This is God's Word. All my bones shake. I'm like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord and because of his holy words. For the land is full of adulterers. Because of the curse, the land mourns, and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. Their course is evil and their might is not right. Both prophet and priest are ungodly. Even in my house I have found their evil, declares the Lord. Therefore their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness, into which they shall be driven and fall. For I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment, declares the Lord. In the prophets of Samaria, I saw an unsavory thing. They prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray. But in the prophets of Jerusalem, I have seen a horrible thing. They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers so that no one turns from his evil. All of them have become like Sodom to me and its inhabitants like Gomorrah. Therefore, thus says the Lord of Hosts concerning the prophets, Behold, I will feed them with bitter food and give them poisoned water to drink, for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into all the land. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually, to those who despise the word of the Lord, it shall be well with you. And to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, no disaster shall come upon you. For who among them has stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and hear his word? Or who has paid attention to his word and listened? Behold the storm of the Lord. Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest. It will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart. In the latter days, you will understand it clearly. I did not send the prophets, yet they ran. I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, Then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds. Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord? I have heard what the prophets have said, who prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat, declares the Lord. Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who use their tongues and declare, declares the Lord. Behold, I'm against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people away, astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the Lord. When one of this people or a prophet or a priest asks you, what is the burden of the Lord? You shall say to them, you are the burden and I will cast you off, declares the Lord. And as for the prophet, priest, or one of the people who says, the burden of the Lord, I will punish that man and his household. Thus shall you say everyone to his neighbor and everyone to his brother, what has the Lord answered? Or what has the Lord spoken? But, quote, the burden of the Lord, you shall mention no more, for the burden is every man's own word, and you pervert the words of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God. Thus you shall say to the prophet, what has the Lord answered you? Or what has the Lord spoken? But if you say, the burden of the Lord, Thus says the Lord, because you have said these words, the burden of the Lord, when I sent to you saying you shall not say the burden of the Lord, therefore behold, I will surely lift you up and cast you away from my presence, you and the city that I gave to you and your fathers, and I will bring upon you everlasting reproach, and perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten." This is what we read in God's holy word. Chapter 23 is about bad leaders. We consider this from two points, before exile and during exile. Jeremiah preached here before the exile, and so we read this mindful of those who would have heard Jeremiah preaching these warnings. But then the exile happened historically. And so the second viewpoint that we can come at this passage with is the viewpoint of the exiles who later are reading the same words we read the book of Jeremiah while they're paying the cost. of having followed bad leaders and found themselves in exile. So there's those two angles on it. First is the original audience, the hearers of Jeremiah's preaching verbally. And then the second is those who receive the book of Jeremiah, the prophecy to read later. Previously, we studied verses one to eight about bad kings and the need for the righteous king. And then, We learn that there's good kings and bad kings in history. Now, beginning here in verse 9, Jeremiah changes the subject, not kings anymore, but now prophets, and deals with the bad leaders in religious life. We could call them today bad pastors. And in the Old Testament, they called them false prophets. A prophet is a man who spoke the Word of God without a book to speak from. For example, Jeremiah himself spoke as God gave him message after message to speak, and then later he wrote down the book of Jeremiah. The difference for a pastor today is that the pastor only speaks the Word of God from the book that God has already written down. But other than that, a prophet or a pastor are bringing God's Word to God's people. So there's good kings and bad