“1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 ‘Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: “Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
9 Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, a burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.
12 Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. 13 While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. 14 Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your fathers. 15 I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim.’”
We’ve been hearing an awful lot about vaccines lately, but what exactly is a vaccine? According to the CDC, “vaccines contain the same germs that cause disease, but they have been either killed or weakened to the point that they don’t make you sick. Some vaccines contain only a part of the disease germ.” So when you are vaccinated, you are exposed to the disease in such a way that you are hopefully prevented from catching the disease. So the question is, “have people who have had the covid vaccinations had covid?” In a way, but not really.
Have people who have lived their lives with a deadened version of Christianity ever really been Christians? In a way, but not really. In a tragic way, it’s almost as if they’ve been vaccinated against ever becoming Christians. Cultural Christians are some of the toughest cases because these people think they are Christians, but they’ve never been born again. It’s almost as if they’ve been vaccinated against it ever catching the faith.
Large swaths of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day had a deadened form of religion which prevented them, so to speak, from catching true religion. They had the true religion, but it was a false form, and false, true religion is exceedingly dangerous; it’s almost as if it vaccinates you against the real thing; false, true religion is exceedingly dangerous; that’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in three points. First: the temple of the Lord. Second: safe to sin? Third: check out Shiloh. First, in verses 1-8, we see the people’s false trust in the temple of the Lord. Second, in verses 9-11, we see that the people thought the temple made them safe to sin. Third, in verses 12-15, we see God tell His presumptuous people to check out what He did to Shiloh.
First: the temple of the Lord. We live in a very religious area of the true religion. There are all sorts of benefits to that. I am thankful that schools still honor Wednesday night as church night. I think it’s great that we have the names of our town churches on our town signs. I intentionally chose to live in this area. It does, however, have its dangers.
Jerusalem was a very religious city too; it was a very religious area of the true religion. Solomon’s temple dominated the life of the city both physically and culturally; however, the temple dominated life wrongly. We see that by the fact that the Lord sent His prophet to the temple; verse 1, ‘This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message. Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Reform your ways…”
God called Jeremiah to correct the practice of the true religion. Jeremiah was repeatedly called to rebuke what was generally agreed upon as good. It was good to go to temple; why rebuke what’s good? It’s much harder to rebuke what’s generally agreed to be good than it is to rebuke what’s generally agreed upon as evil. It doesn’t take much courage to condemn what everyone knows is wrong; it takes more courage to highlight misguided understandings of what is commonly accepted as good. Jeremiah was highlighting the faults of the people who actually took the time to come to temple. As they entered, a priest would remind them to “enter the gate of righteousness” with “clean hands and a pure heart.” Many scholars think that Jeremiah stood near that priest and rebuked these same people.
He rebuked them because their worship of the true God had become false—false, true religion; verse 2, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!’ If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.”’
Jeremiah told the people that their true religion was false because they didn’t put the meaning of the temple into practice anywhere else in their lives. They came to the temple apparently to deal with God, but they didn’t deal with Him anywhere outside the temple. They didn’t trust Him in any functional way. They didn’t obey Him in any discernable way. The only way in which they followers of the Lord was that they identified themselves as followers of the Lord and took part in some ceremonies that had to do with the Lord. That can be said of many people today—the only way in which they are Christians is that they identify themselves as Christians and are involved in Sunday ceremonies that have to do with Christ. It has nothing to do with any of their lives outside of that.
This is what Jesus was after when he called the rich young ruler who did all the religiously devout actions to sell everything he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. True faith is always an exchange—all of you for all of God.
The people in Jeremiah’s day had greatly reduced that; they had reduced the temple to what they wanted it to mean; they now viewed it as a token of divine approval. They had so convoluted God’s promises that they believed that as long as the temple stood, all was right with the world and all was right between them and God. They were like a married man who regularly cheats on his wife, but when he looks down at his left-hand ring finger he sees that his wedding band is still on, and so assures himself that his marriage is fine; that’s what’s going on in verse 4, ‘Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!”’
The people who came to temple had totally missed the point of the temple. They thought because God had promised to meet His people there, God must meet His people there no matter how they lived. As J.A. Thompson put it, “the popular idea that [the Lord] was in some way bound to Zion was therefore wrong. His presence in the temple was an act of pure grace.”
We are quick to do the same. Because we are His people, we come to believe He is ours, that we have a controlling claim upon Him, that He must be on our side no matter what side we are on. It’s easy for us to think that as long as we go to church all is right between with us and God. It’s easy for us to believe that we are somehow doing God a favor by showing up here on Sundays and that He better be pleased as punch that we show up twice on a Sunday. The question of the modern mind on Sunday is rarely, “will God receive my worship?” it is usually, “will I make time for God today?” The fact is that God is under no obligation to receive us. He does so out of His grace.
God does want to meet with His people; the temple made that clear. The problem in Jerusalem was not that there was a temple. The problem was this mutated teaching about what the temple meant. The problem was that it had become false, true religion—the true religion in false form. That’s worth considering with churches as well. There are false forms of the true religion today. Just because someone goes to church doesn’t mean that all is right; mutated teaching isn’t limited to Jeremiah’s day.
