Jeremiah 23:23-40. It has been some time since I posted to this blog. It is supposed to be a daily reading blog to help the reader maintain an active relationship with God through His word. Any relationship requires communication and understanding. God has communicated and it is my desire to understand what God has communicated (it’s meaning to the original readers and to us today) and to share that understanding with those who use this blog to “hear” from God on a regular basis. My absence has been due to some major job requirements over the last several months. It does not mean that I have not maintained a relationship with God but I have been unable to study and write with respect to this blog. On a couple of occasions I tried, in May and earlier this month, but it is difficult to get back “up to speed” after such a long interruption. But here we go, and by God’s grace I will be able to continue.
In our last reading (Jeremaih 23:9-22) we saw both the heart of Jeremiah and the heart of God. There was a lot of sadness on the part of both because so many of the people God had chosen to be a “blessing” to the nations around them had turned away from God. Jeremiah warned the leaders who were misleading the people of disaster coming their way. But as is very common we also saw that there is hope, God gives us the opportunity to turn back to Him.
In today’s reading God starts out with a question, or maybe two. Depending on the translation you are reading verse 23 says something like, “Am I a God who is near but not far?” It’s like God is saying that he is both close by; seeing and involved, and that he is also a God who has power beyond the city walls of Jerusalem or the boundaries of Judea. In the Ancient Near East (ANE) (Basically we call that part of the world the Middle East today, although the ANE also included Turkey and some of Eqypt too.) in the time of Jeremiah there were powerful cities that controlled regions near them. Sometimes this power and influence would grow and larger empires would be built. Egypt was a fairly consistent empire at that time. Assyria with it’s capital in Ninevah had recently lost power over a large portion of the Ancient Near East and Babylon was rising in power (Babylon was the name of the city and the empire, though it is usually called the Neo-Babyolonian Empire (“neo” meaning “new” since there was a more ancient Babylonian Empire)). Both the local and larger powers had their own sets of “gods” that they honored and worshipped. These people often saw their gods as limited in power and influence. In 1 Kings 20:23-28 the King of Aram (Damascus was his capital, north of Israel) had been defeated by the people of the Northern Kingdom (Israel). He decided to attack again the following year but on different turf. In verse 23 his advisors determined that he lost because the god of Israel was a god of the mountains (where the defeat happened) and was (probably) not a god of the plain (where they decided to attempt a second battle). In verses 27-29 we see that the defeat in the plain was huge. The one true God, Israel’s God, Yahweh, is truly a power both near and far away. God makes that very clear in Jeremiah 23:23-24.
In verses 25-27 God applies this idea to the fake prophets that were in Jerusalem. Prophets were supposed to be sort of a mouth for God among the people, but theses guys were having dreams and saying that the dreams were a message from God. To be sure God does use dreams to communicate, sometimes, but the message always has to be measured against what he has already told us. In Numbers 23 a somewhat unfaithful prophet named Balaam was asked by an enemy king to pronounce a curse on the people of Israel. Several times Balaam gave them a blessing instead of a curse. In the middle of this encounter Balaam told the enemy king that the God of Israel is not like us; he does not lie or change, he follows through on his plans and promises. We have to be careful, if we think God has given us some direction we need to see if it lines up with what we know for sure about God and his plans in the Bible. The fake prophets in Jeremiah’s day were not checking their dreams against God’s word, or maybe they were. God talks about them being deceived in their hearts and says that they intended to make the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding area forget about Him through their dreams just like their ancestors (fathers) did by using other fake gods (Baal was one of these fake gods honored by some of the original people in the area).
