Sunday Morning, May 12, 2019 AM Part 2

We thank you that this is a command given to us with promise and pray that you would lead us accordingly.

And Father, as we look at your Word, I pray that you would help us to see from the text the truth of your

Word, the truth that Christ is King and that his gospel, his gospel proceeds.

And I pray that you would help us to bow the knee willingly and we would come to submit our lives to Christ in joy, recognizing what kind of a yoke that he offers us.

We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen. I invite you to open your

Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 28. Jeremiah 28, we'll be reading verses 1 through 17 in a moment.

We come back to this passage as we talk about high -stakes trading. The high -stakes trade in mind has to do with the situation in Jeremiah, the situation in his day was who was in charge.

God had given all the lands, all the cities, all the space in between, all the wild beasts, all the people of Jeremiah's homeland of Judah and the nations of Moab and Ammon and Edom and Tyre and Sidon.

He had given it all to Babylon. In the words that are given to us by God, and we'll use the different words to describe our situation until we...and

that's where we are at. And we said last week that the message you trust determines the manner you serve.

That's the theme of this passage, the message you trust determines the manner you serve.

The reality of the situation was this, that the people were going to serve one way or another. They were going to serve.

The only question that God left open to them, of course he knew how it would all transpire, the only question he left open to them was would they serve willingly or would they serve as an example of destruction?

And that's what was placed before the people. If you would please stand with me, I'm going to read Jeremiah 28 verses 1 through 17 here in the words of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Word of God, a word from our

King. Now, in the same year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month,

Hananiah, the son of Esur, the prophet, who was from Gibeon, spoke to me in the house of the Lord, in the presence of the priests and all the people, saying,

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years

I am going to bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took away from this place and carried to Babylon.

I am also going to bring back to this place Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles of Judah who went to Babylon, declares the

Lord. For I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Then the prophet

Jeremiah spoke to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests, in the presence of all the people who were standing in the house of the

Lord. And the prophet Jeremiah said, Amen. May the Lord do so. May the

Lord confirm your words which you have prophesied to bring back the vessels of the Lord's house and all the exiles from Babylon to this place.

Yet hear now this word which I am about to speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. The prophets who were before me and before you from ancient times prophesied against many lands and against great kingdoms of war and of calamity and of pestilence.

The prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet comes to pass, then that prophet will be known as one whom the

Lord has truly sent. Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke from the neck of Jeremiah the prophet and broke it.

Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people saying, Thus says the Lord. Even so I will break within two full years the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations.

Then the prophet Jeremiah went his way. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from off the neck of the prophet

Jeremiah saying, Go and speak to Hananiah saying, Thus says the

Lord. You have broken the yokes of wood but you have made instead of them yokes of iron.

For thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel, I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations that they may serve

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and they will serve him and I have also given him the beasts of the field.

Then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah the prophet, Listen now Hananiah the Lord has not sent you and you have made this people trust in a lie.

Therefore thus says the Lord. Behold I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die because you have counseled rebellion against the

Lord. So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year in the seventh month. This is the word of the

Lord may be seated. God says in Jeremiah 27 5 and this is the background to what we've been studying,

I have made the earth the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by my great power and by my outstretched arm and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in my sight.

That's how God works. That's how God works. This is a verse that we understand it in its context and it's a verse that may be said again and again throughout the history of the world.

God made all things by his great power all of it and he gave it all to Adam to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, use this for my glory.

Did it all again, gave it all to Noah. It's his to give to whom he wills.

Who did he give the land of Canaan to? He gave it to Abram, to his descendants.

He gave it to them and said use it for my glory. Adam did not use the creation for God's glory.

Noah abused the creation. Israel abused the land. As part of the punishment for Israel abusing the land,

God says now I'm going to give this land and the surrounding lands to the servant of my choice, the servant

I'm going to use to judge this people and that servant is Nebuchadnezzar. I'm giving it all to him now. Why is it that God can give the land and the animals and the people in the cities to whomever he wills?