kings we learn early in the chapter. There's good and bad prophets we learn in the rest of the chapter. We apply it to ourselves in the sense that there's good and bad pastors in our land and in our world. So the main point of the sermon is this, you'll find this on your outline, bogus pastors who do not preach the truth of God are dangerous and should be a concern to all of us. So work our way through this. So number one, point number one, God commands us not to be drawn by them into a false sense of security, verses 9 through 20. So verse 9 begins, as I said, with these three words concerning the prophets. This is the topic. God has something to say about the pastors, about the prophets, about those who speak as it were on behalf of God. That's the heading for the rest of the chapter. So here, Jeremiah begins. The first thing we learn on the topic of prophets is that Jeremiah is in shock. because he was called to prophesy that the false prophets had become bad and that the Lord would severely judge them. The content of the rest of the chapter has him in shock. He says it this way at the start, my heart is broken within me. And then in verse 10, Jeremiah reflects on the fact that it was not just the prophets who were bad, but the chosen people of God were following those prophets into adultery and other evil activities. Verse 11, even the priests were following those prophets into ungodliness, and the rest that was evil was even found even in the house of the Lord, the temple, we learn in verse 11. They were not willing to keep anything as sacred. If they're not willing to keep the temple as sacred, Verse 12, the Lord declared that he would punish them. Verse 13, the prophets over in Samaria, this is a quick history lesson from a year earlier, the capital of the northern city of Israel, one century earlier, got involved in Baal worship, which had its own unseemly wickedness, I'll just leave it there, was destroyed by the attacking Assyrians. God brings this up here, of course, to bring the lesson home. So in verse 14, he brings the comparison to the prophets now in Judah and in Jerusalem who are no better, openly espousing adultery and lies to the extent that God himself compared Jerusalem to another place that everybody knew then and another place that everybody knows now. a place we call as two different cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. And it ought to send a shiver down our spine to read how God himself is describing his people as no different than Sodom and Gomorrah. You remember as Genesis 19 presents, Sodom and Gomorrah were cities of homosexuality and many other wickednesses. And here God is evaluating the horrible things he sees at Jerusalem and not seeing anything different from what he saw in Sodom and Gomorrah. What will God do about it? Consider the fact that God wiped out the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and there is nothing but a stark warning to God's people of what can come and what is coming. In verse 15, God says the false prophets are the ones who are responsible. This chapter, this passage is about the false prophets and God hangs it on them. He puts it squarely on the shoulders of the false prophets. It was from the prophets of Jerusalem that, quote, verse 15, ungodliness has gone out into all the land, end quote. It was from the prophets. God will punish the false prophets, therefore, with bitter food and poisoned water, verse 15. Then at verse 16, since the false prophets fill people with vain hope and speak from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord, therefore God commanded the people not to listen to the false prophets. Do not be influenced by them. Don't accept their categories. Don't accept their definitions. Don't accept the way they spin things. What is it that false prophets are saying that's so damaging? They're minimizing sin. That's it in a nutshell. That's the problem right there. We have a holy, holy, holy God, and the false prophets are saying, it's all right if you sin. before a holy, holy, holy God. Verse 17, they despise the word of the Lord about judgment and about exile, and they instead insist that no disaster is coming. Verse 18, they don't stand in the counsel of the Lord, which means they don't pray. If they had prayed, With Jeremiah, for example, they would speak the same message as Jeremiah is speaking, about war, about disaster, about God's judgment coming because he's extremely dissatisfied with the sin of the people, instead of speaking about a false peace when there's no peace with man and God. Verse 19, the storm of the Lord has begun. The wrath of God will be seen in the judgment of the wicked. Verse 20, the anger of the Lord would not stop, we're told, until God had accomplished His purposes with His holy anger. And it's another prophecy of the exile that we read at the very end of verse 20, in the latter days. You will understand it clearly. Oh, how that must have rung in the ears of the exiles as they read it later and said, oh yes, boy, do we ever understand it now. So that's our first point. God commands us not to be drawn into false sense of