Thought from today’s Bible reading from Lamentations 1:1-3:36.
The book of Lamentations is a lament over the state of God’s people. They had rejected God for so long and departed so far from Him that His patience had run out and He was punishing them for their sins. But how could these people – who should have known better – fall so far? One major factor was the false prophets among them.
“Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions; and they have not exposed your iniquity so as to restore you from captivity, but they have seen for you false and misleading oracles” (Lamentation 2:14).
There were two fundamental problems with the message of these false prophets:
- Their message was false. Their visions were “false and foolish.” Jeremiah does not explain here whether the false prophets were deliberately deceiving the people or if they were fooled themselves into believing a lie. Either way, the results of their prophesying were the same – they were misleading the people and causing them to believe something that was false.
- They failed to expose sin. The reason why God was punishing the people was because they had sinned. The way to get back in God’s favor was to repent of their sins. Yet the false prophets failed to expose their iniquities. While their message of peace when there was no peace (Jeremiah 6:14) may have been popular, it was not helpful. Because they did not expose the sin of the people, sin continued and God punished them.
Those who preach the gospel must not do as the false prophets did. Those who preach must teach what is true (1 Peter 4:11) and be willing to rebuke sin (2 Timothy 4:2).
Those who listen to the preaching of the gospel ought to appreciate the work of faithful preachers who will preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) instead of trying to “accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires” and thus “turn away their ears from the truth and…turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
Preaching that exposes sin and warns of judgment may not be popular, but it is necessary.
Tomorrow’s reading: Lamentations 3:37-5:22
[I’m using the Chronological reading plan on the Bible Gateway website if you’d like to follow along, too.]
Daily Notes & Observations contains all 365 articles from this series and is available in paperback from Gospel Armory.
