Especially for our graduating brothers – Adelino, Anjelo, Johnson, Kennedy, Pacifique, and Venuste – The Lutheran School of Theology, Kenya Class of 2025
Grace, it is yours, as is peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
For today’s sermon text, we return to the Prophet Jeremiah, whom we heard from in the Old Testament lesson just a few minutes ago.
Jeremiah writes,
Concerning the prophets, my heart is broken within me, all my bones shake. I am like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord, and because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers, because of the curse the land mourns, and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. Their course is evil, and their might is not right.
Dear brothers in Christ,
I have a question that I’d like to pose for you today. And as I preach the sermon, I’d like you to think, “Why is it that a prophet would be preaching against other prophets?” The prophet at issue as the one who’s preaching against the other prophets is Jeremiah. We just heard him speaking his heart out to the Lord in the few verses that I read.
But it’s time to do a little bit of work with the text and with these words of God. So the first thing is, since we’re going to be talking about prophets, as everyone knows, we need to define what it is we’re talking about. So what does it mean for a person to be a prophet? I think it means three things, as we’re reminded in this text.
First of all, it depends on the call from the Lord, the righteous Lord himself. Not on bishops and other administrators (The Power and Primacy of the Pope, 60-82). Second, to be a prophet, the prophet needs to be suffering.
The suffering is something that you’ve already been hearing about from Jeremiah’s voice, as he suffers at what he has to preach to, that’s happening among his people, his nation congregation, you might say, about 600 years before our Lord’s birth of the virgin in Bethlehem. So the righteous LORD, suffering – and words, a prophet is made up of words. Being a prophet has everything to do with words.
In fact, we can’t know anything about the righteous LORD who calls the prophet if it’s apart from words. We can’t know the meaning of suffering if it’s apart from words. And interestingly enough, we can’t even know about the words and language that the prophet uses unless we use words; God’s words, actually.
So let’s do a little bit of translating work here as well. First, a mention about how the New Testament speaks about the matter of prophets. This is from Ephesians chapter 4. “The ascended Christ gave gifts to his church. He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be pastors and teachers.” And Paul details how their ministry or work is to be the building up of people in the church of God so that they are not blown around by all the winds of false doctrine and merely human thoughts that hit us every day. With that passage in mind, we can make our translation.
The word prophet in our words today, is pastor. We’re actually going to hear a reminder of this very thing in the first part of the text I’m going to read. We’re about to hear about the shepherds in Israel, which is another name for prophet.
That’s another name for these false prophets that we’re going to hear about, by the way. But the shepherds in Israel, this is another word for pastor. It’s the priests and the prophets in Israel that are going to be at issue and God’s expectations, the way he expects his priests and prophets and pastors to be.
And that is faithful, loving, caring shepherds. If you go through the Latin, that comes out to be the word pastors. Well, here’s our Lord, and we’re going to be understanding now why Jeremiah was calling out to the Lord about how broken and upset he felt.
Here’s the Lord speaking at the beginning of chapter 23.
Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people. You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countless countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds, pastors, prophets over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more nor be dismayed, neither shall be any missing, declares the Lord.
You see the setting. You see the situation.
You see the predicament with these so-called shepherds, these shepherds who were supposed to be taking care of the Lord’s flock. This is what God expects, but they were not doing it. Now, you might think right away that God is going to say right here, “That’s it, I have had it with you people.”
But that is not our righteous LORD. That is not the God who created us and went on to redeem us and sanctify us. That is not the real God.
The real God, that righteous LORD, goes on to promise this. This is pure gospel.
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.
Now, first, my translation has the word is in there, but the word “is” is not actually part of the Hebrew text.
And it’s much more powerful if we don’t mess around with the text, as if we should teach God or His inspired writers how to say things. Our job is to translate, not rewrite. and try to smooth things out. So, think about this. Think how much more powerful it is to say, “The giraffe, tall!” than it is to say, “The giraffe is tall.”
So, here’s the way the LORD reveals himself to us. The LORD, our Righteousness. What’s going on there? Did you hear it? He didn’t just say, this is the word of your LORD, the Righteous One.”
He says, “The name of this coming Messiah is going to be the Lord, the I AM who I Am, our, our, our righteousness. The apostle Paul explains these words given to the prophet Jeremiah by the Lord 600 years earlier when he talks about pastors and others, and he says in 2 Corinthians, a book especially for pastors, by the way, “God made Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Well, now this is where Jeremiah begins by saying how brokenhearted he is, and I think this is very important, so I’m going to reread that part of the text.
