"Prophet Margins " Part 4 November 11, 2018 AM

thank you. I haven't sung that song in 18 years. That was my school song when

I was in high school and we sang that a lot. I haven't sung it in 18 years.

It was a joy to sing it again. Let's pray together. Father I thank you so much for gathering us together at this place and in this time.

Lord we need you to speak to us from your Word today. More necessary than our daily bread, sweeter than the finest food we have enjoyed this last week is your

Word. We are most dependent upon you our

Creator and our Savior. We ask that as you have given us new life in your Son Christ that you would rejuvenate that life in us today as we hear from your

Word. We pray these things for the sake of Christ with whom you are well pleased.

Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 23.

We have been talking about profit margins for quite some time and my desire is for us to to live as a discerning group of people, people of the

Word that we would not ever pick up a book published by some sort of Christian author or Christian publishing house or even just enjoy,

I mean, or be in conversation with other people without thinking critically about what is the

Word of God say? What is the truth of the Word of God can very quickly discern between truth and a lie and I believe that this is not, if this is done rightly in submission to Christ, this does not leave us as being a critical argumentative people but it leaves us as a holy people, people who love goodness and turn away from evil, people who love

Christ and exalt him in all that we do. And in Jeremiah we have been talking about the need to be concerned about profit margins, that there are things that are out of bounds and in bounds, there are things that are false and there are things that are true and that we ought to think about that in context to the

Word of God. Con men rarely announce themselves and their whole goal is to get us to agree with them before we even realize that they've changed our mind and there is a growing contrast in our passage between the

Word of God and the Word of man. The words of God that have been placed down for eternal truth and the words of man which are always changing.

Last time we were together we looked at Jeremiah 23 and verses 25 through 27 and we talked about the so called liberating falsehoods of the dreamers.

Many times false prophets come in the form of liberators, that they see those who hold to the truth of Scripture as being too stringent or not broad -minded and too backwards and they offer liberation even as Satan offered liberation from the tyranny of God to Adam and Eve, that God had restricted them, denied them the opportunity to be as wise as he, denied them the fruit of that one tree and Satan came to liberate

Eve and Adam from that tyranny. And of course that was all a lie and Adam and Eve fell into sin, they sinned against God and were for the very first time awakened to true tyranny following Satan.

We talked about last time that we need a litmus test for what is true and what is false.

Thankfully God has given us a very large stack of litmus paper and we can know what we've got when we hear something on the news or we read something in a book or we have a conversation with someone, we don't have to wonder about the truth or the falsehood of it, we can know what we've got in our hands by the litmus paper of the

Bible. Well we turn our attention to the rest of the passages this morning verses 28 through 40 and I invite you to stand with me to do reverence to Jesus Christ, our

King, our Lord, our Savior, who was revealed here in this text. Beginning in verse 28, the prophet who has a dream may relate his dream but let him who has my word speak my word in truth.

What does straw have in common with grain, declares the

Lord. Is my word, is not my word like fire, declares the

Lord, and like a hammer which shatters a rock? Therefore behold

I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who steal my words from each other.

Behold I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who use their tongues and declare the

Lord declares. Behold I am against those who have prophesied false dreams, declares the

Lord, and related them and led my people astray by their falsehoods and reckless boasting.

Yet I did not send them nor command them nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit, declares the

Lord. Now when this people or the prophet or a priest asks you saying, what is the oracle of the

Lord? Then you shall say to them, what oracle? The Lord declares

I will abandon you. Then as for the prophet or the priest or the people who say, the oracle of the

Lord, I will bring punishment upon that man and his household. Thus will each of you say to his neighbor and to his brother, what has the

Lord answered or what has the Lord spoken? For you will no longer remember the oracle of the

Lord because every man's own word will become the oracle and you have perverted the words of the living

God, the Lord of hosts, our God. Thus you will say to that prophet, what has the

Lord answered you and what has the Lord spoken? For if you say, the oracle of the

Lord, surely thus says the Lord because you said this word, the oracle of the

Lord, I have also sent to you saying you shall not say, the oracle of the Lord.

