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Jeremiah 28:15-17  Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah the prophet, “Listen, Hananiah!  The LORD has not sent you, yet you have persuaded this nation to trust in lies.  Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I am about to remove you from the face of the earth.  This very year you are going to die, because you have preached rebellion against the LORD.’”  In the seventh month of that same year, Hananiah the prophet died.

This statement by Jeremiah at the end of Chapter 28 teaches me two things.

Firstly, that those who were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the words of Scripture to constitute God’s written Word to us were very sure that it was the One True God, the LORD, who was speaking to them and through them.  Jeremiah was a lone voice against all the others at the time who were claiming to be God’s spokesmen and yet who were saying the opposite to what faithful, persistent Jeremiah was saying, and, although this put Jeremiah’s safety, even his very life, in great danger he refused to stop speaking out his unpopular message.  From our perspective, we can see that subsequent history proved Jeremiah to be right in all he said, and we are most thankful he made such a courageous stand alone against such daunting opposition.

Secondly, it warns me against the danger of too easily allowing myself to be convinced, even by finding passages of Scripture to authenticate my opinion, of ‘prophesying’ what the Lord’s will is for me because it fits in with what I really want to happen!  It’s not rocket science that Hananiah was going to have everyone from the top down going along with his forecast because he was claiming the Lord was planning a peaceful, prosperous future for his Covenant people, and this, of course guaranteed unified support from all the other self-appointed ‘prophetic’ voices.

And this, in turn, made it extremely difficult for Jeremiah, out of love and deep concern for his nation,to keep on warning them of the coming harsh judgement on their sinful apostasy and rebellion.  All this gives us a helpful context in which to understand why it seems so hard to convince our society today that we are all sinners, desperately in need of a Saviour, and that that Saviour is the One that God himself has provided for us: his own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hananiah and his followers were loudly proclaiming, ‘Peace, peace’ where there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11), and people were readily believing them.  Those today who are saying ‘God is a god of love and therefore ‘judgement’ and ‘hell’ cannot exist in reality’ have no trouble getting people to accept this message, but, sadly, that doesn’t make it correct, any more than Hananiah’s message prevented Babylon from thoroughly devastating Jerusalem and its inhabitants.

Let us take heart from Jeremiah’s faithfulness and courage in the midst of opposition, and press on with our prayer-fuelled proclamation of the ‘unpopular’ Gospel of Salvation through Christ alone.  And perhaps, against the odds, our loving, gracious God, in his mercy, will bless us with a real spiritual revival even today!

– Bruce Christian