Please turn in your Bibles to Jeremiah 23:34-6 (NIV): "If a prophet or a priest or anyone else claims, 'This is the oracle of the Lord,' I will punish that man and his household. This is what each of you keeps on saying to his friend or relative: 'What is the Lord's answer?' or 'What has the Lord spoken?' But you must not mention 'the oracle of the Lord' again, because every man's own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of the living God, the Lord Almighty, our God." Now let's pray and ask for God's wisdom.
Our passage today has some strong words for people who claim to speak for God, and you might think that my point is to discredit human messengers with "a word from God", but it isn't. I'm one of those people who thinks that the spiritual gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues and healing are not necessarily delusions, although I'm also very skeptical about them, because much of what I've heard, seen or read about them has been uninspiring. I don't have time to go into why I think they're still in play today, but basically, God tells us in several places that He has given us these gifts, and I haven't found any verses to say He's taken them away.
I also want you to know that this is not a verse "aimed" at anyone. As I've been reading through the Old Testament this summer, I came upon this verse a couple weeks ago, and I was riveted by the power of the language. God uses such expressive words through Jeremiah that you can almost feel his frustration at being misrepresented by these impostors. In fact, this is a good reason for me to make sure the things I say about God are true.
My point with these verses is for all of us to remember what God says about how He's being portrayed as we talk to each other, see preachers on TV, etc. Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." I believe God will go to great lengths to preserve the integrity of His name.
The backstory to Jeremiah's prophecy is not a pretty one. The Babylonian's have just captured Jerusalem, and in addition to capturing King Jehoiakim, they also carted off some of the Temple's treasures which the priests used to worship God. The symbolism by King Nebuchadnezzar is unmistakable here: he is asserting his dominance over not just the political rulers of Judah, but also the God they claim to trust. In Jehoiakim's place, Jehoiachin ascends to the throne. Biblical scholars aren't actually in agreement on how old Jehoiachin was when he became king: some manuscripts say he was 18, others that he was 8; suffice to say he was young. Now, if you can imagine adding an assortment of false prophets to this already tumultuous scene, you get a feel for how unsettled the people must have been, not to mention the young king. Here's what Jeremiah says earlier about these prophets:
"Do not listen to these prophets when they prophesy to you,
filling you with futile hopes.
They are making up everything they say.
They do not speak for the Lord!
They keep saying to those who despise my word,
'Don't worry! The Lord says you will have peace!'
And to those who stubbornly follow their own desires,
they say, 'No harm will come your way!'"
(23:16b-17; NLT)
When the king really needed someone to tell him the truth, Jeremiah was one of the few willing to do the job. And of course, we know these people were fakes because, not only were they dishonoring God and His word, but they would also be proved false. About 11 years after this prophecy was given, Judah, in the middle of a botched rebellion from the Babylonian empire, would see Jerusalem fall to King Nebuchadnezzar's army.
Like most Biblical prophets, Jeremiah had immediate recipients of his prophecy—his contemporaries in Judah—but we are also meant to benefit from his ministry. What is God saying to us through Jeremiah today?
I think, for one, God is warning us of the danger in pretending that our own ideas come from Him. If we think it's arrogant when one person misrepresents another, imagine how much more grating it sounds when we claim falsely to speak for the Creator and Savior of the World. We know that's not something that pleases God because God, through Christ, worked very hard to establish the authority of His prophecies. In Matthew 9:1-8, Jesus went out of His way to tell a paralytic that his sins were forgiven. When the teachers of the law see this, they take Him for a blasphemer. In response, Jesus heals the man's paralysis, demonstrating His complete dominion over physical and spiritual health.
In the familiar story of the woman at the well (John 4), Jesus demonstrates His ability to convict people of their sin, by pointing out to the Samaritan woman that she was living in sexual sin. This clearly causes a change in her, because she gets everyone else in town to listen to Him, and proclaims that He told her everything she'd ever done. The end result: many of the townspeople became believers based partly on her testimony.
Signing God's name to our ideas also has the added dangers of lawlessness and rebellion. Earlier in his ministry, God says through Jeremiah, "'A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?'" (5:31; NIV) The Jews had utterly rejected the God-ordained systems they needed to love God and one another (which were the foundations for Israeli society). Unfortunately, we know what they did in the end: God subjected them to chastening and rebuke under the hand of the Babylonians (and yet, by the way, they still rebelled even after that). That's pretty bad, but how about us? I know I rebelled against God this week, so I can't justify feeling superior to them.
