Jeremiah’s word here is that the people are not to listen to
the others who call themselves prophets when they prophesy that no harm shall
come to the nation. True prophets call
for repentance, they don’t support and encourage those who are bent on
following their own ways and because these prophets have not been in the
council of the Lord and have not spoken truth concerning their conduct to the
people, there has been no repentance.
The time now has come, there is no averting it, for judgment, it is too
late to repent and the prophets have to bear the blame since they failed to
warn the people in a timely manner. In
my former work in litigation, there were three things that had to be
established: someone failed in their duty, there was loss to the party to whom
the duty was owed, and the failure caused the loss. The simple parts were the first two, the most
difficult was establishing the link between the failure and loss. Here, the Lord says the prophets’ failure led
to the judgment, causation is declared.
The first and most important thing we have to do in hearing
from the Lord is to let our own agenda go.
Peter had a problem with that when Jesus began talking about what will
happen next. Jesus tells of His
suffering, that He will be killed and three days later will rise again. All these are true but Peter knows
better. Like the people who couldn’t
accept that Jesus was Messiah because they “knew” He was from Galilee or
Nazareth, Peter “knew” all about Messiah and what he knew didn’t allow for
suffering and death, much less resurrection.
It all sounded crazy and Jesus needed to be educated so that He wouldn’t
say such things. Peter got a strong
rebuke and a lesson in what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. To take up your cross and follow is to accept
that you are a dead man walking. My
agenda of self-preservation and self-promotion has to go if I am to be aligned
with Him.
Paul tells the Corinthians that it is reasonable for one who
preaches the Gospel to be compensated for this work. Apparently they have not been willing to
provide for those who preach and teach.
Paul himself does not avail himself of this right but that does not mean
that others are less spiritual or wrong for expecting it. Certainly it can be a problem and can produce
prophets for hire rather than truth tellers as it is always tempting to tickle
the ears of those whose ability to increase the pot. I know that in my own life there have been
times when I was told that I should preach this instead of that and where tithes
were withheld in order to manipulate me but in the end I find that so long as I
am faithful to preach what He says things may be difficult but He provides what
we need. Faithfulness to Him rather than
men is the important thing.
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