Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from Radical.net.

Lamentations chapter 2, verse 14, your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions.

They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.

Oh, this is such a sobering chapter. You read

Lamentations 2. It is filled with sorrow and suffering with the effects of sin on all kinds of

people, including infants and babies, crying out in misery. And at the center of the chapter,

we read this verse, your prophets.

The people who are supposed to be proclaiming God's word to you have seen for you false

and deceptive visions. They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have

seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.

In other words, the people who were supposed to be proclaiming the Word of God, to keep the

people from this, to expose iniquity, to say this is wrong, we should turn and repent and trust

in God.

Those people were giving false and misleading pronouncements

and visions to the people. Oh, what a reminder. Certainly for anyone who has any responsibility

to teach the word, which in a sense is all of us a responsibility to pass on the word to others, a mom or a dad, or, well, just any of us.

We have the word of God given to us to spread it to others, so let's be faithful to spread it to communicate God's word.

And then those who have a gift of teaching in the church to make sure that we are

proclaiming the word, that we're not proclaiming our own thoughts, our own ideas, but God's

word alone and fully the whole council of God. They were exposing iniquity through proclamation

of the word. They were not just sharing what people's itching ears want to hear,

which is what was happening in Jeremiah's day. And as a result, it led to all sorts of sorrow

...