S7 Episode #12- Jehovah Tsidkenu
THE ONE WITH Jes + Jehovah TSIDKENU
This week on The Collected Podcast, Jes is sharing Part 12 of our Names of God series! Over the past few years we have been highlighting different names and character attributes of The Lord. Understanding who God is and who we are in Him are vital parts of walking in freedom and remaining rooting in who we are created to be. This week we are learning about Jehovah Tsidkenu– The Lord Our Righteousness. When God shares this name in Jeremiah 23, the Israelites are in the midst of utter destruction, and yet God provides the hope of a coming savior. Just as the Israelites were helpless to save themselves from captivity in Babylon, so are we unable to save ourselves from our own sin and depravity. God is a righteous God, therefore He demands righteousness from his subjects. Yet, in his great grace and mercy, he provided a way for us to be righteous. The beauty and power of this name is that the perfect righteousness of Jesus is ours, if we only chose to accept it.
LISTEN
WATCH
I’m sorry, there is no video this week! Videos will resume next time! :)
SHOW NOTES
It’s part 11 of our Names of God series! We are highlighting different names and character attributes of The Lord. Understanding who God is and who we are in Him are vital parts of walking in freedom and remaining rooting in who we are created to be. This week we are learning about Jehovah Tsidkenu– The Lord Our Righteousness. I’m so excited to dive into this name because it is such a beautiful and hope-filled prophecy of Jesus.
The first time we see this name in Jeremiah 23, the Israelites are in the midst of utter destruction. The Kingdom of Israel has been divided and the Northern Kingdom has fallen to the Assyrians. Now the Southern Kingdom, Judah, is teetering on the brink of destruction. They have refused to listen to God’s words and obey His commands. They are caught in sins of greed, idolatry, false teaching and corruption. They are stubborn, unrepentant and chasing after their own evil desires.
Does any of this sound familiar? We saw this over and over again in our study of the judges and Jehovah Shalom in our last Names of God episode. But how often do we also see these same sins and attitudes in our own lives?
I know I have been guilty of pride and selfishness– of knowing something was wrong and yet doing it anyway. How many times in my 20s did I stay in an unhealthy dating relationship longer than I should have? I knew it wasn’t right for me, yet it was comfortable and I wanted companionship, so I stayed. Starting over felt too daunting. The unknowns felt too risky. This all seemed innocent enough, and my fears felt valid, justified. But if we’re honest here, this was blatant disobedience. I was failing to trust God with my present and my future. Every day that I stayed– when I knew in my spirit that I was supposed to go– I was essentially denying the sovereignty and goodness of God. My prayer journal was filled with proclamations of trust and yet my actions shouted to God, “I know better than you and I’m going to do things my way.”
The hard truth is that this one act of defiance alone is enough to make me unrighteous. On my own I will always fall short of perfection, I can never be right before God.
It’s easy to try and justify or compare our sins and feel like we are doing a pretty good job, right? I mean I’ve never murdered anyone. But I recently heard an analogy by The Church of Eleven22 pastor, Joby Martin, that really hit home. He explained that trying to achieve salvation on our own is like trying to swim from North America to Europe. It doesn’t matter how good of a swimmer you are– the task is too great and no one can achieve it on their own. I failed my lifeguard test in high school, so let’s be honest… I’m not making it very far in this scenario. Even the best swimmer in the world might only make it a few miles out before exhaustion, dehydration, and the elements take them down. The point is– whether you succeed in swimming 20 yards or 20 miles, you’re still dead. Dead is dead.
BUT GOD intervened and made a way for us to be righteous. He knew that we could never do it on our own, so He sent His son Jesus to live a perfect life and become the final sacrifice for our sins. He paid the price once and for all, so that we don’t have to. Through faith in Jesus we are made right before God. Praise the Lord! Jesus is Jehovah Tsidkenu– The Branch of Righteousness– that Jeremiah had prophesied hundreds of years earlier.
OLD TESTAMENT PROPHETS
Jeremiah was an Old Testament prophet who was calling the people of Judah to return to The Lord or face destruction. Before we go any further, I want to share a great explanation that I found about Biblical prophets from Old Testament Today by John H. Walton and Andrew E. Hill. They explain, “In the Old Testament, prophecy is a message from God, more precisely, a proclamation of God’s perspective and plan. A prophet is best understood as a spokesperson for deity– a mouthpiece for God, though not a passive one. If we use the analogy of a college course, prophecy is like the course syllabus that provides the professor’s perspective on the course and her plan for the course. A student assistant who comes to the class and distributes the syllabus to class members fills the prophetic role. The assistant is not offering his own perspective or ideas about the professor’s plan, but is only delivering the final product.” (p. 231)
To take this analogy one step further, I think that we, God’s people, would be the students receiving the “syllabus”. We most likely don’t fully understand the plan, we might not completely agree with the plan, or even like the plan, but God is still in control and it is our job to follow Him, trust Him, rest in Him, and obey Him. He sees the full picture and is working all things out for the good of those who love him and are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
JEREMIAH 23
Jeremiah would spend forty years proclaiming a message of “repent or perish” to the people of Judah, and he would eventually see Jerusalem captured and the temple destroyed by the Babylonians. And yet, in the middle of the destruction, God provides the hope of a coming savior. Just as the Israelites were helpless to save themselves from captivity in Babylon, so are we unable to save ourselves from our own sin and depravity. God is a righteous God, therefore He demands righteousness from his subjects. Yet, in his great grace and mercy, he provided a way for us to be righteous. The beauty and power of this name is that the perfect righteousness of Jesus is ours, if we only chose to accept it.