What is the basis for that kind of authority? He made it all.

It's his to do with as he pleases. God made it, it's his.

He can do with it what he wants and he gives it to the one whom he chooses. This is the background to what we're talking about.

The fact of the matter is and as we have established time and again in chapters 27 and 28 is that God has given all things to the one with whom he is well -pleased and that is

Jesus Christ. All humanity, all the earth, all the land, all the resources,

God gave it all to Christ. The New Testament only says that about a hundred and fifty different ways and it's good news every single time.

It's good news. It has all been given to Christ and Christ is

King. So Christ gets to decide what happens and how it is to transpire. Now we chafe under authority.

That's part of our sin nature. We don't like to have to submit to authority. We don't like to be restricted by the rules of authority and we like to break free and do things our own way.

That's not an oddity. We begin to experience those feelings for liberty and freedom when we are about age two, maybe earlier, 18 months old.

Starts very early. Starts very early. We do it our own way and we will do whatever we can to get it.

So high -stakes trading. High -stakes trading. We have to be careful about vocabulary trading, trading out words, biblical words for non -biblical words.

We need to be careful about that. It's very high -stakes trading. Forget real estate, gold, futures and derivatives.

Forget all that. It's vocabulary. That's high, high -stakes trading. Also high -stakes trading are yokes.

We don't know much about yokes today. We don't use farm animals to pull our wagons or to plow our fields in general, but yokes are wooden beams laid across the necks of animals with pins that go around the neck of the animal up through the wooden beam.

The animal is to pull hard against whatever's behind them. Pull the wagon, pull the plow.

Putting animals to work. The yoke is also the universal symbol of slavery in the times of Jeremiah and the time of Christ in the ancient world.

A yoke was a symbol of slavery because humans also can wear yokes. They can wear a yoke across their neck and carry things on either side and carry a lot of weight.

It was a symbol of slavery. God tells Jeremiah to get dressed up in a yoke and to preach the message wearing a yoke, wearing the symbol of slavery, to get dressed up in a yoke and preach to the nations, including his own, that Nebuchadnezzar is now in charge and we're all his slaves.

Hence, I'm wearing the yoke. He also says to resist Nebuchadnezzar, who's God's chosen king, is to resist

God himself. It won't work, so put on the yoke, wear the yoke, live.

These are the conditions in which the world is going to operate for the next 70 years. He made that clear.

God made that clear to the people so then they would know what's going on and they needed to submit. Well, yoke trading, trying to trade the yoke that you have for a different yoke, trading one yoke for another, that's high stakes.

High stakes. One message that the Bible has for us that's not very popular, but it's true nonetheless, is that everybody is someone's slave.

Everybody is someone's slave. When you read through Romans 6, just be homework for today,

I'm not having church tonight, you can read Romans 6. Read through Romans 6. Can anybody be classified as non -slave?

And the answer is no, everyone's a slave. You're either a slave of sin or of righteousness, of the enemy or of God.

So when we're trading yokes, it's always a very high stakes thing to do, try to trade out your yoke. And the message you trust about which yoke you should wear determines the manner that you serve, whether in rebellion to the one to whom

God has given all things or in submission to the one to whom God has given all things. The message you trust determines the manner you serve.

We need to be careful about the message we trust. The message today is, if anyone is restricting you, they're wrong, you're right.

What business do they have to restrict you? There's a new,

I don't know how widespread this particular new thing to do is, this new fashion for Mother's Day in churches.

I don't know how widespread this new fashion is. I imagine that it may become more widespread fashion next year.

But here's the new fashion for Mother's Day. Women preaching the

Mother's Day sermon. That's the new fashion, that's what we do on Mother's Day apparently in the evangelical church now, for some.

There was a Twitter conversation, which I have read about five Twitter conversations in my life, but there's a

Twitter conversation that can maybe be a little illustrative for us about trading yokes, throwing off one yoke for another yoke.

