Truth #117 - God's Word trumps your Dream!! - Jeremiah 21-26

Jeremiah 23:16-18
Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, No disaster shall come upon you.’”
For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord
to see and to hear his word,
or who has paid attention to his word and listened?

We live in an era where the Word of God is often trumped by the "opinions" (visions???) of men.   God, in His grace, has given  us His Word and we have all the revelation we need to make the right decisions and/or act in the correct behavior to honor Him.    Yet, man is determined to supplant the authority of God's Word with his/her own opinion.   In Jeremiah's day, God had told Jeremiah to prophesy to the nation of Israel that the suffering they were about to receive by the hand of the King of Babylon was because of their own sin.  As a result of that God told them, through Jeremiah, that they should submit to this punishment and give into this King from the North.   That was tantamount to treason, in the minds of the leaders of Israel.  If you read Jeremiah 26 you can see that Jeremiah's life was saved, but he was under attack for this "word from the Lord."  This would be similar to someone in our day today saying that we should give in to the "King" of North Korea for the punishment of our sins against God, as a nation.   However, during this time, these other prophets were prophesying what the people and leadership wanted to hear. They had "their own visions" and those visions stated that the King from the North would not overtake the city.    They had dreams but the dreams did not follow the "known" word of God.   Today we have similar "prophets" and preachers who are declaring that the church must change about this an that, and that their new revelation (their dream) is from God.    God does speak in many ways and, according to the Book of Job, He can speak through dreams:

Job 33:15
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
while they slumber on their beds

But, when the dream is contrary to the Word, the Word wins!!!   God will correct those who provide false teaching in His time. These prophets were trying to trump the word given to Jeremiah through God.    God, in the above text, corrects them.   God will not allow those who corrupt His Word to succeed.   We must not allow the "visions" and "dreams" of those we hear, that conflict with God's Word, to go unexposed.   God is in the God of order and He only gives one Word.    He can give His world in many ways, but the harmony and consistency of the Word never changes.    No ones dream, vision, opinion or thought can trump the revealed Word of God.  That is the honest truth!!