"Let God Be True" Part 1, Jan 21, 2018 AM

Jeremiah’s Warning Against False Prophets

Thoughts, help us to speak your words. We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen. Well, we're going to be looking at Jeremiah chapter 14 this morning. And we have been talking about in chapter 13 about the dangers of pride and the dangers of spiritual presumption and the resulting droughts that occurred not only on the physical level, but also in the spiritual sense as the people depended upon themselves, self-reliant, cut themselves off from God and received no more grace, no more good from God.

The physical drought they found themselves in was an expression truly of the spiritual drought they were in because of their pride, because of their presumption. With these dangers fresh in our minds from chapter 14 and the end of chapter 13, we need to look again at this passage in verse 13, it says, and if you will please stand with me, I'm going to be reading from verses 13 through the end of the chapter, verses 13 through 22.

And this is the word of the Lord. But, ah, Lord God, I said, look, the prophets are telling them, you will not see the sword, nor will you have famine, but I will give you lasting peace in this place.

Then the Lord said to me, the prophets who are prophesying falsehood in my name, I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them. They are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility, and the deception of their own minds.

Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who are prophesying in my name, although it was not I who sent them, yet they keep saying there will be no sword or famine in this land. By sword and famine, those prophets shall meet their end.

The people also to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword, and there will be no one to bury them, neither them, nor their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters, for I will pour out their own wickedness on them.

You will say this word to them, let my eyes flow down with tears night and day, and let them not cease. For the virgin daughter of my people has been crushed with a mighty blow, with a sorely infected wound.

If I go out to the country, behold, those slain with the sword, or if I enter the city, behold, diseases of famine, for both prophet and priest have gone roving about in the land that they do not know.

Have you completely rejected Judah, or have you loathed Zion? Why have you stricken us so that we are beyond healing? We waited for peace, but nothing good came, and for a time of healing, but behold, terror.

We know our wickedness, O Lord, the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you. Do not despise us for your own name's sake. Do not disgrace the throne of your glory. Remember and do not annul your covenant with us.

Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain, or can the heavens grant showers? Is it not you, O Lord, our God? Therefore, we hope in you, for you are the one who has done all these things.

You may be seated. Very interesting, my wife has had a couple of encounters with Mormons lately, and I sensed something of a Mormon reboot in progress. There are many YouTube channels that, you know, strive to show good family, good family economics, good household sensibilities, and there's a whole network of Mormons putting these YouTube videos out.

And there's some general wisdom that apply to whoever you are, no matter what you believe, but of course, they begin to espouse their Mormon beliefs. Additionally, a couple of Mormon missionaries came up to speak with my wife while she was at the park with the children.

And the common denominator between two of these encounters was their insistence that there'd be no argument, that there'd be no judgment, that there'd be nothing said against one another throughout the entirety of the conversation, so that nobody would call each other false, that no one would say anything against each other.

I believe the statements made were something like, we're not going to judge you, and we're not going to be critical of you, meaning you may not judge us or be critical of us, right? That it would be best if we don't say anything negative about one another while we're having this conversation.

I think the promises in the YouTube video ran along the lines of, when you come visit a Mormon worship place, that you're not going to have any judgmental attitudes, no criticism of you, however you want to make progress towards God is totally up to you.

Everyone's kind of going their own speed, so there's no criticism and there's no judgment whatsoever. And then about two minutes later, they were saying, just to be clear, we don't practice polygamy and those who do are not allowed in the church.

Oh, I thought you said it was a judgment-free zone. It's not very consistent, but the whole point of it is, we're going to believe what we believe and we're not going to say anything negative about you, so you can't say anything negative about us.

I got to thinking about that a little bit and I think a lot of Christians are that same place. I think a lot of Christians have drunk the Kool-Aid along with the rest of the pop culture and have decided to be a non-judgment zone.

And I'm not saying we have a free license to be critical and rude and unloving. I'm saying that Jesus says, judge with a righteous judgment. And I'm saying that if something is false, it's false. If something is wrong, it's wrong.

And we should eschew any kind of approach to life that says, we're not going to be controversial at all costs. The greatest heresy of our day is saying that something is heresy. That's the world in which we live.

