Text: Jeremiah 23:23-29
Date: August 14, 2022
Event: Proper 15, Year C
Jeremiah 23:23-29 (EHV)
Am I a God who is only nearby, declares the Lord,
and not a God far away?
24Can anyone hide in secret places
so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord.
Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.
25I have heard what the prophets who prophesy lies in my name have said. They say, “I have had a dream! I have had a dream!” 26How long will this be in the hearts of these lying prophets? These prophets proclaim the fantasies of their own hearts. 27They think they can make my people forget my name with the dreams each one tells his neighbor, the way their fathers forgot my name because of Baal. 28Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream. But let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully.
What has chaff to do with grain? declares the Lord. 29Is not my word like a fire? declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
God’s Truth Burns and Breaks Our Errors
We like to hear people say what we already think. If you use social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter or any of the other ones out there, they can easily become echo chambers because you set things up to only see things that you like and agree with and avoid the thoughts and ideas that you disagree with or don’t like.
Those types of echo chambers can make us start to think that everyone thinks the way we do, everyone agrees with us, everyone agrees with our opinions. But the reality is that your opinions can divide you from others. Whether it’s something silly like the best brands of ice cream or sports team allegiance, something important like political issues facing our area, or something eternally important things of the teachings of God’s Word, what you think and believe divides you from other people.
In our Gospel this morning, we heard Jesus say that he didn’t come to bring peace and unity of thought; he came to bring division. Not just among people in a country, or a state, or a city, but even among the very members of one’s family, “father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Luke 12:53). God’s Word, the truth of what he’s said and done, causes this kind of division and it always has. In our First Reading this morning from Jeremiah, written almost 600 years before Jesus was even born, we hear God saying the same thing was true then, as it was in Jesus’ day, as it is in our day. God’s truth divides, but it also burns and breaks down our errors, so that his Word leaves us better than we were before.
Jeremiah’s time of service to God’s people was tumultuous. In our Sunday Morning Bible Class, we’ve been studying the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah lived and worked roughly 120 years before Jeremiah. But much of Isaiah’s book of prophecy looked forward to tumult and trouble that would come in the future. Isaiah pointed ahead to those hardships; Jeremiah lived and worked during them.
Old Testament history makes crystal clear how God’s people had been continually unfaithful to him. They had abandoned the truth of his Word, they had served false gods, and generally disregarded everything he said. Not everyone, certainly, but the vast majority of people from kings to the lowliest among them skewed away from God, away from the truth.
So because of this, God sent chastisement in the form of the nation of Babylon who would come to take over the southern kingdom of Judah where God’s people lived and exile them east to Babylon. They would largely destroy Jerusalem, including Solomon’s ornate and magnificent temple.
Jeremiah’s job was to share this impending chastisement for their unfaithfulness, to warn the people so they could know what was coming, and more importantly, why it was coming. This was God calling the people to repentance, calling them to return to him.
You might imagine, though, Jeremiah’s message wasn’t very popular. If there had social media in those days, everyone would’ve blocked Jeremiah’s posting and messages because they had plenty of other spiritual people to listen to. There were prophets who were supposedly bringing messages from God who had radically different words for the people. They said that Babylon wouldn’t pose a threat, that Jerusalem was safe just as it had been when Assyria had attacked during Isaiah’s day. Jerusalem, and the people living there, would always be secure, so said the other prophets.
What is God’s response to this? “I have heard what the prophets who prophesy lies in my name have said. They say, ‘I have had a dream! I have had a dream!’ How long will this be in the hearts of these lying prophets? These prophets proclaim the fantasies of their own hearts…. What has chaff to do with grain? declares the Lord.” Oh.
Again, we like to hear people say what we already think. And so the people of that day much preferred the other prophets’ messages of peace and joy rather than Jeremiah’s message of doom and gloom. But which one was true? And which one did they need to hear?
Where is it that we want a spiritual echo chamber that conveniently ignores what God says? Do we chafe a bit at the idea that his Word should be with us regularly at church each week and in our homes? Do we struggle when his moral directives run contrary to what we want to do or are in the habit of doing around sexuality or helping those in need or not speaking in a way that hurts someone’s reputation (even if it’s true!)? Do we think we should back off on some of the unpopular parts of God’s Word so that our church is more attractive to visitors or make compromises so that more families would join?
When we want to adjust what God says, we are trying to create a spiritual echo chamber that lets us think we possess the truth when we’ve really abandoned it. Instead, we’re really devoted to our own desires and opinions. And having that as our guide is following the lying prophets and their dreams in Jeremiah’s day. Those dreams and false prophets of my own opinions and desires are delusions and lead me down the path of eternal destruction. In the end, if we devote ourselves to our opinions rather than God’s truth, we are depending on what we think for our eternal safety and not what God has done for us. That leads not to the destruction of our city but the destruction of our souls in hell.
While parts of God’s Word are unpopular and difficult for us to come to terms with, God’s Word also offers the solution to our sin. Because whether it’s been an avoidance of the truth or anything else that runs contrary to what God has said, we have disobeyed God and have hearts of stone. But God’s Word brings us the truth of God’s forgiveness in Jesus. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, which removed our sin and proved that forgiveness, is fire that burns away our sin and the hammer that breaks our hard hearts to pieces. Only in God’s truth do we find the solutions that we need. Only in Jesus do we have forgiveness. Only in the Word that God has given us do we find the infallible promises and works of God to save us. Only in God’s truth do we find the way to live our lives in thanksgiving for all that he’s done for us.
And so we take God’s Word and use it to check our opinions and preconceived notions, not the other way around. Rather than picking and choosing what we like from what God has said, we let God’s Word pick and choose which attitudes of our hearts are appropriate and which need to be changed. We don’t surround ourselves in the echo chamber of personal opinion, but we let God envelop us in his truth. When my opinions on how to get to heaven run contrary to God’s, I am the one that needs to change, not God. When my desires and views on moral living disagree with God, again, I need to be changing those desires and views, not trying to warp or ignore God on that matter.
God’s truth burns and breaks those places where we have errors and opens our ears to hear his Word not as adversarial towards us, but eternally loving. If we need correction from God, it is for our eternal good. Because that is his attitude toward us. He made clear through Jeremiah that he was not a God far away but a God who is very near. He’s near to you and me, not to catch us or convict us, but to save us because he loves us.
We are nearing the end of summer here, and the end of summer and beginning of fall for as long as most of us can remember centers around education. Elementary school bells start ringing, college dorms begin buzzing, all in service of learning and growing. So, too, let us find time in the coming weeks to recommit ourselves to growing and learning in God’s Word, allowing personal and group study of his Word to shape us into the people God desires us to be, not the people we are by nature. Let us seek out more opportunities for the loving gospel of Jesus’ death for us to surround us and encourage us in our path through this life as we look forward to the eternal home he is preparing for us.
And let us not fear the division that it may cause in our workplace, neighborhood, or even our families, because being divided from the world means being unified with our God. His truth burns and breaks those errors that separated us from him, and in Jesus we are brought to unity with him forever. God, keep us safe and strong in your truth now and forever! Amen.