So this Twitter conversation starts with Beth Moore, and if you don't know who

Beth Moore is, she's widely published by Lifeway, which is the publishing arm of the

Southern Baptist Convention. She's been proposed by Russell Moore as the first women's president of the

Southern Baptist Convention, so she has a lot of friends, a lot of influence. And she gives five things that she could do if she had the time and the margin to do it.

And she lists five things and then she says, P .S. my original number five, my original number five was teaching a men's Sunday school class, teaching a men's

Sunday school class at a church full of Calvinists just to get everybody going. Apparently Calvinists are the most conservative.

I would probably debate that, but I deleted it, she says reluctantly. She didn't delete it, she just wrote it out.

I'm in a tad of a mischievous mood. To which Vicki Courtney, another published women's author for Lifeway, replies, your

P .S. made my day, yours truly, sings Vicki herself, is preaching, all caps, preaching three services at a

Southern Baptist Church on Mother's Day. But Beth Moore says, I'm doing the same thing too, but don't tell anybody about this.

And there's continuing conversation about how funny this is and how awesome this is and so on and so forth.

To their credit, three women at the end of the Twitter feed said, y 'all shouldn't be making fun of and rejoicing in disobedience to Scripture.

I did go back and check, I was checking, and I know that sometimes it doesn't pop up very often, but I went back and checked in my

Bible. Yes, 1

Timothy 2, 9 through 15 is still there. And it's not the only place that talks about, and why, and all the passages that Paul refers to throughout the

Bible, those are all still there too. So, but why, why the fun and games, why the flippancy, why the, let's do it differently.

This is about yoke trading. It's about yoke trading. The yoke that I'm wearing is too restrictive.

So let's have fun and imagine that that isn't there anymore, and let's go do something to break the yoke.

That's high stakes. Some people think it's kind of funny or amusing, some people think that what we believe from the

Scripture is wrong, but you are going to be trading a yoke. The yoke that's being proposed to trade for is not the yoke of freedom and autonomy and respect and so on.

It's a yoke of someone else is telling me what it means to be a woman, someone else is telling me what it means to be a religious woman, and how things ought to be done.

So who's Beth Moore listening to? Whose yoke is she putting on? Vicki Courtney, whose yoke is she putting on?

For every yoke you break off, you're putting on a different yoke. And who's the one who fashioned that yoke? Who made that yoke?

Who made the yoke that said that women should preach from the pulpit? It's the same people who made the yoke that said women should go fight as Marines in the front line and fly fighter jets, the same ones who said that there should be a women's football league.

You know, who fashioned that yoke? Now, you may not like the yoke that you have on, okay, but if the yoke was fashioned by God himself, don't you think he did a pretty good job?

That he knows your frame, he knows who you are, that he has shown you his love, he has shown you his faithfulness, he has proven himself throughout this history, he has proven himself in this world, he has fashioned a yoke for you, and you want to break that yoke to go wear the yoke of someone else who's made it in their own in their own image, in their own fashion?

You have to be careful with that. Now, I say all this as an illustration that yokes are still being broken in an exchange today, because that's what happens in our text.

It's high stakes trading, it's yoke breaking. We've talked about the superstar prophet

Hananiah, that he was credentialed contemporary and charismatic. Those things are not necessarily bad, but they do not mean that he spoke the truth, for he was condemned for what he said, because he lied to the people.

And now we need to think about Jeremiah, or is it Jesus, that hellfire preacher who opposed

Hananiah? And we look at this in verses 5 through 9 and also verses 13 through 17.

The reason why I say was it Jeremiah or was it Jesus, number one, Jesus preached in a fashion very similar to that of Jeremiah.

So, you know, whatever style Jeremiah preached in, you're going to find that in Christ as well. So whatever we say for or against Jeremiah, we have to be consistent and say the same about Jesus Christ.

But I also say it because in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verses 10 and 11, it says, as to this salvation, the prophets, that would be

Jeremiah, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the

Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.

