Break Your Yoke With The Truth

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(12) After the prophet Hananiah had broken the <wooden> yoke off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: (13) “Go and tell Hananiah, ‘This is what the Lord says: You have broken a wooden yoke, but in its place you will get a yoke of iron.”’ (Jeremiah 28:12-13)

There are three sides to every story; the two opposing viewpoints and somewhere in the middle is the truth.  Don’t just run with what the majority says is the truth, especially in today’s environment of ‘wokeness’.  Already, The labeling of Christianity by the ‘woke’ as ‘wrong-think’ is over LGBTQ issues and the intolerance of sin (except for those denominations that have capitulated to secularism/popularism). 

The CEO of the social media platform Telegram is being detained in France for ‘misinformation’ in allowing opposing viewpoints to be posted on his platform. The European Union, Great Britain, Brazil, Australia, and Canada have strong movements to force Twitter/X and its owner Elon Musk to remove or block content they deem ‘misinformation’, which is essentially those ideas or comments that go against the official narratives of their governments. To Musk’s credit, he is resisting these calls as what they call ‘misinformation’ is often the Truth, or an equally valid viewpoint countering the official narrative.

Some of the ‘misinformation’ is misleading, but often the opposing viewpoint is truth. The official narrative of the COVID vaccines is still ‘they are safe and effective’, for example, while the opposing viewpoint provides evidence there is an increased risk of blood clots and cancer in taking them with no prevention of actually contracting COVID. Governments are attempting to suppress counter-evidence of climate change being natural and not anthropologic (man-induced) as it goes against the official narrative. In Canada, the government is telling Christian churches to suppress the Truth and push government-approved messages about ‘woke’ initiatives on LGBTQ issues and gender fluidity. The Canadian government is forcibly closing several churches and arresting and detaining pastors resisting these restrictions in teaching Biblical Truths going against these initiatives.

The person of long-ago who stood up for the truth is our ‘Bad News Bear(er)’, the ‘weeping prophet’ Jeremiah.  Jeremiah prophesized for the Lord from 626 BC (the 13^th year of Josiah’s reign as Judah’s king) through the fall of Jerusalem (including the destruction of Solomon’s Temple) and the exile of most Israelites to Babylon in 587 BC. 

Staying in Israel until taken to Egypt, Jeremiah did not go into exile but never went back to Israel before he passed away around 560 BC.   Jeremiah by the ‘mainstream media’ and ‘woke’ culture of his day declared much of his prophecies ‘false & misleading’.  The Israelites of his day are much like our American society today; decadent and living for self-gratification and following the ‘if it feels good, do it’ philosophy.  His persecution, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and the sadness he felt in the people ignoring him and God gave him the impetus to write the book of Lamentations.

The more Jeremiah told the people the Truth of God’s Word, the greater they persecuted him.  In Jeremiah Chapters 1 through 10 he attempts to warn the people of their sins (idolatry, false worship, debauchery) and of the impending fall of Jerusalem.  Almost everyone refused to consider his words; they did not match the ‘official narrative’.  Due to Jeremiah’s ‘truth bombs’, he began to be persecuted; in Chapter 11 God reveals his neighbors in Anathoth are plotting to kill him (with God stopping the conspiracy).  In Chapter 20, Jeremiah is beaten and locked in stocks on orders of Pashhur the priest, and in Chapter 38 Jeremiah is first tossed into a muddy cistern and then imprisoned until the Babylonian invasion. 

All of this happened to Jeremiah because he told the truth about the apostasy and sinful acts of the Israelites (‘Repent and turn back to God!’), and the impending invasion of the Babylonians (‘God is about to lay down the smackdown for your unrepentance!’), while the false prophets spoke what the people wanted to hear (‘You’re doing great!  Peace will be us forever!  Do what feels good!’).  If this sounds familiar, it is because it is what is happening today. 

As it states in our Word-of-the-Day Scripture, the false prophet Hananiah had told the people that within 2 years God would break the will (yoke) of the Babylonians, and restore the Temple treasures and the Kingdom to the Israelites – a blatant lie against God.  He symbolically broke the yoke Jeremiah wore in meeting him, but the Lord had Jeremiah respond that Hananiah and the Israelites would be in captivity for 70 years under an unbreakable iron yoke (and that Hananiah would die for his lies, which he did by God’s hand).  What will break our yoke?  We need to return to Truth, to seek God and rediscover the Truth.  Do not succumb to secular desires but seek the freedom of the Truth and Spiritual facts (John 8:32).  BE AWARE not all that is popular truth is indeed Truth.