WWUTT 2459 Declares the Lord (Jeremiah 23:23-40)

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The false prophets came to the people promising them the experiences that they wanted.

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They said, declares the Lord, but the Lord did not really declare through them.

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When we understand the text. This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the

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Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our

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Q &A on Friday. Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Jeremiah, we are back to chapter 23.

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Picking up where we left off last week, a reminder that at the end of chapter 22, Jeremiah had proclaimed judgment against the kings of Judah, even saying to Jeconiah that this man would not have an heir on the throne.

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So the rule of the kings of Judah would end at Jeconiah, and then there would be the deportation to Babylon.

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We saw that also in the genealogy in Matthew, Matthew chapter one, verse 11, Josiah was the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

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And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel. So that prophecy that this man,

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Coniah or Jeconiah, would be marked down as childless only means that he would not have an heir on the throne.

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And indeed, there would never be an heir of David on the throne of Judah again until Jesus is born.

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And Jesus is the righteous branch that is prophesied about in chapter 23. Now Jesus as the righteous branch, as not only the true king, but even the true prophet is set in contrast with the false prophets who continue to proclaim falsely to this people, even leading them astray into sensuality.

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These are the same kinds of false shepherds, false prophets that Peter warns about in second

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Peter chapter two, there will be false prophets that will arise among you just as there were false prophets among the people.

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And that being in reference to these false shepherds that God rebukes here in chapter 23.

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We're going to pick up with that rebuke, the rebuke against the false teachers in verse 23.

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I'll finish up the chapter here and then we'll also look at chapter 24. We should be able to get that far because chapter 24 is not very long.

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So here we go. Jeremiah 23, starting in verse 23, hear the word of the Lord. Am I a

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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

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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,

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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.

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Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully.

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What has straw in common with wheat, declares the Lord. Is not my word like fire, declares the

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Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the

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Lord, who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the

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Lord, who use their tongues and declare, declares the Lord. Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the

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Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness when

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I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the

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Lord. What is the phrase that you heard the most in just that paragraph that I read there, declares the

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Lord. You heard that over and over again. Whenever we get together for family devotions, which is most weeknights, we don't do it every single night of the week.

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We have small groups on Wednesday. So on that night, you know, the kids gather for small group.

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We don't have family devotional night. But when we do family devotions and we'll read through a chapter of the

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Bible, each of the kids has an opportunity to read a certain number of verses based on however many verses are in the chapter.

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Our three year old, I will even guide him through reading. Obviously, he can't read, but I will tell him to say a certain phrase and then he will repeat it after me.

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For whatever reason he has taken to saying when in God, I don't know why.

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I don't even know where that came from. But every time he repeats something that I tell him to say, he'll say it and then say when in God.

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So, for example, if I were to tell him to read verse 23, he would say, am

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I a God at hand when in God declares the Lord when in God and not a

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God far away when in God? Yeah. So just that reminded me this this paragraph reminded me of that in how often

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God says declares the Lord. He says that over and over again. But the reason why he says that you probably have picked this up is because he's setting his word against the word of these false prophets who likewise repeat themselves.

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I have dreamed. I have dreamed. Well, these are the words that God declares. The prophets, these false prophets will say that they speak what

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God has told them to speak. But but God didn't give them that word. So over and over again,

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Jeremiah is being commanded to say this and declare it in the name of God, attributing it to God.

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It is not Jeremiah's word that comes to the people. It is God's word through Jeremiah.

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So it is said again and again declares the Lord. These words you will not listen to.

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You go after the false prophets because they lead you away into sensuality. And that's what your flesh wants.

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So that's why you go after them. I am against those who prophesy lying dreams.

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These are the clear words of God and the people won't listen to them. We see a lot of that today as well.

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I'll give examples again here as we go. So verse 23, am I a God at hand, declares the

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Lord, and not a God far away? Is God right there? And the people of Israel should say, yes, our

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God is with us. He has been inhabiting the temple with us.

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His presence came into the temple. We have known his presence to be there. God's presence has been with his people ever since the tabernacle.

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Remember that God's dwelling with his people in the wilderness? He would come down into the holy of holies of the tabernacle.

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It would be a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And that continued on even in the existence of the temple.