“Concerning the prophets” – so this is about the shepherds, about the pastors, about the prophets. Jeremiah says,
My heart is broken within me, all my bones shake. I am like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord, and because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers, because of the curse the land mourns, and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. Their course is evil, and their might is not right.
Whose course? Whose might? The false prophets, the failed shepherds, the pastors who were not being pastors, right? Now, what Jeremiah is praying here is, as you can feel just by our reading the words again and hearing them – it is a psalm of lament to God.
So he’s calling out to God in the middle of his suffering. He’s trusting in God, you can tell it by the fact that he’s praying to him. But he is embattled. He’s under siege.
The suffering is coming from these people all around him, and you know, especially our graduates know from our studies of the prophets last semester, everything that Jeremiah had to go through in his ministry. If I were to recite those right now, we’d never get on to the last hymn of the service. So Jeremiah is suffering, and in his suffering, he calls out to the LORD, and he pours out, it says his “heart” in our text, but this actually means he pours out his entire being.
He pours out himself to the LORD. If you want to see what this means, as a person who is studying to be an evangelist and a teacher, or as a man who is studying to be a pastor, if you want to know what this means to lament, I have a big recommendation for you. Jeremiah’s second book.
Did you know that there’s a second book by Jeremiah? It’s not called Second Jeremiah. It’s called Lamentations, lamentations, calling out to God on behalf of his whole nation and congregation, the people of Israel, about all the suffering they deservedly were going through, but also how they were relying on God’s promise about that coming Messiah. I think Lamentations is on the list of books most seldom read, preached, or discussed in our churches.
There are also the Psalms of lament. Well, now, what exactly is upsetting Jeremiah? Can we bring this to a sharper focus? Can we get into his heart, his soul, and really see what is making him lament so much?
I think the answer is the long time in between and the status of the people, his flock. There’s a time in between where the people are right now when Jeremiah is writing his book and preaching, right? There’s a time in between that and when the Lord, our Righteousness, is going to come in Person.
We actually know it’s going to be a full 600 years before Christ is born and Messiah comes into the world physically, God and Man in this one Person of Jesus. It’s also a few years yet until the first Judgment Day for the Israelites.
We in August 2025 are still awaiting the great redemption or Judgment Day to come for the whole world, the resurrection of the body, but they had a smaller Judgment Day coming, and that was the Babylonian Captivity.
The Babylonians, enemies of the gospel, enemies of God’s people, barbarous murderers, were actually going to be God’s tool for bringing judgment on the people of Israel. And here’s Jeremiah in the middle, in the in-between, and he knows these people are not listening. “They’re not listening to my calls for repentance.”
They’re not listening to the Word of God telling them to be afraid and to trust in that Messiah, and why aren’t they listening? Because of the other prophets, because of the other pastors, because of the other shepherds, these people whose course is evil and whose might is not right.
What exactly are they doing, and why is Jeremiah so upset and righteously angry here? The clue is actually in what Jeremiah himself gives us. He says, “I’m like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine.”
Weren’t you thinking for a second there that he means he’s just reeling from all of the stuff that’s been happening to him? They’re trying to kill him. They’re throwing him in an empty cistern. They’re chopping up his book as he writes it, just to burn it.
What aren’t they trying to do to him, right? But that’s not it. He says, “I’m like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine, because of the Lord and because of his holy words.” In the New Testament, we learn that we should not be drunk by wine, but be guided by the Holy Spirit.
So if you understand him, and we need to, Jeremiah is saying, I am drunk. But he’s not drunk with alcohol.
He’s not drunk in a sinful way. He is overcome by the words of his Lord, and those words are the words about the Messiah who will become sin for us and give us his righteousness by grace alone. Jeremiah can’t stand the way these false prophets are undercutting the message.
So what does he do about it? He fights them, and he fights them with words, God’s words. And by the way, I think in this text we may also consider that even though, of course, they are talking about God’s words, actually all words belong to God. God created language.
In the beginning, what did he use to create the heavens and the earth, to separate out everything? He used his words. “Let there be!” and there was. Adam and Eve had the gift of language from the first moment of their existence on day six in creation.
The image of God, which was imprinted on Adam and Eve, is the capacity for language. Why? So that He can speak to us, and we can listen, and we can pray and praise back to him. So whenever Jeremiah writes, “my words,” it’s really a third commandment matter.
“You shouldn’t be despising preaching and my word.” It’s also a reminder that God’s Word is supposed to be shaping our everyday words and other actions. God’s Word is supposed to be shaping the way that we are speaking, and thinking, and praying, and praising, and giving thanks, and making our promises to one another in Christ’s name.
