Jeremiah 7b: Deceptive Words.

 Look back a few verses to verse 4: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD’.

 It is not clear whether this is a chant, or just an oft-repeated saying. Either way, it's like whistling in the dark while walking through a cemetery. Some people are like that at church; thinking they are safe when they are not.  

Jeremiah 7: 8-11.  Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? I, too, am watching, says the LORD. 

 Wow! Double wow! These people remind me of our current society where some insist on erecting stone monuments displaying the Ten Commandments yet they themselves, the big talkers, steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and make offerings to politicians who do the same thing. They put up the Ten Commandments and then they say, ‘We are safe!’ They are not. How can they be safe when they have made the churches and the government institutions dens of robbers? 

Jeremiah 7: 12-15.  Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, says the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors just what I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim.

 Shiloh, a name known to Americans for the Battle of Shiloh early in the Civil War. But the Biblical Shiloh was a town north of Jerusalem in the mountains of Ephraim. In the years of the Judges, before the time of King David, Shiloh had been the worship center for Israel.

While Samuel was still young, the sons of Eli the priest took the ark to the battlefield but, contrary to the theme of Indiana Jones, the ark was not a magical weapon to destroy the enemy. God will not be manipulated. The Philistines defeated Israel and captured the ark. When they returned it, the ark went to another town. Shiloh was abandoned. Samuel moved to Ramah, between Shiloh and Jerusalem, to serve the Lord there.

 The point is that the ark was removed from Shiloh, and the town was destroyed.  So, God says, ‘You think Jerusalem is great and will always be impregnable? Go look at Shiloh and see what is left in a town that was once the center of worship’.

The site was in Jeremiah’s time part of a province of the Assyrian Empire, but the town itself was a ghost town. God uses it as an example. If God removed his presence from Shiloh and destroyed the town, then God can do the same with Jerusalem. The temple of the Lord is not a safe place. 

Jeremiah 7: 16-20.  As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? says the LORD. Is it not themselves, to their own hurt? Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: My anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on humans and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.

 God speaks directly to the prophet, Jeremiah, and the message is a strange one. God is directing the prophet not to pray for his people or his nation, Judah. That is as if, one day, God told a pastor or priest not to pray for America. If you reject that pastor, you could be wrong. 

 In case Jeremiah objects, God asks him if he has not seen what is done in Jerusalem and also out in the villages. What he describes is the practice of worshipping other gods and other ideologies along with worshipping Yahweh. Several goddesses had the title of the Queen of Heaven, for example, Astarte or Ishtar. It is as if God asks why people put so much time and energy into practices that honor the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, or Halloween witches. The issue is not so much that it offends God, but rather because people are obsessed with such practices “to their own hurt.”

Jeremiah 7: 21-26.  Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward. From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day, yet they did not listen to me or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.

 What does this mean? God says that it does not matter any more. He tells the people to put their burnt offerings together and have a bar-b-que because the sacrifices certainly do not mean anything to God. Knock yourself out.

 One might ask, didn’t God himself give the rules for the ritual of making sacrifices? Read the text again. “In the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt.” That is a challenge for us to read Scripture the right way, not willy-nilly without context. One verse will never do. The first half of the book of Exodus tells the story of Israel’s escape from Egypt and journey into the wilderness. 

 During that time, God gave no instructions for making sacrifices. God did institute the Passover Meal with heavy emphasis on deliverance from Egypt. Then God acted in several ways to provide for the Israelites in the desert (bread from heaven and water from the rock). But God did not instruct them about sacrifices. 

 Finally, on arrival at Mt. Sinai, the first thing God did was to establish the reason for his acts of salvation. “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).

 That sums up the first half of the book of Exodus. In that day, God taught about the covenant relationship that he had with Israel.

After that, God issues a series of laws, including the Ten Commandments. Only then, in Chapter 25, does God lay out the plans for the types of sacrifices to be made. By that time, the sacrifices are clearly rituals that are supposed to remind the Israelites about covenant and obedience. Thus, the sin of Judah is not that they are doing the sacrifices wrong, but rather that they are not listening to God’s voice nor are they obeying God’s covenant commands.

 The pastor or priest in the pulpit has been sent to remind us weekly not to walk in our own way, but to the discipline of growing in our relationship with God. Worship means nothing unless people pay attention to God’s word and become obedient to God’s commands. It is the relationship that counts, the ritual (worship) is meant to direct our praise entirely to God and teach us how to be obedient. Thus, being in 'the church of God, the church of God, the church of God', without hearing the word of God, does not make us safe.