• Read Jeremiah 23

🌅MORNING— YHWH Tsidkenu: The Lord Our Righteousness 🌳

• Focal Passage: Jeremiah 23:5-6

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch🌳; And He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The Lord our righteousness.’”

Jeremiah 23 begins with a woe.

“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture.”

The leaders of Judah — kings, priests, prophets — had failed. They had not tended the flock; they had exploited it. And when Babylon pressed at the gates, King Zedekiah sent word to Jeremiah asking him to inquire of the Lord. The king wanted relief, not repentance. He wanted God’s intervention without God’s correction.

The irony is striking. Zedekiah’s name means, “YHWH is righteousness.” Yet he bent righteousness to fit his politics. When he did not like the diagnosis, he tried to manage the message.

God answers that failure not with abandonment but with promise.

“I will raise up for David a righteous Branch 🌳.”

The Hebrew term behind “righteous” comes from tsedek, meaning straight, just, aligned. In Deuteronomy, God required “just weights” — honest measures that were not crooked. Judah’s rulers had used crooked measures. God promises to straighten things out with a “righteous” King.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes:

“The promise of a ‘righteous Branch🌳’ is the announcement that Yahweh will not allow the Davidic promise to die, but will bring forth from the stump of apparent failure a new act of faithfulness.”
(A Commentary on Jeremiah, p. 206.)

Out of political collapse, God promises life.

And then comes the name — one of the most astonishing in Scripture:

YHWH Tsidkenu.
“The Lord our righteousness.”

Not merely a king who enforces righteousness.
Not merely a reformer who teaches it.
The Lord Himself becomes righteousness for His people.

The New Testament makes the connection unmistakable. “By His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). And again: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Zedekiah wore the name.
Jesus fulfills it.

The righteous Branch 🌳 grows where the old line seemed cut down. The Shepherd we needed is also the righteousness we lacked.

• Reflection: Are you still trying to present your own righteousness before God — or resting in the gift of His?

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🌆EVENING— Proclaiming Peace When There is No Peace

Focal Passage: Jeremiah 23:16-17

“Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you… They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘You will have peace’; and as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, They say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’”

Jeremiah’s problem was not only corrupt kings. It was prophets who comforted people with false assurances.

They told the nation what it wanted to hear. No invasion. No exile. No consequences. “Peace,” they declared — even while injustice flourished and idolatry burned in the valleys.

Tony Evans once told a story about his father. When he asked his dad whether he had gone to the doctor, his father said yes. When Tony asked what the doctor prescribed, his father gave a detailed report. “So is that what you’re doing?,” Tony asked.

“No,” his father replied.

“So what are you doing?”

“I’m changing doctors.”

That instinct lives in all of us.

When the diagnosis exposes something we would rather not address, we look for another voice. Another preacher. Another podcast. Another explanation that hurts less. The prophets in Jeremiah’s day functioned like spiritual second opinions designed to soothe. They offered assurance without alignment. Peace without turning. Security without surrender.

But real peace flows from YHWH Tsidkenu — the Lord our righteousness. Peace rooted in denial collapses. Peace grounded in righteousness stands. Jeremiah’s false prophets offered emotional relief without moral repair. Their message was soothing — and deadly.

The New Testament reveals what Jeremiah only foresaw:

“For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” (Ephesians 2:14, NASB 1995).

Notice — He does not merely give peace.
He is our peace.

Peace is not an atmosphere.
Peace is a Person.

And that peace was purchased through blood, not denial. Through reconciliation, not avoidance. Through the righteous Branch 🌳 who became “The Lord our righteousness.”

We must be careful which voices we allow to shape our sense of security. Not every calming message comes from God. Some peace is counterfeit because it costs nothing.

But when righteousness is satisfied in Christ, peace is no longer fragile. It rests on something solid.

• Reflection:  Is there an area where you are tempted to “change doctors” — preferring reassurance over repentance? Ask the Lord to make you hungry for righteousness, not merely relief.
• Closing Prayer:  YHWH Tsidkenu, Lord our righteousness, we thank You that what we could not produce, You have provided. Guard us from soothing lies that promise peace without truth. Make us hungry for what is straight and just.
  Lead us as our Shepherd.  Amen.