Spirit of Christ preached to the prophets. This is why I say that when we read Jeremiah and when the word of the

Lord came to Jeremiah and said, go say this, we are seeing what Christ is saying to his prophets and through his prophets to the people.

This is the word of Christ. Now, how does he approach these things?

First of all, he's careful. We see how careful Jeremiah is and you got to wonder why is he so careful. Verses 5 through 9.

Now remember, Hananiah has said his thing. No, the yoke of Babylon will be crushed within two years and everything's going to be fine.

Everything we want to happen will happen. Everything's going to be fine. Well, how does Jeremiah respond? Verse 5. And the prophet

Jeremiah spoke to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and in the presence of all the people who were standing in the house of the

Lord and the prophet Jeremiah said, amen. I just love that.

Amen. May the Lord do so. May the Lord confirm your words. May the Lord confirm your words which you have prophesied to bring back the vessels of the

Lord's house and all the exiles from Babylon to this place. And he says yet, yet, hear now this word which

I'm about to speak in your hearing, in the hearing of all the people. The prophets who were before me and before you from ancient times prophesied against many lands, great kingdoms of war and calamity and of pestilence.

The prophet who prophesies of peace, then when the word of the prophet comes to pass, then that prophet will be known as one whom the

Lord has truly sent. And after Hananiah broke the yoke off of Jeremiah, Jeremiah went on home.

Now, first of all, I want you to see that he's careful in tone. He's very careful in his tone.

I mean, Hananiah has just said, thus saith the Lord. And what he says is something that paints a very nice picture for the near future.

In the next two years, this awesome, wonderful thing is going to happen. And, of course, what

Jeremiah doesn't start off doing is saying, well, that's not what I said. You're saying something different.

You're making me look like a liar. What Hananiah says would be incredibly attractive to everybody, and probably for solid reasons.

You don't want your city destroyed, you don't want your family killed, and so on and so forth. Jeremiah says, amen.

Man, I wish it...that sounds great. That sounds great that everything will be restored, everything will be made right again.

That sounds great. The idea is great. He affirms what he can, but he accurately, patiently keeps his tone neutral.

He says it's a good idea, but let's think about what the actual case of the matter is.

So he's very careful with his tone because he wants the opportunity to help

Hananiah, to show Hananiah and the people where to place their trust. So at the outset, he hears this.

You've got to know that Jeremiah knows that what Hananiah said was absolutely false, absolutely wrong, absolutely.

But he says, you know, the idea that sounds good. But now he says, where are we going to put our trust?

That's verse 7. And verse 8, he says, now you've just told all these people this. Now verse 8, the prophets who were before me and before you.

That's what...you see what he does? What Hananiah proposes grabs at the feelings.

Everybody can get on board with Hananiah, with the feeling he evokes. When he says what he says, everybody can get on board with that.

Yes! Amen! You've grabbed my heartstrings. It's what I want to see.

I want to see Jerusalem restored. I want to see everything back the way it should be. And he really grabs the heartstrings,

Hananiah does. So Jeremiah can affirm that, but he says we don't trust in that.

We don't trust in that. What Hananiah has just said in front of all the priests and all the people, Jeremiah can make a lot of friends right now if he said, let's go with what you're saying,

Hananiah. I mean, you're doing a lot better job at this than I am.

And as we saw from last week, you're more credentialed than I am, so we'll just...we'll go with what you say. He can make a lot of friends right then.

But he doesn't tell people to trust in the feelings or in what your friends say.

But he says, let's trust in what the Scriptures say. He says, the prophets who were before me and before you, meaning it's not about you and me.

Here, I've said this and you've said this and we contradict. Well, I guess the Bible's too confusing.

We'll just give up. All right? Who can know what God really wants? He's just so, so confusing.

Everybody, look at all the different denominations today and all the different preachers today. They're all up there and they're always, always contradicting one another, which is not necessarily the case.