I think as we read the scriptures, however, we are constantly coming up against patriarchs and prophets and apostles and Jesus Christ himself, who say things like, you are liars and are from the father of lies.

There's woe to you. Prophets like Jeremiah who say, what you are saying is not the truth. And I wonder how ready we are to follow suit. When I say the phrase, let God be true, you know what comes next, right?

Let God Be True and Every Man a Liar

Romans chapter three, let God be true and every man a liar. Meaning truth is with God, not with every man. Truth is with God and not the majority. Let God be true, even if every man is a liar. This morning as I want to talk about Jeremiah chapter 14 verses 13 through 22, as I studied this passage, I sum it all up by saying this, that we must meet the forces of deception as soldiers of confession.

We must meet the forces of deception as soldiers of confession, meaning we say what God says, that we are in agreement with him about who we are, who he is and what is going on in this world. That we're in agreement with God.

And as I looked at that, as I looked at the passage, I became concerned that perhaps we would be moving past a very important point. And it's this, that we do not hate false teaching. We might have a slight indigestion.

There may be a mild allergy, but we are by no means in the state of mind, in the condition of our heart to do war against false teaching. To set ourselves in opposition to false teaching and to hold fast to Christ and for the right reasons and in the right way, oppose false teaching.

I don't know if we're there. I think we drink the Kool-Aid too much. I think that we're part of this pop culture where we are judgment free. I'm not going to say anything bad or negative. I'm always going to equivocate and soften and condition everything I say.

And I think we ought to be careful about that. I think we ought to be loving. I think we ought to be kind. I think we ought to be patient. I think we should have all the virtues of Christ in our lives active, but also is telling the truth.

I want us to look this morning at the character of false teaching. Verses 13 and 14. I want to look at the character of false teaching. If we can get to know the character of false teaching, if we see it for what it really is, I trust that the spirit will work his will in our hearts and will vitalize our opposition to false teaching for the right reasons in the right way.

Verses 13 and 14. Jeremiah says, but Lord God, ah, Lord God, I said, look at the prophets. Look, the prophets are telling them, you will not see the sword, nor will you have famine, but I will give you lasting peace in this place.

And the Lord said to me, the prophets are prophesying falsehood in my name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them. They are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility, and the deception of their own minds.

Let's come at it this way. Parents, you know that when your children lie to you, they put themselves in danger. They put themselves out of the reach of your help, out of the sphere of the safety that you're trying to provide for them.

As soon as they lie to you, they hide parts of their lives from you, and they put themselves and they expose themselves to danger. And therefore, you hate lying. You hate lying in your children because of the danger it puts them in.

And you know that more than they do. Doesn't it make sense that God would also hate false teaching? He would hate lies being told to his people. He would hate when people would begin to lie and say things that are untrue in his name.

God hates deception. He says so many, many times in his word. He vigorously warns his children about false teaching. And I wonder if we amen our Heavenly Father, is that truth of the text a true sentiment of our own heart?

That we are opposed to false teaching? Sometimes, however, I think for parents, we want to believe the lies of our children. We want to believe that they are indeed that thoughtful, that responsible. That indeed, it was a true mistake, and it was not something devious at all.

And we truly want to believe the lies of our children because that makes us feel better. My child is just a little unfortunate in the incidents of his or her life. Surely not devious in any way. Surely not systematically rebellious in any way.

No, no, I can't believe that. And we would rather believe the lies that children sometimes tell us than believe the truth. And very often, very often, false teaching is in that same category. We would rather believe this because it makes us feel better than the truth.

And very often, our hearts are an ally to false teaching because we like how it sounds instead of what the truth is. I don't want us to be nonchalant toward heresy, toward cults, toward false religions, to wrong teaching, and just plain bad doctrine.

We need to understand its character. Notice, first of all, it denies God's will. It denies God's will. Why should you be against false teaching? Because it denies God's will. Verse 12, Jeremiah 14, when they fast, I am not going to listen to their cry.

When they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I'm not going to accept them. Why? We've already covered that. Because they were also offering burnt offerings and grain offerings to the Baals and to the Molech and to the Queen of Heaven.

They were worshiping many, many gods. Whichever God will give us, get us off the hook, we'll be good to go. And God says, I'm not going to accept these offerings. Rather, look at the end of verse 12, rather, I am going to make an end of them by the sword, famine, and pestilence.