security through the false prophets' messages. And we're moving on to point two, verses 21 to 29. They are not God's spokespersons, even though they think that they are. Verse 21 shows that the false prophets were not sent by God. So there we have the facts. Verse 22 repeats that the false prophets did not stand in God's counsel. This concept of prayer with God where you get your orders, where you get the message you're supposed to bring, they didn't meet with God or else they would have not had such an easygoing attitude towards sin. Verse 23 shows that God knows what is happening nearby, and God also knows what's happening far away, because He's the God of everywhere. Therefore, as verse 24 makes clear, no one can hide from God. Not the false prophets, not the priests, not the kings, not anyone. Verse 25, God has heard what the false prophets are saying, because He hears everything, because He knows everything. When the false prophets are trying to mislead people by saying, I have a dream, Now, we're not against dreams. We're not against God using dreams for His prophets to lead His people. We have it again and again in Scripture. But these people are saying they have a dream when they didn't have a dream from God. So it's a farce, it's phony. They're saying, I have a vision from God, I have a word from the Lord, as if to put power behind their own words so that people will listen to them. And it's manipulation. God hears all about it. He knows exactly what they're saying. While the impressionable people were fooled and manipulated by these false teachers, God wasn't fooled because God himself knows what messages he sent and which prophets he's ordained. So he has not sent them. And yet they're telling people, I was sent by the Lord, I have a dream from the Lord. You're not fooling me, says God. Verse 26 laments the lies and prophets telling others and the lies the prophets tell themselves. Self-deception, could be a whole other sermon just on that. Verse 27 questions the goal of the false prophets. They want to make God's people forget God's name. That sounds familiar. Sure enough, a previous generation forgot God's name and worshiped the false god Baal instead. Verse 28, God says, go ahead, let the false prophets preach. but let the true prophets preach. And may there be seen a difference. It's like the difference between straw and wheat. It's a statement about God's ability to differentiate, differentiate between the true prophet and the false prophet, differentiate between one who presents straw that's worthless to be consumed and one who presents wheat, which is grain that supports a whole community. It's a statement about God's ability to differentiate and to teach us to differentiate. False prophecies are useless for feeding God's people. True prophecies are grain nourishing God's people. Verse 29, in fact, unlike the worthless words of false teachers, God's word spoken by true teachers is incredibly powerful. How could we express just how powerful God's word is, especially in contrast to the ineffectual words of the false prophets? Well, two ways Jeremiah presents this, that God presents it to us through Jeremiah. The first way is like fire. You know, fire that can burn up straw. Have you ever seen a whole mound of straw go up in flames? It's the image. Falsehood can be burned up by truth as quickly as fire burns up straw. In the second image, if you take the false teaching as a stone, a foundation that they try to lay down, these are the things that we want you to believe, say the false teachers. God's truth comes in like a hammer that breaks stone into pieces. You present straw to be burned up by true preaching. You present stone, these bedrock truths that you want us to believe. One message to come in and breaks it all up. Because it's God's Word. It's a presentation of the power of God's Word. False teachers become soft on sin. Let me break it down just a little bit. They want everyone to have intimacy and pleasure whenever you want, wherever you want, with whomever you want. Is that plain enough for you adults without the children catching on? They deny the sinfulness of sin, and they also deny the justice of God's coming judgment for that sin. One false message leads to another. So they tell sinners that God is not angry with them, so that if there's no sin, that there's no wrath. If there's no wrath, there's no judgment. If there's no judgment, there's no exile. If there's no exile, there's no coming cross. Who needs a cross? They've just eradicated the entire message of the entire Bible by saying that sin is not a big deal. False teachers are always soft on sin, not only in their message, but in their own lives. And Jeremiah, in contrast, gives God's truth, which is God's strong teaching that sin always brings judgment. If you're taking notes, that's what to write. Sin always brings judgment. This is the message from God through Jeremiah. Let me break that down a little, try to spell it out for us just a bit. It's not safe to toy with lust and pornography and adultery. It's not safe to play around with sexuality the way our culture does in other