The Lord Has Done What He Purposed

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness… 2 Timothy 3:16

In Lamentations 2, Jeremiah is stepping over dead bodies and observing mothers killing and eating their own children… In the middle of that scene he says,

What did God command long ago? We must go back to 2 Chronicles 7,

19 “But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, 20 then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 21 And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ 22 Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’”

Then, in Jeremiah 14, the Prophet was praying for his people when God commanded him to stop, saying,

11b “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. 12 Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”

To which Jeremiah responds,

13b “Ah, Lord God, behold, the prophets say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’”

God then answers the Prophet,

14b “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. 15 Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name although I did not send them, and who say, ‘Sword and famine shall not come upon this land’: By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. 16 And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword, with none to bury them—them, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their evil upon them.

For forty years the Prophet told the people that Babylon was coming and that that was God’s will. He warned them not to fight, He told them that God said to obey and submit to Babylon. He told them that if they fought, they would die and the city would be destroyed. They fought, they were killed and the city and the Temple, as God had warned on day one, was flattened…

Which takes us back to Lamentations 2, where Jeremiah writes,

Which leads us to an inconvenient truth:

FALSE PROPHETS ARE ALWAYS HAPPY PROPHETS!

I can assure you that the prophets who are prophesying that everything is going to be okay are lying to you…

You cannot build God’s Church until you deal with sin in the congregation…

Remember this,

If you would fill pews, overflow offering plates, build buildings… speak only happy things…

If you would snatch souls from the gates of Hell… expose iniquity…

This is the word that God gave me and commanded me to share…

David…