GOD SAYS TO THE PREACHER, “YOU SHALL BE AS MY MOUTH”
In today’s gospel lesson Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets.” He had not yet sent out men to preach in His name, whether apostles, evangelists or pastor. He uses the word prophets since that had been the office of those who publicly spoke what God commanded them to speak. But now in the New Testament era it’s the office of pastor. When Jesus says “prophets,” He’s speaking about those who preach in His name.
Pastors are in the “preaching office.” This reaches back to include the prophets in the Old Testament. It’s the same office. What God says to the prophet Jeremiah is something that applies to pastors today and to the Church. In Jeremiah 15, God’s dealing with a prophet – a preacher of His Word – who needs to be strengthened, for the good of God’s people and for the faithful ministering of His Word. We hear these verses once again:
Sermon Text, Jeremiah 15:19-21. Thus says the Lord: “If you return, then I will bring you back; you shall stand before Me; if you take out the precious from the vile, you shall be as My mouth. Let them return to you, but you must not return to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall; and they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you; for I am with you to save you and deliver you,” says the Lord. “I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible.”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. May Your Word be preached in its truth and purity so that our faith will be protected and we will walk in Your truth all the way to eternal life. Amen.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In these verses, God speaks directly to Jeremiah. Actually He’s answering him. In the previous verses, Jeremiah complains to God. He was discouraged.
In his appeal to God, Jeremiah goes back to when God called him as a young man to be a prophet. God did say his hearers would refuse to listen, yet Jeremiah’s call was to keep preaching their need to repent. Throughout the book of Jeremiah, he keeps preaching it and they keep not listening.
When God called Jeremiah He said, “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.” Jeremiah remembers that and now says: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” This is to read, mark, hear, and inwardly digest the Word. It’s beautiful, that the Word was his joy and delight. It’s what God wants for the men who preach His Word. He also wants it for all who hear His Word – that it be our joy and delight, to gladly hear and learn it, as Luther says in the Large Catechism, that a fruitful hearing of the Word – which comes from faithful and pure preaching of it – “always awakens new understanding, pleasure, and devoutness and produces a pure heart and pure thoughts.”
But Jeremiah says this with bitterness. Currently he doesn’t feel that way, he isn’t having joy or delight from God’s Word. At this point, in Jeremiah 15, he’s having a breakdown. He says: “I did not sit in the company of revelers, nor did I rejoice” in godlessness. He says: “I sat alone.” Being the only faithful one meant he was all alone. So heartbroken and alone that it hurts, he laments: “Why is my pain perpetual, my wound incurable, refusing to heal?” He ends his prayer crying that the Word He preaches is failing him. Jeremiah says: “Will You be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail?” That is, are God and His Word like a stream that dries up before it gets to him?
That’s what God is answering in our text today. It’s the question: What if God’s Word seems to be failing? What if God’s Word doesn’t get results? What if I don’t feel joy despite hearing the Word? What if I do what’s right but my life still has turmoil and everyone or everything is against me? Is it even worth it to be faithful and devoted to the Word and pure doctrine?
These questions – and Jeremiah’s experience – just show how Satan attacks the Word. The problem isn’t God’s Word. The problem isn’t you – except that you’re a sinner, and the sinful nature in you is always working against love of God and His Word, and doesn’t want to accept what God says in His Word.
But the chief problem is the devil. He attacks the Word. He attacks the ministry. Just like Jeremiah, pastors today are called to preach Law before Gospel, to preach repentance; but it isn’t a feel-good message. Satan makes the pastor afraid or reluctant to preach this, since it’s upsetting to people (it’s upsetting to the sinful nature). The devil discourages the pastor – and also the congregation – by stirring up a restless, impatient attitude when true doctrine doesn’t seem to result in outward growth of the church. The devil also influences people to resist the Word and leave the church; this too results in discouragement. There’s also sinful pride, spiritual laziness, and judgmental or legalistic ways that can crop up in the church. Guess who’s behind all this?
Satan uses all his arts, and his lies, to destroy love of the Word, to kill delight, to make it seem old or stale instead of – as God says – that the Gospel is the “new song!” Satan gets you disenchanted, stuck in meaninglessness, instead of being utterly enchanted, full of wonder, that God should love little you, and that His way of loving you in Christ, by His cross, is something nobody would have ever looked for, but God came up with it, just for you.
