Introduction
Today the Names of God series continues. In most cultures, as in the cultures of the OT, people’s names are significant and have a meaning. And the name Yahweh showed Israel that God was not just a force or power, but in some wonderful way, He was a person – someone they could relate to. It was the wonderful covenant name of the God who reveals himself as accessible to those who enter into covenant with him.
The names of God in the Old and New Testaments are a GREAT way of getting to know and understand God, BUT the primary name by which we know God is the name of JESUS. His is the supreme and superior name; and if we want to know what God is like, who he is, how he acts, we only need to take a long look at Jesus, and read the gospels.
So it’s fitting for us today to look at one of the divine names that is at one and the same time a name of God AND a name of God’s Messiah. Jeremiah looks to the future and sees a glorious and mysterious future King, and says, “This is the name by which he will be called: ‘Yahweh-tsidkenu’ - ‘The LORD Our Righteousness’. In the original, ‘Yahweh-tsidkenu’.
Revelation of the Name
To understand the name Yahweh-tsidkenu, we have to understand the context in which the name was revealed; and to do that we have to go back to the dark and violent years of around 600 BC. In Jeremiah 23 we find a prophecy that bad shepherds will be replaced by a good one, that an unrighteous king will be replaced by a righteous one, and that the first exodus will be dwarfed by a second one.
In verses 1-4, we find God speaking words of judgement to a Jewish nation that was being led astray by wicked rulers. God says his sheep are being destroyed and scattered, they are uncared for, and their shepherds are to blame. Imagine that! A shepherd destroying and scattering the flock! It was the time of King Zedekiah, and he was that shepherd. A hundred years or so before, the northern Kingdom of Israel had been defeated and led off into an Assyrian exile. And now the Southern kingdom of Judah, was had been annexed by Babylon. Zedekiah was the 21st and last king of Judah, set up by Nebuchadnezzar as a puppet king. Jeremiah had prophesied it was God’s will that Judah and Jerusalem submit to Babylon; part of God’s plan of punishment and restoration, and Judah was to accept it. Zedekiah had other plans though, and rebelled against Babylon. It’s all in 2 Kings 24-25.
But it all went wrong, Jerusalem was surrounded, Zedekiah tried to escape from the city, was captured by Babylonian troops, his young sons executed in front of him, and then his eyes were gauged out. He was led off to spend the rest of his days in Babylonian prison. He was 32 years old.
This was Zedekiah. This was the man whose name meant ‘The LORD is my Righteousness.’ Yes, Zedekiah’s name was similar to the name of the future righteous King. Yet in so many ways Yahweh was not Zedekiah’s righteousness and Zedekiah himself was far from righteous. Time after time the Prophet Jeremiah bewails Zedekiah’s unrighteous rule of Judah. Zedekiah was unrighteous in that he didn’t listen to God, allowed idol worship and occultism to flourish and didn’t point people to God and His ways. Judah was an unjust, unethical, unfair and unkind place to live. And Zedekiah didn’t live up to his name; he was an unrighteous king in an unrighteous land.
You see righteousness at the very heart of God’s character. The word stems from the biblical root word tsedik, which means “straightness.” It carries the meanings of ‘Right standing and just and right behaviour within a community – both a rightness with God and with others.’ And Zedekiah didn’t have either.
Into this situation, and in deliberate contrast to Zedekiah, comes a new revelation from God. A new name; and God says in verses 5-6, ‘I’m going to raise up a new king, a wise king, a righteous king, who will save Israel and he WILL be righteous. He will be like his name and his name will be ‘The LORD our Righteousness’ – Yahweh-tsidkenu. He’ll be what Zedekiah was not. He’ll be a righteous king in a righteous land. He will be what his name is. He’ll be called ‘The LORD’, ‘The LORD our Righteousness’.
Expansion & Application
Well, that’s nice. But some might ask, so what? What difference does it make to us? How’s it relevant to me? Well, this name can mean at least 5 things to us:
1. For those struggling with the idea of the divinity or Godhood of the Lord Jesus, this name helps.
2. For those who think they can get in God’s good books by their own merit, this name gives clarity.
3. For those who find it hard to believe they could ever find favour with God, this name speaks comfort.
4. For spiritual growth, this name is a challenge.
5. For those in crisis, wondering where God is and what he’s doing, this name is a reassurance.
First, and very briefly: for those who struggle with the divinity or Godhood of Jesus, the LORD Our Righteousness settles things. Next time a Jehovah’s Witness comes knocking, show him Jeremiah 23:6. The King to come is called Yahweh. Yahweh-tsidkenu. No other ‘person’ in the Bible is called by this name. It wasn’t a usual name for the time, like Zedekiah was for example. It was a revelation name of God. Both NT and Old recognise the God-ness of the Lord Jesus. The coming Messiah-King will be called ‘the LORD our Righteousness!’
Secondly, the LORD Our Righteousness clarifies something about how we can be right with God – about how we can get into relationship with him – and how we can be sure of heaven. The name reveals that we CAN’T do it without help!
