Grace, mercy and peace be yours from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jeremiah 28:5-9
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, “Amen! May the LORD do so! May the LORD fulfill the words you have prophesied by bringing the articles of the LORD’s house and all the exiles back to this place from Babylon. Nevertheless, listen to what I have to say in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people: 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 will be recognized as one truly sent by the LORD only if his prediction comes true.
Dear friends in Christ,
One of the key ingredients in any relationship is the ability to effectively communicate. Communication is the ability to share your thoughts, opinions, and concerns with someone else so that they are properly understood, and then for that person to do the same with you.
I would like you to think of your relationships and then gauge your ability to effectively communicate. For example: How well do you communicate with your spouse? Your child(ren)/parents? With your boss/employees? With your friends? How well do you communicate with complete strangers?
Now to help you gauge your ability to effectively communicate, I found a list of communication skills. Use this list to determine how well you communicate.
· Are you able to explain your position on a given subject so that you are properly understood?
· Are you clear and concise?
· Are you assertive?
· Are you open-minded to the opinion of others?
· Are you able to reflect on what the speaker has to say?
· Are you prepared to listen?
I think if we were honest, we’d admit our communication skills vary depending on who we’re talking to and how we’re feeling at the moment.
In our Scripture Lesson for today, two men attempt to communicate their message to God’s people. One message is positive, the other negative. Guess which one everyone wanted to hear? The positive one. But was it what they needed to hear? No. The same thing happens today all the time. I have a message to share with you today from God’s word. Will you like everything I have to say? Probably not. But is it what we need to hear? Yes.
I’ve said it before, isn’t it interesting that God gave us one mouth but two ears. If he gave us two of them, they must be important. He must expect us to use them. So as I attempt to communicate God’s message to you, let me ask:
Are You Hearing Me?
The problem is: 1. We hear what we like to hear
The question is: 2. Will we listen to the truth?
Hold that thought for just a moment; we’ll come back to it shortly. Our text this morning comes from the book of Jeremiah and it takes us back to a time 600 years before Christ. Around 600 B.C. God’s people had hit the absolute low point of their existence. It was a time of horrible spiritual darkness. People in Judah went through the rituals of worshiping God, but their hearts weren’t in it. They had better things to do: like making money and having a good time and traveling and living the good life. Economically they certainly weren’t all that bad off as a nation. In fact for the most part they had things pretty good. They thought that God was blessing them, but what they had was really nothing more than a house of cards. They had become enamored with the good life and as a result, their house was ready to fall. They had forgotten the Lord their God. Oh, they talked about God. They prayed to God. They said they believed in God. But their hearts did not belong to God.
600 B.C. was also a time of tremendous political upheaval. The Babylonian empire, which was headquartered in modern-day Iraq, was on the upswing. The Babylonians were marching across the countryside gobbling up territory left and right and adding it to their empire. In the year 605 B.C. the Babylonians came knocking at the gates of Jerusalem, and they said, “Join the empire and pay tribute, or we’ll destroy you.” What could Judah do but comply? Judah became a province of the Babylonian empire, gave up her sovereignty as a nation, and as the price of membership in the empire, the Babylonians took all the gold and silver artifacts from the Jewish temple. They also rounded up all the best and the brightest of the professional people and carted them off to Babylon. One thing the Babylonians didn’t do at this point was destroy Jerusalem. As long as Judah paid tribute, everything was good.
Into this arena stepped a man who claimed to have been called by God. His name was Jeremiah. How would you have liked his job? He was told by God to go to the people and tell them that death and destruction was coming their way. He was also told that no one would listen. Great. You can imagine his message made him immensely unpopular with the people. From the greatest to the least, all the people told Jeremiah to go away, shut his mouth, and save it for someone else. They didn’t want to hear it. They told Jeremiah, “We don’t want to hear about death and destruction. We want to eat, drink and be merry. If you’re going to prophesy, then tell us everything is going to be ok so that we can continue to live in our cushy comfort zones, and nothing has to change.”
Into the same arena stepped another man who claimed to have been called by God. His name was Hananiah. He gave the people a completely different message. He prophesied peace and safety and told the people that within two years the captives and sacred articles that had been taken to Babylon would return. And then the good life would continue on just as it had before.
So here we have in Jeremiah chapter 28 the account of dueling prophets. Two men standing in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple, proclaiming two completely different and contradictory messages: Jeremiah prophesying death and destruction and Hananiah prophesying peace and safety. Both of them claimed to speak in the name of the Lord. Ok, they both can’t be right. So who was? Jeremiah shed some light on that. He says in our text, "From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and the plague against many countries and great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true" (v. 8, 9).
