Sermon: Dread Warrior (Jeremiah 20)

Service Notes

• Liturgy: Divine Service 3
• Hymns:
  • #728, “How Firm a Foundation”
  • #659, “Lord of Our Life”
  • #696, “O God, My Faithful God”
• Location: Three Strands Lutheran Parish

Theme Verse

“But the Lord is with me as a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble; they will not overcome me. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten” (Jeremiah 20:11).

Sermon Text

“The LORD is with me as a dread warrior.”¹Jeremiah 20:11 What a frightening image! The LORD being some great warrior king, fighting the battles for His people. No wonder Jesus was crucified. He looks nothing like that in the Gospels! Right?

The Gospels show Jesus as kind and compassionate. Helpful to friends and enemies alike. Not some valiant warrior looking to reclaim His throne. When we think of dread warriors, we look to guys like Goliath or Hercules. Guys who look like they’ve just come out of a wrestling ring with muscles bulging out of places we’re not even sure we have. But Jesus isn’t shown like that.

But we can only say that if we skip His Passion. How does the Passion paint Jesus? A very dread warrior fighting the most epic battle ever fought. The battle with sin, death and the devil for the souls of all the people on earth.

He is a dread warrior whose enemies made Him a laughingstock and mocked His battle. Roman soldiers stripped Him of His own clothing. Clothed Him with a scarlet robe and a crown of thorns. They mockingly hailed Him as the King of the Jews.²Matthew 27:27-31; Mark 15:16-20 Other soldiers gambled for His clothing.³Matthew 27:35; Psalm 22:18 The bystanders, egged on by the chief priests and elders, taunted Him from the foot of the cross: “You who would destroy the Temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”⁴Matthew 27:40 “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.”⁵Matthew 27:42 The mockery continued from the thieves hanging on either side: “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.”⁶Luke 23:39 Does He look more like a dread warrior or a laughable fool?

The battle raged on and reached its full height as the sky darkened. For three dread hours of darkness, sin, death and the devil did their worst. Then, Jesus gave up His spirit.⁷Matthew 27:50 Everyone thought He was done. Jesus had gone the way of all flesh. He had died. The battle was over. He had lost. No one had to worry about Him anymore. He was not the dread warrior people had hoped He would be.

But then the victory march began: “The veil of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened.”⁸Matthew 27:51-52 Jesus’ victory march began with the tearing away of the barrier between God and man. When God revealed the plan for the Tabernacle to Moses, He said: “You shall hang the veil from the clasps, and bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil. And the veil shall separate for you the Holy Place from the Most Holy.”⁹Exodus 26:33 He further commanded, “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die,”¹⁰Leviticus 16:2 except on the Day of Atonement. But now, the veil is gone! Torn from the top! God tore the veil! God declared no more separation between Him and His creatures since His Son, the dread warrior, had won the war.

Nature itself announced the next phase of the victory march. The earth quaked. The rocks were split. The tombs were opened! Recently dead saints were resurrected!¹¹Matthew 27:52-53 They proclaimed the glory of the dread warrior who would soon be resurrected Himself. The earth could not stand still as its Creator had died. It could not keep quiet. It rejoiced that the firstfruits of salvation had begun. There was an end in sight for its constant groanings under the plague of sin.¹²Romans 8:22

Jesus Himself rose from the dead. The dread warrior would not stay dead! His own resurrection brings the victory march to a fevered pitch. His appearances to His disciples from Easter morning until He ascended into Heaven were to declare what the resurrection truly means. The battle is over. The LORD, the dread warrior, has won. What happens now? Six centuries before, Jeremiah proclaimed the results: “Therefore my persecutors will stumble; they will not overcome me. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten.”¹³Jeremiah 20:11

After the Good Friday portion of the victory march, “the whole crowd who came together to that sight, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts and returned.”¹⁴Luke 23:48 The chief priests and elders, who had handed Jesus over to the Romans because of envy,¹⁵Matthew 27:18 stumbled when they saw all the miraculous events that surrounded Jesus’ death. This “impostor” revealed Himself as the dread warrior, and they didn’t know what to do about it. Their religious world had been rocked, just like the earth quaked.

When Jesus rose from the dead, they stumbled further in order to discredit Jesus. When the soldiers guarding the tomb came back with the report of the resurrection, the chief priests and elders paid off the guards to give a phony report of what had happened.¹⁶Matthew 28:11-15 The news that Jesus had actually risen from the dead made them have to backpedal and rethink everything. Now, their entire religious structure and system would have to switch to a complete and total rebuttal of Jesus of Nazareth being the resurrected Messiah. Their entire religion, which would become modern Judaism, walks away from God’s Word to focus completely on disproving Jesus, the Word of God incarnate.

