A Vision of Their Own Heart Is How Jeremiah Describes the Problem

He believed it because the man was so sure.

That is the whole mechanism and it took him eleven years to say it in those words. There was nothing else. No verse he could not check, no argument he could not follow. What carried it was the confidence, and the confidence was total, and he had never in his life met anybody that certain about anything.

And a man who is uncertain about most things will follow a man who is certain about anything, because certainty is a scarce good and it feels like knowledge.

What he found out later is that certainty is not evidence, and that it is available to people who have nothing behind it, and that the people who have most of it are frequently the ones with least behind it, because a man who has actually looked into a thing usually knows where the difficulties are.

There is a chapter in Jeremiah where God names what is wrong with a set of confident messages, and the fault He names is not in their content.

The diagnosis

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. (Jeremiah 23:16)

They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.

That is the fault and it is entirely about origin.

He does not say the messages were incoherent. He does not say they contradicted the law, and elsewhere in the chapter it is clear that some of what these men said sounded fine.

He says the source is a man's own heart, and the alternative source is the mouth of the LORD, and the difference between those two is not detectable by listening to the words.

They make you vain. That is the effect: they inflate. They produce a feeling of substance where there is none.

You are able to ask about origin and you were never limited to checking the wording. Jeremiah 23:16 makes the fault a matter of source rather than of content, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a finer ear who makes the origin of a thing something a man can ask about.

The picture He gives for the difference

And then a picture, which is the most useful thing in the chapter.

The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 23:28)

What is the chaff to the wheat?

Chaff and wheat come off the same plant. They arrive together, in the same handful, looking like one substance to anybody who has not handled grain.

The difference is not visible at a glance and it is not a difference of appearance. It is a difference of weight, and the way you find it is to throw the whole handful into moving air and let the two go different directions.

That is a test that does not require a man to be able to tell them apart by looking. It requires him to put the whole thing in the air.

And the first half of that verse is generous: let him tell a dream. He is not forbidding a man to say what he thinks. He is asking that it be labeled.

Which is a fair standard and a rare one, and it is worth noticing that a man who labels his own material honestly is showing you something about himself.

You have a way to separate that does not require you to see the difference and you were never asked to tell them apart by looking. Jeremiah 23:28 sets chaff against wheat and asks what one is to the other, and it is His Spirit who is the moving air in which a thing shows its own weight.

The one mark He names

And then the sentence that gives an actual mark, which is the most concrete thing in the chapter.

But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. (Jeremiah 23:22)

Then they should have turned them from their evil way.

That is the mark. A message that came from standing in His counsel turns people. It changes how they live.

And what these men were producing, the chapter says elsewhere, did the opposite: it strengthened the hands of evildoers, so that nobody returned from his wickedness.

So the test is not whether the message was exciting, or whether it was correct, or whether the man was sure. The test is what happened afterward in the people who received it.

And Jeremiah says the same thing about a different set of men earlier in the book:

They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 6:14)

Healed slightly. Which means covered over without going deep, and the phrase is a surgical one.

You have a mark you can check afterward and you were never without a way to look back. Jeremiah 23:22 says a message from His counsel turns people from their evil way, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the turning that verse describes.

Where the standard is

And the two verses that say what everything gets measured against and who does the measuring.

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20)

To the law and to the testimony. The written thing is the standard, and it is available to anybody who will open it.

And Paul, giving a practical instruction to an ordinary congregation about what to do while somebody is speaking:

Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. (1 Corinthians 14:29)

Let the other judge.

That is the room. Not the leadership. The people listening are told to weigh it, as a normal part of the meeting, while it is happening.

Which means the New Testament assumes a congregation full of people who are weighing, and treats that as ordinary rather than as suspicion.

You are one of the others who judge and you were never a passive seat in the room. 1 Corinthians 14:29 says let the other judge about the people listening, and it is His Spirit who makes weighing a normal act rather than a challenge.