But nonetheless, you can make a case like that. So who really knows what it's all about? This has been said more than once.

But instead of giving up, Jeremiah says, the prophets who were before me and before you. It's not about generation now.

It's not about what's happening in the next two years. It's not about who are the voices of today and them disagreeing.

It's about the record of the accuracy of God's Word through the centuries, through the millennia.

What has been given to us, what has been set down, what has been proven multitudes and multitudes of times over as truth.

What was said to come to pass, it did come to pass. And so here we have a reliable source of information, a reliable source of God's Word that we can trust.

Martin Luther has been known for saying, he who would listen to the voice of God would read his

Bible. Here we have 66 books written by over 40 different authors over a 1 ,500 time period in three different languages on three different continents.

And everything, every single prophecy in it has come true or will come true. And it is all unified in its message.

We have a reliable, trustworthy source for the divine Word. We go to the scriptures and discover what

God has said. It's not about generation now or the next two years or the fact that preachers contradict each other from their pulpits.

It's about what has been set down, what has been said, and what has been said has been said clearly and it has been confirmed time and time and time and time and time again.

Now, if we don't like to wear that yoke, if we would rather not have a yoke on our shoulders and about our neck of an established, accurate, true

Word to which we are going to be measured and accountable to, then we might just break off that yoke and say, well, nobody can really understand it and it's everybody's own opinion.

But whose yoke are we putting on if we say that? So Jeremiah says, trust in what has been said, the prophets who were before me and you.

This is what they said. The treasury of scripture knowledge at this verse lists 21 different passages of former prophets.

And I'm not going to read them all. Amos 3, 8 through 12 would be a good candidate if you want to read that.

Amos 3, 8 through 12. But here's what all the other prophets said. You're in the mess that you're in because of sin.

Repent and return to the Lord, and then I will restore you. Right?

Here's what Hananiah said. You're in a mess, but everything's going to get better.

Where's the repentance from sin? Where's the confession of sin before God, the humbling of the sinner before God, the repentance of sin, the confessing of God as king and returning to his authority before this restoration?

Hananiah left all that part out. And that's why Jeremiah says, you know, this is what you're saying does not match up with what has been said.

So Jeremiah subjects Hananiah's words to the standard of truth, to the standard of truth.

And this is what we need to do and be very careful. We need to be very careful to submit whatever we're listening to, to the standard of truth.

Jeremiah 18 and verse 22, it says, when a prophet speaks in the name of the

Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the

Lord has not spoken, the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him.

So when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord of something that will come to pass and it doesn't come to pass, you shall not be afraid of him, meaning you shall not respect him, you will not revere him, you will not listen to anything else that he has to say.

Part of our challenge in our world today is that religious people have very short memories, very short memories.

There are all kinds of false prophets who exist for one thing, filthy money, filthy lucre, and they're on television and still writing books about how things are going to happen and they have had multiple false prophecies proven.

They said this would happen, it didn't happen. They said this would happen, it didn't happen. They said this, that, and religious people and even some

Christians keep eating it up. Because we like a good conspiracy theory and we like something exciting and we need to be careful that we don't give respect or reverence or fear to anyone who has proven a false prophet.

And so we need to be careful what we believe, careful what we believe. Now this tone and this trust and this truth, he's very careful with all these, careful with this tone, careful about who we trust and careful to subject things to truth.

Jeremiah has very good table manners, I would say. Mothers should teach their children table manners.

And their whole hope in teaching the children table manners at home is that when they get invited to somebody else's house, that they're not going to get up onto their chair, bend over their plate, and eat their food like a dog.

Know how to handle yourself at somebody else's house. Proper tone and the way that you handle yourself.

This is helpful for us to know how to handle ourselves when things are being said.

Are they true? Are they false? Let's have the right kind of tone. And depending on the situation, that will vary.

But we need to show that we need to trust what the scriptures say and let's submit everything to whether or not it is true.

