaders fail, or maybe even abuse those they are called to bring closer to Jesus. Broken families are all too common today, aren’t they?

Maybe that’s where your family is. As you look at your tree, examining the older branches, you can see generational brokenness. In our American society, it’s the new normal. According to the National Children’s Alliance, 76% of child abuse cases were perpetrated by parents or legal guardians. Nearly half of kids today will experience at least one significant childhood trauma, often within family structures. So many kids haven’t experienced a home with two parents committed not only to each other in marriage, but to taking their children in their arms and going to the cross of Jesus in the Word. About 40% of babies born today are born to unmarried moms, many of whom are tasked with raising a child on their own, which is not how the Lord designed it to be. On top of all that, according to LifeWay research, 67% of American Christian families are either never or rarely in church. As heartbreaking as these stats are, it hits even more when you see your face in them, or the faces of those you care about.

The prophet Jeremiah could empathize more than you may know. He had seen firsthand what happens when the Word of God no longer nourishes a family tree. He saw King David’s family drift away, causing a generational distancing from the LORD, and because of their political influence, many families in the kingdom of Judah followed suit. Occasionally a king would come who try to break that generational cycle, but in no time, old habits returned, and the LORD was more and more left in the shadows of a distant past. Families had less and less time for God, yet all the while they were searching for meaning, searching for leadership, searching for hope. But as the family unit crumbled, so also their society. Morality in Judah tanked, brokenness was everywhere. Fewer and fewer godly leaders could be found. Eventually, Jeremiah, who wrote much the book that bears his name under house arrest, would watch his family members ripped away from their homes, forced into exile by the Babylonians. They had forgotten who our true Leader is. Anyone who says the Bible doesn’t speak to our modern moment, I think you would agree is more than a little bit off. There’s nothing new under the sun, is there?

Today, finding leaders who put Jesus first, leaders who boldly live out the gospel, family leaders who prioritize the LORD more than anything, are becoming a rare commodity. And it’s not lost on me that this may be extremely personal to you. You know what it’s like to experience hurt from someone you thought would love you more than any other. For some of you, you witnessed, like Jeremiah, the next generation of your family have little time for Jesus, and you feel like an ineffective bystander, seeking opportunities to talk about what life is really about, our God and his grace, but nothing seems to change. Maybe as you look at your own family, you never had the experience of parents or leaders who intentionally brought Jesus into every branch and leaf of life experience, and you feel clueless about how to change that generational effect. Do you see how we show our sinful selves in how we face and react to our family brokenness? What do we do?

Tactics like: Trying to fix it ourselves, trying to push our pain away from our mind’s eye, trying to distract our way through, trying to run away, trying to constantly play the victim card, trying to find hope, trying to change. But do you see who is being placed at the center? You. Me. Isn’t it the case that we find ourselves lashing out at the Lord, our Leader? “Why would you let my family, let me, let my kids, let my grandkids, go through all that?” Do you see how our sin is exposed, our naked shame that can quickly be replicated generation to generation? The whispers of regret far too many of us hear, “If only I had done this,” only to realize the next generation has received from us the same brokenness. What can we do? What can any family do? How can our family trees burst with gospel life?

Such life seems to come out of nowhere. But that’s God’s grace. You’ll notice this phenomenon happens a lot in the Bible, where one verse is just loaded with hopelessness, and then out of seeming nowhere, the only true hope this world has ever had, drops onto the scene deus ex machina, into your story. Look at how this happens in Jeremiah. As the prophet sits in chains, the Babylonians bearing down on Jerusalem, the LORD says, “(Jerusalem) will be filled with the dead bodies of the people I slay in my anger and wrath. I will hide my face from this city because of all its wickedness.” The axe seems to be at the foot of the Judah’s family tree. But then, the unexpected grace hits. God says, “Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it…I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity…I will cleanse them from all their sin…will forgive all their sin of rebellion against me.” As God looks at their family stump, he promises life. How could he accomplish such a massive generational change? This is how: “The days are coming when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah. In those days and at that time 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.” A new family Leader of God’s people would come, and his name would identify and heal God’s family forever. You know who this Branch is!

