Unfortunately, some preachers are just too easy to ignore. God made sure this didn’t happen to Jeremiah. In the previous chapter, He told His prophet to make a yoke out of straps and crossbars, hang it around his neck, and parade around the temple as if he were an ox hitched to a plow (27:2). It’s hard to ignore a preacher like this, no matter how hard you may try! Soon everyone in Jerusalem had seen the spectacle and heard the message: they must come under the yoke of captivity or they would be destroyed. But Jeremiah wasn’t the only prophet in town. So it’s not surprising that his negative message was soon countered by those with a different take on Judah’s situation. Jeremiah 28 tells about a public confrontation between Jeremiah and Hananiah, who boldly predicted that the nation was already in the latter stages of their Babylonian exile. The king, the people, and the temple furnishings that had been taken into captivity in 608 BC would be brought back in just a couple of years. Contradicting Jeremiah, he claimed that God would soon break the yoke of the king of Babylon! (v 2-4). As Philip Ryken puts it, “No doubt Hananiah’s message was very popular. It was bold, patriotic, and uplifting. Whose church would you rather go to? With Jeremiah it would be gloom and doom for the next seven decades. Hardly the message for a seeker-sensitive church! Hananiah, on the other hand, would tell you what you wanted to hear. In soothing tones, he promised you would be free from all your troubles before you knew it.” The problem is, a popular message may be a false one. People are comforted to hear that a God of love would never punish sin, or that His will would never involve suffering. But Hananiah was not telling the truth. We might have called it wishful thinking, but God called it a “lie” and “rebellion” (v 15-16). Jeremiah did not enjoy warning of judgment, so he hoped Hananiah was right. Even if his own reputation took a hit, he would rejoice in the mercy of God. Yet he took God’s justice seriously and reminded Hananiah of the Biblical job description for a prophet. Fulfillment is always the proof of prophecy, so time will tell which one of them is actually speaking the truth (v 5-9). Then things start to get personal when Hananiah dramatizes his message by breaking Jeremiah’s yoke. God’s true spokesman calmly walks away from this act of aggression. But later, he delivers more hard news. For Judah, there will be an unbreakable yoke of iron; for Hananiah, an imminent death (v 10-17). For further meditation: