Jeremiah 23:28-29 “Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain? declares the Lord. Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

Unless God’s word is preached faithfully, all the life-giving power is drained from it. The dry and empty straw which is left has no power to change people’s lives or eternities. To the degree that God’s word is not being spoken faithfully, it ceases to be God’s word.

But God’s word has real power. Like a hammer, it can break through even the stoniest heart. It can soften it, and make it humble, and loving, and useful again.

Like a fire God’s word can consume our wickedness, and purify us from our sins. It warms us with his promises of forgiveness and life in Jesus Christ. It makes us shine with the light of God’s love.

Doesn’t Jeremiah’s message help us to understand the proper Christian concern for faithfulness to God’s message? You are just as aware as I am that those who make a fuss about the purity of God’s word, as Jeremiah did here, are perceived as being narrow minded and self-righteous. When Christian people will tolerate no compromise with error, many are inclined to say, “You just think that you are better than everybody else.”

Maybe one place to start with such people would be confessing our sin. Yes, we have been guilty of thinking we are better at times. We have been sinfully prideful about the purity of God’s word, as though we could take the credit for it. We are imperfect people, and sometimes we are more concerned about our own “rightness” than we are about God’s reputation or the spiritual welfare of souls. For this I am ready to say, “I’m sorry.”

But in the end, we are not the issue. We are not better people. Concern for the truth about God is finally not about us, it is about him, and about the people whom he wants to save. If the truth about God in his law is diminished, then people will not know how much they need a Savior. If the truth about God in his Gospel is diminished, then people won’t be able to know him as their Savior.

When gross immorality is condoned as just an alternate life-style or a personal choice, people will fail to grasp God’s forgiveness for such sins. When God’s gifts of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are no longer perceived as gracious acts by which he promises forgiveness and life, but merely human acts of obedience, people will perceive God’s loving goodness and the faith-building power of his promises that much less. When we love God, love his Gospel, and love his people, we will care about the faithful preaching and teaching of his word as much as he does.

Don’t be afraid of what God’s word will do if we tell the whole truth. Let his fire burn. Let his hammer strike. Let hearts be touched by the full force of his word. Only good will follow.

Jeremiah 23:26-27 “How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their fathers forgot my name through Baal worship.”

God is concerned that people not forget his name. That does not mean that he fears that the words “God” or “Lord” or “Father” or “Savior” are somehow going to disappear from memory. God’s name is all that he has revealed about himself. His name is his reputation–everything that we know about him. It is the glorious and gracious reputation of God which is at stake when false prophets preach their false messages.

This makes false preaching and teaching a sin against the Second Commandment: “Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God” (or “Do not take it in vain”). The Catechism points out that doing so not only involves cursing and swearing. It is also a matter of lying and deceiving by the use of God’s name. This leads people to see him as a different kind of God.

Unless God’s law is preached with a hard edge that convicts us of our own sins, we lose sight of the fact that the true God is a God who hates sin so much, he will not let a single sin go unpunished. If that happens, how will people appreciate the fact that every single sin was placed on Jesus’ shoulders and punished by his death on the cross?

This is how we know his greater reputation as the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin is more than empty words. It is proven in the life and death of Christ himself. How incredibly gracious God has been to me to sacrifice his own Son in payment for my sins!

Do you see that this not only affects God’s reputation, but the faith and salvation of human souls? God’s people are led to trust him when God leads them to understand how much they need a Savior. Then he leads them to see that he is their kind and loving Savior. This was just as true in Jeremiah’s day as it is for us today. Something infinitely precious was at stake if the prophets didn’t get the message right.

Jeremiah 23:25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, “I had a dream! I had a dream!”

It was bad enough that the rival prophets of Jeremiah’s day gave the people false comforts, and distorted the words of God. Worse yet, they did it all in “God’s name,” as though the Lord himself approved of their messages. What they were trying to pawn off as God’s own message was nothing more than their own dreams. It may have sounded good to the people. It may have been interesting, fun to listen to, even uplifting. But it wasn’t a message in which God was revealing himself. It wasn’t the message in which people could come to know who God is and what he demands or promises.