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The people knew that God was there because his presence had come down into the temple. It was seen in the days of Solomon, and so it had always remained with them.

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And so since God, his presence is there among his people, he is a

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God at hand. Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away?

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The answer to that is yes. He is a God at hand. A God far away doesn't respond. A God far away does not hear.

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All the false gods, gods that are far away. I mean, they don't even exist. They're so far away, they're not even there at all.

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They cannot see. They don't even do. They don't deliver what the prophets say they will.

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But God is there. And not only does God search out the lies and expose what is in darkness, but he even knows the hearts of these false prophets.

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He also hears the lies of the false prophets. Verse 24. Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the

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Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord? This also reminds me of Psalm 94, beginning of verse 8.

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Understand, O dullest of people, fools, when will you be wise?

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He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?

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He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge, the

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Lord knows the thoughts of man that they are but a breath. God will bring judgment against those who lie, who speak falsely, who lead people astray.

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So God says in verse 25, I have heard what the prophets have said, who prophesy lies in my name, saying,

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I have dreamed, I have dreamed. And as I said, we encounter this today. There are people today who will claim to have had dreams from God.

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They will claim that the Lord has spoken something to them. And so you must listen to the word that I say to you, because to disagree with it would be to disagree with God.

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Beth Moore used to do this a lot more. I don't know if she still does. I haven't listened to her in years. But it used to be that she would stand before people and say,

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God gave me a dream. He gave me a vision. And that vision was this. And then she would teach that vision to the people that she was talking to.

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Or God spoke to me. He told me to tell you this today. She used to do this a lot. She got called out on it so much that I think she really drew back on how often that she said that.

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But it used to be all the time. And Stephen Furtick today, a guy that every single sermon

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I think I've listened to of his, I believe that he starts by saying, God has told me to tell you, God told me this.

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So the sermon that he is going to preach that day, he claims came from God. It's what

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God told me to say. If you're familiar with the book, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, she claims that God put those thoughts into her head.

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And that was what she wrote down in the book, Jesus Calling. The words of Jesus that came to her.

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And then she wrote it down. If it really was Jesus speaking to her and she really wrote it down, then it would be scripture.

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But it's lies. When you read the words of Jesus in that book, it kind of sounds like a middle -aged

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American woman trying to speak like Jesus. It does not sound like words that Jesus would say based on when you listen to the words of the apostles wrote in the

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Gospels or God speaking anywhere in the Bible. Even right here is God speaking.

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You could take the words of Jesus and compare them here. So there are many, many even today who will say that God has given them a dream or a vision or otherwise.

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Verse 26, 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.

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Now, one of the things that I think of here is Joseph Smith. Who had a dream or a vision rather of an angel that spoke to him.

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At least this is what he claimed, as I've said many times about Mormonism and its origins by the false prophet

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Joseph Smith. I don't think Joseph Smith ever saw anything. I don't think he ever had a dream of any kind or that God ever appeared to him or even an angel appeared to him and convinced him that he was an angel and just led or strung

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Joseph Smith along. I don't think that was the case at all. I don't think he saw anything. I think he made it all up.

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He was a con man. It was what he did. It was his MO. He was doing that even before he tried to start his own religion and he tried to start this thing and it happened and it really kind of got out of hand.

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It probably got bigger than he ever anticipated it getting. So he just continued on with the lie because he was a con man, but he was a true charlatan.

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He knew everything that he was saying was a lie that he had never seen any of these things or experienced any of these things.

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You also have Muhammad. Who is the founder of Islam who claims also to have had dreams or that the angel

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Gabriel appeared to him and gave him the book that would become the Quran. So very similar sort of thing, a similar deception.

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I've not studied Muhammad enough to know whether he really did encounter an angel or if he do like Joseph Smith was just making it all up, but it still could have been a messenger of Satan.

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An angelic appearance that wasn't really an angel, but a fallen angel.

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Because remember, as the apostle Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 11, even Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

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So it could be an angel that it appeared to Muhammad and gave him a false message claiming to be from God, but not really from God.

