The Sweet Poison of a Lie
Introduction: The Itching Ears Epidemic
We live in an age that is allergic to bad news. In the modern evangelical landscape, the highest virtues are often considered to be niceness, positivity, and an encouraging demeanor. A pastor who thunders from the pulpit about sin, repentance, and the coming judgment of God is considered a crank, a throwback, someone who clearly "doesn't know the heart of God." We have cultivated a people, as the apostle Paul warned, who will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will heap up for themselves teachers, turning their ears away from the truth and being turned aside to fables (2 Tim. 4:3-4). They want a gospel that is therapeutic, not transformative. They want a God who is a celestial butler, not a sovereign King. They want peace, but they want it on their own terms, without the unpleasantness of submission and repentance.
This is not a new problem. This is the ancient and perennial temptation of God's people. They want the blessings of the covenant without the obligations of the covenant. They want to live like the world six days a week and then come to the assembly on Sunday to be told that God is still smiling upon them. And throughout history, there has never been a shortage of court prophets, hirelings, and spiritual snake-oil salesmen willing to provide this service for a price.
The passage before us in Jeremiah is a raw, unfiltered exposé of this spiritual sickness. It is God's divine diagnosis of a nation that has chosen to be lied to. Jeremiah is faithfully preaching the hard word of the Lord, the word of impending judgment, of sword and famine. But he is being drowned out by a chorus of popular, state-approved prophets who are singing a much sweeter song. This is not a polite disagreement over secondary doctrines. This is spiritual warfare. This is a clash between the Word of the Lord and the deception of the human heart. And God is about to make it terrifyingly clear which one is reality.
The Text
But, "Ah, Lord Yahweh!" I said, "Behold, the prophets are saying to them, 'You will not see the sword nor will you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.' "
Then Yahweh said to me, "The prophets are prophesying lies in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a vision of lies, divination, futility, and the deception of their own hearts.
Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning the prophets who are prophesying in My name, although it was not I who sent them, yet they keep saying, 'There will be no sword or famine in this land', by that sword and famine those prophets shall meet their end!
The people also to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and there will be no one to bury them, neither them, nor their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters, for I will pour out their own evil on them.
(Jeremiah 14:13-16 LSB)
The Prophet's Perplexity (v. 13)
We begin with Jeremiah's exasperated plea to God.
"But, 'Ah, Lord Yahweh!' I said, 'Behold, the prophets are saying to them, "You will not see the sword nor will you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place." ' " (Jeremiah 14:13)
You can hear the anguish in Jeremiah's voice. He is the faithful messenger, the one bearing the true but terrible word of the Lord. And he is being contradicted at every turn. He is essentially saying, "Lord, how can I get through to these people? I am telling them judgment is coming, but the entire religious establishment is telling them the exact opposite."
And notice the specific content of the lie. It is a promise of "true peace." The Hebrew is shalom emet. They have the audacity to add the word "true" or "assured" to their lie to make it sound more convincing. This is the essence of all false gospels. They promise peace without dealing with the reason for the conflict, which is sin. They promise the crown without the cross. They promise the blessing of Abraham without the faith of Abraham. They tell the people that God's fundamental disposition toward them is one of indulgent affirmation, regardless of their flagrant idolatry and rebellion. It is a message of unconditional security divorced from the conditions of the covenant. It is the original lie of the serpent in the garden: "You will not surely die."
The Divine Diagnosis (v. 14)
God's response is immediate and severe. He does not equivocate. He does not say, "Well, they are a bit misguided." He delivers a four-part diagnosis of their prophetic malpractice.
"Then Yahweh said to me, 'The prophets are prophesying lies in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a vision of lies, divination, futility, and the deception of their own hearts.' " (Jeremiah 14:14)
First, God states the central crime: "The prophets are prophesying lies in My name." They are committing spiritual identity theft. They are forging God's signature on their own worthless checks. God then issues a threefold denial of their authority: He has not sent them (no commission), not commanded them (no authority), and not spoken to them (no message). They are entirely self-appointed and self-directed.
