Wooden Lies and Iron Realities Text: Jeremiah 28:12-17
Introduction: The Prophetic Showdown
We live in an age that despises hard truths. Our entire culture, both inside and outside the church, is structured to reward the peddlers of smooth things. We have an insatiable appetite for lies, provided they are affirming, positive, and above all, optimistic. Tell us that our rebellion is actually self-expression. Tell us that our sin is a sickness. Tell us that judgment is an outdated concept. Tell us that God is a cosmic teddy bear whose only job is to endorse our chosen lifestyles. This is the spirit of our age, and it is the ancient spirit of the false prophet Hananiah.
The scene in Jeremiah 28 is a public confrontation, a high-noon duel between two prophets in the house of the Lord. On one side stands Jeremiah, the grim messenger of covenantal reality, wearing a literal wooden yoke to symbolize God's decreed submission to Babylon. His message is hard, unpopular, and politically inconvenient: God is using a pagan tyrant named Nebuchadnezzar as His instrument of discipline, and if you want to live, you will put your neck under his yoke. On the other side stands Hananiah, whose name ironically means "Yahweh is gracious." He is the court prophet, the man of the people, the purveyor of patriotic piety. His message is exactly what the focus groups wanted to hear: God would never do such a thing! In two years, the yoke will be broken, the exiles will return, and everything will be great again. To punctuate his point, he grabs Jeremiah's wooden yoke and theatrically smashes it to pieces before the cheering crowd.
In that moment, it looked like a decisive victory for Hananiah. He had the optics, the momentum, and the popular vote. Jeremiah, for his part, simply walked away. But God always gets the last word. Our text today is God's response. It is the divine comeback. And in it, we learn a permanent lesson about the nature of God's sovereignty, the danger of wishful thinking, and the terrible consequences of speaking rebellion against the Lord. God's people are always tempted to trade a difficult truth for a comfortable lie. But as we will see, when you break God's wooden yoke of discipline, you do not get freedom. You get a yoke of iron.
The Text
Then the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah after Hananiah the prophet had broken the bar of the yoke from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "Go and speak to Hananiah, saying, 'Thus says Yahweh, "You have broken the bars of a yoke made of wood, but you have made in their place the bars of a yoke made of iron." For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, "I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they will serve him. And I have even given him the beasts of the field." ' " Then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah the prophet, "Listen now, Hananiah, Yahweh has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie. Therefore thus says Yahweh, 'Behold, I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die because you have spoken rebellion against Yahweh.' "
So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year in the seventh month.
(Jeremiah 28:12-17 LSB)
The Divine Exchange Rate (vv. 12-13)
We begin with God's direct response to Hananiah's little piece of political theater.
"Go and speak to Hananiah, saying, 'Thus says Yahweh, "You have broken the bars of a yoke made of wood, but you have made in their place the bars of a yoke made of iron."'" (Jeremiah 28:13)
Notice the principle here. This is the divine exchange rate for rebellion. Hananiah thought he was breaking the yoke of bondage. In reality, he was simply upgrading the material. He was trading a manageable, albeit uncomfortable, discipline for an unbreakable, crushing judgment. The people cheered when the wooden yoke splintered, because they mistook a symbol for the reality. They thought that by destroying the sermon illustration, they could nullify the sermon. But God's decrees are not so fragile.
This is a fixed law in God's moral universe. When men rebel against God's ordained authority, whether it is His Word, His church, or His delegated authorities in the civil realm, they do not escape into glorious autonomy. They simply place themselves under a harsher, more tyrannical master. Reject the gentle yoke of Christ, and you will find the unyielding yoke of sin and death. Reject the wooden yoke of God's fatherly discipline, and you will find yourself fitted for the iron yoke of His wrath. Hananiah, in his patriotic fervor, was not leading the people to freedom; he was guaranteeing their enslavement. His actions, meant to defy Babylon, actually made the Babylonian boot press down that much harder.
This is because God is sovereign, and man is not. Man's rebellion never frustrates God's plan; it is always incorporated into God's plan. Hananiah's rebellion did not cause God to throw up His hands and say, "Well, so much for the Babylon plan." No, God simply factored Hananiah's sin into the equation and used it to intensify the very judgment Hananiah was trying to deny.
The Sovereignty of God Over Tyrants (v. 14)
God then elaborates on the nature of this iron yoke, and in doing so, He gives us a master class in political theology.
"For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, 'I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they will serve him. And I have even given him the beasts of the field.'" (Jeremiah 28:14)
Let this sink in. Who put the yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations? Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel. God did it. Nebuchadnezzar was a pagan, a tyrant, a worshipper of Marduk. And yet, God calls him "My servant" elsewhere (Jer. 27:6) and here states plainly that He is the one who has given all these nations, Judah included, into his hand. This is bedrock biblical reality. God raises up kings and he puts them down. He is sovereign over the Hitlers and Stalins and Nebuchadnezzars of this world just as much as He is sovereign over the Davids and Josiahs.