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The God of Muhammad, Allah, as the Muslims call him, is not the

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God of the Bible. He's nothing like the God of the Bible. It is a completely different God. It is not just the

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Old Testament God denying Christ. Because I've heard a lot of people who have spoken about Islam say that like Muslims do worship the same

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God. They just deny Christ. No. Yeah. Muhammad claimed to have heard from the

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God of Moses, the God of Abraham. He claimed that. But the presentation that he gives of God is not

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God at all. It is a satanic caricature of God that is not really

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God. And so you have even today these false prophets that will claim to have dream dreams and they lead people away to false gods.

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Even when it came to the Baals in Israel, the Baals would have been thought of by some of the

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Jews as being the true God. Here's our true God right here. He's in this statue.

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That is Baal. They probably thought they were worshiping Yahweh through this thing. Remember when

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Aaron made the calf, the golden calf for the people of Israel out of the gold that they brought to him.

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He gave them the calf and said, behold, your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

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So he presented this thing as Yahweh. This is Yahweh who brought you out of the land of Egypt. But what they did was wicked.

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They worshiped a false God and not the true God. You have the same thing going on in Roman Catholicism by the by the millions every day, millions and millions of people who will claim

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Mary appeared to them or an angel appeared to them, the Marian apparition. Some of those that have become so famous, they led to building churches and temples, and there are holidays and feast days that are built around them.

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There are prayers, quote, unquote, prayers that a Marian apparition gave to somebody that made it into rosary prayers.

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But they're not really prayers. They're not true prayers to God. They're lies. Praying to a woman,

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Jesus mother, instead of to God himself. Are you mad? But this is the most dominant, quote, unquote,

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Christian religion in the world. It's not truly Christianity. It is a distortion of it. The Roman Catholic Church is apostate.

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But this is when it comes to like the Christian label or a Christian category, the largest one on Earth.

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It's Roman Catholicism. And they follow lies. They follow these visions and dreams, worshiping things that are not

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God. And so the Lord goes on in verse 28. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully.

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What has straw in common with wheat declares the Lord. So, yeah, let that false guy tell his dream.

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We'll test it. We'll test it by the true word of God, and we'll see which one really comes out as true.

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All these dreams and visions and prophecies that are made by the false prophets will ultimately come to nothing.

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And then you will know that they're false prophets because they prophesied this and it did not come to pass. But whatever comes from the mouth of Jeremiah, which would be repeating the words of God is the true

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God. So what has straw in common with wheat? These are the true words of the Lord. Verse 29 is not my word like fire declares the

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Lord and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. God's word consumes.

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It burns. It gets to the core of the person. It breaks the hard heart into verse 30.

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Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets declares the Lord who steal my words from one another.

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

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Lord. They say declares the Lord. They say it, too. But their words are not truly from God.

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They speak from their own sensuous heart, from their own passions, not from the Lord.

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Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams declares the Lord and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness when

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I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all declares the

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Lord. I remember when I was in charismatism used to be a charismatic, a continuous attending charismatic churches.

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I was in these churches for about 10 years. I continued to be a charismatic even for another five or six years after that.

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But I remember friends of mine claiming that they were receiving dreams and visions from God and that and that they would ask him to do something for them and then it would happen or they would speak in tongues and they would feel this move of the

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Holy Spirit. Of course, it's not really tongues. They're just gibberish. They claim that they had the

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Holy Spirit was manifesting himself in them like like this in this way. And yet I knew that those guys were sleeping around with their girlfriends.

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I knew that they were getting drunk or smoking pot or doing something else like that.

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They are claiming to have these moves of the Holy Spirit and which I even believed would happen.

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I believed that the Holy Spirit was still giving dreams and visions and prophesying and speaking in tongues was really a legitimate biblical practice and all these things.

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I believed all that. But yet I saw in my friends who were claiming these things and yet they were living in wicked sin.

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They had porn addictions. They were lying to try to cover all these things up.

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They were cheating at their classes. I knew one guy claimed to be filled with the Holy Spirit and yet he was cheating to get through a certain college class.

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And these were the kinds of people that I was surrounded by in the kind of church that I was in, and I was just as bad as them.

