The Prophecy of Public Relations
Introduction: Two Kinds of Religion
In every generation, the people of God are confronted with two kinds of religion. One is the religion of Yahweh, and the other is the religion of "Thus says Yahweh." They are not the same thing. One is the faith delivered once for all to the saints, and the other is a faith cooked up in the hearts of men who want the blessing of God without the God of the blessing. One is the religion of the cross, and the other is the religion of the crown without the cross. One is the religion of Jeremiah, and the other is the religion of Hananiah.
The scene before us in Jeremiah 28 is a public, high-stakes showdown in the house of the Lord. This is not a quiet disagreement over fine points of systematics in a seminary classroom. This is a clash of gospels, a battle for the soul of a nation, played out in front of the priests and all the people. On one side, you have Jeremiah, God's true prophet, who for years has been preaching a hard, unwelcome, but loving word. He has been telling Judah that because of her flagrant, unrepentant covenant-breaking, God Himself has placed a yoke of submission on her neck. The covenant lawsuit has been decided, the verdict is in, and the sentence is Babylon. The only path to survival is to bow the neck and accept the discipline of God. To drive this point home, God has had Jeremiah fashion a wooden yoke and wear it on his own neck. It is a living sermon, a piece of prophetic theater that makes the truth unavoidable.
On the other side stands Hananiah. He is also a prophet, or so he claims. And he has a very different message, a much more popular message. His message is one of patriotic optimism. It is a message of "peace, peace," when there is no peace. He preaches a god who would never let His chosen people fall to a pagan empire, a god who is on their side regardless of their sin. Hananiah's god is a mascot, a national good luck charm. And in the passage before us, Hananiah decides to counter Jeremiah's prophetic theater with a bit of his own.
We must understand that this is not ancient history. The spirit of Hananiah is alive and well. He is in our pulpits, on our televisions, and in our bestselling books. He is anywhere a man promises the fruit of faithfulness without the root of repentance. He is the prophet of public relations, the purveyor of a designer god, and his chief weapon is telling people exactly what their itching ears want to hear.
The Text
Then Hananiah the prophet took the bar of the yoke from the neck of Jeremiah the prophet and broke it. And Hananiah spoke in the sight of all the people, saying, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Even so will I break within two full years the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations.’ ” Then the prophet Jeremiah went his way.
(Jeremiah 28:10-11 LSB)
The Grammar of Rebellion (v. 10)
The confrontation begins with a dramatic, physical act.
"Then Hananiah the prophet took the bar of the yoke from the neck of Jeremiah the prophet and broke it." (Jeremiah 28:10)
Notice the audacity. Hananiah does not simply argue with Jeremiah. He does not offer a counter-exegesis. He physically assaults the prophetic sign. He walks up to God's messenger, lays hands on the symbol of God's declared will, and shatters it. This is not just an attack on Jeremiah; it is an attack on the God who sent Jeremiah. It is a public act of defiance against the declared Word of the Lord. This is the essence of all false teaching. It does not just misinterpret the Word; it seeks to break its authority, to remove its binding claim from the necks of the people.
The yoke Jeremiah was wearing was made of wood. It was a real, tangible burden, but it was bearable. It represented a humbling but survivable judgment. God, in His mercy, was offering Judah a path through the consequences of their sin. "Serve the king of Babylon, and live" (Jer. 27:17). This wooden yoke was, in a very real sense, a grace. It was a means of preservation. But Hananiah and the people did not want a bearable judgment. They wanted no judgment at all. They did not want to bend the neck. They wanted to have their sin and their sovereignty too.
So Hananiah breaks the yoke. In his mind, and in the minds of the cheering crowd, this is a victory. It is a bold declaration of freedom. It is a patriotic act of defiance. But what is it in reality? It is the act of a fool sawing off the branch he is sitting on. It is a man in the path of a freight train tearing up the warning sign. By breaking the symbol of God's merciful judgment, Hananiah is not averting disaster; he is guaranteeing a worse one. Later in this chapter, God sends Jeremiah back to Hananiah with a terrifying message: "You have broken the yokes of wood, but you have made in their place yokes of iron" (Jer. 28:13). The logic is simple and severe. If you will not accept God's discipline in wood, you will receive it in iron. If you reject the chastisement of a loving Father, you will receive the unyielding wrath of a righteous Judge.
This is the grammar of rebellion. It always promises liberation but delivers a heavier bondage. The world tells you to break the yoke of God's sexual morality, promising freedom, and it delivers the iron yoke of addiction, disease, and heartbreak. The false teacher tells you to break the yoke of sound doctrine, promising a more inclusive and enlightened faith, and he delivers the iron yoke of confusion, apostasy, and the worship of a god made in man's own image.
The Language of Lies (v. 11a)
Having performed his act of rebellion, Hananiah now provides the verbal interpretation.
