Jeremiah 23:16-29
There are prophets. And then there are prophets. In ancient Israel, during the time of Jeremiah the prophet – a real prophet – there were some other prophets – fake prophets. Of these, the Lord said:
“Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; they speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord. They continually say to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord has said, “You shall have peace”’; and to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, ‘No evil shall come upon you.’”
In Jeremiah’s day there were many who despised the Lord. Oh, they may not have despised the idea that there was a Lord – that is, a God whose name was “the Lord,” or Jehovah. But they despised what this God and Lord stood for, and they despised what he insisted his people stand for.
They would make up their own rules for how to live and how to treat people. They would set their own priorities. And perhaps they would also invent their own religious rituals, while dishonestly putting God’s name onto all these things.
They would also seek out prophets-for-hire to confirm them in these delusions, and to tell them what they wanted to hear. And they would rest secure in the make-believe world of physical and spiritual safety that they had thereby created for themselves.
But a true prophet of God would always condemn such blasphemies. A true prophet would warn people who were walking down such a pathway, of the destruction and divine punishment that awaited them: unless they altered their course, turned to the Lord for forgiveness and guidance, and walked instead according to the Lord’s statutes.
In the time of Jeremiah, those were the warnings, the admonitions, and the exhortations that Jeremiah offered – even as the people of Judah hated him for it. But whether they liked it or not, punishment from God was coming upon them, through the instrumentality of the invading Babylonians.
Jerusalem would be besieged and eventually fall. The nation as a whole would be taken away into captivity. The people may have imagined that if their preferred prophets said otherwise, this would somehow make it not happen. But it was going to happen.
This punishment was coming, because of the people’s persistent breaking of the Ten Commandments according to both tables of the law: through egregious sins against God directly, and through egregious sins against each other.
The people of Judah were guilty of idolatry and false worship. One would think that they would have learned a sobering lesson from the destruction of the Northern Kingdom at the hands of the Assyrians about 130 years earlier, because of the idolatry of those tribes.
But such a lesson, if it had ever been learned, was now forgotten. Some in Judah shamelessly worshiped Baal and other pagan idols.
But the primary spiritual problem in Jeremiah’s time was that the people, who did participate in temple worship, did so thoughtlessly and superficially: without repentance and faith, and without a heartfelt desire to know God’s will and to submit to it once they knew it.
This angered God, who was and is righteous and holy. Through Jeremiah, God reminded the people of some important aspects of their history:
“I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’”
Elsewhere in the Book of Jeremiah, we are told that the Lord had more recently implored his people in this way:
“Ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls.’ But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not listen.’”
And then – as Jeremiah quotes him – the Lord said this:
“Hear, O earth! Behold, I will certainly bring calamity on this people – the fruit of their thoughts – because they have not heeded My words nor My law, but rejected it. For what purpose, to Me comes frankincense from Sheba, and sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet to Me.”
With respect to the second table of the law, the people were also guilty of cruelty toward others, and indifference regarding the suffering of others. God had previously directed Jeremiah to speak these words to the nation:
“Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, you who sit on the throne of David, you and your servants and your people… Thus says the Lord: Execute judgment and righteousness, and deliver the plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.”
God promised that if the king and the people obeyed him, and if justice and mercy prevailed in the land, then the nation and the throne of Judah would be preserved and protected. But God also said:
“If you will not hear these words, I swear by Myself, says the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation. … I surely will make you a wilderness, cities which are not inhabited. I will prepare destroyers against you, everyone with his weapons; they shall cut down your choice cedars and cast them into the fire.”
“And many nations will pass by this city; and everyone will say to his neighbor, ‘Why has the Lord done so, to this great city?’ Then they will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.’”
As Jeremiah was pointing out, God’s warnings were coming to fruition, because the king and the nation had not heeded his voice. God’s threats were now being fulfilled, because they – and the false prophets who catered to them – had made up their own words to believe in, rather than believing in the words of the Lord their God.
The New Testament era in which we live differs in many ways from Old Testament times. Now, the God of the Christian Church is the same God as the God of ancient Israel and Judah. He is just as holy and righteous today as he has ever been.
But there is a different focus for his demands and warnings. The chosen people of God are no longer defined in terms of an earthly kingdom.
And the dangers that surround us are not the armies of hostile countries of this world. Those dangers are of another world. St. Paul reminds us in his Epistle to the Ephesians that
“We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness…”
Earthly tyrants are not trying to separate your body from your country, by carrying you off to another land. Supernatural tyrants – the world, the flesh, and the devil – are trying to separate your soul from the fellowship of faith that is the holy Christian church.
The kind of worship that is pleasing to God today, and that is beneficial for our salvation, does not involve a physical temple in Jerusalem with animal sacrifices. But the New Testament does lay out for us the general character of what the liturgical life of Christians is supposed to be. We read in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians:
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”
And we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews:
“Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
The requirements for how we treat people are basically the same as were the requirements that were laid down for the ancient Hebrews. A difference is that our love and compassion are not to be directed only to the members of our own earthly tribal group – however that may be defined – but to all people.