And what Jeremiah was serving up was not very appetizing to the people. There was too many vegetables.

But it was what God had put on the table and they were supposed to eat everything on their plate, even if they didn't like to hear it.

So that's why Jeremiah's being careful to say what he's saying. Also, Jeremiah comes back and after spending some time with the

Lord, and the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah to confirm that Hananiah was, in fact, preaching falsehood.

Jeremiah comes back to confront Hananiah. He's very contrarian, he sounds like in verses 13 -15.

So the word of the Lord says this to Jeremiah, Go and speak to Hananiah, saying, Thus says the Lord, you have broken the yokes of wood, but you have instead made them yokes of iron.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they may serve

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they will serve him, and I have also given him the beast of the field.

And then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah the prophet, Listen now, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, and you have made those people trust in a lie.

Now notice that he still has the proper tone. This is exactly what

God told him to go say. Here's what happened. Jeremiah hears something and he's not sure whether God said it or not.

So he says, I can affirm the good sentiment of what you said.

But beyond that, we're going to have to test it according to the word of God. And that's his tone.

He even goes home after Hananiah breaks the yoke off his neck. He's like, well, I'm just going to go home.

I mean, what else are you going to do? Now, I think my problem personally is if pride is running at a high, then what do

I do? I stick it out until somebody wins. I don't go home. But Jeremiah goes home, and what does he do?

He examines the word of God, and he hears from the word of God. And it's clear that what Hananiah said is false.

At that time, when that is clear, Jeremiah then doesn't say, well, you know, live and let live.

He goes back and contradicts Hananiah and says, you're telling a lie.

Well, my goodness. You know, what's your problem, Jeremiah? Are you so arrogant that you just can't let this lie?

You have to be proven right, Jeremiah? You're just upset that things are changing and that people aren't listening to you?

And imagine all the accusations that come against Jeremiah because he's being so contrarian. But no, he goes back and he confronts, directly talking to Hananiah.

He goes back to Hananiah. He's the source of the false teaching. He goes right back to the source. He doesn't go around and start a whisper campaign.

He goes right back to the source. And with very carefully saying what God says, he confronts

Hananiah and says, you are telling a lie. You are telling a lie. He's being contrarian, contradicting

Hananiah. Why is he doing that? Well, mothers, why do you contradict a child?

Why would you ever contradict your child? You ever tell your child no or that's wrong?

You ever counsel your grown children about wise versus foolish?

Why would you contradict a child? What if they're too passive? What if they're too reckless? Let me ask it a different way.

Does it matter what people believe? Does it matter what people believe? Yes, it does.

Look, we have been called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is an exclusive message.

And there's all sorts of gospels, all sorts of false messages out there. We better know that it does matter what people believe.

And Jesus was often saying these things. You have heard it said, but I say to you. This is the way you are thinking, but this is the way you should be thinking.

He was always telling the scholars, have you never read? Have you never read the scriptures? Have you never read the Bible on this particular issue?

And what is the essence of this two -word phrase? Repent, believe.

What's the essence of that? That you would turn away from whatever you are trusting, however you are thinking, whatever it is that you are letting define you, you turn away from that to hold fast to Christ and Christ alone.

The whole essence of what it means to be followers of Christ is that we're going to have to be careful about what we believe and then we're going to need to be contrarian and say when things are false, when things are wrong, we're going to have to say that.

If we care about what people believe, and if we care about people, we've got to care about what they believe.

And then Jeremiah is also condemning in verses 16 -17. Therefore, thus says the Lord, behold,

I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die, because you have counseled rebellion against the

Lord. So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year, in the seventh month. So Jeremiah promises the judgment of death for the crime of counseling rebellion.

Why does he do that? Well, it's what the Lord of the Lord said, and it's well established,

Deuteronomy 28, in the long list of the consequences of disobedience for the people of God.

Verse 47, because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy, I mean, I don't want his yoke on my neck.