Therefore behold, I will surely forget you, cast you away from my presence along with the city which

I gave to you and your fathers. I will put an everlasting reproach on you and the everlasting humiliation which will not be forgotten.

And this is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. We have a custom at Thanksgiving and the custom is after we have eaten the meal and had some dessert and hopefully most of the folks are still around the table, we begin to and this is usually by Becca's prompting, we go around the table and everyone there will mention three things that they're thankful for.

I'm sure that's very common for a lot of families and it was interesting this year to see, to hear what some people were thankful for and to see the struggle for some who don't make that a habit to come up with something to say but I have been thinking about this for a little while.

I knew it was coming, I wanted what am I thankful for and really what should I be thankful for it sometimes is the question.

And I find that I am increasingly thankful for the Bible. We enjoy so many of the blessings of God precisely because we have a copy of God's Holy Word, this

Holy Bible in our hands, in our lives. And when we think about Thanksgiving we can't forget the pilgrims, we can't forget where Thanksgiving as a national holiday or even really just a cultural holiday where it really came from.

The pilgrims who were so persecuted, who suffered greatly, many afflictions, many persecutions because they had separated from the

Church of England. They were separatists, they were not Puritans, they were separatists. They saw no hope for the

Church of England that had failed to be reformed according to the Word of God and so they stood outside of the establishment and were constantly persecuted for their faith because they read the

Bible for themselves, because they had in their homes and in their church a copy of God's Holy Word, the

Geneva Bible, and they would read it for themselves and they were instructed by the words, the eternal words of God and by the by the power of the

Holy Spirit who God was, how he ought to be worshiped, the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And based on the growing passion and conviction of their lives, they fled

England for the sake of their children, ultimately fleeing all the way to the

New World where half of them died because of the

Bible. Because they wanted to go somewhere where they could worship the God that was revealed in the

Bible according to the way that the Bible said to worship him and they wanted to raise their children, even giving their lives for the sake of their children so that they could read the

Bible for themselves and worship God according to the scriptures. So we can't think of Thanksgiving without thinking about the

Bible and remarkably in the last 25 years, 1 billion English Bibles have been sold.

This adds to the 6 billion Bibles in existence. These are all estimates, obviously, but 6 billion

Bibles in existence. The question comes to mind, are we thankful for Holy Scripture?

Are we thankful for Holy Scripture? Do we read it? Do we gather in its harvest? Do we depend on it?

Are we nourished by its truth? It's often very difficult for us to be thankful for something that is so readily available.

We ought to thank God for every breath that we breathe, but how difficult is that because we take it for granted?

And this is the case of the Bible. We have so many copies in our own homes.

Many of us have lived so long with the Bible. Are we thankful? Are we thankful for the

Bible? The question for this morning is, how thankful? How thankful are you for the Bible? Let's just assume that we ought to be thankful and to say, how thankful are we for the

Bible? I think verses 28 through 40 of Jeremiah 23 helps us be thankful and increases our gratitude for the established certain

Word of God. Let's look at verses 28 and 29 again.

These are riveting verses. Verse 28, the prophet who has a dream may relate his dream, but let him who has my word speak my word in truth.

What does straw have in common with grain, declares the Lord? Is not my word like fire, declares the

Lord, and like a hammer which shatters a rock? Let's give some thought to the life -transforming power of the

Bible. When God says, through the prophet

Jeremiah, when he says, what does straw have in common with grain?

We know that's a rhetorical question, but perhaps its impact is lost on us because we don't...

most of us, I assume all of us, but I'm just gonna be safe to say most of us do not harvest our own grain to make bread.

Some of us may have done that, and you know what this verse is talking about. What does straw have to do with grain?

That's a great question. It reminds us of the process of farmers going out to their fields, having sharpened their scythes, and they go out to the field, and they begin to to swish that blade through the grain, felling it in droves.