In verses 28-32 it becomes very clear that God is speaking through Jeremiah, and God is very clear about what he thinks of theses self serving “prophets”. It may seem odd in verse 28 that God says, “Let them tell their dreams” since in verses 25-27 we learned that their dreams were lies and were actually designed to make the people forget God. But there is a contrast in verse 28 that helps us understand. God also says in verse 28 that the true prophet who actually does have a message from God should tell that to the people “in truth”. God then compares the dreams of the false prophets to straw (the stems and leaves of a grain plant) and the true words that he has give prophets like Jeremiah to the kernels of grain. In verse 29 God compares his words to fire and a hammer. The first comparison kind of relates back to the straw and kernel comparison. Not only are God’s true words useful like grain but they can also burn thing off like a fire does and one thing that burns pretty well is straw. We see that sort of destructive power in the second comparison when we are told that the hammer can break rocks. So it’s not that God is giving the false prophets permission to keep lying and misleading the people but he is informing all of us that his words, his plan, his message is much stronger and will destroy the lies of the false prophets. In verses 29-32 we see that God himself is against these false prophets who have “stolen his words from each other” and run around the streets of Jerusalem and Judea saying, “God said …” In the first case they are stealing lies from each other and spreading them around; it’s like gossip. In the second case we are told that they are using their own tongues to make up messages that they claim are from God. He is also against the ones who have claimed their “dreams” were messages from God when they were not. Think about it, this is the guy who spoke the universe into existence (Genesis 1), do you really want him “against” you? I don’t. At the end of verse 32 we see that these made up stories were not from God and that they were having a bad effect on the people of Judea. The people were all going the wrong way and were not benefitting at all from what these fake prophets were telling them.
In verses 33-40 we see a very stern warning. In verse 33 God tells Jeremiah how he is supposed to answer the people, the priests, or the (false) prophets if they come to him looking for “oracles” from God. The word “oracle” translates a Hebrew word that means “burden”; like something you have to carry. That seems like a good word to describe the messages that true prophets would deliver from God to various people. Sometimes their jobs would involve physically carrying a physical message from God to someone (like Moses and the stone tablets with the 10 commandments on them or earlier when Jeremiah had a scroll to deliver to the king) but their messages were also “burdens” emotionally and spiritually. Many of the prophets suffered a great deal for bringing information from God to various people (See Hebrews 11). It truly was a burden delivering these “oracles”. In verse 33 we see that, if the people come to Jeremiah and ask him if he has a “delivery” for them from God that he supposed to ask them, “What delivery? God has abandon you!”
Of course the people wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer so they would turn to the false prophets and the religious leaders looking for direction from God. God tells Jeremiah he does have a package for those guys, “In the package is a warning not to pretend that they have messages from God. If they do they will be punished.”
Verses 33-36 have a couple of interesting pieces of information in them. First we see that the people won’t stop with the false prophets and the religious leaders, if they can’t get answers from them they will start looking to each other for messages from God. The interesting part is in verse 36. In verse 36 we are told that they had already gotten a message from God but had forgotten what it was. This is probably referring to true messages from true prophets like Jeremiah. And of course they had the original message they could go to, the Old Testament, or at least the part of it available to them at that time.
In verses 37-38 Jeremiah is told to go talk to any one who is claiming to be bringing a message from God to the people. He is supposed to challenge these self-appointed “prophets” about their supposed messages from God and tell them to stop their lies. Remember in verse 33 God told Jeremiah there would be no more answers to the people about the events that were happening, like the take over by the Babylonians. In verses 39-40 we see that if the people insist on pretending that God isn’t dealing with their constant rebellion and disrespect that it will soon be very clear because the city of Jerusalem will be taken away from them and they will be taken away from the city. These people may have been fooled or started to believe their own lies but the soon coming events would be a reminder forever of what happens when you don’t listen to God and make up your own explanation for what is going on in history.
This reading is a very serious warning to people who want to say what God is doing. God has given us the big picture in the Bible about what is going on in history. In the last “book” of the Bible, the Revelation, there is a stern warning not to add to the word of prophecy of the Bible. Several years ago when the HIV virus started to make a big impact on lives in the United States some Christians started to say that is was a “judgment” from God on the homosexual community. The problem with that sort of talk is that God didn’t tell us that, those people were coming very close to saying that they had special information from God. To be sure God is displeased with people who participate in a homosexual lifestyle but there is no indication that HIV is a specific “judgment” from God. What the people of Jeremiah’s day needed to do was listen to what God had already said and respond respectfully to it. Today we need to listen to the warning and not try to mold God according to how we want life. We need to be careful not to put our words into God mouth. The cool thing thought is that God actually takes the time to warn us when we are rebelling. He doesn’t just “ZAPPP!”, hit us with a lightning bolt, he warns and warns and warns and makes it very clear what he wants us to do. I’m so glad God gives us lots of chances, other wise I’m sure I’d be a little lump of charcoal out in the middle of a field some where. God thank you for your patience.
Thank you for all the warnings. Thank you for communicating to us through the Bible. Thank you for Jesus, who made it possible for the Holy Spirit to live in us and help us understand and honor you. Help me live for you and help me communicate your true words to others.