So what is going on with these false prophets? You’ll notice that Jeremiah has a dialogue going. God says something about what he prayed to God about, and then Jeremiah responds. And this is for all these people to hear.
We could say right here that Jeremiah is doing what we often talk about here on campus. He is “speaking like a prophet,” right? He’s speaking very loudly so that everyone can hear, and hear the words of the Lord first, and then hear his words as the true prophet of the Lord second. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesied to you, filling you with vain hopes.”
Phew! “Don’t listen to those pastors.” Which pastor should I not listen to? Which pastor should we stay far away from? Those who fill you with vain hopes. The word vain hope there is exactly the same word that Solomon uses in the book of Ecclesiastes to say, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.”
It’s a vapor. Puff, gone. That’s what these false pastors are preaching.
They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say and preach over and over that God’s People should despise the word of the Lord. But, as in the catechism, “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and his Word.” The false pastors say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, “It shall be well with you.”
What are they saying in Hebrew? Shalom, peace. Jeremiah is preaching that a Judgment Day for the people of Israel is coming, and therefore they must repent. And all the other pastors are saying, “Oh, no, no, no, no. Shalom, shalom, shalom, peace, peace, peace. Don’t listen to that guy.”
Isn’t this so? Do you see how that’s misusing God’s words? That word shalom is something we’re actually going to hear in English here again today, when Pastor May blesses us with the blessing from the Old Testament.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you shalom, peace. That’s that word. This is the peace that goes far beyond understanding, the peace that the world cannot give, only Christ alone can (John 14:27). These people are abusing God’s Word and His beloved people in Israel at the same time.
“It shall be well with you,” they say. And to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, “No disaster shall come upon you.” Here’s what’s happening.
Jeremiah is there to preach them to repent. He is being a good, faithful Lutheran prophet. Right? The first of the 95 theses states, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, in saying ‘repent,’ intended that the entire life of the believer would be a life of repentance.
A very Lutheran pastor, a very Lutheran prophet. Well, here’s some more. This is more Jeremiah, quoting the LORD verbatim again. “For who among these false pastors has stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and to hear his word, or who has paid attention to his Word and listened? Behold, the storm of the Lord’s wrath has gone forth. A whirling tempest, it will burst upon the head of the wicked.” That’s that judgment day coming up. “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.”
I think we have to read that verse, emphasizing the deep sadness in Jeremiah’s voice as he mentions “the latter days” because he is preaching and pastoring during that in-between period, remember. Jeremiah realizes that about the time that Jerusalem is falling to the Babylonians, somewhere in the middle of the siege, when the Israelites are – I’m sorry, this is mentioned in Lamentations – eating their own children because they’re starving to death, about the time when the pagan Babylonians will be crushing the temple and taking all of the fine things that belong to the LORD off for their museums and treasuries and temples…Well, “in the latter days” on the horizon, only then are his congregation going to get it, just before they get dragged off into the Babylonian Captivity. Maybe just before they die, or even while they’re being tortured to death – only then will they understand. When it’s too late.
And Jeremiah, the faithful pastor, can barely stand the thought. But he won’t stop preaching. Here’s the Lord speaking up again.
“I did not send the prophets, yet they ran.” I did not bring these people. I did not appoint them to be a prophet pastor in my church Israel.
At the beginning of Jeremiah, we hear that the Lord personally selected Jeremiah to be a prophet. That happens at the beginning of every prophet in the Old Testament. “Before you were in the womb, I knew you,” as the Lord tells him.
But these lying prophets and shoddy shepherds in Jeremiah 23 have no divine call. People who set themselves up as pastors have no divine call. Only those whom God calls to be among his people.
Ah, there is a whole important story there about what it means that these people, like Jeremiah, are not somebody’s employee, but they are God’s servants.
I did not send the prophets, yet they ran. I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
But if they had stood in my counsel, then they would have proclaimed My Word to My people, and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.
God is agreeing with his prophet-pastor, Jeremiah. “If you evil prophets had just shut up, then Jeremiah would have brought my people to repentance. But here you are, a bunch of shoddy shepherds, of false prophets, of lousy self-appointed pastors, and look at the harm you’re doing to my people. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking back to the commandments.”
“I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5). He does not at all put up with people interfering with those whom he loves, and he loves these people of Israel as he loves us. I have one example to share with you so that you can take this along as if Jeremiah hasn’t really pounded this into our souls as it is.