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So, you know, I'm not saying not sitting here judging all of them. I, too, was lying, doing things with my girlfriend that I should not have been doing and yet was claiming to be filled with the

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Holy Spirit and was looking for moves of the Holy Spirit in this way. But all I was chasing was a feeling. It was not genuinely the

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Holy Spirit. I wanted an experience so bad that I thought I was experiencing that experience when

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I wasn't. The Holy Spirit was really moving in me in this way to have all of this charismatic ecstasy and yet I couldn't stop the sin that was in my life.

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The Holy Spirit was so weak that I couldn't be convicted over my sin to stop it. So these were not manifestations of the

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Holy Spirit. That's the point I'm trying to make. It was not the Holy Spirit in my life. It was me chasing a feeling.

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If the Holy Spirit was really in my life, why wasn't my heart being convicted to stop my sin or in all of my friends?

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Same thing. They were claiming to have all these movements of the Holy Spirit and yet they were persisting in sin.

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One of my friends from that chapter, from that era of my life, two of my friends actually because they married each other, are attending a

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Unitarian church to this day. Two people that used to claim to constantly be filled with the Holy Spirit and experience all these charismatic gifts and to this day they deny the true

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Christ, that God is a Trinity. They deny that the Bible is inerrant because their faith had been founded upon nothing but an experience once upon a time.

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It wasn't real. It was not grounded in the Word of God and trusting in the

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Word of God. It was chasing after fleeting feelings. An experience that wasn't really an experience of God.

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So let me finish up this chapter. Verse 33, when one of this people or a prophet or a priest asks you, what is the burden of the

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Lord? You shall say to them, you are the burden and I will cast you off declares the Lord.

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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.

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Thus shall you say everyone to his neighbor and everyone to his brother, what has the Lord answered or what has the

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Lord spoken? But 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

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God, the Lord of hosts, our God. Verse 37, thus you shall say to the prophet, what is the

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Lord answered you or what has the Lord spoken? But if you say the burden of the Lord, thus says the

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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

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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.

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The false teachers are the burden that God will cast off and then no new word or burden will be given to this people because they have not been listening to God.

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They have not been holy. They have not been obedient. They are chasing after feelings. They want experiences.

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They want the passions of their flesh. And so God is not going to speak a word to them.

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Instead, he will bring judgment upon those who have been faithless. But again, there was a true prophet who was to come the righteous branch in the line of David, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. His words are true words and his words, my friends are sufficient for us.

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We don't need the spiritual experiences, the dreams upon dreams, the extra biblical words.

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Give me some assurance outside of the Bible. He's given me everything that I need right here in the pages of Scripture.

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If I want to hear from the Lord, I read the Bible. My conscience, my spirit is being shaped by these things conformed to them that I would have them and I would live by them.

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I would be filled with them and I would be content with them. Psalm 23, one, the

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Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He has filled me with every good thing.

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And no matter what may happen to me in my life, whatever circumstance I can't see coming or trial that may be on the way,

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I will be comforted by the words that I have already read and his spirit having filled me up will minister to me according to these words.

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I don't need another dream or vision. I just need the sufficient completed word of God, which has every promise for me to help me endure to the very end.

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And that includes resisting sin and temptation, turning from that, walking in holiness, pursuing

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Christ, keeping my eyes on my savior who died for me and rose again so that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, but have everlasting life.

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My friends, I hope the gospel is sufficient for you. It is your joy every day.

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And you're not chasing after an experience to give you an assurance of your salvation. Our assurance is in the

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Holy Spirit that has been given to us. We've been sealed in the spirit. You don't get more spirit. We have all the

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Holy Spirit that we are ever going to get. And he continually reminds and comforts our minds and hearts with the truth of God's word that we already have.

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Heavenly father, I thank you for what we have read. I pray that we would continue to look to Christ and know that he has given us all good things that we could ever need.

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And may we not be dissatisfied. May we not decide that the

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Bible and prayer are not enough. I need something more than this because that's the moment we're going to start looking outside of ourselves for things that will not be of God.

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It will be something to satisfy a certain craving that is not really a pursuit of the

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Lord. Make us careful of these things. Help us to beware. We are not as strong as we think we are, but Christ is our strength in all things.

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And so to him, do we turn in moments of plenty and in moments of trial.

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Guard our ears from false teachers. Let us not be led astray by those who would try to scratch our itching ears.

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But the word that we desire the most is Christ's. We pray these things in his name.