more radical ways. It's not safe. to be a minister of such teachings, misleading people on these very topics when the Bible is abundantly clear on these very topics. It's not safe to teach on those things. It's not safe to be the pro-gay ministry teacher when you say both the imaginations and the actions are just fine with God. That's false on both counts. The actions are abominable to God as well as the thoughts. It's evil desires and it ought to be repented of and it will destroy you. God teaches forgiveness for those who repent and the expectation that they will then live holy lives. The only way to escape God's wrath for his sin is to trust Jesus Christ for salvation, believing that he died on the cross to cleanse you of your sins. God's people don't come to God's temple. God's people don't come to God's house. God's people don't come to God's church to hear what a man has to say. God's people come to God's house to hear what God has to say. And whether that man is confused about his identity or whether that's a woman, whoever it is that's a human standing in front of people to say what man thinks, that's not God's people coming to hear that. God's people insist to hear God. Christ's people hear Christ's voice. And if they don't hear Christ's voice, they won't come anymore. They insist to hear God's voice. These are not God's spokespersons. They don't speak for God, though they think that they are, and they'll tell you that they do. They're not spokespersons for God. That's our second point. We're moving to our third point, which is almost redundant, but it's an interesting play on words. God is against bogus teachers, and God himself will judge them. In case it hadn't been clear yet, God now makes it more clear if that were possible in verse 30. We might have gotten that impression, but there it is in black and white. I'm against the prophets, the false prophets. And as long as we're laboring to be very clear, let's be very clear which prophets specifically that God is announcing he's against. Verse 30 answers that also. God is against the ones who steal my words from one another. Isn't that a fascinating phrase? Since the false prophets don't stand in God's counsel, they don't pray, they don't get words from God, they don't read the scriptures and take it seriously, they steal God's words And then they change them. And they don't seem to have fear in doing that. That's what's being said here. Look how verse 31 explains what God said in verse 30. God explains it in our next verse. Is that clear? That's so clear. They use their tongues and say God said it. They have their own message and then they say, thus says the Lord. It's a bold-faced lie. That's so clear in verse 31. What makes a false prophet false is that he speaks his own message, his own opinion, his own ideas, and falsely attributes it to the Almighty God. That's what makes a false prophet false. That's what makes a bogus pastor bogus. What makes a true prophet true is that he gets all of his words straight from God and God's word. If a prophet wants to know God's truth, he's gonna have to go to God to get it. Verse 32, because the false prophets claim they get their dreams and their words from God, they're lying. And the truth is that people do not gain any benefit from these false prophets. Now, they might actually believe that they're getting words from God, but God has explained in this chapter that they're actually deceived themselves. It doesn't make them true just because they genuinely believe it. We'll give them credit for genuinely believing it, but they're flat out wrong. They're completely deceived. And starting in verse 33, there's this huge pun. A double meaning, a play on words, a play on this word burden. A burden here has two meanings. One is a burden is God's message. I have a burden from the Lord. I have a message from the Lord. That idea. And the second meaning of the word burden is something heavy to be carried. You know, a heavy pack. Basically, they're treating their personal opinion as if it were the message from God, and God was weary of it. So he created this pun to say, if you have a burden from the Lord, right, then that's burden I'm going to cast off. So the false teachers claim to have a message from God to preach, but instead God told the false preachers they are the burden. something heavy to carry and God will cast them off. Verse 34, God will punish the false prophets for even saying that they know the burden of the Lord. God is just tired of them saying it. Listen, all of you are not allowed to say the burden of the Lord anymore, but they say it anyway. I specifically told you not to say burden of the Lord, and they say it anyway. That's what's going on here. He'll punish the false prophets for even saying the words burden of the Lord. Verse 35, everyone asks, what is it that God says? Everybody wants to know, what does God say? Verse 36, the prophet perverts the words of the living God. Verse 37, God instructs the people, how about do this? You reverse the question and turn around and ask the false prophet, what does God say? And in verse 38, if the false prophet