So beware of false, true religion and beware of throwing out the forms of true religion because they can become false. There is a temptation to throw out tradition in hopes of revival. The problem in Jerusalem was not that there was a temple. Jeremiah wasn’t against the temple. He was against misusing the temple. He wasn’t anti-tradition. He was anti-traditionalism. As Jaroslav Pelikan put it, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Jeremiah honored the living faith of David who was dead by rebuking the dead faith of those who entered the temple he dreamed to build.
The problem wasn’t the temple. The problem was the hearts of the people. The problem is the heart. We don’t want to hear that because that means that the problem has to do with us. The people actually needed to practice the reason for the temple to gain any benefit from the temple. We need to actually follow Christ to be Christians.
The temple was designed as a place to expose sin to God and receive forgiveness. As can so easily happen, God’s designed means of grace became a way of hiding from God; we see that in our second point: safe to sin?
Grace is easy to misunderstand. As Paul explained to the Romans, we easily turn grace into an excuse for sin. The people in Jeremiah’s day did so by acting as if the temple granted them not safety from wrath but safety to sin without wrath; as God put it in verse 9, ‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, a burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “we are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things?’
The people were trying to enjoy grace without repentance, but grace always goes hand in hand with repentance. It is the grace of God that invites a heart to repentance. It is grace of God that moves a heart to repentance. It this repentance that opens the door of God’s grace.
The sinful heart, however, wants grace without repentance; that’s what was happening in Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day; that’s what was happening in Bonhoeffer’s day in the German Lutheran church. Bonhoeffer called it cheap grace, “[cheap grace is] the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Cheap grace is no grace at all. It was no grace at all in Jeremiah’s day. It was no grace at all in Bonhoeffer’s day. It is no grace at all in our day. It turns the church into the world; in fact, it turns it into something worse than the world. To borrow a phrase from John Skinner, it turns us into, “organized hypocrisy.”
There is organized hypocrisy in both legalism and lawlessness. There is certainly hypocrisy in religion that doesn’t love the people of the world, but there is also great hypocrisy in religion that loves the world. You have to love the people of the world without becoming the world. You can fall off the ditch on both sides, and it would be good for each of us to remember that because each of us fears falling off one side and has a tendency to veer toward the other.
Jeremiah was pushing back against lawlessness. Jesus was pushing back against legalism. Jesus was dealing with a different ditch from Jeremiah, but he used the same critique. He wasn’t against the temple. He wasn’t against the traditions. He was against the dead faith of the living. He was against the “organized hypocrisy.” That’s why, when he drove the money changers out of the temple, he quoted from our passage. “Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?” God in the flesh wasn’t against the true religion, but he remains firmly against false, true religion.
You see the extent of his opposition in our final point: check out Shiloh. Shiloh was the original established place of worship in the Promised Land. This is where the ark rested when Samuel was a child. It was destroyed because it, like the temple in Jeremiah’s day, had become a cloak for sin. The priests in charge of the place were sleeping around with the women who helped out in the worship of God. They were also taking the choice offerings for themselves. Those priests thought they had God wrapped around their finger. They even took the ark of the covenant into battle as if it were a weapon. They put their trust in the same sort of superstitions as in the people in Jeremiah’s day.
The people in Jeremiah’s day thought they were good with God because they had the stamp of divine approval in the form of the temple. Jeremiah reminded them about Shiloh to say, “that could happen here too; that will happen here too;” verse 14, “what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your fathers.”
It seems the people had a higher estimation of the temple than God did. God was willing to destroy the temple because it had become an idol to them. They trusted in it rather than in Him, and so He would destroy it. God is a jealous lover. He destroys whatever presents itself as a rival for His peoples’ affections; you don’t do anything a favor by loving it more than God.
Only God can save. The people in Jeremiah’s day thought they were safe from Babylon because they had the temple. Jeremiah reminded them of Shiloh and reminded them that these tribes in which Shiloh was placed had already gone into exile; verse 15, “I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim.” The tabernacle couldn’t save Shiloh. The temple wouldn’t save the unrepentant sinners of Judah from exile. The temple couldn’t even save itself.
God alone saves. We see that by the fact that God becomes the temple. The people wanted to trust in the temple and so God became the temple. This is why Jesus, after clearing the temple of vice, said, ‘“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” [The Jews] replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But, John explains, ‘the temple he had spoken of was his body.’ Jesus was the temple—he was the meeting place of God and humanity.
People treat him like the temple—some wrongly and some rightly. Plenty of people claim him without following him in any measurable way. Plenty of people sit through ceremonies having to do with him without ever giving a thought to obeying his commands outside of a religious building. Plenty of people claim Christ and say, ‘“we are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things.’ Other live out the meaning of this temple outside of worship. Rather than trying to use God, they become more like God. They’ve caught true, true religion.
You need to ask yourself which category you fall in. You need to ask yourself if being part of the true religion has just vaccinated you against it or whether you have, in fact, caught what Jeremiah argued for and what Jesus came to spread. Amen.