From the beginning, we have so often chosen to make our own standards of what is good and right. Our own codes of morality. No matter how well we might think that works, it won’t help us if it doesn’t line up with God’s standard of morality. We have fallen so far short and gotten so off track from that standard. Which created all kinds of damage in our lives and collateral damage in the lives of those around us. The influences we often listen to point us to live by our own codes of morality instead of God’s. That won’t help us. But God, who loves us, had a way to give us his morality, his righteousness, as a gift. He also provided a way for us to be encouraged, influenced, & shepherded back to the life He offers us. He did that all through Jesus. The One promised to come.
From the beginning, we have so often chosen to make our own standards of what is good and right. Our own codes of morality. No matter how well we might think that works, it won’t help us if it doesn’t line up with God’s standard of morality. We have fallen so far short and gotten so off track from that standard. Which created all kinds of damage in our lives and collateral damage in the lives of those around us. The influences we often listen to point us to live by our own codes of morality instead of God’s. That won’t help us. But God, who loves us, had a way to give us his morality, his righteousness, as a gift. He also provided a way for us to be encouraged, influenced, & shepherded back to the life He offers us. He did that all through Jesus. The One promised to come.
She just didn’t get it. How could her daughter possibly think that? Unbeknownst to all, Target had become a warzone. Ashley, a spirited preschooler, versus Mom, a frustrated parent. A few months back, I ran into Target to grab some groceries, when I unintentionally approached this far too familiar battleground. From what I heard as I awkwardly tried to sneak away, Ashley had been holding a toy, and her baby brother snatched it out of her hand when she wasn’t paying attention. This in turn led Ashley to grab it back and pinch her brother. Her mom called her on it, but she didn’t see anything wrong. I can still hear her little voice, “He’s the one who took it, Mama, I did nothing wrong. He deserved it!” We’ve all seen that shouting match unfold in a store near you, and it illustrates something about human beings: Like little Ashley, we have an inborn drive to justify ourselves. We want others to see us as righteous according to our terms, our standards. I never realized until I was on Reddit last week how much the word “righteous” and “righteousness” are back in our American vocabulary. I always thought such words were only heard in the Bible or church, but it’s all over the place now. People calling out others for being “self-righteous” for having a worldview or morality that’s different. People justifying their actions, why they’re right, and anyone who thinks differently is wrong. We as people don’t like being wrong. We come up with our own standards and without realizing it, we expect the world around us to affirm that, and anyone who doesn’t affirm us offends us in a small way or a big way. But what if there is a standard beyond anything we could keep? How can we really be righteous? How can there be peace for broken people like you and me who are driven to justify our brokenness?
Such peace was something only a few knew in Jeremiah’s time. It was about 600 BC, but honestly, Judah at this time was a lot like 2022. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: Political leaders taking advantage of their citizens, abusing their power, and social injustice all over the country. People were often mindless and oblivious to social and moral problems, trying to avoid conflict and conversation about it. A nation divided into a tribal-like culture, pitted against each other, not united. People who were easily offended, especially when it came to God’s Word, and if you walked around the country of Judah enough you’d hear more “How dare you tell me how to live my life” than you’d ever care to hear! People in Judah were searching for righteousness, thinking they could find it their own way, and cutting down anyone who dared correct them, “How dare you tell me how to live my life!”
Maybe you've heard that soul-scorching phrase from someone you care about. Why does it hurt so much? Why does it sting when your child dismisses your view on life or a decision you made? Why do we take it personally when someone corrects us? It really is an ego thing. Lionel Ritchie in an interview once said, “All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes.” The reality is, it’s not just artists, the Bible tells us it’s all of us, you and me. By nature, we want people to recognize our greatness. We want to prove ourselves. But when we meet resistance, when others show our version of righteousness or rightness to be wrong or inferior, we take things personally. Our hearts struggle and condemn us. The influences within us and around us dictate how we see righteousness.
God doesn’t mince words when it comes to those influences, inside us and out, that tell us we can be righteous, and make things right, on our own. He stares down such influences and says, “Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away…I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done.” All the influences that people wrongfully affirmed that were leading people away from God are condemned by our heavenly Father. Because such influences whether in our environment or in our hearts come from the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing, Satan. God as he so often does lets his heart bleed on the pages of Scripture, as the shepherd he is, seeing his lambs, his sheep he’s cared for as his own, you and me, believers of all times and places, choosing to wander into the dangers of sin and Satan, it makes him angry. It makes him angry because we’re drifting away from him.
