I have an important question for you as we begin our lesson today. What gives you confidence that you are right with God? What would you point to so that you know that you are in right standing with God? As you think about this, I would like for you to open your copies of God’s word to the book of Jeremiah and we are going to look at Jeremiah 7. Jeremiah has been told to go preach a sermon. In Jeremiah 7:1-2 we are told that Jeremiah is told to preach at the entryway to the temple complex to all the people who are coming to worship the Lord. Now I want you to think about this before we begin. Jeremiah is not preaching to the world. Jeremiah is not preaching to the non-worshipers in Israel. He is standing at the temple entryway, preaching to everyone who is coming into the temple complex to worship the Lord. What does God want to say to his people through his prophet, Jeremiah?
Why Do You Think You Are Safe? (Jeremiah 7:1-15)
Imagine Jeremiah standing at the door telling everyone these two things. First, you must amend the way you are living and you can stay on the land. Second, do not trust the lies that tell you to put hope in this place of worship (Jeremiah 7:3-4). Verses 5-9 reveal that the people are full of sins. They are not acting with justice and righteousness with one another. They oppress one another. They steal, murder, commit adultery, and lie. They offer sacrifices to idols. So the message is that the people need to repent. They need to reform the way they are living. They cannot keep committing these sins.
Now you would think this would be obvious to the people of God. Surely they would know that you cannot lie, steal, be sexually immoral, act unrighteously, or worship idols and be right with God! The reason they think they are safe is because they go to the temple to worship. They proclaim that since the temple of God is here, then they are safe (Jeremiah 7:10). Notice how God makes this point in verses 9-10. You go commit your sins throughout the day and then come and stand in the temple for worship. There you stand, worshiping and thanking God for the temple, only to return to your sins later. They believe that are safe because they are hiding behind their worship. All is good because we worship God. All is good because we have the temple. All is good because God is with us.
But God makes the point that your worship is not your spiritual safety. You cannot look at your worship habits and determine if you are safe with God or not. You will notice that God makes this point in two ways. First, in verse 11 he says that the people have turned the temple into a den of robbers. You go and commit your sins and then think you can hide your sins in the temple. Going to the temple does not make your sinful life acceptable. Jesus uses this image in Matthew 21:13 and applied it to the religious leaders for covering their sins by their temple actions. Second, God says to remember that Jerusalem was not the first place of worship. Initially, God set his place of worship in Shiloh, which we read about in the early chapters of 1 Samuel. But God destroyed Shiloh by the hands of the Philistines because of the people’s wicked ways, exemplified through Eli and his wicked sons (1 Samuel 4). God took away what they were putting their hope in for rescue. In fact, you might remember that the people put their hope in the ark of the covenant. They bring it out with them for battle, only to lose to the Philistines and have the ark captured. God will take away what you put your hope in. So these people are putting their hope in the temple. They think they are safe because they worship. They think that their sins are covered because they have the temple. God tells that they are trusting in lying words that are worthless.
Here is what I want us to think about with Jeremiah’s sermon. Do we think that we are safe, even though we practice sin, simply because each Sunday we go to church? Do we think we can be deceptive, speak against others, commit sexual sins, hurt others, steal, or follow our gods and be still safe because we came to a building to worship him? Worship is not spiritual safety. Our sinning is not all better because we came today for worship. God’s grace is supposed to lead us to obedience, not to sinning. We are seeing a point that we were making in our last sermon series. It matters how we live our lives. It matters to God what we do Monday through Saturday. Sunday does not cover over the other six days of the week. But these people believed they were safe in their sins because at least they had the temple. We are not safe in our sins because we go to church. Friends, we are to be a hospital for the spiritually sick. But we must come, looking to get well and be healed by our Great Physician. We do not come to stay sick.
Don’t Pray (Jeremiah 7:16-20)
Now God gives an instruction to Jeremiah that we will find shocking. God tells Jeremiah to not pray for these people. Do not pray for them. Do not offer a plea for them. Do not make a petition for them. Do not ask me to save them. God tells Jeremiah that he will not listen to those prayers. Who would ever believe that God would tell people not to pray? It doesn’t sound right. Surely God would not tell someone to not pray! But God says to not bother praying for these people. Why? How could this be? Why would God give such an instruction? Look at verses 17-20 for God’s reasoning. The people are worshiping their idols to their own harm and shame. Whole families are idolators. The children gather the wood for idol worship. The fathers kindle the fire for idol worship. The women make food for idol worship. Family time is not a godly time. Family time is sinning time. We will focus the family on worldliness. We will spend time following our hearts and our desires.
