When God's Word Becomes a Joke Text: Jeremiah 23:33-40
Introduction: The Weight of a Word
We live in an age of cheap words. Our culture is drowning in a sea of babble, of hot takes, of snarky tweets, and of meaningless therapeutic jargon. Language has been detached from reality, and as a result, it has lost its weight. Words are used not to convey truth, but to manage perceptions, to signal virtue, or simply to make noise. And the great tragedy is that this trivialization of language has seeped under the doors of the church. We have become accustomed to a light and breezy Christianity, a faith where the pastor is more of a life-coach, the sermons are TED talks with a Bible verse tacked on, and the worship is designed to be upbeat and affirming above all else.
But the Word of God is not light. It is not breezy. It is a weight. It is a burden. It is a hammer that shatters the rock. It is a fire that consumes the chaff. And when God’s people begin to treat the pronouncements of the living God as a triviality, as a catchphrase, or worse, as a punchline, they are standing on the cliff edge of judgment. They are mocking the very reality that holds them in existence.
In this passage from Jeremiah, we find Judah in the grip of just such a crisis. The nation is rotting from the head down. The prophets and priests, the very men tasked with delivering the weighty Word of God, have turned it into a cynical joke. They have taken the solemn phrase, "The oracle of Yahweh," and made it a piece of fashionable slang. In response, God does not just rebuke them; He dismantles their entire religious vocabulary. He tells them they have forfeited the right to even speak His Word. He promises to abandon them to the weightlessness of their own words, which is a precursor to the crushing weight of His judgment.
This is a terrifying passage because it reveals that one of the most dangerous things a man can do is to handle the Word of God flippantly. It shows us that when a culture of irreverence takes root among God's people, the judgment that follows is not just external, like an invading army, but internal. God removes His presence and His Word, and leaves them to the echo chamber of their own foolishness. And make no mistake, this is a clear and present danger for the American church today.
The Text
"Now when this people or the prophet or a priest asks you, saying, 'What is the oracle of Yahweh?' then you shall say to them, 'What oracle?' Yahweh declares, 'I will abandon you.' Then as for the prophet or the priest or the people who say, 'The oracle of Yahweh,' I will bring punishment upon that man and his household. Thus will each of you say to his neighbor and to his brother, 'What has Yahweh answered?' or, 'What has Yahweh spoken?' For you will no longer remember the oracle of Yahweh because every man’s own word will become the oracle, and you have perverted the words of the living God, Yahweh of hosts, our God. Thus you will say to that prophet, 'What has Yahweh answered you?' and, 'What has Yahweh spoken?' For if you all say, 'The oracle of Yahweh!' surely thus says Yahweh, 'Because you said this word, “The oracle of Yahweh!” I have also sent to you, saying, “You shall not say, ‘The oracle of Yahweh!’ ” ’ Therefore behold, I will surely forget you and abandon you, along with the city which I gave you and your fathers, so that you are out of My presence. I will put an everlasting reproach on you and an everlasting humiliation which will not be forgotten."
(Jeremiah 23:33-40 LSB)
The Scoffer's Question and the Divine Threat (vv. 33-34)
The confrontation begins with a question, dripping with sarcasm.
"Now when this people or the prophet or a priest asks you, saying, 'What is the oracle of Yahweh?' then you shall say to them, 'What oracle?' Yahweh declares, 'I will abandon you.'" (Jeremiah 23:33)
The key here is the Hebrew word massa. It means both "oracle" and "burden." A true oracle from God was a heavy thing. It was a weight of glory, a weight of responsibility for the prophet, and a weight of judgment for a rebellious people. Jeremiah was a man crushed by the weight of the words he had to deliver. But the false prophets, the corrupt priests, and the jaded populace had turned it into a joke. Their question, "What's the latest burden from Yahweh?" was the ancient equivalent of rolling their eyes and saying, "What's the doom-and-gloom prophet on about today?" It was a sneer.
God’s response through Jeremiah is a brilliant and devastating play on their own word. He says, "What oracle? You are the oracle. You are the burden." The people themselves, in their flippant rebellion, had become the burden that God was about to cast off. Their sin was so heavy that God Himself was declaring His intention to abandon them. This is one of the most fearsome judgments in all of Scripture. It is not just that God will send Babylon. It is that God will leave. He will withdraw His presence, His protection, and His word. When men treat God's Word as a trifle, God responds by removing it altogether, leaving them to the consequences of their own weightless chatter.
And this judgment is personal and comprehensive.
"Then as for the prophet or the priest or the people who say, 'The oracle of Yahweh,' I will bring punishment upon that man and his household." (Jeremiah 23:34)
God does not grade on a curve. The prophet who preaches lies, the priest who enables him, and the people who love to have it so are all culpable. Notice the covenantal nature of the judgment: "that man and his household." Sin is never a private affair. A father's irreverence infects his home. A pastor's flippancy poisons his flock. The rot spreads, and the judgment will follow it wherever it goes. This is a corporate solidarity in sin, which will be met with a corporate solidarity in judgment.
The Forbidden Phrase and the Perverted Word (vv. 35-38)
God then gives them a new script. He is so offended by their abuse of the term "oracle" that He forbids its use entirely.
