Making God's people trust in a lie

“Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah, the Prophet, Hear now Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie” (Jeremiah:28:15Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.
See All...).

Of course it is no wonder that Hananiah was better received. Hananiah’s “word’ was uplifting, and encouraging. To a people already partially humiliated by a deportation of their own nobility and a stripping of the vessels of their holy temple- Hananiah a priest proclaimed in God’s name that “I have broken the yoke of the King of Babylon. Within two full years will I bring again into this place  all of the vessels of the Lord’s House…”(Jeremiah:28:2-3 [2] Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. [3] Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the LORD's house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried them to Babylon:
See All...). Such confidence!

Part of the problem with Hananiah’s message is that there is no consideration of the fact that it was sin and backsliding that caused that humiliation, (which he so boldly prophesied a reversal of). There was no mention of repentance, no vindication of God’s charges against the people, no connection between the people’s suffering and the wrath of the God of the covenant. He merely prophesied peace and restoration and victory. He preached a God of Love, but love only.

Contrast that encouraging Word with the one given to the ‘weeping prophet’, Jeremiah, that Judah would go into captivity for seventy years (Jer:29:10For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
See All...), and that Nebuchadnezzar, a pagan king was God’s servant (Jer:25:9Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations.
See All...) and adding insult to injury- that the best recourse was to see in the Babylonian invasion and captivity the good hand of God and to humbly submit to it.  Does that sound like faith and confidence? Where is the patriotism in that?

Jeremiah too preached a God of Love, but as all true prophets do, he correctly showed forth the Love of God in its true context, which is the Holiness of God. Indeed, God is Love and God is Holy. His love is Holy love.  God is Sovereign. There would be a restoration, but on God’s terms and by God’s own means. The problem Jeremiah’s contemporaries had with his preaching was that it wasn’t man centered.

Pastor Bill Randles (“Making God’s People Trust in a Lie”)