They come back, and they begin to bundle it up into sheaves, and they carry it from the fields, which are mostly in the lowlands, and they carry all of this up, perhaps by hand, perhaps in the back of a donkey, perhaps by cart, but they take all of their sheaves of grain, and they take it up to a higher altitude where the wind blows, and there they have made a flat area.

Perhaps they have an ox to help them with the work, but they have a flat area and a post in the middle, and they hook their ox up to this post by way of a ring and a strap, and they throw all of these sheaves of grain evenly onto the bottom of this threshing floor.

They have a small little wall around the edges so the stuff doesn't fall out, and then they crack the whip, and they get that ox moving around, and according to Leviticus, they're not supposed to muzzle the ox.

And the ox is moving around and around that post, and its heavy hooves are crushing up that grain, separating it from the stalks of straw that it's attached to.

Very often they also have a sled that the ox pulls behind him, also very heavy, crushing that grain, removing the seeds from the husks and from the straw, and so it's all separated.

Then they move the ox out of the threshing floor, they get the sled out of there, and they have this pile of straw and grain all together.

Is it time to make bread? It's not time to make bread. Now comes the winnowing process, and they grab the winnowing fork.

It probably looks like a pitchfork in our minds, and they put it into the pile of the straw and the grain, and they throw it up in the air, and the wind blows away the husks and the straw because they are light, and they catch the wind, and they sail, but the grain, which is heavy, tends to fall right back down into that threshing floor.

And after winnowing and winnowing and winnowing, suddenly you're left with a pile of grain, and the straw is gone.

And God says, what does straw have to do with grain? See, the grain, the seed, is what's valuable.

The grain, the seed, is what they turn it into bread. They eat bread every day.

You're not going to make bread out of life. It's man's food. It maintains life.

This, we in the image of God, are sustained by the Word of God.

This is our daily food, and it is not straw. This is seed.

Not only does seed maintain life, seed or grain produces life.

We are born again by living and enduring seed, the

Word of God. You take a seed, you put it, you take a seed, a grain of wheat, you put it in the earth, and it sprouts.

You want to see people in your life, family, friends, relatives, neighbors, co -workers. You want to see new life in them.

You want to see God's life in them. Let your children, your grandchildren, give to take it as food.

We see it as life. So what does seed have to do with straw? When we read the story of the farmer, the farmer who gathers in the grain, what happens to the grain?

It is safely stored in the barn. What happens to the straw? What happens to the chaff? The wind either drives it away, or it is gathered for burning.

Because it's worthless. It's good for nothing. And so God says, what does straw have to do with grain?

What does straw have in common with grain? Seed is greater than straw.

And so the Word of God is greater than all the various impulses, ideas, theories of man.

If we want to be maintained in life, and to see life produced, we go to the Word of God. We go to the grain.

What good is the straw? Let us not say of straw that it is seed, for it is not.

How thankful are we for the seed, for the grain? How thankful are we for the life -transforming power of the

Bible? That's the first image we're given. Also, look at verse 29.

The Lord says, "...is not my word like fire, and like a hammer which shatters a rock?"

And the first thing we think of in context is the straw and the fire. Fire would consume the straw.

What does fire do to the grain? It bakes bread. Okay, no problem there.

But the fire consumes. We hear that God's word is like a hammer that shatters a rock.

I could use 27 to be reminded that the false prophets are causing them to forget the name of God himself.

And they are doing the very same work that the false prophets of old did when they talked about Baal all the time.

The false prophet, the false god Baal, and caused the people to forget the name of God. Well, God's word shatters the stone idol.

And so in the context, when we think of God's word being fire, that rock, yes, it shatters idolatry, destroys these icons with fire.

And Exodus 19 verse 18.

Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire.

And its smoke ascended, like the smoke of a furnace and the whole mountain quaked violently.

The rock got split and was lit on fire when

God came down to give a powerful image.

This is why is God's word like fire? Why is God's word like a hammer that shatters a rock?

Because God's word reflects the character, the power, the nature of God himself.