You did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart for the abundance of all things. Therefore, you shall serve your enemies, whom the

Lord will send against you in hunger and thirst and nakedness and in the lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

See, Jeremiah is preaching from the Bible. He's quoting directly from Deuteronomy 28, 48.

Verse 49 says, The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, like Babylon, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.

That's exactly what is happening. Why does

God damn the deceivers to deliver the deceived? God damns the deceivers to deliver the deceived.

God cursed the serpent, didn't he? God condemned

Satan, didn't he? God condemns the false prophets, the deceivers, so that the deceived might be delivered.

Notice how swiftly and thus how mercifully God acted. We're in the fourth year of Zedekiah.

He has seven years left before the horrible end. And Hananiah has promised that in two years all will be made well.

Just hang on for two years and everything will be fine again, folks. That would push you into year six of Zedekiah.

Then only five years would be left before the awful end. If they waited around to see if Hananiah's prophecy came true or not.

But God was so merciful to this people, that as we read at the beginning of the chapter, that it was in the fifth month of the fourth year, by the seventh month

Hananiah, the false prophet, was dead. And that is how merciful God was to that people. That he didn't allow that false prophet to continue to lie to the people and keep them in doubt about the true word of God.

But that his falsehood would be exposed so swiftly. And the people would be left with no doubt that the word of Jeremiah was in truth the word of God.

And that would give people a clear signal that what God said to Jeremiah was the truth. And that was the message they could trust.

And therefore they ought to repent and follow that message. How merciful of God to kill Hananiah that swiftly.

Hananiah wasn't just way out there. It wasn't like he was trying to preach

Hinduism to fundamentalist Baptists. It wasn't like the message was just completely universes apart.

The things that he was saying were familiar to them. The passages he would reference were familiar to them.

The themes and the words he would use, they could really buy into. And it wasn't like he was so off.

He was only, probably if I do my math correctly, 75 years off.

Only 75 years off. I mean that's pretty good for false prophets.

Some prophets are thousands of years off. 75 is pretty good.

Think about how big of a target you're talking about. It's somewhere close to the bullseye. Because here's the program that actually was promised.

The program that was actually promised was very clear. In chapter 24 of Jeremiah, which was the sermon on the basket of the figs, the two different baskets of figs,

Jeremiah preached that right after Jeconiah was taken away into exile, right after Zedekiah became king.

And he told them in that very vivid illustration that the

Lord God, in verse 6, he would set his eyes upon those who were taken away into exile.

He would set his eyes on them for good. And that he would bring them again to this land, and I will build them up and not overthrow them, and I will plant them and not pluck them up.

And he goes on to talk about the bad figs who were going to die. He affirmed the need for repentance.

He also said in chapter 25 in verse 12 that it would be about 70 years until all this came to pass.

And he also says in other parts of Jeremiah, how Jeremiah preached to the people and said, you need to surrender to the king of Babylon when he comes with his armies.

Go out to the king of Babylon and surrender so that you may live and you may go into captivity out to Babylon.

Why? What's the point? Well, that's not the end. I mean, you're going to go out there, it's going to be like 70 years, but there will be a time that he's going to restore you.

After the land has had its rest from all the Sabbaths that you refused to observe. The whole program was given to them, they just didn't like the time frame.

They wanted everything to be done in two years, and Jeremiah says, no, it's going to be more than 70 after the time of the destruction.

He's given them the program, they just don't want to have that time frame. He promised them,

God promised, I'm going to bring back the vessels, I'm going to bring back the people, but on my time frame. Hannah and I just wanted to speed it up a little bit.

Just a few decades. And he died for it.

He died for it. Because he was preaching rebellion instead of counseling repentance.

I want us to think a little bit about Christ. Is this the way that Jesus operates? A lot of people have the idea, and I can understand why, perhaps.

But the Old Testament is just completely different than the New Testament. Old Testament, completely different from the

New. And in some ways, there is something new about the New Testament, but when it comes to preaching and being direct and calling about judgment, themes are pretty much the same from Old to New.

Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 23. He gives eight woes to the

Pharisees. These are the most religious, faithful, scripture -saturated people of the day.

And this is not to say that faithful, scripture -saturated members of this church are

Pharisees. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that these people were looked up to because they seem to be very, very holy.

But they didn't have the gospel. That makes the difference. And they were preaching, basically, salvation by works.

You get born into Abraham, that's grace, but then you have to stay in by your good works. That's basically their gospel.

Verse 15 in Matthew 23, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte.

Very zealous. And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

Why so condemning, Jesus? I mean, I thought you were Jesus. You're not supposed to condemn anyone. Why would he condemn the deceivers to deliver to the deceived?

In verse 33, he says, You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

I think he may have borrowed that from his cousin, John the Baptist. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

So why so condemning? Why so condemning? Why all this hellfire stuff?

Why so contrarian? Why so careful? The message you trust determines the manner you serve. The message you trust determines the manner you serve.

And if you decide to trust a message that says, the word of God is too restrictive.

Obedience to Christ is too restrictive. Break free of those yokes. Break free of those authoritarian structures.

You're not getting a yoke -free life. You're taking on somebody else's yoke. Somebody else has fashioned in their rebellion against God and wants you to wear their yoke as well.

Let's talk about that yoke -trading business briefly and then we'll be done. There are two types of yokes.

There are yokes that get broken and there are yokes that stay fashioned. Remembering that yokes are unavoidable.

Which one are we going to stick with? Hananiah had some warrant to what he was saying.

When he went up and he broke the yoke off of the neck of Jeremiah, the people really lit up on that because there's language throughout the

Old Testament. Isaiah notably about the breaking of yokes. It really grabs people's attention.

Isaiah talks about God promised the breaking of the yoke of Assyria that Assyria's yoke would be broken.

A prophecy. Hananiah was like, this is going to happen with Babylon as well. There's language even in Jeremiah of the yoke of Egypt being broken when

Egypt had Israel in bondage and slavery. There's a promise in Isaiah 9 verse 4 about the yoke being broken when

Christ comes, when the Messiah comes there will be salvation, the yoke will be broken. So the language is there.

But it's not the only yokes that get broken. There's also another yoke that gets broken and it's called covenant faithfulness in Jeremiah 5.

God through Jeremiah prophesied and said the people were breaking the yoke of their covenant with God.

They would not serve God. They broke the yoke because they wanted something else. They wanted to serve something else and someone else.

So there are yokes that get broken but there are yokes that stay fashion. There are two yokes. One is the yoke of judgment and one is the yoke of salvation.

You know what's scary about a yoke of iron? You can't break it.

A yoke of wood you can break as Hananiah so aptly demonstrated. But then the word of judgment was you have broken the wooden yoke but here comes a yoke of iron and the idea is that you can't break that.

All those who believe in Hananiah's lie, here comes the yoke of iron and that's unbreakable. An unbreakable yoke of judgment.

But there's another type of yoke. A yoke that we ought to rejoice in.

A yoke that stays fastened. And this is a yoke of salvation. Christ after saying that all things have been given to him by the

Father he is the king to whom God has given all things he says in verse 28 of Matthew 11, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. A yoke of salvation.

Look, we're going to be a slave of someone. We're going to be a slave of the enemy or a slave of Christ. Jesus knows who we are.

He made us. Jesus knows who we are. He died for us.

I'll take his yoke. I'll take his yoke. Let us lay aside the yokes of men for the yoke of Christ.

No higher stake of trading than that. Let's close in a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word.

Thank you for the mothers who are here in attendance and I thank you for the gift of mothers.

I thank you for my mother. I pray that today as we go forward and we honor and celebrate and we give thanks to you,

I pray that you would help us to embrace the yoke that you offer us.

A yoke of following Christ and following your word. I thank you that you love us. That you love us for the sake of your son.