One of Satan’s front lines of attack is to tempt Christians, including pastors, to change God’s Word in order to satisfy what the sinful heart wants to hear. He tempts us to shrink from rejecting and condemning what’s false, or to think it doesn’t matter that much. People in the church clamor for peace with the world, or lowering the standards so the church will grow more easily.
This is what God specifically tells Jeremiah not to do: “Let them return to you, but you must not return to them,” in other words, don’t change the message out of fear, intimidation, or a desire to please. God says, “I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall,” meaning his proclamation of God’s Word, and the pure teaching of it, are to be absolutely immovable. All this despite the fact Jeremiah, the preacher, is human, and as the book shows he’s timid and tender, and as we see here, wounded, ready to give up.
But the fact that included in God’s Word is the very disenchantment of which we speak, that in Jeremiah’s own book it shows him at his worst and lowest, not trusting the very word he’s called to preach, is a sign of the great compassion God has for sinners, and how His Word shows such honesty.
But the good news – the Gospel – is God’s love for all His people – both the afflicted, beaten-down pastor and the people who Satan thinks he has power over. Notice in these commands to Jeremiah God’s promises: “I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall” – that it’s not the pastor’s doing or by his own strength, but God will provide it. And God says: “They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you; for I am with you.” This is a promise to pastor and people that faithfulness to His Word is a promise that God makes comes true, and that He blesses it. He’ll bless His Church. He’ll bless our congregation. He’ll be the one to keep us faithful.
This works through Law and Gospel, which is the key to His Word. Notice how God begins with Jeremiah: “If you return, then I will bring you back; you shall stand before Me.” God calls the preacher to repent. He doesn’t just say to Jeremiah: “I understand.” He preaches the Law to him. God also doesn’t say “if they return,” but: “if you return.” Repenting, confessing sins, isn’t about what someone else has done, but to admit what you’ve done.
God says that Jeremiah – the preacher – needs to come back to God. In this text we only hear the Law being spoken to the one holding the pastoral office, even though his hearers are unrepentant and need to repent too. But this is only right, because the pastor confesses his sins with the people. In the liturgy, when I as pastor ask, “Do you confess that you have sinned, and do you repent of your sins?”I say the words, “I do,” along with you.
This is where confidence in the Word, and having a clear conscience, begins: first to get rid of the sins by repenting, by laying one’s sins on Jesus. This repentance happens because God Himself brings Jeremiah (and each of us) to repent. This is the work of the Holy Spirit and the power of His Word. He brings you to repent by means of His Law; it’s the same for pastors. We all may say those words rather easily, and not go through an inner debate, to say “I do” in response to “do you repent,” but it’s the work of the Holy Spirit, it’s a miracle, that the pastor and each person is actually sorry for sins against God, even for resenting God’s Word or wanting to give up spiritually.
Then we get to the Gospel: that God forgives all the sins, for Jesus’ sake. The way it is in Jeremiah is that God says: “I will bring you back [and] you shall stand before Me.” This is the Gospel. You can’t stand before God as a sinner; only as a forgiven sinner. Because of each pastor’s own sins, no man is worthy to preach the Word and pronounce God’s forgiveness to others; but through God’s forgiveness he stands in God’s presence and is not struck down, and he turns around and forgives his fellow sinners in Jesus’ name.
These are the words God puts in the pastor’s mouth: “By virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word … in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins.” The forgiveness of sins is valid not because the pastor is so worthy but because it’s the Word of God which is powerful, and because it is Jesus’ worthy and innocent blood shed for every sinner that is able to cleanse you from all sin.
This is what it means that God says to Jeremiah: “You shall be as My mouth.” In other words, God’s words are in the pastor’s mouth. When the pastor forgives your sins, it is Christ forgiving your sins.
This is what it means that God says to Jeremiah that He is to “take out the precious from the vile” – that what is ugly, our sins, will turn into what is beautiful or precious: that the sins are taken away and forgiven, and what remains is beautiful, that we’re all made precious and spotless in God’s sight.
God wants this to be unchanging, unyielding, so His Word does for you what He wants it to do. He wants to save you by His Word. He wants to keep you, preserve this faith in you, by His Word. He wants to comfort you, give you peace of conscience, by His Word. And He does it by His Word.
It is worth it to be devoted to His Word and pure doctrine. We aren’t alone. He makes us to stand in His presence. And there is abiding joy and delight. Amen!