Psalm 104 verse 32 says, he looks at the earth and it trembles. He touches the mountains and they smoke.

God's word is not going to be inconsistent with the character and the nature of God himself.

It's part of the part of the litmus test. And so, how thankful are we for the

Bible? The Bible that maintains our life and produces life. How thankful are we for the

Bible that is like fire which consumes the worthless and like a hammer that shatters the idols in our lives?

That can be...that sounds like a painful process. Yes. But how thankful are we for the living, active, powerful, sharp word of God?

It's a good question to ask. You know, the very first part of this verse is helpful for us.

Verse 28, the prophet who has a dream may relate his dream, but let him who has my word speak my word in truth.

Here's the application. If we're really thankful for the Word of God, if we're thankful for the

Word of God, its unique status, its character, its power, if we're really thankful for the

Bible, then let the person who has had a dream relate their dream.

Let them talk about it. Sure, you go ahead and talk about your dream.

I'm sure it's significant to you, it's personal, it's vivid. You go ahead and relate your dream.

Do you know what? It's nothing but a dream you had. And let someone's story of unexpected...let

their story...let them relate their story of their experience, and that's all it is.

Let an imaginary voice, that's all it is. Let a sensation up the spine be just that.

These things we experience and they are real to each one of us, but let the one who has

God's Word, let the one who has Holy Scripture speak it as God's Word in truth.

And let the seed be seed. And let's call straw, straw. The people in Jeremiah's day were not doing that.

They had stopped doing that. To them, everything was seed. Everything was good for food.

Everything was fine to sow in the field to see if it produced life. And there was no more separation or division in their minds between what was the truth and what was

God's Word and what was something else. And they had lost all distinction. They weren't thankful for the

Word of God. Well, we need to be thankful for the

Word of God, thankful for the Bible because of its life transforming power, but also we need to be thankful for the

Bible because of the long -suffering hatred of the

Lord. Thankful for the Bible that tells us who he is and relates to us his message of warning and salvation.

We see this in verses 30 through 40, a long -suffering hatred of the

Lord. One of the first things we have to recognize is that the

Lord is against people. That may be surprising to find out the

Lord is actually against somebody or against a group of people.

I think in our time that we have been coached to think that God is like the sports fan.

Not really just a fan of one type of sport. No, he doesn't favor one sport above other sports.

He's a fan of all sports. And he doesn't have a team in any particular sport that goes on.

He doesn't root for anybody in particular. He doesn't get up for rivalries. He's just for all sports and all sporting activities everywhere.

That's the way God is for all people, whatever they think, whatever they do.

That God is just general mammothy. God is all about you. And he's not more about you than anybody else, which in many ways is simply these thoughts about who

God is and being for everybody. That's just a reflection of what

God is telling us what we ought to think, and we're just projecting that onto God as an idol. The Lord is against people.

If you're not convinced, you just read. What does the Bible say? Verse 30,

I am against the prophets. Verse 31, I am against the prophets. Verse 32, I am against those who have prophesied false dreams.

He's against, he's against, he's against. Who is he against?

He is against those who steal his words, in verse 30. They hear a snippet of scripture and twist it around and use it for their own purposes.

He's against those who lie in his name and say things like, well, God told me to tell you stop annoying me, or buy this anointed prayer cloth.

God is against those who harm his people, verse 32. He is against those who give these false messages to people and lead them away from God and away from Christ and harm his people.

He is against them. He is against those who pervert his words, verse 36. He's against those who steal his words, lie in his name, harm his people, and pervert his words.

He's against them. So much so that he says in verses 39 and 40,

I will forget you and cast you away from my presence, along with the city which

I gave you and your fathers. I will put an everlasting reproach on you and an everlasting humiliation which will not be forgotten.

That's how much against these false prophets and these people who misuse the

Word of God and misuse his name. That's how much God is against them, to that degree, to that everlasting degree.

It's interesting, the word oracle that is repeated over and over and over again. You may have in your margins or in the text itself the translation burden.