Not the first time God said so. God had made it very clear. Famine, sword, and pestilence is a threefold chord that expresses all the curses from Deuteronomy 28, verses 15 through 68. All those curses for Israel, should they disobey God's law, can be summed up by famine, pestilence, and the sword.

It was clearly God's will. He had said it. He had said it in detail. He had said it again and again. And the false prophets, the false teachers are coming out and saying, no, this isn't so. Why should you be opposed to false teaching?

Because it denies God's will. False teaching takes what is clear in God's word and makes it cloudy. Takes the clearly expressed will of God and makes it opaque, hard to see, hard to understand, makes something clear and simple, very complicated.

Why? Why would false teachers do that? One motive, not the only motive, but one motive is materialism. Materialism. Micah had the same problem in his day. In Micah 3, 5, he says, thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray.

When they have something to bite with their teeth, they cry, peace, shalom. But against him who puts nothing in their mouths, they declare holy war. It is the character of false prophets to false preachers and false teachers to say peace and shalom to those who will buy their books and pay for their conferences.

But for those who say, no, you are lying, I will not support you against such people, they declare holy war. As in Micah's day, so it is today. He clarifies in verse 11 of Micah 3, her leaders pronounce judgment for a bribe, her priests instruct for a price, and her prophets divine for money.

Yet they lean on the Lord saying, is not the Lord in our midst, calamity will not come upon us? Do you hear the motive? One motive for false teaching, one motive for denying the clear revelation of God's will is materialism.

The second reason why we should hate false teaching and be against it, why we should oppose it, is it dissimulates God's word. It simulates God's word, but it is not God's word, it is against God's word, therefore it dissimulates God's word.

They speak for God. They speak for God. Notice at the end of verse 13, where the prophets say, and Jeremiah is quoting them, I will give you lasting peace in this place. That's what the prophets are saying God says.

The false prophets are coming to the people and saying, God says, I will give you lasting peace in this place. But notice, the Lord said to Jeremiah, these prophets are prophesying falsehood in my name.

I have neither sent them, nor commanded them, nor spoken to them. They are prophesying to you a false vision. He says it again in verse 15, I haven't sent them. These are not my words. We should be against false teaching because false teaching dissimulates God's word and false teachers will say, this is what God says, and he never actually said it.

This can be exposed in a couple of different ways. Sometimes false teachers speak the echoes of their own mind as the word of God. I had a thought. It popped into my head. It bounced around for a while.

I figure it's God. Here's what God says. And it wasn't really God at all. Sometimes they, as in Paul's terminology, they wrangle words in the scripture. They cut and paste. They cherry pick the Bible using a conglomeration of passages out of their context to deceive and speak a message of man as if it were the word of God.

Why should we be against false teachers? Not only do they deny God's will, which is clear, but they also dissimulate God's word. Why? Why would false teachers do such a thing? What are they really about?

Well, let's back up a little bit and let's go over to Ezekiel. And this is something that came about in my scripture reading last week. As I was reading through the Bible, I came across this passage as I was studying for this passage.

And lo and behold, the word agrees. Ezekiel chapter 13 and beginning in verse 1. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy and say to those who prophesy from their own inspiration.

You hear that? Those who prophesy from their own inspiration. Is that possible that even today there are false teachers who are teaching and preaching from their own personal inspiration? Yes. Listen to the word of the Lord.

There's the cure. There's the cure. Listen to the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, woe to the foolish prophets who are following their own spirit and have seen nothing. Meaning the seers are blind.

Oh, Israel, your prophets have been like foxes among ruins. You have not gone up into the breaches, nor did you build the wall around the house of Israel to stand on the battle on the day of the Lord.

They see falsehood and lying divination who are saying the Lord declares when the Lord has not sent them. Yet they hope for the fulfillment of their word. Did you not see a false vision and speak a lying divination when you said the Lord declares, but it is not I who have spoken?

Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have spoken falsehood and seen a lie. Therefore, behold, I am against you, declares the Lord God. Let me ask you, are you against false teachers? The Lord is.

God is. Are we? Are we against false teachers? Oh, we can take them or leave them. It's not that bad of a deal. You know, maybe they're in error, but you know, it's not doing anybody any real harm. Lord says I'm against them.