I realize that it’s not a popular thing to say, but such prophets are still around today. For many years I received a monthly mailing from an organization trying to foster good relations between various faiths and their houses of worship in my community. They sponsored some fine charitable activities and programs. Across the top of their letterhead was the Jewish star of David, the Christian cross, and the crescent moon of Islam. They put these and other faiths on the same footing. They believed that all religions are just different ways to the same God.

One year they sponsored an anti-violence Sunday. Among the sermon texts they suggested were some from the Quran, the Talmud, and Hindu Scriptures. It seems that the Christian churches which were members–and they were many–did not believe God wanted their Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu friends to convert. They didn’t believe the Christian Bible can make us any more certain of who God is or what he is like than these other religions could.

Perhaps a more subtle example of the thing Jeremiah was confronting takes place when law preaching loses its hard edge. Some preachers may be riveting speakers. They make you laugh. They make you cry. They tell entertaining stories. But they don’t call people to repentance. They make no attempt to convict people of their sins. If that is the case, what sense will a gospel of forgiveness make to anyone?

This is a danger for our own church, too. I once met a lady who left the Lutheran Church over 60 years earlier because her pastor would not preach repentance. When she noticed this, and asked him about it, he indicated that he knew on which side his bread was buttered. He told her that if he actually preached against the sins he knew were common, members of his church would leave.

I must admit that it is tempting to skip past a text like this one from Jeremiah. False teaching inside the Christian church is an uncomfortable and unpopular subject among Christians today. But the spiritual health of God’s people depends on becoming aware of the problem and able to recognize it. If we lose our ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, what will happen to our faith in God’s grace? We need preaching that isn’t afraid to identify popular sins and lead people to find forgiveness at the foot of the cross, not happy dreams that distract us from the real dangers to our souls.

Jeremiah 23:23-24 “Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”

True or false? People can know what God is like. Before we look at how Jeremiah helps us answer that question, perhaps we should take a moment to consider a more basic question: Is there a God at all? Does he really exist? How we answer that question will determine how we judge Jeremiah.

In this chapter, Jeremiah has some harsh words for other prophets who claimed to speak for the Lord. If God is just a figment of our imaginations, just the collective good ideas and sincere wishes of good people, then shame on Jeremiah for criticizing them. Why couldn’t their ideas be just as good as his? But if God really does exist–and we all agree that he does, I believe–then some things are true about him, and others are false. Then people shouldn’t say just anything they want about him.

But that seemed to be the way it was in Jeremiah’s day. The prophets that Jeremiah was criticizing were not the prophets of some pagan gods like Baal or Molech or Asherah. They were prophets who, like Jeremiah, claimed to be prophets of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–the God who delivered his people from Egypt and promised to send them a Savior.

These prophets weren’t denying all the most important teachings of God’s word. They didn’t deny that God had promised to send his people the Messiah someday. They didn’t speak against the sacrifices at the temple, or the celebration of the important feasts.

But they did pick and choose which parts of God’s message to deliver, and they added something of their own. One of the most serious problems was their refusal to call the people to repent. They told them what they wanted to hear. Jeremiah warns in verses 16-17: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you…They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’”

You see, Judah had been through two “revivals” in the last hundred years under Kings Hezekiah and Josiah. Outwardly the people seemed much more religious, much more devout about going to the temple and worshiping the Lord.

But inwardly little had changed. The people still worshiped the false gods on the side. There was still a laundry list of sinful attitudes and behaviors which they cherished. Maybe these other prophets didn’t worship the false gods themselves. “But,” the prophets thought to themselves, “who are we to tell these very religious people that they were wrong?” Who were they to judge someone else, and tell him that what he was doing is a sin?

It seems that these prophets had forgotten what God is like. Maybe they themselves didn’t believe that anyone could be sure. That’s why God sent Jeremiah with these questions: “Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”

The point of each question is the same, isn’t it. Since God is everywhere, there is no place anyone can go to hide from him. People can hide their sins from others, but every time they sin, God is an eyewitness. He is right there with them. So prophets who claim to speak for him should not think that God is unreal, or somehow unaware of the message which they preach.

