EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(נ) Lamentations 2:14. The Book of Jeremiah contains ample evidence as to who those miserable comforters were. It shows that, during the period just preceding the overthrow of Judæa, there were a number of persons who were accustomed glibly to say, The burden of Jehovah, but who were mere pretenders to divine visions, who gave chaff and not wheat. The reason lay in the character of the people, that formed its own instruments in politics and religion. If a people prefer to have sensational statesmen, such statesmen will appear. If prophets prophecy falsely, it is because the people love to have it so. They say unto the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. They got what they wanted. Thy prophets have seen for thee, and the result is vanity and foolishness, unreal and unreasonable things. They did not make known the will of God so as to expose the evil ways and doings of the people, and prepare for amendment. They have not uncovered thine iniquity to turn away thy captivity. Instead of that, their boasted visions tended to produce burdens of vanity and causes of banishment. They prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land, and that I should drive you out.
HOMILETICS
FALSE PROPHETS
I. Are self-deluded. “Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee.” Thy prophets—they were certainly not God’s prophets. Their authority was self-assumed, and they ingratiated themselves into the favour of the people by prophesying only what was agreeable to their hearers. They indulged so lavishly in lies and deceit, that they almost persuaded themselves that what they uttered was truth. But they were deluded, and their delusion was self-induced. An inveterate habit of lying vitiates the moral sense; it becomes difficult to appreciate what is true. A lie poisons the atmosphere wherever it circulates. It has no legs and cannot stand, but it has wings and can fly far and wide.
II. Have no insight into the real cause of national calamities, and their teaching is powerless to prevent them. “They have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity.” The Syriac renders the words thus: They have not disclosed to thee thy sins, that so thou mightest repent, and I might have turned away thy captivity. They were so demoralised by the habitual practice of falsehood, that they were incompetent to judge the cause and drift of the national troubles. They could not see that disobedience to God was at the root of the general distress; or, if they did, they saw so little evil in it, or danger from it, that they did not deem it necessary to alarm the people by any words of warning. Had they been able to read the signs of the times and to act with promptness and fidelity in urging the people to repentance, Israel’s chastisement might have been averted. When responsible leaders are unfaithful, and abuse their trust by deceiving others, the misguided nation rushes on to its doom.
III. Invent messages full of deceit. “But have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment.” The word burdens does not mean here prophecies of a minatory character, for evidently the false prophets assured the people of prosperity and deliverance. The word is used in a contemptuous sense. The burdens, so different from the Divine message laid as a burden on the conscience of the genuine prophet, were, in this case, mere pretence, false, empty, and utterly inadequate to remove “the causes of banishment.” The false prophets, in their attempt to account for the captivity, invented any cause but the real one—the apostasy of the people. Deceit produces darker shades of deceit. One lie must be quickly thatched with another, or it will soon rain through. The way of falsehood is tortuous. A deaf and dumb boy being asked, “What is truth?” replied by thrusting his finger forward in a straight line. When asked, “What is falsehood?” he made a zigzag motion with his finger. The result of false teaching is disintegration, banishment, a driving out. Every lie, great or small, is the brink of a precipice, the depth of which nothing but Omniscience can fathom. The poet Campbell calls it, “The torrent’s smoothness, ere it dash below.”
LESSONS.—
1. The true prophet receives his commission directly from God.
2. While the prophet is faithful to his Divine calling he is preserved from error.
3. The false prophet deceives himself as well as others.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—A false prophet.
“The bigot theologian, in minute
Distinctions skilled, and doctrines unreduced
To practice; in debate how loud! how long!
How dexterous! in Christian love, how cold!
His vain conceits were orthodox alone.
The immutable and heavenly truth revealed
By God was nought to him; he had an art,
A kind of hellish charm, that made the lips
Of truth speak falsehood; to his liking turned
The meaning of the text; made trifles seem
The marrow of salvation;
Proved still his reasoning best, and his belief,
Though propped on fancies wild as madmen’s dreams,
Most rational, most Scriptural, most sound;
With mortal heresy denouncing all
Who in his arguments could see no force.
He proved all creeds false but his own, and found
At last his own most false—most false, because
He spent his time to prove all others so.”
—Pollok.
False doctrine. A man holding false and pernicious doctrines preached at a village chapel, and endeavoured to convince a large congregation that there is no punishment after death. At the close of the discourse he informed the people he would preach there again in four weeks, if they wished. A respectable merchant rose and said, “Sir, if your doctrine is true, we do not need you; and if it is false, we do not want you.”
False teaching dangerous when mixed with truth. Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits, her hook with truth. No opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.—Colton.
—Error is never so dangerous as when it is the alloy of truth. Pure error would be rejected; but error mixed with truth makes use of the truth as a pioneer for it, and gets introduction where otherwise it would have none. Poison is never so dangerous as when mixed up with food; error is never so likely to do mischief as when it comes to us under the pretensions and patronage of that which is true.—Cumming.
Faith in falsehood disastrous.—When the English army under Harold, and the Norman under William the Conqueror, were set in array for that fearful conflict which decided the fate of the two armies and the political destinies of Great Britain, William, perceiving that he could not by a fair attack move the solid columns of the English ranks, had recourse to a false movement in order to gain the victory. He gave orders that one flank of his army should feign to be flying from the field in disorder. The officers of the English army believed the falsehood, pursued them, and were cut off. A second time a false movement was made in another part of the field. The English again believed, pursued, and were cut off. By these movements the fortunes of the day were determined. Although the English had the evidence of their senses, yet they were led to believe a falsehood. They acted in view of it. The consequence was the destruction of a great part of their army, and the establishment of the Norman power in England. It is an incontrovertible fact that the whole heathen world, ancient and modern, have believed in and worshipped unholy beings as gods. In consequence of believing falsehood concerning the character of God, all heathendom at the present hour is filled with ignorance, impurity, and crime.—J. B. Walker.
Falsehood.
“I scorn this hated scene
Of masking and disguise,
Where men on men still gleam
With falseness in their eyes:
Where all is counterfeit,
And truth hath never say;
Where hearts themselves do cheat,
Concealing hope’s decay.”—Motherwell.