Jeremiah 23:28-29 – God's Unrivaled Word
28
“The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream;
And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully.
What is the chaff to the wheat?” says the Lord.
29
“Is not My word like a fire?” says the Lord,
“And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?
Launching from Luke 24:27's assurances that Christ expounded unto His own, "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," Spurgeon wonders in Morning and Evening, "He who hid the treasure in the field Himself guided the searchers to it. Our Lord would naturally discourse upon the sweetest of topics, and He could find none sweeter than His own person and work."
Do we find and settle for less when we come to hear the Word? The spirit which God accosts in in Jeremiah 23:28-29 is at work. The dreams, interpretations, and guesses of men are at work as they attempt exegesis to make God's Word an accomplice to give religious credibility to their vision-casting. Instead, God calls for truth in labeling.
He calls for spiritual leaders to call their own dreams what they are, but then to be clear when they are pronouncing God's Word by contrast. That Word, compared to dreams in our sleep we sometimes can't remember upon waking or dreams of our youth which sometimes seem folly as we mature, He calls His Word fire which leaves an unmistakable impact. Even while our dreams might hold together sensibly before culpable or well-wishing men, comparatively He declares His Word to be the hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.
But false equivalence between God's Word and men's dreams is not just the product of Sabbath services gone awry. We often commit it unaware in our own minds. We spend so much time on our own speculations, taking, as George Eliot writes in Adam Bede, making a peck of our own words out of a pint of the Bible's. We distract ourselves from the Bible's main point, which is Christ as He showed, and we over-apply it to reinforce our own opinions.
We may catch this when, as in Jeremiah 23, we are the false prophets assuring ourselves and any who will listen that God's will is constant comfort. We are less likely, perhaps, to recognize we have veered into a personal tension when our "streams" are pessimistic. When our what-ifs take on a darker hue, they can be at least as dominant as our most optimistic flights of fancy. They can rumble louder than the steady whispers of God's Word which continued to insist irrespective of mood, opinion, or assumption this is the way. Walk in it. Christ is the way. Walk with Him.
Let us put ourselves under disciplined teaching, then, which will creatively and personally illustrate the principles of the Word but will never veer far from the Word's main subject. Let us hold up the arms of spiritual leaders who will continue to point us to Christ in every verse, through every week. Let us revere them as His instruments, and show the most respect for their Jeremiah 23:28-29 discipline in teaching His Word by seeking Him first in our time there. Rooted the bedrock of the black-and-white Word, it is Christ who will, in the words of Sidewalk Prophets' "Everything in Awe, trace dreams upon our minds.
:
“The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream;
And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully.
What is the chaff to the wheat?” says the Lord.
29
“Is not My word like a fire?” says the Lord,
“And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?
Launching from Luke 24:27's assurances that Christ expounded unto His own, "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," Spurgeon wonders in Morning and Evening, "He who hid the treasure in the field Himself guided the searchers to it. Our Lord would naturally discourse upon the sweetest of topics, and He could find none sweeter than His own person and work."
Do we find and settle for less when we come to hear the Word? The spirit which God accosts in in Jeremiah 23:28-29 is at work. The dreams, interpretations, and guesses of men are at work as they attempt exegesis to make God's Word an accomplice to give religious credibility to their vision-casting. Instead, God calls for truth in labeling.
He calls for spiritual leaders to call their own dreams what they are, but then to be clear when they are pronouncing God's Word by contrast. That Word, compared to dreams in our sleep we sometimes can't remember upon waking or dreams of our youth which sometimes seem folly as we mature, He calls His Word fire which leaves an unmistakable impact. Even while our dreams might hold together sensibly before culpable or well-wishing men, comparatively He declares His Word to be the hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.
But false equivalence between God's Word and men's dreams is not just the product of Sabbath services gone awry. We often commit it unaware in our own minds. We spend so much time on our own speculations, taking, as George Eliot writes in Adam Bede, making a peck of our own words out of a pint of the Bible's. We distract ourselves from the Bible's main point, which is Christ as He showed, and we over-apply it to reinforce our own opinions.
We may catch this when, as in Jeremiah 23, we are the false prophets assuring ourselves and any who will listen that God's will is constant comfort. We are less likely, perhaps, to recognize we have veered into a personal tension when our "streams" are pessimistic. When our what-ifs take on a darker hue, they can be at least as dominant as our most optimistic flights of fancy. They can rumble louder than the steady whispers of God's Word which continued to insist irrespective of mood, opinion, or assumption this is the way. Walk in it. Christ is the way. Walk with Him.
Let us put ourselves under disciplined teaching, then, which will creatively and personally illustrate the principles of the Word but will never veer far from the Word's main subject. Let us hold up the arms of spiritual leaders who will continue to point us to Christ in every verse, through every week. Let us revere them as His instruments, and show the most respect for their Jeremiah 23:28-29 discipline in teaching His Word by seeking Him first in our time there. Rooted the bedrock of the black-and-white Word, it is Christ who will, in the words of Sidewalk Prophets' "Everything in Awe, trace dreams upon our minds.
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