"And Hananiah spoke in the sight of all the people, saying, 'Thus says Yahweh, ‘Even so will I break within two full years the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations.’'" (Jeremiah 28:11a)
Here we find the native tongue of all false prophets. It begins with "Thus says Yahweh." The lie is always baptized in the language of piety. The devil does not appear with horns and a pitchfork; he comes as an angel of light and quotes Scripture. The false prophet does not say, "Here is my bright idea" or "Here is what the focus groups are telling us." He wraps his rebellion in the name of God. He hijacks the divine authority to sanctify his own message. This is the very definition of taking the Lord's name in vain, and there is a special place in Hell for those who do it.
And what is the message? It is specific, it is optimistic, and it is exactly what the people wanted to hear. He gives them a timeline: "within two full years." This sounds authoritative. It sounds like he has inside information. True prophecy is often concerned with the eternal and the ethical; false prophecy loves to get bogged down in date-setting and sensational predictions. He promises a quick fix. No long, drawn-out seventy years of exile like Jeremiah had prophesied (Jer. 29:10). Just two years, and everything will be back to normal. The temple treasures will be returned, the exiles will come home, and the national pride will be restored.
This is the gospel of the flesh. It promises a crown without a cross, a resurrection without a death, a restoration without repentance. It is a political gospel, a nationalistic gospel. It promises that God will fix our external circumstances without demanding any internal transformation. The people loved it because it required nothing of them. They could continue in their idolatry, their injustice, their covenant-breaking, and still be assured that God was on their side and would bail them out. Hananiah was not a pastor; he was a flatterer. He was not a prophet; he was a politician telling the people that it was "morning in Judah again."
The Wisdom of Walking Away (v. 11b)
Jeremiah's response to this public humiliation and theological fraud is instructive.
"Then the prophet Jeremiah went his way." (Jeremiah 28:11b)
What does he do? He does not get into a shouting match. He does not try to wrestle the broken pieces of the yoke from Hananiah. He does not appeal to the crowd, which has clearly sided with the feel-good message. He simply leaves. He walks away.
This is not an act of cowardice or defeat. It is an act of profound faith. Jeremiah understood that this was not his battle to win. The Word of God does not depend on Jeremiah's debating skills for its power. The truth does not need him to defend it in a public brawl. His job was to deliver the message God gave him. He had done that. Hananiah had now delivered his counter-message. The issue was now joined, and it was in God's hands. Jeremiah's quiet departure was a supreme act of confidence that God Himself would vindicate His own Word and His own prophet.
There is a time to contend earnestly for the faith, and there is a time to wipe the dust from your feet. There is a time for public debate, and there is a time to go your way and let God be the judge. Jeremiah knew that no argument he could make in that moment would be as powerful as the verdict God was about to render. And God did render it. Before the chapter is over, God gives Jeremiah the prophecy of the iron yoke and a specific word of judgment for Hananiah: "Behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against Yahweh" (Jer. 28:16). And the text soberly records, "So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month" (Jer. 28:17).
God has a way of settling these disputes. The test of a true prophet is not his popularity, his charisma, or the dramatic flair of his presentations. The test of a true prophet is whether or not his word comes to pass (Deut. 18:22). Hananiah's word had an expiration date of two years. He himself had an expiration date of just a few months. Jeremiah went his way because he knew that time, and eternity, was on his side.
Conclusion: Breaking the Right Yoke
This scene presents us with a choice. Every day, we are presented with the wooden yoke of God's Word and the siren song of some Hananiah promising to break it. The wooden yoke is the call to discipleship, to daily repentance, to mortifying sin, to submitting our thoughts, our desires, and our plans to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is the yoke Jesus Himself invites us to take upon ourselves, promising that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matt. 11:29-30). It is easy not because it is effortless, but because He pulls it with us, and it is the yoke for which we were designed.
The modern Hananiahs tell us this yoke is oppressive. They tell us to break it. They preach a gospel of self-fulfillment, of personal peace and affluence, of a god who wants you to be happy, healthy, and wealthy, no questions asked. They tell you that you can have a relationship with God without the inconvenient demands of righteousness. They promise a two-year fix for problems that require a lifetime of sanctification.
But when we allow them to break the easy yoke of Christ, we do not find freedom. We find that we have fashioned for ourselves an iron yoke. It is the iron yoke of sin, which always promises more than it gives and takes more than you can afford. It is the iron yoke of chasing fulfillment in created things, which always leaves you empty. And ultimately, it is the iron yoke of God's unbending judgment against all who teach and believe rebellion against Him.
The choice is ours. We can listen to the false prophets of our age who promise a painless, cost-free, convenient Christianity. Or we can listen to the true Prophet, Jesus Christ, who calls us to take up His yoke. One path leads to the spectacular, short-lived victory of Hananiah, followed by sudden death. The other path leads to the quiet, faithful walk of Jeremiah, which may look like defeat in the moment, but which ends in vindication and life in the presence of the God who is always true to His Word.