That's what it means, a burden. It's an interesting thing that in the society in which

Jeremiah lived, for all of their misuse of the Word of God and their lack of faith in the truth of which

God had sent to them, that they had this way of talking about divine revelation.

They would say the oracle of the Lord or the burden of the Lord. They even had some sort of biblical background of speaking that way.

It was their religious language, the oracle of the Lord, the burden of the

Lord. Verse 33, now when this people were the prophet or a priest, anybody asks you,

Jeremiah, what is the oracle or what is the burden of the

Lord? Then you shall say to them, what oracle? And actually, depending on how you separate the

Hebrew letters, which the scribes did not have room on their scrolls to leave spaces between the letters, so this could be, then you shall say to them what oracle, or it could be translated, then you shall say, you are the burden, which

I think is the actual translation. So when a priest or a prophet or the people come up to Jeremiah and they recognize him as a prophet of God, they say, what is the burden of the

Lord? You are the burden and I'm gonna offload you.

That's what the verse says. You're the burden and I'm gonna cast you away. Why are they the burden?

Because rather than simply relying on the truth of Scripture that had been plainly given to them, they went around looking for something else, right?

Somebody at the Thanksgiving table got some dry turkey breast, some green bean casserole, and the onions on top were soggy, and some mashed potatoes with a giblet gravy they don't like, and they didn't want it, and they went back to find something else.

And the people of Israel, the people of Judah, had been given what they had been given, but they didn't want it, and they went to go find something else.

And they went to go find a new word, a fresh word, a different word. They didn't like what was on their plate, and they called these new words the the burden of the

Lord. Here's a weighty message from God. God, hear me right,

God laid something on my heart. It's probably the closest church language we have in our day that compares with what they were saying in Jeremiah, okay?

God laid something on my heart. They were speaking in the name of God, and they were saying,

God is saying this, and you must listen to this, rather than being thankful for what they had been given, what was right in front of them, what was established.

And so they kept on going around using this, oh, I have a burden I need to share. They didn't think much of it.

It was so much a part of their common language. They thought it was just fine. This is how they did things.

This is how they communicated religious thoughts to one another. And God said, stop saying that.

Stop it. He says in verse 38, for if you say the oracle of the

Lord, surely this says the Lord, because you said this word, the oracle of the Lord. I have also sent to you saying, you shall not say the oracle of the

Lord. Stop saying that, because you are the burden, because you keep on perverting, and lying, and harming, and stealing, and I am against you.

I am against you. It's surprising,

I think, in our time to hear that God is against anybody, but part of that surprise comes from our lack of thankfulness for the

Bible. See, if we're thankful for the Bible, we'll read it, we'll be familiar with it. In Psalm 5, verses 4 through 6, we hear this, for you are not a

God who takes pleasure in wickedness. No evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.

You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.

And these false prophets were deceiving, they were speaking falsehood, and they were reckless in their boasting.

God says, I am against you. But thankfully, even though we hear that the

Lord is against those who misuse his word, we also hear why the Lord waits. I mean, why does God even wait?

Why doesn't he just destroy them instantly? Why not the very next time someone says, the oracle of the

Lord, he just takes them away, Sodom and Gomorrah style?

Why does he wait? He's long -suffering. Why does the Lord wait? Because he's giving instructions.

He's giving, he's promising judgment, but he's also giving instructions in repentance. That's why he's waiting. He's he's warning us.

Wasn't that a good warning this morning from Proverbs 7? What a great warning, that the immoral young man would hear that warning.

God doesn't destroy him instantly, but gives him a warning to hear a promise of judgment coming, but also instructions in repentance, how to turn away from what we have been engaging in.

When we hear in 2 Timothy 3, 16, that all scripture is

God -breathed, profitable for doctrine, for reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, we're being told that every single word of God's Word was superintended by the

Holy Spirit in full and accurate truth, and it tells us what's true, where we're wrong, how to get right, and how to live

God's way. And so he's patient, and he's long -suffering, and giving us his word full of warnings and instructions for repentance.

