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Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Please go and have a seat. We start off with something kind of disturbing today. This picture here. Anyone recognize that guy? I know Emily does with her master's degree in modern European history. This is Joseph Goebbels. By many measures, he is one of the evilest, uh, vilest men in human history. Uh, this particular photograph was taken in 1933 by Alfred Eisenstedt, a Jewish photographer, which helps to explain the scowl on the subject's face. Goebbels was the Reichsminister of public enlightenment and propaganda in the Nazi regime. In this role, he widely propagated Nazi ideology, promoting their uniquely heinous brand of violence and nationalism and antisemitism. Goebbels engineered narratives so relentlessly that reality itself began to be reshaped in the public mind of Germany. The Nazis understood a chilling reality. People will be quick to believe what they want to hear, no matter how far-fetched. And if you repeat a lie often enough, no matter how horrible or unthinkable it may be, people begin to believe it's true. And that's just what happened, of course, in Germany to historically devastating effect. They made the people trust in a lie. As extreme an example as Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine may seem to us, it is perfectly illustrative of a war that has been waged from the very beginning, when the father of lies first tempted humanity away from God's word. The serpent asked Eve, did God actually say? And he's been asking the same question ever since. Today, as we continue our Lenten journey through the book and the life and the ministry of the prophet Jeremiah, we encounter another significant battle in this ages-old war. Last week we heard the heart of Jeremiah's message in his famous temple sermon back in chapter 7. And today we have heard in chapter 28 Judah's obstinate response to that message, exemplified and personified by the false prophet Hananiah. Today we consider this battle for truth and examine what it has to teach us who live in a world where so-called truth is a commodity to be bought and sold and massaged and manipulated. But let's start the conversation this morning, not with Jeremiah and Hananiah, but with Jesus and Pontius Pilate. You know the scene. The Son of God stands before the Roman governor. He's been slapped around by the temple guard, spit upon by members of the Sanhedrin, and handed over to the Romans. And now Pontius Pilate is in a pickle, to say the least. Jesus's fate has been placed in his hands. Whether he will live or die is wholly dependent upon this embattled ruler who has enormous pressure on him to make a decision that will either uphold justice or appease the crowds below. So what does he do? He interrogates Jesus. He determines that he's done nothing wrong, nothing worthy of death. And then he asks a question, perhaps sarcastically, perhaps desperately, perhaps sincerely. What is truth? And all the while the truth himself stands right in front of him, staring at him through bloodshot eyes. What is truth? That's the question, isn't it? In John 18, it's not being asked in a philosophical seminar, but by a politician who would rather manage the optics than submit to reality. But it's a question that's been asked by every generation before and after Pilate. In our own day, this question has come all the more to the fore with the rise of the internet and cable's news networks, social media, AI, deep fakes. The sources are endless that claim to provide us with the truth, that claim to have the status of truth arbiters in our society. News outlets promise facts over feelings. Presidential debates now come with a handy real-time fact-checking element. Podcasters claim to uncover the truth hidden by the mainstream media narrative. How do we know what's real and what's not? What's true and what's fake news? Sometimes there are so many voices it even sounds like there's like a bird chirping during the sermon or something. You know, who can we trust? Politicians or podcasters or preachers, celebrities, coaches, social media influencers, which it still boggles my mind that there is such a thing. We live in a time where truth feels negotiable, malleable, relative. Competing headlines from competing experts, creating competing narratives. For many, truth itself is secondary to the profit that one can gain by peddling some semblance of it. But there is such a thing as truth. There is such a thing as reality, as much as we may deny it, as much as it might elude us. Truth was standing right in front of Pilate, but Pilate looked right through him and succumbed to the mob. Jesus, the truth, was crucified because Pilate chose comfort over what was right. Because he trusted in a lie. That's exactly what's happening in Jeremiah chapter 28. I'm going to give you a bit of a history lesson here, so buckle up. Let me give you a little bit of context. The year is probably just about 594 BC. Judah by this point has experienced not one but two humiliations at the hands of the Babylonians. When Nebuchadnezzar defeated Egypt in the Battle of Carchimesh in the year 605 BC, Babylon had become the dominant power in the region. Nebuchadnezzar had come to Jerusalem and besieged it and had made King Jehoiakim his vassal. Nebuchadnezzar also took some of the vessels of the Jerusalem temple home with him. He carried off the prophet Daniel and a few other elites into exile. Eight years later, in 597 BC, King Jehoiakim decided to rebel against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar came back and besieged Jerusalem again. Jehoiakim died during the siege, and his son Jehoiachin became king just in time to be captured by the Babylonians and taken off into exile. More vessels from the temple were stolen and plundered, and Babylon installed Jehoiakim's brother Zedekiah as their new puppet king. This time, Babylon deported about 10,000 others along with him, including the prophet Ezekiel. Three years later, the events of Jeremiah 28, and the question on everyone's mind is what happens next? Will we break the yoke of Babylon and be free of their tyranny? Or is this depressing situation here to stay? Jeremiah had been answering that question very consistently for a long time. Fifteen years earlier, his temple sermon had proclaimed destruction, and the events of 605 and 597 BC maybe kind of gave the impression that that was on the way. More recently, at the command of God, Jeremiah had been wandering around the city of Jerusalem with a wooden yoke on his shoulders, symbolizing the oppression of the Babylonians, that it was here to stay. You can