responds by actually saying out loud that God commanded them not to say, Then verse 39, God will throw the false prophet out for saying the burden of the Lord. And verse 40, the result for the false prophets will be, listen to this, absorb this. What will the message to the false prophets be? What is the result for the false prophets? Everlasting reproach and perpetual shame. Now, do you think God's messing around? with sin and false teaching? I think we don't take false teaching seriously enough. This is the message of Jeremiah 23. And here's some of my applications to us. I think I have five. Applying this chapter to modern Christians in America. Number one, we should be broken about false pastors. That's how verse nine starts. Jeremiah didn't get mad at them, he didn't get even with them, he wept for them. Verse nine, my heart is broken within me. Is that our reaction? When we hear that people are saying about God we should be deeply disturbed, and people wanna say God is behind LGBT, you know, the whole alphabet soup they've got, that God is behind it, we should be deeply disturbed for them. Jeremiah was not smug and judgmental, but rather was internally weighed down with sadness and lamenting. It's part of why we know Jeremiah as the weeping prophet. He wept that God's people would not repent, including the false prophets. Listen to the words of Jesus on this topic, Matthew 7, 21. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me. you workers of lawlessness, Matthew 7, 21 to 23. So who should we feel sorry for? We need to teach clearly about false teachers from our pulpits, refute error in all of our Bible studies, but we must be as charitable as possible and also fully humble. If it were not for the grace of God reaching us, we would be doing the same things. When we look around at our churches and false pastors, it breaks our hearts. How are the cities of America, the things they do, the things they say, different from Sodom and Gomorrah? We mourn for our cities, we mourn for our country, we mourn for the bogus pastors themselves, and we preach the truth ever so clearly, but with compassion in our hearts, with a lump in our throats, and with tears in our eyes, because we know exactly what's coming to them. Our first application is to be broken about false pastors. Our second is to keep the fear of God in His word. The word of God, we're told in this chapter, is like a hammer that breaks stone in pieces. We ought to have proper respect for the word of God. True prophets were men like the prophet Moses, who talked with God on the mountain. The prophet Isaiah, who saw the Lord sitting on a throne. The Apostle Paul, who was caught up to the third heaven, whatever that means. And the Apostle John, who was in the Spirit, seeing the glories of the kingdom. These were the prophets of God. Scripture comes from the throne of the Most High God. You know what else comes from the throne of the Most High God? Jesus. Keep respect for the Lord and his word because his son is the word. Jesus was sent as the prophet. He was also sent as the word. He is the message. Jesus was sent from God. These prophets were not. Jesus was. He was sent from God. He's the only true prophet, as it were, for the people of God. And all of us have our truth from him. According to our chapter, a true prophet is one who's met in the counsel of God. Well, Jesus, does he ever meet that qualification? When the Holy Spirit overshadowed the womb of the Virgin Mary and she became pregnant with Jesus, let me ask you, just prior to that, where was Jesus? He's preexistent, right? He existed before all time. So where was he just prior to the Holy Spirit overshadowing the womb of the Virgin Mary? I tell you where he was. He was ever, always in the council room of the Lord. he went from hearing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with his glory. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come, to hearing what you might hear in a medical exam for a pregnant lady. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, the heartbeat of Mary. Of course he's familiar with the council room of the Lord God Almighty. That's his father in heaven. Jesus has been in the council room of the Lord. And when the false prophets in the day of Jesus threatened to put him to death, this is what Jesus said in John 8, 40. Keep your fear of the Lord God and his word that you have heard. That's our second application. Our third application, show your respect for God and his word by reading his word a lot. Read it every day, read it with your spouse, read it with your family, and attend church every time the word of God is being preached. Christ said in Matthew 24, 11, many false prophets will arise and lead many astray, Matthew 24, 11. The best way to avoid being led astray is to keep growing in your own knowledge of the Bible. I wonder whether Christians pay more attention to blogs and comments and comments on the comments than they do to studying the Bible itself. I once recently saw a federal form had gender, male, female, other. Other? The federal government thinks there's a other gender beyond male and