Their motive, I believe, for why they do that is easily seen, not only in terms of materialism, but also in terms of man pleasing. It's materialism and it's man pleasing. In Jeremiah chapter 5 and verse 30 says, an appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.

The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own authority and my people love to have it so. The false teachers are simply doing what pleases the people. So two motives that we can see, not the only two motives, but two motives for false teaching, materialism and man pleasing.

And false teaching denies God's will and it dissimulates God's word. I want us to think about that for a little bit. This should not be surprising to us. It should not be a new concept for us. But Paul says the time will come.

In the last days, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.

Do you remember King Ahab? When you think of King Ahab, do you think holy man or unholy man? Ahab and Jezebel, remember Ahab? Do you know that Ahab had on his payroll 400 prophets of the Lord? What a holy man.

He had 400 prophets of the Lord. And when he told them to prophesy, do you know what they would tell the king who was in charge and who paid their paycheck? They told him what he wanted to hear. 400 prophets.

The king of Judah came up to the king of Israel and said, maybe we should go into battle together. Maybe we should join forces and go take care of this great threat against both our nations. And the king of Judah said, but first I want to ask of the Lord, I want to ask of the Lord, to see if this is okay.

And Ahab said, sure, I've got 400 prophets who will tell you something from the Lord. And of course, all 400 prophets said, go up, you will be victorious. And the king of Judah smelled a rat. He said, don't you have anybody who's a real prophet around here?

And here comes Micaiah. Micaiah comes on the scene and Micaiah says, don't go up, death awaits. Do you know Micaiah was right even though he was one man versus 400? Do you realize that if you put your Bible on a shelf with 400 heretical works, 400 awful books that get the scriptures wrong and get Christ wrong, do you realize the 400 books are wrong and the Bible is still true?

You can surround yourself with 400 different authors and speakers who all seem to be saying the same thing. And guess what? They're all wrong if they disagree with the scriptures, if they deny God's will, if they dissimulate God's word.

Let's not surround ourselves with falsehood like Ahab. False teaching also defiles God's worship. God has not sent them. God has not sent them. God has not sent these false teachers. Well, who did? Who did send them?

From where did they get their commission? What motive do they have? We've seen their motives, but they're giving false visions, divinations, something called futility, and then deceptions of their own heart.

Well, God has not sent them, so who has? Where do false visions come from? Ever thought about that? Where do false visions come from? I woke up one night and Jesus was standing at the foot of my bed. He was glowing.

And he told me to do this and do that, and now I'm a billionaire. Where do false teachings come from, false visions come from? From the father of lies. You know, 2 Corinthians 11, 13 through 15 tells us that even Lucifer shows up as an angel of light, and his ministers also look to be ministers of righteousness.

False visions didn't come from God. It didn't come from God. False visions are like non-native invasive species. Ever heard of silver carp? It's flooding the Mississippi River basin. These things that jump out of the water so high that they hit people on boats, get tangled up in the engines of the shipping.

They weren't native to here, but here they are, and they're invasive, and they're taking over. False visions are like that. They're invasive. Divinations. Divination involves the use of the occult, the modeling of pagan spirituality.

How many times in the last 50 years have I read a book published in the last 50 years, have I seen something attributed to some pagan method of spirituality? Well, what you have to do is you have to empty your mind.

Empty your mind. And when there's nothing there, then God will speak. That's not biblical. That's Eastern pantheistic monism. It's Buddhism. It's Hinduism. Scripture says, fill your mind. Fill your mind with the scriptures.

Meditate on the word day and night so that you know what God desires and who God is, who Christ is. Divinations, false visions, and this thing called, and King James does a better job of this, a thing of not.

A thing of not. Because in the Hebrew, it's Elil. It's God with the diminutive ending, meaning it's little gods. Little nothings. Little nothings. Meaning that they're consulting little nothings to get their information.

The same thing is found in Zechariah 10, 2 through 3. It says, for the teraphim, which is the same idea of little gods, the teraphim speak iniquity and the diviners see lying visions and tell false dreams.

They comfort in vain. Therefore, the people wander like sheep. They are afflicted because there is no shepherd. What does God say? My anger is kindled against the shepherds and I will punish the male goats.

