The Danger of False Prophets: A Pentecost Meditation on Jeremiah 28

Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet,

Hear now, Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee;

but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.

Therefore thus saith the Lord;

Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth:

this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the Lord.

So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month.

The prophet Jeremiah had a tough job—to preach repentance to the people of Israel, and the catastrophe of the Babylonian captivity should they refuse.  The people of his country were in a time of rampant wickedness, selfishness, adultery, and idolatry, and his call to turn from their evil and cling to God in faith was largely rejected.  Also at his time, there were many who wore the mantle of prophets claiming to speak for God, as well as those who served as priests whose duty it was to shepherd the people in the Word of the Lord.  The vast majority of these official prophets and priests were apostates, teaching the people to be comfortable in their sins, and presuming to speak words from God which God did not give them.  Like so many of the authentic prophets, Jeremiah’s was a lonely road, full of scorn and derision among his peers for refusing to preach the official party line, but instead clinging fast to the Word of God.

The conflict with Hananiah was climatic.  God had told Jeremiah to fashion a yoke and put it upon his shoulders, as a sign that the people of Israel would serve the King of Babylon as judgment for their sins.  If the people would accept a lesser service to Babylon as penance for their sins, their faith and repentance would receive the grace of most of them continuing to live in their land while a smaller number lived in exile, awaiting a final return.  If they continued to rebel, God would use King Nebuchadnezzar to destroy them with war, famine, and pestilence.  Hananiah preached continued resistance to God and His judgement, took the yoke off Jeremiah’s shoulders, and broke it in pieces, saying that their suffering under Babylon would be complete in less than two years.  God slew Hananiah for his false prophecy, but not before he convinced many to follow him in rebellion, and the suffering of the people of Israel was tremendous.

As at the time of the Babylonian captivity in the 6^th century BC, so too in our time and place; many people are given over to wickedness in a thousand variations, from sexual sins to violence, insurrection, gluttony, covetousness, and idolatry.  Also as in their time, we have many who take to themselves the mantle of prophets, pastors, and priests, who falsely claim to speak for God when God has not spoken to them, leading people to feel comfortable in their evil and their rebellion against God’s Eternal Word.  Trusting in their lies, many individuals, and even whole communities, are rushing headlong into destruction, while authentic preachers of God’s Word are sidelined, ignored, ridiculed, or persecuted out of their livelihoods.  While we may not have a Jeremiah in our day who is receiving the direct call of God to speak verbatim to the people, we do have the Word of God which was given to Jeremiah, as well as all the Prophets and the Apostles whom God has sent to the world to bear His call to faith and repentance.  And while the multitude of apostate false prophets and malignant shepherds may have the public ear, befriended by the organs of media, politics, academy, and celebrity in which the people of our time find their idols, there are still faithful voices out there of those whom God has sent to preach His Law and Gospel, to call every soul, family, community, and nation to repentance and faith.  In our time, as in the times which have come before us, the Lord has preserved His saving Word, desiring that none should be lost, but that all might come to a saving knowledge of the Truth.

And that saving Truth is the same today, as it was in Jeremiah’s day; what Jeremiah prophesied and foreshadowed, the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled and completed in His life, death, and resurrection.  Where the people could not save themselves from their slavery to sin, death, and hell, Jesus took their sin, death, and hell upon Himself at the Cross, breaking the yoke of eternal condemnation by sacrificing Himself in our place.  By the shed blood of Jesus our debt and penance is paid, making satisfaction before the Father for the justice we have earned through our rebellion.  In Jesus the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, that we might behold His glory as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, and the only Name given under heaven by which we must be saved.  In Jesus all the words of God through the Prophets find their completion, and the words of the Apostles whom He sent find their power.

The world is still full of lies, half-truths, and deceptions, promoted by countless false prophets and false shepherds wrapped in the finery of this age, and those who follow them find calamitous destruction in this world and the next.  But the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ is still the only Way, Truth, and Life for all who will repent and put their trust in Him.  Kingdoms rise and fall across the ages as did King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, but the Word of the Lord remains forever, with the undiminished power of the Holy Spirit carrying it forth through faithful servants in every generation.  Today this Word calls to you like a clear clarion through the cacophonous fog of our times, that you might lay aside every false teaching and false teacher, and cling once again to the saving Word of Jesus.  Hear Him today, repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

While we were yet sinners: A Meditation on Romans 5

For when we were yet without strength,

in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die:

yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that,

while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 Much more then, being now justified by his blood,

we shall be saved from wrath through him.

