December 1, 2025

FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT: HOPE

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.”

(Jeremiah 29.11-12)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Yesterday I suggested that we could read this passage of scripture out of Jeremiah as a twofold. It was quite literally a word of hope to the Jerusalem exiles. It was God’s challenge to them to be more than faithful in the land of their sojourn. They weren’t merely to exist in Babylon. They were expected to thrive. Their lives there were meant to be twofold: a glory to God that they would not be defeated by this exile in a distant land; and a witness to the Babylonians of what faith in God can do regardless of location. Their legacy of hope as Hebrews, Israelites and Jews was long. In truth, the whole of the Old Testament was a witness and testimony of hope in the fulfillment of God’s promise by God. Regardless of their actions, the Jews were never able to save themselves even from themselves. Their faith in God’s word, however, allowed them to survive to see what God could do. Their very survival was a testament to what God was about to do. They just never knew when. This prophecy to the Jerusalem exiles in Babylon, as well as to those left behind in Jerusalem/Israel, actually gave them a time frame. It wasn’t a comfortable time frame as seventy years had become a lifetime. It was their “threescore and ten” to borrow from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. (I don’t suppose many have considered the shared meaning and message of their connection.) Nonetheless, they had an anticipated goal and objective. Within seventy years “those who were dwelling in darkness would see a great light.” Do you recognize that imagery from Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 9.2) as well as Jesus’ use of that scripture as an announcement to His ministry of Jubilee beginning in Nazareth (Matthew 4.12-17)? The light for the Jerusalem exiles was the return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple. It would once again be a beacon for the sojourner looking for where God could be found as well as a lamp to their feet making every step secure. It was once a great light and would again be a great light but only if it transcended the physical and amplified the spiritual. We know this to be the true intention of God through two prophesies.

The first prophesy was that of Ezekiel’s revelation concerning the departure and the return of the “glory (shekinah) of God” to the Mount of Olives and back again to the restored Temple on Mount Zion. Too many cast their lots on that blessed event with the rebuilding of the Temple upon the exiles return from Babylon with the resources promised to Nehemiah and Ezra by Cyrus. Remember, mighty ones, Cyrus believed that the building of “that house” in Jerusalem was more a testament to himself as the favored one of God than for God Himself. This means that the rebuilt temple did not have a singular purpose or focus for the world (look and see what Cyrus has done) or for Israel (look what we have been given again not by our own efforts). We do not hear of that moment when Ezekiel’s prophecy of God’s shekinah returning. For Ezekiel, the revelatory prophesies given to him were beyond dreams; they were theophanies or real acts of nature in which God revealed himself. The “wheel within a wheel” vision given to Ezekiel was an example of this. Consider well then the four hundred years of prophetic silence which existed following the building of the Temple up until the birth of John the Baptizer as precursor to Jesus the Christ, his cousin. It is important to hear how John the Elder and disciple of Jesus puts the “cleansing of the Temple” at the beginning of his gospel remembrance where the Synoptic Gospels have it at the end preceding His arrest and crucifixion. For them, His challenge of the temple authority became the proverbial straw which broke the camel’s back. For John, it was the testimony of “light of the world which came as God in the flesh” and thus brought God’s shekinah back to the Temple in truth, justice and holiness. We hear Jesus say, “My Father’s house is a house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves.” If there was no prophetic word following the rebuilding of the Temple “four hundred years” previous it could well have been a sign of the absence of God’s true presence in the Temple. It still existed apart from Jerusalem.

The second prophecy comes in John’s Revelation Given by Jesus the Christ. There is speaks of the hope yet to come when the “new heaven, new earth and new Jerusalem” are set in place by Jesus Christ Himself. We were foretold of this event by Jesus Himself when He spoke to the disciples in the Upper Room (read John 14) saying “In My Father’s House there are many rooms and I AM going there to prepare a place for you; if it were not so then why would I tell you.” In the midst of that
“new place” which is revealed to John of Patmos by the Resurrected and Glorified Christ in Heaven, there would be no Temple but only the throne of God whose glory would fill the whole space. it was, we could say, the fulfillment of God’s shekinah returning and thus bringing holiness and righteousness to it fulfillment of God’s promise made to Abraham according to his faith.

Mighty ones of God, we can read the words of Jeremiah with Jesus in mind. He is the One who not only gives us hope of the glorious restoration of the people of God’s hand but fulfills it with His birth, life, death and rebirth/resurrection. Consider that gift well today and this week as we prepare to share the good news with the world as did the angels “Glory to God in the Highest!”

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.