Let’s take a look at Jeremiah 23:1-8, where we see the name Jehovah Tsidkenu for the first time:
“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend my people: “Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done,” declares the Lord. “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord.
“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 Righteous Savior.
“So then, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when people will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ Then they will live in their own land.”
Here we see that the people will indeed be destroyed and scattered, but that is not the end of the story. Praise the Lord that our destruction is never the end of the story. I think someone out there needed to hear that today. You may feel destroyed and scattered, but your story is not over. God is still at work. If your destruction was a result of your own sin, repent and turn back to the Lord. If your destruction was out of your control, lean into the promises of God and know that He is at work and can use all things for your good and His glory.
Jeremiah goes on to record what The Lord promises to do for his flock– the people of Judah:
He will gather the remnant and bring them back to their pasture.
They will be fruitful and multiply.
He will raise up shepherds to tend to them.
He will take away their fear.
He will provide a “righteous branch” to bring justice and righteousness to the land.
The people will be restored.
HOPE IN CHRIST
The message here and throughout the whole Old Testament is that in the midst of impending destruction, there is still hope. And that hope is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ– the righteous branch of the line of David. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us about Jesus,“He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
In Romans 3:10, Paul reminds the people of Rome that “no one is righteous, not even one.”
He goes on to give the remedy in verses 21-26…
“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
From the very beginning, God had a plan in place to save His people. In Genesis 3:15, sin has entered the story, but God says to Satan, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
This is foreshadowing the work of Jesus on the cross– Jesus suffered greatly (thus the “bruised heel”), but Satan received the death blow (“crushed head”) because all who believe in Jesus are free from death and the power that Satan holds over the world.
Later, in the book is Isaiah, God once again promises that a Savior would come from the lineage of King David to bring full redemption and restoration
Isaiah 9:6-7
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
LINEAGE OF JESUS
Matthew 1:1-17 lays out the full lineage of Jesus taking us from Abraham all the way to the birth of Jesus. I’ve been guilty of skipping over genealogy chapters when I read the Bible. It’s so easy to forget that these were real people who had real lives and struggles and triumphs. I’m not going to read the full 17 verses to you right now, but I want to highlight a few things that stood out to me. I’d also encourage you to take some time this week to read through this chapter on your own and see what new insights the Holy Spirit has for you.
The first thing I noticed is that women are acknowledged in the line of Jesus– we see Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathseba, Mary… this fact right here could be a full podcast series on its own! In fact, Francine Rivers has a powerful book series about the lives of each of these women. I highly recommend it! We can’t camp out here right now, but I still wanted to at least mention it.
In verse 6 we see the key verse about King David– “and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.”
Verse 6 confirms the prophecies from Isaiah and Jeremiah– Jesus is from the lineage of King David– check! But what really jumped off the page for me was verse 11-12, “and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel…”
Even in the Babylonian Exile, God STILL protected the promise. When all seemed lost, and all hope seemed gone, God was still at work protecting his promises and making a way for the salvation of His people.
Even if everything around you has crumbled and you’ve found yourself so far from where you thought you would be, God is still at work in your life.
HOPE + A NEW COVENANT
The whole book of Jeremiah is filled with words of hope that will carry the people through some dark days ahead. Let these verses to the Israelites fill your heart with hope as well because we are part of the New Covenant that is prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-33…
“The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, thought I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord.
“But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
“Because God is righteous, sin must be paid for. Because He is merciful, He delayed the payment. And because He is full of grace, He made the payment for us.” (Run Over by the Grace Train, Joby Martin, p. 53)
That is such a perfect summary of everything we have learned so far! I want to end today with a beautiful word of encouragement from Jeremiah 17:7-8…
“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.”
NEXT STEPS
Here are a few action steps to help you dip deeper this week!
Read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17. Ask The Holy Spirit to reveal something new about the lives of these people. Select one person to research further.
Take communion. Spend time in prayer confessing your sins and praising God for the redeeming work of Jesus on the cross.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please remember that everything we do is funded by those who benefit from our ministry. Our ministry a 501(c)3, so your contribution is tax-deductible.
CHECK THIS OUT:
The Collected Podcast is a production of Collected Ministries, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping disciples of Jesus discover and live from their true identity in Christ, recognize and walk in their divine purpose within the Kingdom of God, and experience growth in their capacity for mature, healthy relationships.
Follow us!
Jes French: @jesafrench
Jes’ Hand Lettering: @sprezzafoundry
Charitable partner: @flourishkenya
The Collected Podcast is produced by Jes French and edited by Jacob Early. Cover art designed by Ben Biondo.