understand why his message was not super popular. And you can understand the appeal of Hananiah's claims. People often seek a second opinion when the first doctor's verdict doesn't quite satisfy them for one reason or another. Consider this: if one doctor told you it's nothing, and the other said it's terminal, whom would you want to believe? And so Hananiah confronts Jeremiah in the temple where he had preached that sermon before, where he had been proclaiming this for a long time, and Hananiah claims to speak directly for God, saying this: I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jekoniah, another name for Jehoiachin, by the way, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Hananiah tells the people exactly what they want to hear. The holy plunder will be restored, the exiles will come home, the deposed king will be placed back on the throne. Hananiah's name means the Lord is gracious. And his message sounded an awful lot like true gospel. Sounds like Hananiah is the one trusting God here, right? Not Jeremiah. Hananiah takes the wooden yoke from Jeremiah's back and breaks it to pieces in front of everyone. This is no polite theological debate. It's a public collision between two prophets claiming to have the truth, with the fate of a nation at stake. And Judah is just eating up what Hananiah is feeding them. When have we longed for relief in lieu of repentance? Have we, like Paul describes in Romans 1, exchanged the truth for a lie? What comforting falsehoods are tempting to us? Maybe that we will be or even are being restored to the Christian nation we once were. That our anger and the harsh words we use to express it online are justified. That our sin isn't really that serious, that we can go on sinning and grace will increase. Churches plant their flags on political hills that God has not ordained. The battle for truth is rarely fought between obvious good and obvious evil. It is between what soothes temporarily and what saves eternally. Last week we heard Jeremiah warn Judah against deceptive words. And throughout his book, Jeremiah exposes false prophets like Hananiah for what they truly are. He says they prophesy falsely, that they have provided a counterfeit remedy for Judah by declaring peace when there is none. They deceive the people, they prophesy lies. For 32 verses in chapter 23, Jeremiah goes on and on about the scourge of lying prophets like Hananiah. And when all is said and done, Jeremiah will remember how the prophets had told the people that all was well as he sits in the ruins of an obliterated city. So Jeremiah tells Hananiah that he wishes what he says were true. How he wishes it were. But it's simply not. So Jeremiah says, Listen, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie. He says that Hananiah's and Judah's refusal to hear what God has clearly spoken has replaced a wooden yoke with an iron one. And Jeremiah says that Hananiah himself will die for his sin. Just as we read in our Bible in a year this past week in Deuteronomy about false prophets, Hananiah had prophesied that within two years everything would be okay. And instead, within two months, Hananiah, the lying prophet, lies dead. And for Babylon, the third time's the charm. The third exile of 587 BC is it's the big one. This time Jerusalem is reduced to ashes. The temple's looting is total, and then it's burned to the ground. And the people's subjugation lasts the full 70 years that Jeremiah had predicted all along. In this battle for truth, the truth won out. It always does. So the question for us today is how can we avoid Judah's fate? How can we rightly discern all the Hananias that bombard us with their desirable deceptions? How can we suss out wolves in sheep's clothing? By listening to the voice of the shepherd. We can do what Hananiah refused to do. What Pilate refused to do. We can submit to the king of truth. Jesus said to Pilate, You say that I am the king. For this purpose I was born. And for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. How do we do that? How do we listen to the voice of Jesus? How do we know if something is true or if it is a lie? In a world where there are so many voices, so many opinions, so many technologies to which we can turn, how do we know what's true? Quite simply, if God says it. And to those who claim falsely that they have been sent by God, we say to them, as Jeremiah said to Hananiah, listen, the Lord has not sent you. You have made this people trust in a lie. We say it to our culture, to those of influence. We say it above everything to Satan himself. We refuse to believe that sin is no big deal. We refuse to trust in our own righteousness or goodness or good works. We refuse to acquiesce to the claims of those who would co-opt the name of Jesus for their own gain. Hananiah had urged the people to ignore the crisis of their sin. Jeremiah had urged the people to surrender, to give themselves over to the rule of the Babylonians and the judgment of God. And only one of these two offered true hope. In his book on Jeremiah, Dr. Reed Lessing writes, Hope involves telling the truth. Hope means letting go of the old. Hope surrenders to God's plans and God's timing. That's precisely what Jesus did that day in the Jerusalem headquarters of Pontius Pilate. What happened that day at Gabatha and on Golgotha? It looked like yet another so-called earthly king being deposed, put to death, his kingdom just snuffed out. But God was doing exactly the opposite. He was reversing our exile. He was restoring everything the enemy had plundered from us. He was establishing his kingdom forever. He was decisively winning the battle for truth, putting a forever end to this ages-old war. Because for Jesus, the king of truth, the third day was the charm. On the third day, as he had been predicting all along in those words, like the perfectly faithful prophet he was, he strode forth from the grave, a million times more victorious than Nebuchadnezzar ever was. Jesus is the king of truth, and everyone who is of the truth listens to his voice. We do so by hungering for his word, by meeting together like this, to study it and to discuss it, by internalizing it within ourselves, by refusing to believe anything or anyone that contradicts it or tries to twist it for their own purposes. Because God's own purpose with his word is to form you and shape you in the truth, to proclaim the gospel to you, to save you, and give you eternal life. So let's pray for discernment. And then let's listen to the words of the one who desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, the knowledge of Jesus, the King of truth, who is the way, the way, and the truth, and the life. Amen.