Why would the prophets have turned the people from their evil ways if they had stood in the council of the Lord?

What is implied by the Lord’s question in Jeremiah 20:18 is now stated emphatically. The Lord did not send these prophets, yet they ran, and he did not speak to them. The true prophet is the one who is sent by the Lord and to whom the Lord has spoken; neither is true of these prophets.¹ They were not compelled to preach because of any valid experience of the Lord, but by their own motives. The falseness of their ministry is seen in its fruitlessness. The Lord says that if they had stood in his council then they would have proclaimed his words to the people, not their own, and the people would have turned from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds. The hard message of looming judgment would have brought peace through repentance to the Lord’s people, not the false message of easy peace without repentance.

However, did Jeremiah’s ministry stand up to this test? He had certainly preached the message of repentance in the face of judgment. Yet not many turned from their evil, and ultimately judgment did come. Jeremiah did however display a very deep, personal and anguish-filled desire to see his people turn to the Lord. The false prophets showed none of this.² It could also be argued that the Lord sovereignly worked out the intentions of his heart (Jeremiah 23:20) through the preaching of prophets such as Jeremiah who were sent by the Lord. The message Jeremiah preached was that the Lord himself would bring about the repentance of his people through judgment, even if it were only a remnant. This is indeed what happened in the end. Jeremiah’s preaching was not fruitless, even if he did not get to see the fruit himself.

The other implication of the Lord’s assessment of the fruitless nature of the false prophets’ ministry is that if they had not preached a message that opposed Jeremiah’s so blatantly, then perhaps the judgment about to come might have been averted.³ There was very little chance of anyone listening to Jeremiah’s message of judgment when so many voices were declaring a message of peace.