And the repentance instructed in this text is, stop saying, oracle of the

Lord, burden of the Lord, stop saying that. Verse 35, thus you will each of you say, here's what you're going to say now to his neighbor and to his brother, what has the

Lord answered? What has the Lord spoken? Past tense, written down, unchangeable.

That's what you're going to say. Don't go around looking for something new, what is the oracle of the Lord? What's the new word on the street?

No, what has been written down? What has been established? What has been said?

That's what you ask one another. And the same is said in verse 37, thus you will say to that prophet, what has the

Lord answered you and you and what has the Lord spoken? Speak. If we're thankful for the

Word of God, if we're thankful for the Word of God, then we will use it correctly. If you give a gift to somebody and they totally misuse it, you can say that they're not really full of gratitude for that.

My dear mother -in -law gave some wonderful gifts to my children for Thanksgiving, some stick horses to ride around in the country.

Yeah, Abigail and Emmett got their horses and they named their horses and they cared for their horses, made sure that their horses were well fit to ride and they looked good, and Tobias lit his horse on fire.

You know, there's a difference. Two of them were thankful, one of them, hey, just something else to throw into the fire pit.

Now he needs to learn thankfulness. We need to learn thankfulness. We have been given the

Word of God, what do we do with it? Are we careful to read it? Are we careful to think about it? Or do we treat it, this is grain, this is seed, let us not treat it like straw, as if it's on the same level as anybody else's opinion which could be could take relief.

We are given time. God is long -suffering. Psalm 7, 11 through 12 says,

God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day. If a man does not repent, he will sharpen his sword, he has bent his bow and made it ready, but he is long -suffering.

Every day there's indignation, every day there's offense, but he is patient. He has given us promises of judgment and instructions in repentance.

I'm thankful for warning, I'm thankful for instruction, I'm thankful for the Word of God. And as long as we're talking about God being against people, who the

Lord is against and why the Lord waits, we should ask who is the

Lord for? We see that he is against all those who pervert his word, all those who fail to follow through in his word, and that's everyone who is an

Adam. Ever since our parents perverted and twisted the

Word of God in the temptation of Satan, so do we. But who is the Lord for?

He is for Christ, he is for his Son, and he is for those who are in Christ.

He is for those who are united to Christ through faith, having repented of their sins and turned away from their abuse of Scripture and abuse of their lives, and they have turned to Christ.

Psalm 2, 11 through 12, worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling, do homage to the

Son that he not become angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled. Listen, how blessed are all who take refuge in him, how blessed are all who take refuge in Christ.

He is the one whom God is for, he is the one whom God has set up on the holy hill, has established his throne in Zion, he's the one whom

God is for, is Christ. And I am thankful for the Scriptures because the Scriptures reveal Christ, so I know who he is, so I can love him and serve him and follow him.

How thankful are we, how thankful are we for the

Bible, who reveals to us Christ. We are grateful that God's Word is established in the heavens, it's eternal, it's unchanging.

It's eternal and changing because it's from God and he's eternal and he is unchanging, but of necessity it is eternal and unchanging because the

Holy Scriptures reveal to us Christ. Now listen to this connection to Hebrews 13,

Hebrews 13 verse 8, you know very well, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

You know that verse, it's a great verse. Now here's the point, verse 9, do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings.

You see, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so don't be carried away by varied and strange teachings.

I'm so thankful for the Scriptures, I'm thankful for the Bible that God has given to us, so we will know who he is, we will know how to worship him, we know the salvation he's given to us in Christ.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for our time together in your Word. I pray that it has been a blessing to our souls, that we will ponder this question, how thankful are we for the

Bible? Lord, I pray that you would make the distinction between straw and grain very clear in our minds, that we will rejoice in the strength, the power of your

Word, and that we would rejoice in Christ your

Son, our Savior, revealed in this text. We thank you for the abundance and the accessibility of the

Scriptures. Help us through a rising thankfulness and a rising gratitude to be good stewards of this momentous blessing.