Chapter 28

When you’re trying to tell something unpleasant to someone (particularly if that someone has trouble believing you, it can really be offputting when a third party – someone not directly involved – starts contradicting you.

It’s bad enough when you’re not sure about the facts of the matter. But it is a thousand times worse when you know exactly what the facts are, and your opponent is talking nonsense.

This is the scenario Jeremiah is facing in this passage. He is trying to get the people of Judah to listen to his truthful (but unpopular) message from the Lord – that they be exiled, and that God plans to fight against Judah on the side of their enemies.

Another “Prophet”, Hananiah, has seen Jeremiah walking around with his yoke (see chapter 27), and sees an opportunity. He grabs Jeremiah’s yoke, picks it up and smashes it. He declares that just like this, God would smash the armies against Judah.

Note this – God didn’t say anything of the sort to Hananiah. His desire to smash the yoke was to cost him his life. We don’t know why he wanted to smash it. Maybe he was trying to be nice to Jeremiah, but I suspect not. For all we know, perhaps it was effectively a piece of performance art! My own idea, however, is that he was somehow threatened by people listening to Jeremiah, and wanted to counteract the attention that he’d been getting lately.

People always think they know better. Younger people especially (I say as a teacher!).

The problem is simple, though – Hananiah’s comment came from him, and not from God. And as a result, God orders for him to die by the time the year is over. This may sound harsh, but remember – prophets have a lot of influence, and for people to pretend that God speaks through them is a serious matter. Consider how easily people could be fooled by that into doing something disastrous?

In fact this is what I wanted us to concentrate on this evening. Simply this – Given that it’s presumptuous for a person to speak words as God’s words when he or she has not been spoken to, I wonder how many times this might be thought to apply to our own conversations.

Two questions: 1) Do you ever say or imply that you believe God to be directly speaking through you? Sometimes He may, and that’s great. But we need to be absolutely certain that He is speaking through us, and it’s worth remembering the lesson of Hananiah.

2) What is your source of authority? Is it God’s word? or is it you yourself?

It is a serious thing to speak on God’s behalf, and we need to ensure that we do it in a correct and righteous manner.