God is against those who lead people astray by defiling the worship of God and bringing to bear in the so-called preaching of the word of God and teaching of the word of God, things like false visions which come from the devil and divinations which come from paganism and little gods.

Note this, behind all false teaching lies some form of idolatry, making up a god of our own imaginations. Are we against false teaching? It denies God's will. It dissimulates God's word. It defiles God's worship and it divorces God's wisdom.

Think of this, when someone denies God's will, replacing the message of God's word with their own, reaping insights from devils and spouting the deceptions of your own mind, what has that person done but deceived themselves and divorced themselves from God's wisdom?

Proverbs 18 1 -2 says, he who separates himself seeks his own desire. He quarrels against all sound wisdom. A fool does not delight in understanding but only in revealing his own mind. Just in verses 13 and 14, we discover the character of false teaching.

What it is, what is, and think about it just a little bit more. What is this false teaching accomplishing? What is it doing? It's doing the exact same thing Satan did in the Garden of Eden. When you deny God's authority and deny God's truth and deny God's holiness and deny God's wisdom, what are you doing?

But choking off all the goodness of God that's supposed to be in your life. We're made in the image of God so that so mediating his goodness, we would manifest his glory but false teaching chokes off the goodness of God.

No more of his authority, no more of his truth, no more of his holiness, no more of his wisdom. You should be against false teaching because it dehumanizes us. We should be against it because it cuts us off from God.

I want us to be against false teaching, to hate false teaching in the right way for the right reasons. That's hard to control. That's hard to aim rightly. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 1, he talks about being among the people there in a gentle way, like a nursing mother and he didn't come with anything as a pretext for greed.

He didn't come to win men's praise. He didn't come with a with a false word, but he came with the gospel and he was gentle among them and leading them out of idolatry to Christ. So we know we got to be gentle about this, but we also have to be firm about that.

In fact, if we're going to oppose false teaching, we should do so for the right reasons and in the right way. And we've already talked about the reasons a little bit, but I just want to clarify the right reasons is because our renewal in Christ depends on true teaching.

True teaching. Is there anybody who gets sanctified, made more holy, renewed in Christ by believing and following lies? Anyone? It doesn't work that way, does it? We should be against false teaching because it does not renew us under Christ.

In fact, it leads us astray. We should be against false teaching because we desire the health of one another in Christ. We want one another to be truly renewed in Christ. So we should be against false teaching for that reason.

Also, we should be against false teaching for the reason that it cuts people off from Christ. I am not happy and okay with the Jehovah's Witnesses having more missionaries in Mongolia than Christians.

To cite one particular example, that's not a good thing. We're not aiming at the same objective. We don't have the same message. That's not good. That's bad. Here's what Jesus says to the teachers of his day, the teachers who took up even the Old Testament scriptures and knew them frontwards and backwards, had much of it memorized.

Those who would teach and encourage people to go to the temple, these kinds of folks, this is what he says to them because they had missed the point and were teaching a twisted form of Judaism. He says to them, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people.

You shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Do you hear Jesus? He's against false teaching because it cuts people off from the kingdom of God.

I know we live in a day and an age where really it is all about not saying anything critical about one another. And obviously, we don't want to become a hypercritical, angry, unkind people, always looking for fault.

That is not at all what we should be. But we should model Christ and we should have the mind of God on this matter. False teaching does matter. It does harm. We're just looking at the character of false teaching this morning, but I want our motivation to be right.

I want our focus to be right because next week when we look at the rest of the passage, we're going to learn more about the consequences of false teaching and we're going to talk about the proper response to it according to the scriptures.

Let's pray together. Father, I come before you this morning and I confess that there is so much to say on this matter, but Lord, I pray that you would help us to have the right mindset, that we would look at the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we would see him whom you have given to us for our salvation, that we would recognize that false teaching leads us and others away from Christ, always distracting from the superiority and the sufficiency of Christ, and that this cannot be agreed with.

This cannot be ignored. Lord, I pray that you would give us a true spirit-led sensitivity to false teaching, that we would be bold enough and loving enough and gracious enough to speak the truth and not allow these opportunities, these conversations, these comments along the way to go past, but that we would take full advantage.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to love Christ, to love him and desire him and to follow him and model him in our lives. We pray these things for Christ's sake.