Can people really know what God is like? Yes! True! He reveals himself here, but this was nothing new. How he feels about sin, or the fact of his holy presence in all places at all times, was nothing new. He had revealed it in his word time and time again in the past. These things remain true today, and will continue without end.

Romans 4:14-16 “For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith…”

God’s law is good for the purposes he gave it. But if keeping God’s law was the only way to possess God’s promise, that would introduce some big problems.

The first problem would be this: “For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless.” If God’s promises are something we possess through keeping the law, then we have lost the promise, and it does us no good for God to make it. If I said to my grandkids, “I will take you out for ice cream, but first you must solve this problem in quantum physics,” or “first you must dunk this basketball,” what would be the use? It would be a waste of my breath. The promise would be useless to them. My grandkids have their own gifts, but none can do anything like that.

If God were to say to us, “You can have my promises when you keep all my commandments,” He may as well just say, “You can all go to hell.” We don’t keep his law. That’s is just the reason that we need his promises of grace and forgiveness.

The second problem is this: far from bringing sinners like us closer to possessing God’s promises, the law produces the opposite: “…because law brings wrath.” The law itself isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t make for a happy relationship between God and man. People get mad at God because his law puts things off limits that they want. They get mad that he demands a perfect keeping of his law that they can’t achieve. Jesus said in the sermon on the mount: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Thomas Jefferson said, “That kind of God is a monster.” Unitarian minister William Channing said, “The God of the Bible is the kind of a God in whom we ought not to believe. We could not believe if we wanted to, and if we do we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”

On the other side, our law-breaking makes God mad. In chapter one of this letter to the Romans, Paul had begun this whole discussion, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men…” God’s wrath is not exactly what we hope to obtain.

Is that any less important for us to understand today than in the past? Is this any less practical for Christian faith and life? One popular Christian author would like to skip past this kind of theology and get right to the details of daily life. “I’m not called to…expound on deep theological doctrines or disputes that don’t touch where people live,” he says.

But doesn’t this touch us right at the source of Christian life? We can talk until we are blue in the face about good behavior, but what good will it do if we don’t understand its failure to bring us closer to God and his promises? We may as well try to teach people how to breathe in outer space without a space suit. That’s the problem with performance-based religion. The law lacks the power to enable us to claim and enjoy God’s promises.

If not the law, then what? Faith fits the bill: “Therefore, the promise comes by faith.”

A righteousness that comes by faith is a righteousness that starts outside of us. It is not an innocence, an absence of guilt, we produce. Then we would be back to keeping a law of some kind. It is something we receive. It begins outside of us.

Everything that I have ever received existed outside of me before I ever received it–gifts, money, applause, affection. The same is true of God’s gift of righteousness. Jesus produced it on the cross before I even existed. There, the forgiveness he purchased produced a sinless image of me that God gives as a gift. When God led you and me to faith, that sinless image became our very own. And with that gift comes every other promise he has made.

Only faith in Jesus’ performance—his perfection and sacrifice—can make us confident God’s promises belong to me.

Colossians 3:9-10 “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.”

I want you to note a couple of things here that give us the confidence to slay our sins. First, note the tense of the verbs. You have put off the old self. You have put on the new self. That’s in the past, isn’t it. These are accomplished facts. You are not who you used to be. Your sinful nature died with Christ. You are a renewed, holy person God sees with him in heaven. You have been given power to live a different kind of life.

Someone has well said that we aren’t human doings, we are human beings. And the key to living the godly life we want to live is not so much in what we do, but in the new people God has made us to be by his grace. You are a new self.

Second, look at how that new self is described: “…being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” You may remember that when God first made Adam and Eve, they were made in the image of God. Morally and spiritually, they were little copies of God. They didn’t look like him physically. They thought like he thought and wanted what he wanted. If there were such thing as a spiritual mirror that reflected what goes on in the soul, it would show Adam and Eve’s souls to look like the love and holiness of God himself.

As we slay our sin in repentance, as we believe the good news that God forgives us and decrees us his holy people, that is exactly what is happening to us. The Lord is making us into little spiritual and moral copies of himself, with a mind that works like his own. And that means we can live a new life.