Jesus directs us to make disciples of all nations – by baptizing and teaching people from all nations. And according to the Epistle to the Romans, “there is no partiality with God,” so that all who disobey his law – whether Jew or Gentile – are equally accountable before him.
But also, as St. Paul rhetorically asks in Romans, regarding the Lord:
“Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.”
In his Epistle to the Romans, Paul also gives us a New Testament perspective on how the moral law should be fulfilled by Christians:
“Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul adds these thoughts:
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
The true prophets and apostles of the New Testament era, are teaching us these things. They are warning us not to despise the Lord by despising his will is these matters.
They are forbidding us to listen to the false prophets and false apostles that are present in abundance, with contrived teachings that contradict what the Scriptures say about our duty toward God, and that justify the rebellion of our sinful nature against what God’s Word says regarding our duty toward our neighbor. And they are threatening us with divine punishment: if we wilfully turn away from the Lord who has redeemed us, and with unbelief expel the Holy Spirit from our hearts.
In his parable of the sower, as St. Luke records it, Jesus describes those “who, when they hear, receive the word with joy”; yet “these have no root,” so that they “believe for a while,” but “in time of temptation fall away.”
Dear friends, in a time of temptation, please do not let yourself fall away. Please do not throw your Savior and your salvation away. The fate of those who do fall away, and who stay fallen away until death, is described with a heavy heart by St. Paul in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.
We are told there that “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire,” he will take “vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”
It would not be difficult to find prophets and preachers today – on television or in liberal pulpits – who would gladly tell you that hell is a myth, and that there is no coming judgment. But their statements – which contradict what God’s true prophets and apostles say – will not cause hell to become a myth, and will not make judgment day not come.
The rebellious people of Judah were removed from their homeland because of their despising of God and his Word. And those who rebel against God’s Word today, to the point of unbelief, will remove themselves from the spiritual fellowship of the church, and will lose the hope of heaven.
You might think that you are not rebelling against God, or despising him, but are just being neutral, or indifferent.
But when God the Father, who sent his Son to redeem you from sin and death, tells you through his apostle Paul, “You were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s”; and you respond with neutrality or indifference, you are rebelling against him.
When the Lord God tells you through his prophet Ezekiel, “As I live…, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live,” and you do not turn, you are despising him.
We read in today’s text from Jeremiah:
“Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord has gone forth in fury – a violent whirlwind! It will fall violently on the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and performed the thoughts of His heart. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.”
But, there was a way of escape for the ancient Hebrews, if they would only repent and turn. And even when they ignored Jeremiah and were accordingly carried away into Babylon, there was a way back.
There is also a way of escape for you. If your faith has been weakened by the prideful desires of the flesh, by the enticing riches of the world, or by the alluring lies of the devil; and if you are even now being tempted to fall away: there is a way of escape for you.
And there is also a way back for you. If you have already succumbed to temptation, have expelled God from your life through the hardening of your heart against his Word, and have fallen away, there is a way back for you. If you are still alive, then there is still a way back.
We turn once again to the Prophet Jeremiah, as he held out to God’s Old Testament people an oft-repeated Messianic promise. Someday there would be a new beginning for everyone: Jews and Gentiles; the strong in faith, and the weak and struggling; those who have been preserved in God’s grace, and those who need to be invited to come home.
Someday, there would be a new covenant for everyone. God, in the person of his Son, would do everything to make this covenant happen. It would not be a negotiated deal between God and man, but this covenant would be a gift, to be received by faith.
Jesus would establish this new covenant by the atoning sacrifice of his body on the cross, in the stead of a fallen and fearful humanity. Jesus would fulfill this new covenant by the shedding of his precious blood, to wash away all sin for the reconciliation of God and man.
Jeremiah was a mouthpiece for God, so that God could say this to everyone through him:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
This is what God’s prophets and apostles are telling you today, through the pages of Holy Scripture. God has indeed established a new covenant through Jesus, the one mediator between God and man. And he has established it for you.
God has indeed provided a way to know him: to know his mercy and love, his comfort and protection, his wisdom and strength. And he has provided it for you.
God has indeed declared his gracious forgiveness in Christ: which covers over all the rebellions against him, and all the despisings of him, that scar the lives of sinners. And he has declared this to you.
The wondrous and liberating truth proclaimed by his genuine prophets is for you. The good news of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord of his church – revealed and applied in Word and sacrament – is for you.
The certain hope of eternal life – as a child in God’s family, and as a citizen in God’s kingdom – is for you. The assurance that God is with you every day – to teach you by his Word, and to inspire you by his Spirit – is for you.
The Lord says: “The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully.”
Today, God’s Word has been spoken, faithfully, to you. Amen.