Day 20….Jeremiah 23:23-32

"Let these false prophets tell their dreams, but let my true messengers faithfully proclaim my every word. There is a difference between chaff and wheat!” (Jeremiah 23: 28) 

Notes from the devotional:

• God can and does communicate to us in dreams. But Jeremiah knew all too well that dreamers who profess to have a message from the Lord should not necessarily be accepted at face value.
• There are some who claim to have a message from God who, in actuality, have no such thing. Instead, they are seeking to authenticate their own imaginations and investing their own ideas with divine sanction.
• The problem is, how do you differentiate between a genuine, revealed message from God and the product of a wicked or vain imagination? The key is to test what is said against Scripture.
• The more familiar we are with what God has to say in the Bible, the less likelihood there will be of our being led astray by “smooth tongued prophets” (Jeremiah 23:31). Carefully studying scripture and deliberately applying its truth to our lives may seem unglamorous and mundane compared to receiving dramatic revelations and making imaginative predictions, but warnings against false prophets and their ultimate fate (Jeremiah 23:39-40) should put us on guard for such.
• The Scriptures are so powerful, so life-giving and refreshing, that we should relish them and not have a desire for flashy speakers spouting their own ideology.

My notes:

• My first thought was what they say about the U.S. Treasury Department. They don’t train agents to recognize counterfeit money by studying counterfeit money. Instead, the study every nuance of real money. They become so knowledgeable on every minute detail of real money that they immediately notice counterfeit by its difference from the real thing. To know Truth, we must study Truth. To evangelize and counteract false doctrine, false religions, we must intimately know God’s Word. Anything other than God’s true Word will then become immediately apparent and avoidable.
• I also sit here and am kind of laughing at God’s nudging… Seems like one of the take home messages I get from virtually all these devotionals lately is… get in the Word more. Daily. LOL. Thanks God. I got it. Working on being more obedient …
• We are surrounded by false prophets people. Our culture is becoming more and more splintered because people are looking under every nook and cranny for truth. They think they find it there too… “within themselves”, the charismatic leader who “has a unique interpretation of the Scripture,” the politically charged celebrity, and so on. The more we look elsewhere for truth, the further away we get from it and the harder it is to see the difference between truth and falsehood.
• Stay in the Word. Seek truth there. And no where else, because God is the source of all truth.

Personal challenge:

• Where do you go for truth? How do you judge between what is true and what is false?
• Pray for commitment to stay in the Word daily, so that you may easily see God’s Truth and separate from the false doctrine of the world.

~~from The One Year Book of Devotions for Men (Stuart Briscoe, 2000)~~