This is not to say that God approves of Nebuchadnezzar's wickedness. The tyrant is still morally culpable for his sin, and Babylon would later be judged for its arrogance and cruelty. But God, in His absolute sovereignty, uses the sinful actions of men to accomplish His righteous purposes. He uses the pagan hammer of Babylon to discipline His own rebellious children. This is strong meat, and it offends our modern sensibilities. We want a God who is only involved in the nice things. But the God of the Bible is the Lord of hosts, and He governs all things, from the flight of a sparrow to the rise of an empire.
And notice the extent of this delegated authority: "I have even given him the beasts of the field." This is total dominion. It is a direct echo of the dominion mandate given to Adam in Genesis. God is saying that, for a time, He has made Nebuchadnezzar the de facto ruler of that portion of the world. To resist Nebuchadnezzar was not simply to make a poor geopolitical calculation; it was to fight against the living God. Hananiah's rebellion was not patriotism; it was blasphemy.
The Sin of Lying Hope (v. 15)
Jeremiah then delivers the charge directly to Hananiah, and it is a devastating one.
"Listen now, Hananiah, Yahweh has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie." (Jeremiah 28:15)
Here is the essence of the false prophet's crime. It is twofold. First, he claims a divine mandate he does not have: "Yahweh has not sent you." He wrapped his own political opinions and wishful thinking in the sacred mantle of "Thus says the Lord." This is a profound violation of the third commandment, taking the Lord's name in vain. He attached God's reputation to a falsehood.
Second, and as a direct result, "you have made this people trust in a lie." This is the terrible pastoral consequence. He did not just tell a lie; he manufactured false faith. He encouraged people to place their hope, their trust, and their confidence in a complete fabrication. This is spiritual poison. To cause God's people to trust in a lie is to lead them to shipwreck. It is to tell a man walking toward a cliff that he is on the road to a feast. Hananiah's message was popular because it was what the people wanted to hear. They wanted a gospel of nationalism, a gospel of quick fixes, a gospel without repentance. And Hananiah was more than happy to sell it to them. But lies, no matter how encouraging, have no power to save. They only damn.
The Unavoidable Consequence (vv. 16-17)
Because the sin was so grievous, the judgment is swift and personal. God makes an example of the false prophet.
"Therefore thus says Yahweh, 'Behold, I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die because you have spoken rebellion against Yahweh.' So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year in the seventh month." (Jeremiah 28:16-17)
God's sentence is stark and severe. Hananiah had promised deliverance within two years. God promises his death within one. The specific charge is that he has "spoken rebellion against Yahweh." This is what all false teaching ultimately is. It is not a simple mistake or a difference of opinion. It is rebellion. It encourages people to rebel against God's revealed will, to disobey His commands, and to distrust His character. To teach rebellion is to do the serpent's work.
And God authenticates His true prophet, Jeremiah, in the most undeniable way possible. The prediction comes true. Hananiah, who had stood in the temple full of bluster and patriotic pride just two months earlier, was dead and in the ground. This was the final, grim punctuation on God's sermon. Reality has a way of cutting through the spin. You can argue with the prophet, you can break his yoke, you can win the crowd. But you cannot win an argument with a coffin. God's Word does not return to Him void. It will accomplish the purpose for which He sent it, whether that purpose is salvation or judgment.
Conclusion: Modern Hananiahs
The showdown between Jeremiah and Hananiah is not just a dusty story from the ancient world. The temple courts are still filled with the spiritual descendants of Hananiah. They are the preachers who promise health and wealth to all who will just "name it and claim it," ignoring the difficult biblical realities of suffering and persecution. They are the political pundits, both left and right, who baptize their partisan agendas and promise national salvation if we just elect their man, ignoring the fact that our only hope is repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
They are the progressive theologians who tell us that the clear teachings of Scripture on sexuality and marriage are a wooden yoke that must be broken, promising a new era of freedom and inclusion. But what they offer is not freedom, but an iron yoke of sexual brokenness and confusion. They are the purveyors of cheap grace and therapeutic deism, who have made the people trust in the lie that God is a non-judgmental grandfather who would never, ever discipline His people.
Their message is always the same: peace, peace, when there is no peace. They speak smooth things because they know that is what itching ears want to hear. They break the wooden yoke of biblical authority because it is restrictive and uncomfortable.
But the principle of the iron yoke remains. When a culture, or a church, or an individual rejects God's Word, they do not become free. They become enslaved to something far worse. They become enslaved to their own lusts, to tyrannical ideologies, to the cold, hard machinery of a godless state. The wooden yoke of submission to Christ is true freedom. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. But the alternative is not a life without a yoke. The alternative is the iron yoke of a master who hates you.
Therefore, we must have the courage of Jeremiah. We must speak the truth, even when it is unpopular. We must wear the yoke of God's Word, even when the world mocks us for it. And we must trust that God's reality will, in the end, triumph over man's rebellion. Hananiah had his moment of popularity. He had the cheers of the crowd. But Jeremiah had the Word of the Lord. And in the seventh month of that year, it was clear which one truly mattered.