Put your hope in the Hope of Israel

Sermon for the week of Trinity 14

Jeremiah 17:13-14 + John 5:1-15

In the First Lesson tonight, you heard about one of the miracles Jesus performed, healing a man near the pool called Bethesda, in Jerusalem. It was no ordinary pool. According to John it was a healing pool, a pool to which God would send one of His angels, from time to time, to stir up the water and to heal whoever was first to step into the water. It sounds fantastical, but it isn’t really that surprising. Jerusalem was still, at that time, the city of God, His chosen dwelling place among men. The Israelites, at that time, were still the chosen people of God. So it isn’t that surprising that God would mercifully provide them with this miraculous place of healing.

But the healing God occasionally provided there, by the hand of an angel, for only one person at a time, was nothing compared to the true healing of the soul—and, eventually, the full healing of the body, too—that God offered to all Israel, and to all people, through the promised Christ. Physical ailments are the result of, and signs of, the spiritual ailment that infects us all, the disease of sin that corrupts our flesh, our very nature. So when Jesus went and healed those physical ailments, as He did in that First Lesson, it was always a sign that people should put their trust in Him as the Healer of sin, the Healer of their relationship with God. As we heard on Sunday, He is the Physician who came to heal the sick, who came to call sinners to repentance. Because with repentance comes the healing of the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation from sin, death, and the power of the devil.

The prophet Jeremiah knew that the Lord God was the source of that healing, and that the Lord would eventually send His Messiah to Israel, the Savior of Israel, the Savior of the world—Jesus, whose name means “Savior”—the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And so Jeremiah prayed, O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake You shall be ashamed.

The LORD was Israel’s only and sure hope against their enemies, against famine, against sickness, against death itself. And now that Christ has come, remember that “Israel” no longer refers to that country in the Middle East. It refers to the Christian Church throughout the world. The Lord, and His Christ, is the hope of the Church—a sure hope who will not disappoint us—unless we forsake Him. All who forsake You shall be ashamed, put to shame, disappointed.

But forsaking the Lord, the God of Israel, was all too common among the Israelites in the days of Jeremiah, leading up to the Babylonian captivity. Israel forsook God by worshiping idols, and by trusting in men to save them, and by taking the words and promises of God out of context. How so? They took His promises of peace to Jerusalem to mean that they were safe from foreign invasion, regardless of whether or not they kept His covenant, regardless of whether or not they lived in repentance and faith. These same forms of forsaking the Lord are still common today. All those who reject Christ Jesus as Lord have already forsaken the true God. But how many idols have Christians gone after, too, whether it’s in the form of praying to the saints for help, or of putting their career and their earthly life ahead of God, or clinging to institutional churches that have abandoned the pure doctrine of God’s Word? How many Christians put their trust in manmade forms of worship, or in politicians, or in charismatic church leaders? How many Christians take the words and promises of God out of context, preaching “peace” and “forgiveness” without repentance, without recognizing and turning from sin? Just as Israel was put to shame and subjected to destruction and captivity, so all who forsake the Lord will be put to shame when Christ returns.

Those who depart from Me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters. Now God speaks through Jeremiah. He warns that those who depart from Him, all who depart from Him, will be “written in the earth.” What does that mean? Well, just as the names of believers are “written in heaven,” as Jesus once put it, because, through faith in Christ, they are counted among the citizens of heaven and will inherit the heavenly kingdom one day, so all who depart from the true God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, will be written in the earth. They will not take part in the resurrection to eternal life. They will not see the heavenly kingdom, but will die an earthly death and then be raised to the second death of hell.

Why? Because the Lord alone is the fountain of living waters. He is life. He gives life, and health, and hope. Jesus tied Himself to the living waters of the pool of Bethesda (in John 5), to show that He is the true source of life and health. He promised the woman at the well (in John 4) that He would give her living water, if she asked Him for it. And two chapters later, also in John’s Gospel, Jesus will cry out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water, referring specifically to the Holy Spirit who would dwell in the hearts of believers after the Day of Pentecost. To forsake the Lord God—to forsake Jesus as the Savior—is to abandon the only source of true life. But to come to Him, to remain with Him and in Him, is to receive life, and health, and hope that will never be put to shame, no matter how much death and darkness surround us in this evil world.

And so, in response to this, Jeremiah pleads: Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; Save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise. If only the sick man lying by the Pool of Bethesda had known who was talking to him when Jesus asked, Do you want to be made well? He didn’t know who it was, so he complained about not having anyone to help him down to the pool. But the pool wasn’t the real answer. Jesus was, and is, the answer. Jesus was, and is, the Healer—the Healer of bodies, yes, for a brief time while He was here on earth, but much more than that, the Healer of souls, the Healer of guilt, the Healer of the breech between God and man. He is the only One through whom healing comes. And since all men are sick with sin and guilt, all men need the Healer, and are urged and invited by God to call upon the name of Jesus for that healing: Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed. Save me, and I shall be saved!

Let that be your constant prayer. Look nowhere else for healing. Look nowhere else for salvation. Look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Call upon His name. Put your hope in the Hope of Israel. And soon, when He comes again, you will find that, not only your soul, but also your body will be healed and made new. And you will see the Lord’s salvation in the eternal life of your new heavenly home. Amen.