The example comes from very late in Jeremiah 23, our chapter, and surprisingly, it is a lesson from the Lord who sounds like a very demanding professor. The good news here is that He is not giving up, so I want you to watch for that, but I’d also like you to see how important it is that people do not use words in the wrong way as far as God is concerned. So this is a homework assignment, if you will, given to these false pastors in which faithful pastors have a part too.
Now when these people or a prophet or a priest asks you, ‘What is the burden of the Lord? ’ you will respond to them, ‘What is the burden? I will throw you away! This is the Lord’s declaration.’ As for the prophet, priest, or people who say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ I will punish that man and his household. This is what each man is to say to his friend and to his brother: ‘What has the Lord answered? ’ or ‘What has the Lord spoken? ’ But no longer refer to the burden of the Lord, for each man’s word becomes his burden and you pervert the words of the living God, the Lord of Armies, our God. Say to the prophet, ‘What has the Lord answered you? ’ or ‘What has the Lord spoken? ’ But if you say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ then this is what the Lord says: Because you have said, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ and I specifically told you not to say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ I will surely forget you. I will throw you away from my presence — both you and the city that I gave you and your ancestors. I will bring on you everlasting disgrace and humiliation that will never be forgotten.
They didn’t listen, but God is still working. When one of these people or a prophet or a priest asks you, what is the burden of the Lord? Aha, we know that word, don’t we? We know it from many of the Pentecostal preachers around here.
“The Lord has put on me this burden,” they say. “I must preach this burden to you because I have this heavy burden to deliver from the Lord.” “You must listen to everything that I say.”
What is the burden of the Lord? You shall say to them, “You are the burden, you’re the burden, and I will cast you off, declares the Lord. And as for the prophet, priest, or one of the people who says, the burden of the Lord, I will punish that man and his household.”
Do you hear it? You’re not just going to get an F on the homework assignment. The LORD is saying, “I’m going to punish you if you people even use that word again, I’m so sick of it. These ones are doing so much harm.”
You understand what I mean when I say Jeremiah is a good Lutheran prophet.
We’re hearing the echoes of Jeremiah in Luther and our Catechism, aren’t we? So the question is, what does this mean? More literally in German, what is this? When we hear from God, you shall do this or you shall not do that in the commandments and the other parts, the six chief parts of doctrine. The question is not, “What burden has God put on the teacher today?” The question is to be, “What has the Lord answered? What has the Lord spoken?” But “the burden of the Lord,” you shall mention no more. For the burden is every man’s own word. “And you pervert the words of the living God,” the LORD of hosts, the true God.
It’s amazing that God did not open up the earth to swallow every false pastor, then and now. He concludes, “Therefore, behold, I will surely lift you up and cast you away from my presence.” It’s the very voice of the LORD Our Righteousness who will say in the fullness of time, “I never knew you,” (Matthew 7:23). “You and the city that I gave to you and your fathers, and I will bring upon you everlasting reproach and perpetual shame, which shall not be.” Why is the Lord our God such a jealous God that he would talk like this and demand this? For the sake of the Gospel.
He loves you. He loved those false pastors, and loved those Israelites. He loved the false prophets and was still calling them to repentance.
But enough is enough. You must take this with you. You must take this with you from your classes here at the Lutheran School of Theology and all of our preaching and time with God’s Word in chapel and outside when we’re praying and talking about his Scriptures.
You must take this along with you. You must take this along with you as a worker in Christ’s congregations in evangelism. You must take this along with you as a preacher in the great continent of Africa where the African souls need to hear not what somebody’s burden is that they want to dump on them, but they need to hear the Gospel.
The Gospel, the Gospel. The good news that Jesus loves them dearly.
Here, then, is your mission. As Jeremiah writes,
The prophet who has only a dream should recount the dream, but the one who has my word should speak my word truthfully, for what is straw compared to grain?”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “Is not my word like fire” – this is the Lord’s declaration – “and like a hammer that pulverizes rock?”
If we were sending each of you out with a hammer, you would know what to do with it, building and pounding. We are in fact sending you out with a hammer, the hammer of God’s Word. You have some pounding to do—pounding the saving, life-giving Word of God into the hearts of precious African souls throughout our vast continent.
If we were sending each of you out with a hammer, you would know what to do with it, building and pounding. We are in fact sending you out with a hammer, the hammer of God’s Word. You have some pounding to do – pounding the saving, life-giving Word of God into the hearts of precious African souls throughout our vast continent.
Let’s get hammering.
Amen!
Rev Gregory P Schulz, DMin, PhD
Professor of Theology
Academic Dean