Who was the real prophet? That’s obvious. We have a book in the Bible called “Jeremiah.” There is no book of Hananiah. Hananiah was a false prophet, and all his promises of peace and safety didn’t help him at all. Later in this same chapter Jeremiah said to Hananiah, "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 (Jeremiah 28:15-17).
The people didn’t want to listen to Jeremiah’s message because it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. They didn’t want to hear about the Babylonians returning, destroying their city, and taking them into exile. Hananiah’s message of peace and safety was so much more appealing.
And isn’t it amazing how true that is today? Our sinful human nature doesn’t want to listen to what God has to say either. He demands perfection. He demands we listen to and obey his word. And we can’t do it. We don’t like it when we’re reminded that God wants us in worship. He wants us to come to his table with repentant hearts. He wants us to share with others what we know to be true. I should say we don’t want to hear it when we’re not doing it.
We also don’t like it when we’re told that what we’re doing is sinful. We don’t like to hear:
· Disrespecting your parents is wrong. It doesn’t matter if you think they don’t have a clue. It’s still wrong.
· Ending your marriage without scriptural grounds is wrong. It doesn’t matter if you’ve found someone else who makes you happier. It’s still wrong.
· The grudge you’re holding against someone else is sinful on your part. It doesn’t matter that they embarrassed you in front of your other friends. Forgive and move on.
· Failure to give back to God a portion of what he’s given you, in keeping with your income, is sinful. It means that you’ve put yourself and your wants ahead of God.
We don’t like to hear those things. We would much rather listen to the voices in our society and even within the church who speak much more evangelically. These are the voices who say living together without the benefit of marriage, alternative lifestyles, unscriptural divorce, and abortion rights, “C’mon, what’s the big deal? Everyone’s doing it. Nowadays we must be careful not to offend anyone. I know, I know the Bible speaks against such things but you have to remember the Bible is just a guide book. Only the ultra conservatives believe the Bible is verbally inspired and true in every part. Listen, here’s what you do. Find the parts in the Bible that work for you and the parts that don’t, don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about those who say you’re sinning; eventually we’ll win them over too. And if we don’t, we’ll simply drown them out.”
We would much rather listen to the voices that condone drinking, eating, sleeping, and shopping to excess. It’s the American Dream! Ad campaigns have even picked up on it. They sell the mantra, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Are you hearing me?
All that’s required for evil to prevail is that good men and women do nothing.
Maybe I’m starting to sound like Jeremiah here, which helps to prove the point; it’s been 2600 years and we’re still dealing with the same thing. We hear what we want to hear. The question now is, will we listen to the truth?
Well, what is the truth? The truth is what by faith you already know and have been led to believe. It is true; we are sinful human beings who deserve God’s punishment. It is true that we commit the same sins that people have been committing from the very beginning. We lie, cheat, and steal. We covet what we don’t have and protect what we do as if our lives depended on it. We want to listen to the voices that tell us peace and prosperity; eat, drink, and be merry. And we don’t want to listen to voices that warn otherwise. But the truth is, if we fail to heed God’s warning, he will take his blessings from us: as individuals and as a nation.
Martin Luther once wrote that the gospel truth is like a rain shower. What he meant by that is that God showers us with his love and blessings, but when we fail to listen and do as he says, the shower moves on. His blessings will go someplace else. You see, you can have the truth without passion for the truth, but you won’t have the truth very long.
That is why it is so important that we listen to the truth. Yes, we are sinful human beings, yet because of Jesus, God remembers our sins no more. Because of Jesus we are now blood-bought souls. Because of Jesus we have become heirs of eternal life. Are you hearing me? Peace and safety are found only in Christ.
Our struggle remains the same. How do we let our lights shine in a world that doesn’t want to hear what we have to say? First of all, make sure you’re hearing the truth. And the way you tell is by comparing what you hear in this place with what God says in his word. When it agrees, you have the truth. If ever it doesn’t, then you know who is really telling the truth and who is not.
Secondly, don’t for a minute believe that no one wants to hear what God has to say. He has promised that this word will not return to him empty. He’s promised that the message of Christ will continue to spread until Jesus comes again.
So what we have to keep on doing is work on our communication skills. Listen to what God has to say, and then, speak the truth in love. Speak clearly and concisely. Tell your friends and family, tell them what you know. Tell them the truth. Tell them that Jesus is the Savior of the world. And then just to make sure, don’t forget to ask, “Am I getting through?” “Am I making myself understood?” “Are you hearing me?”
Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.