Most of them would not–could not–bring themselves to acceptance of the fact nor to repentance over having killed the Messiah. Some did believe in Jesus as the Messiah and join the ranks of the disciples,¹⁷Matthew 27:57-61; Mark 15:42-46; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:38-42; Acts 6:7 but the majority remained steadfast in their arrogant defiance of what they knew to be true. Their arrogant defiance would lead them to great shame which will never be forgotten.

The chief priests and scribes gave themselves eternal dishonor in their arrogant refusal to accept that Jesus is the Messiah. This will never be forgotten because the Holy Spirit caused it to be recorded in the Scriptures. I’ve already mentioned the cover-up with the guards at the tomb. The fallout that would continue to shape the way of Jewish apologetics forever. They would not see Jesus as the dread warrior that He was promised to be throughout the Scriptures. The dread warrior who would crush the serpent’s head.¹⁸Genesis 3:15 The dread warrior who “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows … pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities … with His wounds we are healed. … The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”¹⁹Isaiah 53:4-6

Jesus Himself said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”²⁰Mark 16:16 The unbeliever’s dishonor does not end with their earthly death. Just as Jesus’ death began the slow victory march to be completed on the Last Day, the unbeliever’s death begins the slow march of the condemned. They wait for the Last Day so that they will be reunited body and soul in order to continue their eternal dishonor in the fires of Hell.²¹Matthew 25:46; 2 Thessalonians 1:9-10 The final dishonor that cannot and will not be undone or forgotten.

This has all been great, but what does it have to do with us who believe in Jesus? Where is this dread warrior now? “The LORD is with me as a dread warrior.”²²Jeremiah 20:11 This dread warrior is beside you in all your trials, tribulations and troubles. He fights for you! Giving you the great spoils of His battle. What He won, He gives to you! Your persecutors stumble! They will be ashamed! Their dishonor will never be forgotten!

The dread warrior is no longer frightening. In fact, He is very comforting. He is your refuge and fortress.²³Psalm 91:2 You stand in the shelter of His wings,²⁴Psalm 91:4 as they are stretched out on the cross. His war brings you the victory through faith.²⁵1 John 5:4 He has overcome the world.²⁶John 16:33 Since we are in Him, we too will overcome the world.²⁷1 John 4:4 He “will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.”²⁸Psalm 91:3 That means, though, that you sometimes find yourself in the fowler’s snare or surrounded by the deadly pestilence. Even through all this, He guards and keeps you as His own. The evils of this life will overtake you, but you will overcome them! Because you stand on the foundation of the dread warrior’s “excellent Word.”²⁹LSB #728.1

Your persecutors will stumble. Those who revile and rebuke you.³⁰Matthew 5:10-11 Who might even be from your own house: “Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise up against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for My name’s sake.”³¹Matthew 10:21-22 Why do we have this division among people? Jesus. “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”³²Luke 12:51 And your persecutors love to point this out. Love to stress the division.

But your division is not from the LORD. As we heard last week from the prophet Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.”³³Isaiah 49:15-16 You are not divided from your Lord. You are forever bound with Him through the engraving of the nail prints in His hands. “He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you will find refuge.”³⁴Psalm 91:4 Under His wings, you “have been brought from death to life.”³⁵Romans 6:13

All who try to divide you from Him will stumble and be ashamed. He forgives sin. He has overcome death and the devil. Who can stand against Him? He is the dread warrior who has won the greatest victory ever. He is the refuge that allows you to “depart this life confiding in [your] Savior.”³⁶LSB #696.5 You can confide in Him because He has given you His life. He has saved you so that you may rejoice in Him for all eternity. Rejoicing because your persecutors can only kill your body. They cannot destroy your soul.³⁷Matthew 10:28 Their power is limited and fading. His is ever overflowing.

His eternal and ever overflowing power gives you honor that will never be forgotten. It is His free gift to you.³⁸Romans 6:23 You have committed your cause to Him.Jeremiah 20:12[/mfn] He is committed to you and your salvation. Otherwise, He would have turned away from the cross and let you wallow in your sin. But He came down and pick you up out of the muck and mire that surrounds you. He calls you His own. For now, you might be mocked by the world. You might become a laughingstock to unbelievers.³⁹Jeremiah 20:11 But this is all momentary. The problems of this world are fleeting. His love and salvation are forever. His love wells up inside you like “a burning fire shut up in [your] bones.”⁴⁰Jeremiah 20:9 You cannot help but confess your faith in Him as your dread warrior. We do this with our words and our actions. We show the world that the battle has been won. Jesus the dread warrior has emerged victorious from everything His persecutors put up against Him. He brings you along so that you may share in His eternal honor and glory.

You are part of the dread warrior’s victory march. “His faithfulness is a shield and buckler” against all attacks.⁴¹Psalm 91:4 He is your refuge in the ongoing battles of this life. He is the fortress that stands firm forever. His dread warfare is your great glory. “You will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”⁴²Matthew 10:22 You will endure because the dread warrior has fought for you and won the war. Amen.