Someone once told Yogi Berra about a Steve McQueen movie, to which Yogi replied with one of his famously obvious statements, “He must have made that before he died.” That would be right. Less obvious, perhaps, is that the Christian life does not begin until after we have died, died with Christ to sin and raised to a new life of faith. Then we can live like those who truly live in Christ.

Colossians 3:5-8 “Therefore, put to death, what belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, God’s wrath is coming upon the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now, put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth.”

As far as God is concerned, our sin, and our sinful nature, were put to death at Jesus’ cross. But if we continue to embrace our sin, treasure it, indulge it, and consider it for our good, we give it life again. We become spiritual Dr. Frankensteins, going out to the graveyard to dig up the corpse of our sin and bringing the monster to unnatural life.

“Put it to death,” Paul says. Slay your sin. Despise it. See it as the rotten, stinking thing it is. This change from giving sin life to putting it to death, from seeing it as grand to seeing it as grotesque, is the change we know as repentance. It is the inevitable result of living like those who died and rose with Christ.

Then Paul helps us to see why this is so vital. “Because of these, God’s wrath is coming.” If a person is contemplating sin, there are many consequences we can warn them about. If a man is considering abandoning his family by divorce, you can warn him about how quiet and lonely it will be without them. You can remind him of the psychological harm he may bring to his children. You can point out how expensive the process will be. And all of this would be true.

If a teenager is dabbling in promiscuous sex, you can share pamphlets that warn about the dangers of disease. You can educate her about the possibility of pregnancy. You can present the statistics that show how this reduces the chances of establishing a stable marriage later on. All of these are verifiable consequences that make life less pleasant.

But we have yet to mention the key thing as far as God is concerned. “Because of these, God’s wrath is coming.” The main reason sin is bad is not that it introduces pain into our daily lives, true though that may be. The main reason sin is bad is because it brings God’s wrath. It leads to death and hell. And for those who like to gamble and want to know the odds, that is not just a possibility. It is a certainty.

But wait a minute. Did these Christians to whom Paul was writing stop sinning completely? Do we? Not at all. That is why Paul must urge us to keep on putting sin to death, to slay our sin. We go on repenting of our sins. We give it to Jesus to dispose of for us at the cross, and we receive his forgiveness.

That is why Paul can say, “and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now, put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth.” There is a difference between stumbling into a sin out of weakness and living in it as your regular, accepted practice. The difference isn’t the sin itself. That’s equally wicked either way. The difference has to do with the heart. In one case it is on God’s side fighting the sin. In the other case it opposes God by making it a way of life with no intention of changing.

So long as we struggle against sin in faith, it’s not our way of life. We haven’t removed ourselves from God’s grace and forgiveness. We don’t live under God’s wrath. And this urges us all the more to slay our sin, to put it to death in repentance.

Colossians 3:1-2 “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

So long as we keep thinking about the evening news, our body’s aches and pains, the mountain of work we can’t get on top of, our fear of school shootings and terrorists, the security we so desire but never really achieve, the more pessimistic and depressed we get. So long as we struggle with our own lack of self-control, so long as we fret over our own inability to be as good and moral as we desire, the more we lose heart and lose the motivation to try. These things kill the spirit.

We need to set our hearts and minds on things above. Heaven is where our focus belongs. It needs to be the object of our concern, our hopes and goals and dreams. That is not merely for a distraction. Setting our hearts and minds on things above isn’t escapist, like reading a book or watching a movie gets our minds off our reality. No, Paul gives reasons far more compelling than that.

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” We died? How? When? He is referring to the death we died with Jesus since he went to the cross as our substitute. Our worldly obsessions, our selfish cravings, our moral failures–all of them were nailed to the cross when Jesus died. That life is buried and gone as far as God is concerned. We died to sin. No need to dig that corpse of a sinful, worldly life up and keep looking at it.

