Over the dinner table, a small child said: “When I grow up I want a good life.” The child went on to elaborate: “I don’t want to worry and I don’t want be stressed out.”
These are interesting words coming from the mouth of a child. Children are often sensitive to how they are feeling, many times more so than we adults are. They also have an ability to sense the underlying feelings of the people around them. If a child were watching your life, what underlying feelings would those sensitive antennas pick up?
In this case, the child defined the “good life” as free from stress and worry. How would you define the good life? What are you looking for? What do you desire to get out of life? A life free from worry and stress sounds good to me – especially at Christmas. Although one specialist in the area of stress has said, “If you have no stress, you are dead.” So then maybe a life with just a moderate amount of stress sounds good.
Jeremiah, the prophet was speaking to a people who were worried and stressed. Babylonian soldiers, intent on capturing the city, surrounded the city of Jerusalem. Day after day a defenceless, hungry, frightened people listened to the enemy breaking down their walls. They had been warned about the final outcome. Jeremiah had told them that many would die, many would be taken captive and their once thriving city would become a hovel inhabited by a few people and wild animals.
Now that the destruction of Jerusalem is immanent, Jeremiah delivers a message of hope from God. It is the promise of a good life. Jeremiah 33: 15-17 reads, “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 Righteousness.”
You may be saying to yourself, “That sounds okay but… it is not quite what I imagined the good life to be like.” Think of it this way. If enemy soldiers had surrounded Kingston and were firing grenades into our streets and subdivision and people were frequently stepping on land mines, the “good life” would be safety and freedom from the fear of destruction and death. We would think that a wonderful life would be to live in a land of peace and security.
Canada is one of the best countries of the world in which to live. There are few if any places in the world more safe and secure than Canada. Because of our national situation, the idea of a righteous leader and safety is not one of our predominate concerns.
Yet as Canadians we struggle. We are stressed and often anxious. When we are in that state of mind, we certainly don’t feel like we are living the good life. There has got to be more.
The promise we have in Jeremiah lays a foundation for peace and security. It points us to the One who came to give life and give it in abundance—Jesus, the Messiah (the Christ). He is the righteous branch – the righteous descendent of David that Jeremiah refers to.
If I were to say to you, “The good life is found in Jesus,” I imagine that some of you would say to yourself, “I am already a Christian. I am stressed, worried, upset, angry. I am still looking for the “good life”. So how can Jesus give it to me?”
The promise in Jeremiah points to two parts of the good life that God determined to bring into our world through Jesus.
Read Jeremiah 3:15: “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.”
Notice the last part of verse 15: “He will do what is just and right in the land.” I want to link this phrase with a central commitment of the Christian faith. The One who comes to do what is just and right in the land calls us to follow him. We follow Jesus to learn from him and live like him. He wants to mentor us into individuals who act justly and do what is right. There are two implications.
The first implication is surprising. The good life is not about you or me. The truth is that the more we attempt to centre the good life around ourselves, our family and our own needs, the more the good life eludes us.
The good life is about justice and righteousness – God’s justice and righteousness. If everyone in the world determined to act justly and righteously, wars, poverty, exploitation of people and famine would cease. Disease would diminish. Our environment would begin to experience healing. Our consumer-based economy would be radically altered.
Every day we are bombarded with messages telling us the good life comes through entertainment, the pursuit of pleasure and the possession of things. These messages influence our expectations and our approach to family living. We attempt to create the “good life” by accumulating things, and pursuing entertainment and pleasure.
These things are not bad in of themselves. But the pursuit of them does not lead to the “good life.” If the rich and famous can teach us anything, it is how empty and unsatisfying life can be even when a person has all the trappings our culture proclaims as important for the “good life”.
So if the good life is not about us or about possessions, or entertainment or pleasure, then how do we experience the “good life” according God?
The “good life” begins when we are willing to lose our lives for the sake of following Jesus. We follow Jesus, in fact we connect with Jesus as family, when we choose to do the will of God.
In the Gospel of Mark we read Jesus’ words: “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother, (Mark 3:35)." Just saying that Jesus is important to us is not enough. The importance of doing the will of God is emphasized near the end of the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, (Matthew 7:21)”.
What is the will of God? We can’t do it if we don’t know what it is! The Bible provides a clear understanding of the will of God both specifically and generally. Specific examples are: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery. A general example would be to love your neighbour as yourself. In Matthew 6: 33. Jesus sums it up like this, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Ask yourself: If I truly sought God’s kingdom and his righteousness first in every area of my life, what would my life look like? Would some of my conflicts in relationships dissolve or would they escalate? Would the way I treat people change? Would my attitude toward my possessions be different? Would the things I desire change? How about my conversations or my speech patterns? What about the way I do business? How about my use of time? Am I concerned to help those God values such as the powerless and marginalized people in our world?
The questions could continue and continue and continue… To seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness deals with every part of life.
The context of Matthew 6: 33 is the worries and stresses of life. Jesus is saying that if we seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, God will look after the things we tend to worry and stress about.
I would encourage you to list all your worries and stresses on a piece of paper. Maybe you will need a legal size piece to list all of them. As you look at the things you are worried and stressed about ask: Would these concerns stress Jesus? If they would not stress Jesus, why am I as a follower of Jesus stressed? Look for the answer to that question. Ask God to give you the grace you need to make the necessary changes in your life.
The good life then is not about us. It is about following Jesus and doing what is just and right. To follow Christ is to do the will of God. God’s will is that we trust him so completely we will seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Maybe you are saying to yourself, “I don’t think I quite measure up to the righteousness of Jesus.” If you are saying that, I say, “Good!” You are now prepared to proceed to the next verse. Jeremiah 3:16 is the second part of God’s plan for experiencing the “good life” through Jesus. “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 Righteousness.”
Notice the phrase “The LORD Our Righteousness”. A parallel passage in Jeremiah 23: 6 makes it clear that the one called ‘the LORD our Righteousness’ is the Messiah. He is the one who will execute justice and righteousness in the land.
How does the LORD become our righteousness? The Apostle Paul explains it this way: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” It is the central message of the Gospel. We failed. We sinned. We have fallen short of the righteousness of God. We want the “good life” but we want it to centre on us rather than on God’s justice and righteousness. The Good News is that Jesus took upon himself our failure, our sin, our self-centredness. He became sin, in our place, so that we could know the righteousness of God.
God did this because as he looks at you and me, he says, “You know what? I love these people. I want to give them meaningful life that will last forever.” He did this through Jesus, the Branch of David. The New Living Translation puts it, “God did it through the righteous descendent of David.”
Jesus became our righteousness by carrying our failure to the cross. Through him, we can experience forgiveness and know the righteousness of God.
Take a moment to bring to God your anxieties, your stress, your discontent, your failures. Ask forgiveness for failing to seek his kingdom and righteousness first. The promise is that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) By the grace of God, you can be forgiven, restored and revitalized.
What a wonderful way to begin Advent!