So where does their message come from? God tells us precisely. First, it is a "vision of lies." It is a counterfeit revelation, a product of their own imagination. Second, it is "divination." This is a crucial word. It refers to pagan, occultic practices. It is the attempt to discover hidden knowledge apart from God's revealed Word. When you abandon Scripture as your sole authority, you do not become a free-thinker; you become a slave to other spiritual influences. Their "prophecy" was not from God, but from the same dark source as the babbling of pagan soothsayers. Third, it is "futility." It is a worthless, empty thing. It has no substance. It is a spiritual diet of cotton candy that will leave the people malnourished and unprepared for the coming crisis. Fourth, and this is the root of it all, it is "the deception of their own hearts." They are not just lying; they are self-deceived. They have so marinated in their own wishful thinking and desire for comfort and popularity that they have mistaken the voice of their own sinful hearts for the voice of God. Their prophecy is nothing more than their own rebellion projected onto heaven.
The Prophet's Payday (v. 15)
God's judgment is not arbitrary. It is always fitting, just, and often, deeply ironic. The punishment for the false prophets is a perfect example of this divine poetry.
"Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning the prophets who are prophesying in My name, although it was not I who sent them, yet they keep saying, 'There will be no sword or famine in this land', by that sword and famine those prophets shall meet their end!" (Jeremiah 14:15)
This is the law of the harvest in its most terrifying form. The very instruments of judgment they denied will be the instruments of their own execution. They built their careers, their reputations, and their bank accounts by promising immunity from the sword and famine. And God says that the sword will find their throats and the famine will gnaw at their own bellies. They will be the first to go.
There is a solemn warning here for anyone who stands in a pulpit. God holds teachers to a stricter judgment (James 3:1). To misrepresent God, to soften His warnings, to peddle a cheap and easy grace, is to paint a target on your own back. When reality, in the form of God's righteous judgment, finally breaks in, the purveyors of lies will have nowhere to hide. Their false words will be choked down their own throats.
The Consumer's Comeuppance (v. 16)
But the blame does not stop with the lying prophets. The people who eagerly consumed those lies are just as culpable. The existence of a market for lies is what makes the business of lying so profitable.
"The people also to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and there will be no one to bury them, neither them, nor their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters, for I will pour out their own evil on them." (Jeremiah 14:16)
The judgment on the people is just as severe. They will be killed by the very sword and famine they were promised they would never see. Their bodies will lie unburied in the streets, a sign of ultimate curse and degradation. And this curse will fall upon the entire household, the husband, the wife, the sons, and the daughters. A society that embraces lies will see its foundational institution, the family, utterly destroyed.
And notice the final, devastating reason: "for I will pour out their own evil on them." God's judgment is not some external, arbitrary punishment. It is God simply giving them what they asked for. He is letting their own sin and folly run its natural course. They chose a lie, and they will be consumed by the reality that the lie was hiding. They sowed the wind of pleasant deception, and they will reap the whirlwind of brutal destruction. God is simply taking His hands off the brakes and letting their own evil crash upon their own heads.
Conclusion: The True and Better Peace
This passage is a grim and necessary warning. But it is not without a pointer to the gospel. The false prophets of Judah offered a false peace, a shalom emet that was no shalom at all, because it ignored the festering wound of sin.
The gospel of Jesus Christ begins where Jeremiah begins. It tells the hard truth. It says that because of your sin, you are at war with a holy God. There is no peace. The sword of His justice is rightly raised against you, and the famine of eternal separation is your just desert. Any "prophet" who tells you otherwise is lying to you, either because he is a fool or because he is a wolf.
But having declared the war, the gospel then declares the peace. But it is a peace that was purchased at an infinite cost. The true Prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, did not deny the reality of the sword and famine. Instead, He stood in our place and absorbed them both. On the cross, the sword of God's wrath fell upon Him. On the cross, He endured the famine of separation from His Father. He took the full measure of the covenant curse that we deserved.
Because He did this, He can now offer us a truly true peace, a genuine shalom emet. It is a peace founded not on wishful thinking, but on the shed blood of the Son of God. It is a peace that comes not by ignoring sin, but by having it fully and finally punished in our substitute. This is the only peace worth having.
Therefore, our duty is clear. We must turn away from the sweet poison of the modern-day false prophets who preach a god of affirmation without holiness, a gospel of comfort without repentance. We must cultivate a love for the hard, sharp, life-giving truth of God's Word. For only in that truth will we find the Prince of Peace, and in Him, a peace that passes all understanding.