What the psalmist writes in Psalm 14, Paul reiterates in Romans 3 – “There is none righteous, not even one.” “All have sinned and have fall short of the glory of God.” And Paul tells it how it is. The human race is lost. Europeans, Jews, Africans, Americans, Asians, Arabs, you name it - as far as being righteous is concerned, as far as being legally in the right before God, not one of us has a leg to stand on and all deserve God’s judgement because of our sin. We can never earn forgiveness for this. We can do our absolute best, be on our best behaviour, but it’ll never come up to God’s righteous standard. We’ve given Zedekiah a bad time, but hey! With one finger pointing at him there are 3 pointing back at me! I’m a sinner too! That’s why we need this God and Lord who’s called Yahweh-tsidkenu.
But the thing is that The LORD Our Righteousness will only mean something to the person who can say ‘Yes Lord! I’m a sinner, and I can’t do anything about it! Help!’ The person who feels like a blind beggar before God is the one who gets excited by the name Yahweh-tsidkenu - the Lord who came to call the sick, and those who need a doctor. Friends, make no mistake: we’ve no righteousness of our own. We need His.
Thirdly, to those who find it hard to believe they’d ever find favour with God, the LORD Our Righteousness speaks comfort.
Sometimes it can be hard to believe that God accepts us - that He’s forgiven us. Some of us can get really down on ourselves, and wonder if we really are saved, and right with God. A Monk once came to the great Reformer Martin Luther for help in this. The Monk was struggling; desperately uncertain if he was forgiven or not. Luther told him: “Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say. ‘Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not”.
You see, Paul, in Romans 3, after proving that the whole world is unrighteous in God’s eyes, after spending the best part of 3 chapters painting a very bleak picture, and concluding there’s no hope but judgement for us all, he breaks some amazing news: “But now!!!! (v21) Now a righteousness from God has been made known. Paul sees that Jesus’ death on the cross was a sacrifice for sins. He sees that it was God’s way of saving us without ditching His own standard of rightness or justice – which demanded that sin be punished. He sees that God in Christ takes OUR punishment on the cross.
And Paul tries to unpack for us, how we can receive this righteousness. He writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21 of an amazing exchange; that our sin becomes Christ’s and Christ’s righteousness becomes ours. We receive the legal status of Christ the Righteous One (the One who never sinned!), and He receives the legal status of us, the unrighteous one. As someone put it, the Cross is, “God’s righteous way of righteoussing the unrighteous”! Friends, as we trust in Jesus, his righteousness becomes ours; he covers us, like Isaiah says, in robe of righteousness. Like the prodigal son, who leaves his sinful way of life, returns to the father, and the father gets the best robe, puts it on him and says, ‘My son was dead, and is alive again! It’s party time!’ Treasure that image! Feel that beautiful robe draped round you! Know that you’ve been made right with God.
Fourthly, the LORD Our Righteousness challenges us in our spiritual growth. Those who’ve been declared righteous in His sight, He calls to be like Him. Romans helps us again here (Romans 6:13): “Don’t offer the parts of your body to sin… but offer…. your body to [God] as instruments of righteousness.” Verse 18 goes on to say, “You’ve been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”
See the thing is, when I became a Christian, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t automatically become righteous in all my thinking, speaking and living! When the Lord became my righteousness, I was called to make regular choices to offer myself as an instrument of righteousness.
There’s been a lot of focus lately on the 200-year anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the UK. As Christians we can be thankful that our brothers and sisters in Christ were crucial to that whole movement. That was righteousness in action, by the way. But let’s hold the idea of slavery in our mind’s eye for a moment. The Bible says people who don’t know Jesus are slaves to sin. It says that Jesus sets us free from sin’s slavery. And we say ALLELUIA! And we might think we’ve been set free from slavery altogether. But that’s NOT what the Bible says! It says we simply exchange one slave master for another. Sin used to dominate and control us as our master. But now Righteousness is our new Master, and we’re called now to voluntarily submit, as a slave, to offer ourselves to Him. There’s been no abolition of slavery for us - only a change of ownership!
Being a slave of Yahweh-tsidkenu means a journey of growth in actively living rightly – in a way that affects all our relationships and habits. Yahweh-tsidkenu is a Lord who calls us to become like Him and to a process of becoming what he has declared us to be. How often we need to ask ourselves who and what we’re slaves to. But thank God that the Holy Spirit is our constant help in this process of growth.
Fifthly, for those perhaps in a personal crisis, those who wonder where God is and what he’s doing, the LORD Our Righteousness brings reassurance.
God’s Prophet Jeremiah speaks to those watching their nation unravel before their eyes, a people who knew of God’s covenant with Israel and were screaming, God, where are you, why aren’t you helping us, your chosen people – we thought you were righteous and faithful?! And into the hullabaloo comes the defence and reassurance: I am righteous. I am caring for you - in a way that others can’t and won’t and haven’t.
Many of us have big questions. We wonder why God has allowed certain things to happen to us or those we love, or why certain things haven’t happened. We can wonder how just and fair God is. It may be a health or work or relationship or money problem. And we can feel that it just isn’t right. Friends, be assured: Yahweh-tsidkenu is a God who always acts rightly, justly and fairly towards us, because that’s who He is! He says in Jeremiah 9.24, ‘Let him who boasts boast that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight’.
And finally, Yahweh-tsidkenu, The LORD Our Righteousness reminds us that all is not right in the land – and that all is not right in OUR land. And reminds us He’s begun, through the cross and empty tomb, to put things right.