female? That's where we are. The Bible says that God made people male or female. What's the other category? It's a lie. We need to be steeped in the word of God to keep ourselves in truth or the lie that's all around us, even getting into the official forms of our government, will get us to believe some falsehoods, won't it? A nation without truth sickens. The danger is that sick culture feels perfectly normal to the people who are living in it, like the frog in a beaker that's slowly warmed. Americans are becoming oblivious to the sins of the approaching culture death. It's vitally important for us to safeguard ourselves and our families by reading the truth of God's word habitually, even more consistent, I would say, than your habit of eating food. For our fellow citizens, this all must be very confusing. For us, it must not ever be confusing. For our fellow citizens, we can only speak to them about the word of God. The courageous few speak up. Those who stay in God's word show respect for his word by reading it yourself a lot. That's our third application. Our fourth is be careful of careless words. Matthew 12, 36. Do not speak about getting a word from the Lord. as if something new were going to appear from heaven about your big decision. Don't say, I feel led. The Lord has laid it on my heart. as if that's some sort of divine revelation to you outside of the normal pattern of His Word and His Spirit. Don't say, God told me this and that. God told me to tell you this and that. Be very careful about your words. Because it's really up against what we saw in this chapter of the burden of the Lord. Everybody's asking, what does the Lord say? What's the burden of the Lord? And the false prophets are so bold as to say, the burden of the Lord is this, and God says, it's offensive to me. We are people of the book. It's all settled and written down. It was settled 1900 to 2000 years ago, it was settled. Closed canon, it's complete, it's finished. There's no additions. We have the spirit who helps us to understand and interpret, but we're not people of the daily tweet from the Lord. We're not people of the weekly upgrade from the Lord to monthly transition to a whole new system. There's no new system. It's a closed canon. Be very careful how you speak about God guiding us. Table of Contents is closed at 66 books. We have exactly how many books, exactly how many chapters, exactly how many verses and words, even down to the dotted I's and crossed T's that we are going to get from God because it's all that we need for life and godliness in this broken culture. God has given us what we need for our big decision, so let's be careful of our careless words. That's our fourth, I have one more. Listen for the voice of Christ your Savior. Listen for it. God is speaking to you. You came here to meet with God, didn't you? God is meeting with you by his word and his spirit. It's found in preaching from his word. True preachers will always say to you, judgment precedes life. Every true preacher will say there's got to be a cross. There's got to be the exile. There's got to be judgment. God can't just wipe away your sins. He's got to deal with it straight up. Every true preacher from the Bible will say judgment must precede life. Christ needed to suffer and then enter his glory. It's the only way, it has to happen. We need a cross because we've offended the holy God with our sin. Matthew 16, 21, Jesus began to show his disciples he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed. And on the third day be raised, Matthew 16, 21. Or Acts 26, 23, the Christ must suffer And that being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles, Acts 26, 23. And as long as you're listening for the voice of Christ, put your seatbelt on. Because the true, unadulterated word of God from Christ will rip you up and then fix you up. And isn't that also why you came? Isn't that why we're here? Isn't that what we really need? you'll be convicted, and then you'll be comforted. And you'll run to Christ and Him crucified, and you'll receive nourishment for your soul. The darker the day in which we're living, the darker it is for you, for the next generation, our children, for the next generation, our grandchildren. And the more thankful we should be for the team of faithful pastors that God has raised up in a faithful denomination. Let me take our main point of our sermon and state it inversely now. I had five applications. Here's the main point of the sermon. Bogus pastors do not preach the truth of God are dangerous and should be a concern to all of us. Let me state that the opposite way. The inverse truth that's also true. True pastors. who faithfully preach the truth of God are a safeguard for us and should be a source of calm and peace for all of us. John 10.3, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he's brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him and they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him. But they do not know the voice of strangers. Listen for the voice of Christ your Savior when His grace and His word is preached. Let's pray. Father in heaven,