Jeremiah 7a: Stand in the Gate.

Jeremiah 7: 1-2.  The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah, you who enter these gates to worship the LORD’.” 

 With this heading, we can see that the sermons or prophecies of the previous chapters are now behind us and we move on to a new part of the story. In fact, if Chapters 2-6 are a collection of Jeremiah’s early prophecies, as they seem to be, then beginning at Chapter 7 we jump ahead a number of years (John Goldingay, The Book of Jeremiah, 2021, page 234). These two verses mirror Chapter 26: 1-2, which describes this same scene as it occurred during King Jehoiakim's reign which was from 609 to 598 BC.

 Remember that Jeremiah’s ministry as a prophet began around 627 BC. Note also that Baruch the scribe and other disciples of Jeremiah gathered Jeremiah’s prophecies and arranged them according to some order which is only partly a consecutive order. The prophecies are also arranged somewhat by theme and by genre of literature, that is by sections of poetry and sections of prose. We just left a section of poetry, sometimes wild and imaginative. Now we move into a section of prose, more descriptive and interpretative.

  What is happening in this scene? The instructions from the Lord are to stand in a gateway at the temple. Since there were concentric walls in the temple precincts, there were several gateways, each limiting the kind of people who were allowed to go further in. Everyone could enter, then only Jews at the next gate, then only men, then only priests. Presumably the Lord means for Jeremiah to stand near the entrance, where “all you people of Judah” will be able to “hear the word of the LORD.”

 As Goldingay points out, it was the priests’ function to manage this traffic and permit only approved worshippers to move further in, sort of like a religious TSA. It may be, then, that God is telling Jeremiah to function as a priest who checks identities (Goldingay, 238). By now you have studied enough of Jeremiah to suspect where this is leading.

Jeremiah 7: 3-4.  Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.”

 The priests might say, ‘You are a foreigner, stop here’. Or ‘You are an invalid, so stop here’. Or ‘You women over there, go no further’. Jeremiah is commissioned to do something different; his identity check is not based on outward appearances. The issue is neither ethnic nor gender identity, nor is it an identity assigned according to a disability or social status. What is in question here is personal ethics and social behavior. Repeat: It is not some kind of identity or disability that is the problem, it is ethics and behavior. How far have we strayed from the way God looks at people?

 We may paraphrase it as: ‘Correct your way of being and doing’, says the Lord, ‘and then I will be able to live in this place’. This is a shocking message for the people because they were secure in the assumption that they were of Jewish descent and thus heirs of all the ‘unconditional’ promises. God lived in the temple and he would not, in fact, could not move out. So, they were safe.

 The problem is that they have followed flawed logic to the conclusion that they are already accepted by God so now they can do whatever they want to do. Surely Americans would not also follow this flawed logic imagining that they belong to an exceptional nation that is free to do whatever they want to do, would they? Is there no morality in a self-proclaimed 'Christian nation'?

 No nation is exceptional, nor does any nation have a free ticket to act in an ungodly manner; not the United States and not Israel. What God said and what Scripture affirms is that God offers grace and obedience is the proper response. “The land was an unconditional gift of grace. Continuing life in the land required an obedient response to that grace. … Those conditions were obedience to the covenant law, living together as a people of justice and compassion, in every dimension of economic, social, political, judicial and religious life” (Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Jeremiah, Revised Edition, 2014, page 100). 

 This flawed conclusion also has been the bane of Christianity from the beginning. Christians believe that Jesus freely offers an unconditional invitation to repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near (that was his message). Those who accept this offer make up a community of forgiven sinners. That is all pure grace. We cannot earn it, cannot buy it, cannot fake it. It is an unconditional gift in the sense that we do not have to clean up our act beforehand or achieve a certain level of righteousness in order to receive this free gift of forgiveness and acceptance. Neither does anyone else who heeds God's call.

 The second truth is just as important. Accepting God’s grace means being forgiven AND then entering into a relationship with God. Remember that Jesus said, "Follow me'. That means that we are called to be a disciple. At that point, we begin our lifelong walk in obedience to God. In this sense, our continued relationship with God is conditional; we either walk with God or we don’t. There are Christians who are just as ignorant of this double dynamic as the people of Judah that Jeremiah was preaching to.

 John Wesley laid it out like this. Before you repent and come back to God, you are warned to repent. That is Prevenient Grace. The origin of the word is pre which means ‘before’ and venio which means ‘go’; this is grace that goes before. This is also called general grace that everyone receives, as Paul affirms, “For what can be known about God is plain…. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made” (Romans 1:19-20).

 Then when the sinner returns to God, confesses his or her sins, and accepts the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross on everyone's behalf, that is the stage of Justifying Grace. We have been made right before God because Jesus’ righteousness has been accepted in place of our own rags.

 That ushers in the third stage, that of Sanctifying Grace. Now we are disciples walking that long and narrow path of obedience toward God our Father. In the process, step by step, the Holy Spirit reveals what is good and what is bad behavior, and that builds our confidence of faith in God. John the Baptist understood this; that is why he told people coming for baptism to “bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.”

 This was always the plan. Here are some of the conditions for holy living that God has laid out for Israel and Judah.

Jeremiah 7: 5-7.  For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave to your ancestors forever and ever.

 Notice the ‘if–then’ nature of these statements. In fact, there are four ‘ifs’ followed by one ‘then’. That reminds us that continued fellowship with God in the temple (or in the church today) is conditional. What is the condition? God said the people of Judah had to amend their ways so that God would be willing to live with them and they would be free to live in the land (two meanings of ‘this place’).

 Then what does God’s statement that this is the “land that I gave to your ancestors forever and ever” mean? That means that it was God’s intent, indeed, it was God’s promise that he gave them the land to keep forever and ever. But God does not add the phrase, ‘no matter what you do’. Look and you will not find it. There are no people who are an exception to the rule.

 The land is linked to fellowship with God, trust in God, the fear of God, and obedience to God. Continued existence in the land and living the good life depends on maintaining an obedient relationship with God. A covenant is a contract. God made his promise and listed his expectations. The people of Israel failed to be obedient, loving, and just. Time ran out for them in 721 BC. 

 Now, to the people of Judah, God restates his expectations. The list is a reminder of the original agreement which God made through Moses. For example, here is Moses' warning about worshipping other gods and the consequences. 

“So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. … When you have had children and children’s children and become complacent in the land, if you act corruptly by making an idol in the form of anything, thus doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God and provoking him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to occupy; you will not live long on it but will be utterly destroyed. The LORD will scatter you among the peoples; only a few of you will be left among the nations where the LORD will lead you” (Deuteronomy 4: 1, 25-27).

All the conditions that Jeremiah lists in this sermon come directly from the Law of Moses as the conditions as laid out in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. We can summarize them as: ‘Act justly with one another. Do not oppress the vulnerable in society. Do not chase after other idols, ideals, or ideology to your own hurt. Amend your thinking and change your doing in these matters, and you will live in the land forever. If not, then not’. 

 But the people of Judah missed the part about obedience. Those who follow God are to grow to maturity as the people of God. The free pass they think that they have is not free at all. There will be a price to pay.

 I fear, following Jeremiah's warning, that people today have used the same flawed logic about what it means to be God's people. They seek revenge and overkill rather than acting justly toward one another. They oppress the alien (aka the stranger in the land), the orphan (those without a father to protect them), and the widow (those who are on their own in the legal system). They fool religious people into sanctioning the shedding of innocent blood. They follow another ideology rather than the commandments to “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. ... In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (see Leviticus 19:18 and 34; then Matthew 5:44 and 7:12 and Luke 6:27 and 6:31).