Sermon for August 17, 2025 (Jeremiah 23:16-29) by Rev. David Domanski
Speaking the Word of the Lord can be a tough business, and few people knew that better than Jeremiah. He initially tried to disqualify himself from the call to be a prophet, citing his youth: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth,” he said (1:6). Jeremiah also knew he was doomed to being ineffective, having been told by the Lord that he would preach but that the people would not listen. It doesn’t get much more straightforward than Jeremiah 7:27, where the Lord declares, “You shall call to them, but they will not answer you.” Knowing this, he worried he would end up looking like a buffoon. Later, he complained, “I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me” (20:7).
And to make things even worse for Jeremiah, he had competition. For every word he proclaimed, there were many others proclaiming a different message, one that was far more appealing than what the Lord had given Jeremiah to say. Jeremiah served as a prophet during the final days of the kingdom of Judah. The Babylonians were on the cusp of taking the people into captivity and exiling them from their land. Faithful King Josiah had been killed in battle, and his successors were all evil. Jeremiah became the target of persecution. Not surprisingly, the current king, Jehoiakim, preferred the message of the other so-called prophets who said Judah had nothing to fear and that peace and good times were right around the corner.
Call it “market-driven ministry,” if you will—"Give the people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.” The Lord sums up their message at the beginning of the text: “They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you’ ” (vv 16–17).
No one likes to ponder the impending destruction of their homes and their cities. No one really likes to hear that the only way to avoid that outcome is to submit in repentance to the Lord, returning with broken and contrite hearts to the one who saved them and made them to be his people. It is much easier to hear that things will be well and that despite appearances to the contrary, everything is going to be fine. People wanted to hear about peace, and the so-called prophets were only too happy to proclaim a false peace rather than judgment.
Sadly, the problem faced by Jeremiah was not confined to his time. Speaking the Word of the Lord is a tough business and we sometimes succumb to the temptation to preach what is popular instead of what is true. In Jeremiah’s time, the false prophets tried to reduce our Lord to a deity made in our image. We all like the idea of a god who is at hand, a god who is near us and serves us the way we want to be served. Indeed, the Lord is near to us and has promised to be with us always, but that message can be distorted to be preached in such a way that God’s promise of closeness lines up very nicely with the contours of our lives, and every distinction between God and us collapses into self-congratulation. Jeremiah countered this false source of contentment with the message of “a God far away,” who knows what we hide in secret places (v 24) but whose own power is vast, inscrutable, and, finally, utterly beyond us. And this transcendent Lord promised judgment against those who preached their own imaginings: “Behold, the storm of the Lord! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly” (vv 19–20).
The storm would come; judgment would fall upon the false prophets and those who listened to them. In 587 BC, Jerusalem was overrun, the dreams of the so-called prophets became nightmares, and the wrath of the Lord came upon the people. Jerusalem would be destroyed and her people carried into captivity. But even in His wrath, God would not forsake them. Just a bit earlier in Jeremiah 23, God made an important promise to his people: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’ ” (23:5–6).
This righteous Branch would be the ultimate prophet, the Word of God in human flesh. Like Jeremiah, He stood in the council of the Lord to see and hear His Word. He proclaimed that Word faithfully. And like Jeremiah, He was opposed. People looked to Jesus to proclaim a worldly peace, but He would not preach what they wanted to hear. Instead, Jesus proclaimed what they needed to hear, even if it turned families upside down and brought turmoil into the hearts of those who heard Him.
Like Jeremiah, Jesus would contend with false prophets, oppression, and lies. And as with Jeremiah, there would be a storm. The clouds would rise and the winds would blow (Lk 12:54–55). On Good Friday, the storm would reach fever pitch, and Jesus himself would be the lightning rod for God’s anger against all who pervert and misuse His Word, against all who proclaim their dreams rather than the Word of the Lord. Only as we see our Lord hanging there in our place do we “understand clearly” (cf v 20) the Lord’s real message for us. Only there do we discover what we really need to hear. On the cross, we see God’s fire burn against sin and His hammer shatters the prideful rocks of our hardened hearts. But there, too, we find real and lasting peace. For God’s wrath is poured out on Christ, and in God’s judgment against Him, we are blessed with forgiveness. Real peace comes then, not through us being told what we want to hear, but through the faithful preaching of God’s Word because it gives us Christ. And now, the blessings of the cross come to us in Word and Sacrament, giving us true and lasting peace. Real peace comes not in telling us what we want to hear, but through the faithful preaching of God’s Word because it gives us Christ. Amen.