He’s the Branch who unexpectedly, yet perfectly planned, was born into this broken world, into a broken family. His mom…ostracized, his step-dad… seen as crazy. From the moment he was laid in hay covered in saliva, the smell of animal by-products filled his little lungs. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.” This righteous Branch would seek to restore the family tree of humanity. He entered the homes of the outcasts, of the forgotten, of the hopeless, to share with them life that not even the worst generational cycle of abuse and suffering could end. He endured more trauma than any of us will ever know. He willingly chose to spend time with children and shared with them a love that no darkness can change. He went into the homes of families who had no time for him, even his own family rejected him, but his leadership was not one of self-service, but selflessness. His leadership was so devoid of ego, that he simply longed to give us life so we could be a part of a new family. 

Our Jesus the Righteous Branch carried a tree himself, and in the splinters of the cross, he endured the hopelessness we should have had forever. As Jesus carried that wood to a space of seclusion, yet bared for all the world to see, carrying the sins of all families of all time, taking on the punishment of every family leader, the consequences of ungodly leadership. He was nailed, broken away from his Father to endure total abandonment. He carried all the times we badly missed the mark on keeping him as our ultimate priority, which he calls us to do not because he’s hungering for our praise, but because he wants our family trees to draw from his living water of grace. He allowed the axe of death to cut him down. Why? So that all your broken branches of sin, guilt, and shame, could be buried in the grave with him, only for them to stay, never to see the light of day again, because when the Lord of life burst out of that tomb, his righteous branches cover you forever. You live in the shadow of his love. This is the gospel. I love how Tim Keller captures this, “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hoped.”

Because here’s the thing about your Righeous Branch Jesus! He has grafted you in! Through faith, he has connected you with the tree of God’s eternal family. He has put his name on you through baptism: Righteous, holy, God’s special possession. He has called you out of generational darkness, into his eternal light. He has redeemed your hurt and pain, and done the impossible, he’s brought life out of it! How the Lord does that is simply marvelous! To remove any thought of victimhood, such a lifestyle isn’t for you anymore dear branch of Jesus. He as your Leader, your Messiah, has a far different plan for you, leaving behind a legacy that we will explore to no end in heaven. His gospel has a forever effect and it’s what we long to pass down.

I think of my own family. Much of my lineage is of German origin. Which means that my family came out of pagan Germanic tribes, and if you know anything about pagan Germanic tribes, many included the atrocity of human sacrifice in their worship rituals. And yet in that stump of brokenness, the Righteous Branch appeared. I won’t know who Jesus brought to my ancestors, but through that Christian, a new family was connected to the family of Christ. To the point that generation after generation passed down the only true hope in the world so that I could hear the voice of Jesus even in my mother’s womb, that I could be baptized the very day I was born and then be trained in the wonder of the Bible so that God’s truth could be passed on anew to the next generation. Can you think of a grander vision for your family life?

What would it be like to make time to sit at bank of the stream of the Scriptures intentionally, sitting under the shade of Jesus as a family, opening your Bible app, or your physical Bible, and letting his Word take root? What would it be like if we went against the societal grain and had an “unbusy” schedule? A schedule not dictated by endless activities, but centered on resting with Jesus? Grafting him into every twig of life’s experience? What would it be like if our church family's senior members, the wisest members, whom I often hear saying, “When you’re retired, time is always on your hands.” Come alongside a family, or a young person, or a child in our church, and simply share Jesus with them, maybe even mentor them, seeing the time God has given you to make a generational effect, that you can share what the Lord has done, It’s what Jesus loves to do! He finds us in our brokenness and makes us whole, making us by His Spirit to be more like him. It’ why we strive with every last bit of who we are, to grow closer to Jesus, to stand up for those who are put down, to defend with the love of Christ the truth that not only changes a family, but a culture. To rejoice that we are defined as “righteous” because of our Jesus. He makes us whole.

I have one more story to share if you still think your family tree is withering beyond restoration. There’s a dear Christian mom I know who could relate. She grew up in a home where alcoholism was all too present, parents who were all over the map in their spiritual beliefs. She grew up, and got married only to find yourself with a husband struggling with the same disease of alcoholism she lived through as a child. As she cared for the children God had given her, this brokenness led to something beautiful. She began searching the Scriptures, intentionally looking for a church that proclaimed all God’s truth, why? So that her kids could know the gospel and its infinite wonders, so that one day, they too could pass it to the next generation, that they too could know how grace heals, and how Satan can never break the gospel. My dear family in Christ, run under the shadow of Jesus, be refreshed in his voice, and trust that his unexpected grace will never be torn from you. Amen.