For if, when we were enemies,

we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,

much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

It remains a central mystery of the Christian faith, that it is God who moves toward mankind for his salvation, rather than man who first seeks reconciliation with God.  Such a move by God goes contrary to so much of human experience and intuition, that it is often ignored or explained away by those who simply can’t accept the clear testimony of God through His Prophets and Apostles of Holy Scripture.  Yet St. Paul, in his epistle to the church at Rome, calls everyone to hear the blessed Gospel that it is not man who seeks and saves himself, but rather Jesus who seeks and saves a lost humanity.

In our time of fascination with all things material, our pride can make this hard to swallow.  The western structures of economics and commerce all function on the principles of individual interest and motivation, where consumers pursue that which they desire (and marketers work feverishly to inflame those desires toward their own peculiar wares.)  Western government is built on the principles of self interest and individual liberties, where democratic process reflects the individual will of voters exercised through their duly elected representatives.  In other places throughout the world, individual desires and the will to power drive people into systems of commerce and politics based on the exercise of strength and cunning, where the leaders work hard to keep their power, while others constantly seek to take it.  Educational systems present the rewards of work completed, where students pursue knowledge or advantage, then take their skills into the workforce for trade or barter.  Every person eventually learns the basic laws of physics written into the universe, at least as they apply to them—that every action has a reaction, effort produces results, and that a person will reap what they sow.  The industrious tend to live better than the slothful, the clever better than the slow, the strong better than the weak, with every conceivable shade of variation between those respective poles.  Book stores, publishers, and educational institutions make fortunes (cleverly) pandering to the crowds of people who will snap up every self-help, multi-step program they can buy, particularly those promoted by a slick and wealthy author.  In a materialist world of cause and effect, there is always an inclination toward finding the right recipe for wealth, power, pleasure, or a thousands kinds of exhilaration, comfort, or distraction.  The emphasis is on the individual, what they do, and how well they do it.

And yet, for all the blessings of industrious labors and soaring minds, the human race continues to find itself trapped in death.  Our fallen nature and twisted desires infect everything we touch, as evidenced by the never ending wars, tyrannies, and frauds we perpetuate upon each other.  There is always the inclination of the strong to dominate the weak, and the clever to manipulate the less agile of mind.  Our laws reflect this reality, attempting to put boundaries or limits on the evils of men, with greater and lesser effect in various times and places.  As fallen creatures we live with the blessings of life in a good world, yet use our lives and resources in violation of natural law and our neighbors, making us at once enemies of the universe in which we live, and the Creator who brought forth both it and us.  We receive our lives from the breath of God, and live as rebels in His creation, denying His Word even as we strive in our own God-given powers to take as much as we can from the universe He has given us to live in.  It is not merely that we are flawed creatures occasionally wounding each other in our ignorant pursuit of personal pleasure, but rather that we are corrupted to our core, worthy of eternal judgment before the God whom we have despised through the abuse of His creation and creatures.  For all the grandeur of our unfolding universe, humanity remains a defiant and malevolent mob, occupying this world like a petulant band of agitators, declaring our world a God-free “autonomous zone” as we shout vanities and profanities at the One to whom we must inevitably give account.

And so, when St. Paul declares the Gospel truth that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, it is a mystery beyond fathom in every age of man, including our own.  While we were yet the riotous and inglorious mob; the robber barons and carpetbaggers; the slave traders and insurrectionists; the murderers, thieves, adulterers, and fornicators; the plotting tyrants and the traitors; the cowards and the abusers; the selfish and the self-centered; the devious and the duplicitous; Christ died for us.  While we might pride ourselves on thinking we would die for glory or for a righteous cause in our own limited estimation, Jesus died for a world of people just like us.  And in so doing, Jesus turned the world and all its systems on their head.

Today, we know the blessed truth that Jesus comes to save sinners, of whom we are chief.  To us, His Word of reconciliation and peace comes even when we aren’t looking for it, or think we don’t need it.  To us comes His grace of forgiveness, life, and salvation, poured out freely to all those who will hear Him, repent of their evil, and trust in Him for eternal life.  Such a Gospel is not of works, as if anyone in our besotted race could ever raise himself to the heights of deity, but rather a work of love and compassion that transcends our brokenness and restores us to the divine image God created us to bear.  This Word of grace and peace transforms us from condemned enemies to sanctified children of the Living God, into people empowered to use their God-given gifts of life and resources for the glory of our Creator and the good of our neighbors.  This Gospel which comes to us today, in the cacophony of our present world and the confusion of our present souls, speaks a Word of life, and peace, and hope.  Hear Jesus as He calls to you today, for He died for you while you were yet a sinner, and there remains no condemnation for you in Him, as you live in Him forever by grace, through faith.  Amen.