It still makes him angry today. He knows what sin is capable of, what our sin-influenced hearts think: “I am righteous and the world should recognize me for that.” As sinners, we often compare ourselves with others or lash out when someone lovingly calls us out for something wrong we are doing in our lives, and or look for affirming voices to tell us a certain sin is okay. We are our own worst shepherds so often of the time. We want to shepherd ourselves instead of giving the staff to Jesus.
Leaving the metaphors, let’s get concrete. Let’s be real. How does this sinful self-shepherding happen? It happens when one of our kids calls us out on something, that inner anger we have. It happens when a wife rightly calls out a husband, it’s not nagging, it’s love, but our drive for righteousness rejects it. It happens when we dish heat on social media. It happens when we ghost a friend at school when they disagree with us. It all points to one of our core struggles: The struggle we put on ourselves to prove ourselves. To prove we are right, we are okay, or we can pick up our broken pieces and put ourselves back together, but it’s like putting Elmer’s glue on a broken diamond, it won’t ever be strong enough to hold it together. We can’t make things right. We can’t be righteous. We are sheep without a shepherd. But that’s not where God left us.
That’s not where God left his flock in Jeremiah’s time either. Notice, after he calls out those influences that we often follow instead of the LORD, he doesn’t drop a bomb of punishment. Instead, he steps in. He says, “I myself with gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture.” The Lord saw how lost his flock was, searching for righteousness and scattered in their psyche. So he puts it on himself, to gather them and to give them a righteousness that they could never achieve. Righteousness that would give them a home, a pasture, peace again. He would gather his flock with his own arms, and they would never “be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing.” The broken would have completeness, peace, again.
If you feel broken this morning, constantly trying to prove you’re okay when you’re not, trying to show the world it’s wrong about you, offended when you get called out, stop chasing the winds of pride, and peer into the Bible and you’ll find righteousness, unlike anything you could begin to imagine. Are you ready to see Jesus in Jeremiah 23. Here he is: “The days are coming, declares the LORD, “when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD our righteousness.” Why is that “our” blown up on the screen? Because the Lord is talking about you and me, the righteousness Jesus won for us!
He is the righteous branch of David’s family. The king who always reigns with complete wisdom and always does what is right. The Shepherd who will never stop gathering his sheep, you. He is our Jesus, who doesn’t let the sinful influences of our world or our hearts stop him. Satan says to you, “Justify yourself. Prove you’re somebody. Prove you’re right.” Jesus says to you, “You’ve been justified. You’re more than just somebody in God’s eyes. You can be at peace now through me.” Jesus has given you a kind of righteousness that silences the voices that pressure you, that demand you make right what you’ve done wrong. He quiets the shouting you hear, telling you in no uncertain terms, “You need to fix yourself.” He tells you in Word and sacrament, “Stop trying to prove right what you know is wrong, just follow me. Let me care for you.” He is your Shepherd, your ultimate pastor. Your Shepherd has something far better for you than proving the world wrong: Peace with God. Living safely always (Jer 23:6).
What does living safely mean? Being in Jesus’ flock, covered in the white of his righteousness, doesn’t mean life will be free of danger and pain. But here’s what it does mean: It means you won’t be going through it scattered, lost, and isolated, but you’ll walk with Jesus. You walk in faith knowing even in the valleys of darkness, he’s right there. You live with a wholeness that Jesus will make things right as he always has. You can live without the pressure to prove, because you have the Shepherd who saved. You’ve been justified, declared righteous. Free.
What would life look like if you weren’t living to justify yourself anymore? How would you view your work if you remembered the promises of the Bible that God has prepared your work before time began to glorify him, not to prove yourself? How different parenting is when we focus on wanting our kids to see Jesus as we teach them how to say sorry and “I forgive you.” How deep marriage is, when our sole aim is to bring our spouse closer to Jesus by praying together and reading the Bible together. How freeing life would be if we but focused on being known by Jesus, a sheep at his side. This is the life you have in the Shepherd who laid down his life for you. When God sees you, he doesn’t see a person lost in an impossible dream of self-sufficient righteousness, he sees Jesus. That’s righteousness. We don’t need to prove ourselves. We’re loved by God.
In a world seeking promotion, to be viral to the end of time, to be right, you live for a different reason. You live justified. Christ is your righteousness. He’s done it all. He’s your shepherd who has compassion for you and will gather you again and again to his side. Pressure gone, peace for the broken. Righteous in the eyes of God. Live free, sheep of God. Amen.