"Thus will each of you say to his neighbor and to his brother, 'What has Yahweh answered?' or, 'What has Yahweh spoken?' For you will no longer remember the oracle of Yahweh because every man’s own word will become the oracle, and you have perverted the words of the living God, Yahweh of hosts, our God." (Jeremiah 23:35-36)
They are to return to simple, direct, and respectful language. No more clever wordplay, no more insider jargon. Just the plain facts: "What did God say?" This is a command to strip away the layers of cynical commentary and get back to the bare text. But the reason for this prohibition is chilling. They are forbidden to use the word "oracle" because they have fundamentally corrupted its meaning. They have hollowed it out.
The central sin is identified in verse 36: "every man’s own word will become the oracle." This is the very essence of rebellion. It is the creature usurping the role of the Creator. It is subjective preference replacing objective truth. When you get tired of the weight of what God has actually said, you begin to substitute it with what you would like Him to have said. Your feelings, your political opinions, your cultural sensibilities, these become your "burden," your "oracle." And when you do this, you have "perverted the words of the living God." To pervert means to twist, to distort. You are taking the straight, true, life-giving words of God and bending them into a crooked shape that serves your own sinful agenda.
This is precisely the sin of the modern liberal church, which twists the Bible to affirm every sexual perversion imaginable. It is the sin of the prosperity gospel huckster, who turns the gospel into a get-rich-quick scheme. And it is the sin of the woke evangelical, who filters the clear teachings of Scripture through the muddy lens of critical theory. They have made their own words the oracle, and in so doing, have perverted the words of the living God.
God repeats the command for emphasis, making it clear that this is not a suggestion.
"Thus you will say to that prophet, 'What has Yahweh answered you?' and, 'What has Yahweh spoken?' For if you all say, 'The oracle of Yahweh!' surely thus says Yahweh, 'Because you said this word, “The oracle of Yahweh!” I have also sent to you, saying, “You shall not say, ‘The oracle of Yahweh!’ ” ’" (Jeremiah 23:37-38)
The lines are drawn. God has issued a direct command, and their continued use of this phrase is now an act of open defiance. It is no longer just a bad habit; it is high treason.
The Unforgettable Abandonment (vv. 39-40)
The passage concludes with the final sentence, the ultimate consequence of their verbal treason.
"Therefore behold, I will surely forget you and abandon you, along with the city which I gave you and your fathers, so that you are out of My presence. I will put an everlasting reproach on you and an everlasting humiliation which will not be forgotten." (Jeremiah 23:39-40)
Here we see a terrifying divine irony. Because they made God's weighty word a light thing, He will perform a weighty act of forgetting. The Hebrew for "surely forget you" contains another wordplay on "burden." It could be rendered, "I will surely lift you up and cast you away." Because you would not bear the burden of My word, I will now make you the burden, and I will heave you out of My sight.
This is the judgment of divine abandonment. To be "out of My presence" is the definition of hell. For Israel, this meant the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the very place where God's presence dwelt. It meant exile. It meant being handed over to their enemies. God gave them the city, the covenant, the land. And now, He is taking it all back. Their inheritance is revoked.
And the result is "everlasting reproach" and "everlasting humiliation." Their sin was treating God's name and word as a joke. Their punishment is that they will become a cautionary tale, a permanent object of shame and disgrace among the nations. The humiliation will not be forgotten. The world will look at the ruins of Jerusalem and know that this is what happens when a people trifles with the living God. The covenant has blessings and it has curses, and they have pulled the lever for the curses with their own mocking tongues.
The Burden of the Lord Jesus
This passage is a stark warning, but it is not the final word. For we who live on this side of the cross know that God did not ultimately abandon His people to their reproach. The entire problem described by Jeremiah is that sinful men cannot bear the weight, the burden, of God's holy word and righteous demands. We are all guilty of perverting His words, of substituting our own wisdom for His, of treating holy things with a familiarity that breeds contempt.
And so God did something marvelous. He sent One who could bear the burden. The Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate Oracle of Yahweh, the Word made flesh (John 1:14). He did not pervert the words of the living God; He embodied them perfectly. He spoke only what the Father gave Him to speak. He was the true prophet who bore the true burden.
On the cross, Jesus experienced the very judgment described in this text. He was abandoned. He was cast out of God's presence, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). He became the burden. He took upon Himself the full weight of our flippancy, our irreverence, our twisted words, and our cheap religion. He bore our "everlasting reproach" and our "everlasting humiliation" in His own body so that we would not have to.
And in exchange, He gives us His word, not as a burden that crushes, but as a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light (Matthew 11:30). He does this not by diminishing the weight of God's truth, but by giving us His Spirit, who enables us to love the truth, to delight in it, and to bear it joyfully. The gospel does not make God's word less weighty; it makes us strong enough, in Christ, to carry it.
Therefore, the application for us is clear. We must repent of all flippancy in the face of God's revelation. We must recover a sense of the sheer weight of Scripture. We must tremble at His word (Isaiah 66:2). We must refuse to twist it, domesticate it, or turn it into a joke. We must receive it for what it is: the very words of the living God. And we must cling to the one who bore the burden of our sin, the Lord Jesus, so that we might be saved from the coming judgment and be granted the honor of bearing the glorious burden of His gospel to the ends of the earth.