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Jeremiah 28:5, 8-9  Then the prophet Jeremiah replied to the prophet Hananiah before the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the LORD. He said, “… From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms.But the prophet who prophesies PEACE [for Jerusalem] will be recognised as one truly sent by the LORD only if his prediction comes true. ”

The problem Jeremiah was facing was the problem faced in every age by anyone who seeks to be faithful to the truth of God’s Word in a situation where this truth is unpalatable.  Jeremiah knew clearly that the message the LORD had given him to proclaim to Judah was universally unacceptable, denied by king, prophet, priest and people alike.  It was not only a message of God’s judgement on his people because of their sinful lifestyle and behaviour, but, worse still, that the instrument he would use to execute this judgement was the hated, arrogant Babylonians!

Hananiah, like just about every other ‘prophet’ at the time, was proclaiming a ‘gospel’ of peace.  This made him and his colleagues quite popular among the people, and therefore intensified their opposition to Jeremiah, and their determination to ostracise him.

In the same vein, Paul could easily have been warning Timothy about our own day when he wrote: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Our current tendency to emphasise God’s attributes of love and forgiveness at the expense of upholding his holiness and justice has led to an almost universal tolerance of sin and a rejection of any possibility of judgement.  There are sins that are clearly condemned in Scripture that today we remain silent about either because it is considered ‘politically incorrect’ to expose them, or because they are so endemic that our collective social conscience is too seared to even consider them sinful or wrong.

In 586 BC, Hananiah’s prophecy was proven false and Jeremiah was vindicated; do we have the courage to speak out about God’s judgement on sin as the Day of Christ’s final return in judgement looms closer?  It cost Jeremiah his popularity and credibility in the eyes of the nation – which is usually the price to pay for faithfulness to the true and living God!

– Bruce Christian