This is a point that we can easily forget. We can move ourselves to a point that we are too far gone from God. We can make so many decisions against God that we will never want to even consider coming back. The New Testament also teaches us this truth.
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. (Hebrews 10:26-27 ESV)
If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. (1 John 5:16-17 ESV)
It is hard to believe that there can be a point where there is nothing you can do spiritually for that person. But this is the danger of practicing sinning. They know the truth but they deliberately keep on sinning. They have experienced God but they are returning to their own vomit (cf. 2 Peter 2:22). They have tasted the goodness of God and no one can bring them back to repentance (cf. Hebrews 6:1-8). There is no more sacrifice and there is no more intercession when we know God and walk away from him.
Multiply Your Useless Worship (Jeremiah 7:21-29)
So God says to go ahead and keep on committing your useless worship. Keep adding your offerings and eat the meat yourselves because your worship is fake and false. Listen to what God says in verses 22-23. When did God ever say that all he wanted from you was to make sure that you kept your worship sacrifices? It would be like saying today, where did God ever say that all he is interested in is making sure you go to church every Sunday morning? He didn’t say that. What he said was, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people” (Jeremiah 7:23). Walk in obedience and it will go well with you. Rather than listening to God, the people followed their own advice and followed the stubbornness of their own evil hearts (7:24). Rather than going forward with God, they keep going backward. They do not listen. Even when God sent his prophets, the people became even more stubborn. How shocking is it for the people of God to hear the word of God only to become more stubborn in hearing it! It is like the joke that is often said about sermons. If you preach on giving, then the giving goes down. If you preach on attendance, then the attendance goes done. We have this resistance to being told that we are doing wrong, that we are being selfish, and that we need to change. But this is what leads to our spiritual demise.
You will notice that God tells Jeremiah that he needs to keep preaching to the people. But understand that the preaching is not going to do any good (7:27). They are not going to listen to you. They are not going to change. But you need to keep telling them what God has said to do. Listen to what God says for Jeremiah to tell the people in verse 28. Tell them that you did not obey the Lord and did not respond to his correction. So truth died. Truth is no longer on their lips. They are consumed in self-deception and perpetuate with their lies. Therefore God has rejected this people (7:29).
The Sin In Your Worship (Jeremiah 7:30-34)
If these things were not enough, the people wanted to sin in the name of worshiping the Lord. In verse 30 we read that the people had put idols in the temple. Can you imagine that they were worshiping their desires when they came to the temple to worship? Rather than looking for what God wanted, they were doing what they wanted to do. Not only this, they were offering their children on altars to their gods, something that God did not command or even consider. So judgment comes because they are worshipping in ways that God did not authorize. They are worshipping themselves and their own desires rather than seeking the will of God. They do not care about God. They care about their sins. They do not care to listen to what God says. They want to think they can keep on sinning because they worship.
Application
So I want ask the question again that I first asked at the beginning of the lesson. What gives you confidence that you are right with God? These people in Jeremiah 7 thought they were right with God when in fact they were so far gone from God that Jeremiah was instructed to not pray or intercede for them. Here is what I want you to think about. Are you living your life in such a way that God would say to no longer pray for you? Are you making decisions so that there is no longer is a sacrifice for sins available to you? Are you allowing yourself to move so far from God that no one can bring you back? Have you decided to return to the filth of the world rather than listening to your Creator God who loves you? Do you believe that going to church covers over the sinning you committed this last week?
How can we have confidence that we are right with God? The answer that Jeremiah gave to these people was this. You listen to what God is teaching rather than the lies and you amend your ways to conform to his will (cf. Jeremiah 7:5-7). How did these people get so far from God? They stopped listening to God and kept listening to their own counsel and their own desires (7:24,26). Friends, we should have no confidence in being in right standing with God if we are not constantly amending our ways to match God. We cannot be like the ruler who came to Jesus thinking he had nothing he needed to change. He said that he was keeping the law from his youth (cf. Matthew 19:16-30). If we think we are right and have no need to change, then we are spiritually doomed. Please ask yourself if your spouse can talk to you and you will listen and change. Can your family talk to you and you will listen and change? Can your friends talk to you and you will listen and change? Can your church family talk to you and you will listen and change? Can your spiritual leaders and shepherds talk to you and you will listen and change? Be honest. Don’t be defensive. The answers to these questions are really important.
Are you changing or holding on to your sins? Are you repenting or are you continuing to refuse to listen to what God is telling you to change? Please be open to changing your life and listening to God’s direction for your life as revealed in his word. There is nothing more terrifying than God saying that there is no reason to pray for you. Do not let that be you. Do not let your sins harden you. Amend your ways and listen to the Lord before you become so far away that you will not return.