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JEREMIAH: STAYING UPRIGHT AMIDST EVIL PRESSURES
Part VI: Prophecy Against Judah's Religious Ministers: A Study In Responding To Good And Bad Pastors
(Jeremiah 23:9-40)
  1. Introduction
    1. One could wish that all religious ministers were godly so that their lives and messages could be believed and heeded as beacons of God's light! Yet, to the consternation of many, such is not the case!
    2. This problem existed in Jeremiah's day! We thus view God's message to and through Jeremiah for handling what we face today in terms of questionable or errant ministers and their ministries (as follows):
  2. Prophecy Against Judah's Religious Ministers: A Study In Responding To Good And Bad Pastors.
    1. Jeremiah, God's true messenger (cf. Jeremiah 1), stated the message from God he was about to give in Jeremiah 23:9-40 made him upset due to the evil of those about whom he would speak, Jeremiah 23:9.
    2. That evil was so great that it had led to the land becoming full of adultery (Jer. 23:10a) and its resulting lack of God's provision of ample crops on the land (23:10b) in keeping with the Mosaic Covenant, Dt. 28.
    3. Jeremiah clarified the evil to be in the form of the lives and ministries of Judah's prophets and priests of the Lord who did evil even in the temple, Jer. 23:11. Since Jeremiah was himself a Levitical priest from the town of priests in Anathoth (Jer. 1:1 and Josh. 21:15-19), this message engendered great pain in his heart, for Jeremiah was called to pronounce judgment on his acquaintances and relatives! (Jeremiah 23:9)
    4. God announced He would judge these errant ministers by the coming Babylonian invasion, 23:12; 1:13ff.
    5. Though the false prophets of the Northern Kingdom of Israel had prophecied by the name of the false god, Baal, Judah's false prophets had been worse: they had committed adultery, spoken lies and enabled others to become so evil that they had turned out to be as vile as the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham's era whom God overthrew with fire and brimestone, Jer. 23:13-14, 15; Jude 7 and Genesis 19.
    6. God then directed the people of Judah to reject the messages of these false religious leaders, for they spoke of false hope authored by their own imaginations in contrast to God's truth, Jeremiah 23:16.
    7. Specifically, these false messengers predicted all would be peaceful for the people of Judah for their current ways of selfishness and lust gratification when just the opposite was true , Jeremiah 23:17, 18-22.
    8. After critiquing the false ways of the false religious prophets and priests (Jer. 23:23-28a), God disclosed through Jeremiah how His people could discern His true messages from false messages (as follows):
      1. In contrast to false messages, God's true Word spiritually nourishes the soul like wheat physically nourishes the body; the words of false messengers did just the opposite -- they were likened to the straw that wheat kernals grew upon but which did not nourish the body if ingested, Jeremiah 23:28b.
      2. In contrast to false messages, God's true Word burns like a fire that convicts the heart of sin like fire burns up the straw or like a hammer that shatters a hard rock into pieces, Jeremiah 23:29.
    9. Accordingly, God through Jeremiah predicted He was against these false prophets and priests of Judah, that He stood opposed to their misrepresentations of His truth before the people and the way they thus misled them when He neither sent them nor told them to say what they heralded, Jeremiah 23:30-32.
    10. God directed that when the people or their false prophets or priests asked Jeremiah what was the burden of the Lord, meaning what was God's message from him to them, he was to say that they themselves were the burden, that God would cast them off as one casts of an unwelcome load in judgment, Jer. 23:33.
    11. Indeed, God pledged to bring lasting reproach on the false ministers, their ministries and upon all who heeded their ministries, Jeremiah 23:33, 34-40.
Lesson Application: (1) God opposes and will judge those religious ministers who live in sin and enable others to sin, and who then presume to herald God's truth when they are neither led of God to minister nor told by Him what to speak. (2) God will also hold those who HEED these false messengers guilty of SIN for following the false messenger's errors. (3) So, for their OWN good, God's people are TOLD HOW to DISCERN false ministers and their messages from the true as follows: (a) GODLY ministers (+) align their LIVES with Scripture (+) and seek to influence others to Scriptural living; (+) their WORDS both (-) align with SCRIPTURE (-) and NOURISH the SOUL (-) in a POWERFUL way. (b) UNGODLY ministers (+) live in violation of Scripture, (+) they influence others to sin (+) and their messages (-) neither align with Scripture (-) NOR do they nourish the soul (-) in a powerful way!