But there is so much more than a death here. “…your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Jesus is not just our death. He’s our life! We not only died with him. We rose with him. He is still our substitute, not just at the cross, but even now at God’s right hand in heaven. This is how God sees you. He doesn’t have to go searching for you here on earth. He can turn to his Son, seated in glory at his right hand, and there he sees you and me as glorious, perfect creatures, because our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

Is it hard to see, then, why we want to spend more time looking up, to see our life above? What happens when a child grows up in an abusive home? Over and over he is told he is stupid and worthless. Over time he begins to believe it. Then he begins to act that way. It becomes his identity. How he sees himself has an effect upon everything else in his life.

Now, what happens when a Christian fixates on his existence in this world? He is constantly confronted with his frequent moral failures. His life is full of disappointments and troubles. Relationships are messed up. Career goals don’t pan out. His body is subject to sickness and decay. Death is inevitable. If that is all the input we receive, or if that dominates, won’t we see ourselves as dying failures and act accordingly?

But that is not the truth! That life died with Christ at the cross, and our real life is hidden with Christ in God. Although we can’t see it now, God assures us that we really look like Jesus in all his glory. That is our true identity. Because of the forgiveness of sins we are holy saints. We are creatures of heaven.

When we believe that, won’t it make all the difference for our lives? Don Matzat tells the story of a man who worked as a janitor. He had immigrated to this country from Iran, where he was a high official in the court of the Shah, (the ruler of that country before the Ayatollah took over). Because of the way the man carried himself, and spoke, and behaved, you didn’t get the idea that you were talking to a janitor. He continued to see himself as someone important. He believed that one day he would be restored to his former position. That was his identity, and it drove the way that man lived.

Dear friends, see your life above, hidden with Christ, where you are seated with him at God’s right hand in glory. Then you will live like those who died and rose, who died to sin with Christ and rose with him to heavenly life.

Luke 10:39 “She had a sister named Mary, who also sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what he said.”

I have a number of “honey-do” projects that need to get done. Several years ago I bought Pergo flooring for my home study, and I still haven’t installed it. The frame around my back door is falling apart and needs to be replaced. The wall in our master bath near the shower could use a little patch work. Other projects wait for my attention.

Most likely, I will hire someone to get these projects taken care of. They will come and do the work. I will appreciate their service. If they do it well, I may even hire them again. But their work hardly means we have a close relationship.

When my wife gets a day off, she usually takes the kitchen back from me and does the cooking. She often helps with the yard work. I appreciate the help.

But I don’t want her to spend the entire day doing housework or getting projects done. I want us to get some “we” time. I want to sit and listen to her tell me how her life is going. I want time to tell her how much she means to me as well. It’s far more important for our relationship that we are communicating: speaking and listening to each other.

Isn’t that what Mary was doing with Jesus? We don’t know the specific content of their conversation, but I doubt very much that he was lecturing her about good behavior. No doubt his words were leading her further and further into the great heart of God. There we find love that seeks us no matter what we have become. There we find he forgives us no matter what we have done. There we learn he takes us back no matter how many times we have turned away. In opening our eyes and hearts to God’s grace, Jesus’ words bring us closer and closer to God himself. They deepen our relationship. They strengthen our grip on his gifts. They fill us with trust in his promises, because faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

There is a brief scene in the movie You’ve Got Mail, in which Tom Hanks, who has put Meg Ryan’s bookstore out of business, visits her with flowers when she’s sick. He has discovered she is the anonymous woman he has been falling in love with online. She doesn’t know he’s the man she has been chatting with yet. Before he leaves, she mentions the online relationship to him. “On the internet,” he says. “Yes.” “You’ve got mail,” he says. “Yes!” “Powerful words,” he says. “Yes,” she says, as if mesmerized just to think of them again.

Powerful words. That is the one thing necessary for us who follow Jesus, powerful words in which we are not serving him, but he is serving us. His powerful words inspire us to sacrifice for him only because he sacrificed body and soul in our place on the cross. “We love, because he first loved us.” “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his only Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

So Jesus shows us the one thing necessary. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.” Jesus will always love your service to him. Don’t stop giving it. But none of that matters if he doesn’t serve us first, because we can neither have nor maintain our relationship with him without his word of grace. Hearing it, reading it, having it is the one thing necessary.