When we claim to speak for God, in addition to everything else, this is an act of rebellion. God says, "For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry...you have rejected the word of the Lord..." It comes from 1 Samuel 15:23. It speaks boldly and forcefully about God's holiness, and how it must grieve His heart when we reject His words for our own, not even entirely because of what we do to Him, but what we do to ourselves. At times like these we can be thankful that God's high expectations for us were met by God's Son.
In this passage, Jeremiah also accuses the false prophets of "distorting the words of the living God", or as the New Living Translation renders it, is "turning God's Word upside down". Essentially, these false prophets contradict Jeremiah's message, and they contradict what would ultimately happen to the city of Jerusalem a decade later. Their words are a kind of "spiritual static" that makes it harder for people to hear what God is really saying to them. God is consistent, through and through. James says that with God "there is no variation or shadow of turning" (1:17; NKJV). This underscores the exhortation James gives later in the book:
"With our tongues we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who were made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?" (3:9-12; NIV)
But James's words are directed at all Christians: you, me, and every other believer in Christ. God's calling for prophets in the Old Testament is higher still. Look at his words:
"'But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.' And if you say in your heart, 'How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?'--If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him." (Deuteronomy 18:20-22; NIV)
"From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true." (Jeremiah 28:9; NIV)
Now, am I making the very bold statement that false prophets among us today should be stoned? Absolutely not. I do think there are good reasons to argue that the Biblical office of prophet has changed because of Christ's atonement, but I think God's demand that a prophet's calling be to deliver God's messages above all else is unchanged.
The problem of misrepresenting God's character also invalidates and trivializes the message of the Gospel that we wish to bring to a dying world. Paul says in Romans,
"You, therefore, who teach one another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?...You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For 'the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you'" (2:21, 24; NKJV)
If people want a religion whose core tenets contradict themselves, they can get that from Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or a number of other choices from the spiritual smorgasbord. A relationship with God through Christ does not--and indeed should not--have any contradictions on the part of God's character, words or actions. When we're presenting this relationship--when we're being God's hands and feet--we should not do so out of hypocrisy.
I had some friends who took a missions trip to a foreign country, and they were filling out the passport papers and told me that they had stated their reasons for going as strictly "vacation purposes", so that the visa process would go more smoothly. I encouraged them to make sure they didn't sacrifice the Truth they were trying to present as missionaries.
I think there's a simple solution to all the hypocrisy and falsehood we've just discussed, and that is to judge all of our words and actions against the plumb line of Scripture. If this means sacrificing a crucial point that can't be supported or subjecting our prejudices to our own scrutiny, then so be it. None of us has a monopoly on truth, and we are all just truth-seekers, with God's Word as our foundation.
When the early church was bickering over whether Paul or Apollos was the superior leader of the church, Paul speaks to the issue with authority. In 1 Corinthians, he says, "Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not take pride in one man over another." (4:6; NIV)
Here are a couple practical ways I see to make that happen:
- If the words of a prophet contradict God's Word, it can't be from God.
- If the words of a prophet definitively claim to see inside another man's heart, or they make absolute truth claims apart from Scripture...it may not be wrong, but it's something to view warily and with trepidation. The dangers you run into in this case are: (a) judging another man's heart rather than his actions (1 Corinthians 4:5), and (b) setting up your own opinions as the words of God.
- And above all else, the one prophesying and those prophesied to must maintain their own humility at all times. Paul says in Ephesians, "Be filled with the spirit...giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God" (5:18b, 21).
I saw a denominational slogan once that I think gets to the heart of this topic: "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things, charity."
Something that I'm still learning every day, especially being married and having a family, is the power my words have. When I misrepresent false things as true, or even speak truth with the wrong intentions, I'm showing disrespect to the God of All Truth. In contrast, we have the picture of Jesus, who didn't just live by the truth of His words—He died because of them. Think of all the times near the end of His life on earth when he could have turned around and conveniently "forgotten" what He knew about God to get out of trouble with men. He chose not to--and thank God for that--because His very identity and good name was at stake.
