Jeremiah chapters 7-10 records the third sermon of Jeremiah. This particular sermon is one that is very heavy and convicting. This sermon was so bold that it nearly got Jeremiah killed. “In this courageous sermon, the prophet exposed the nation’s false worship (Jer. 7:1–8:3), their false prophets (8:4–22), their false confidence in the covenant they were disobeying (9:1–26), and the false gods they were worshiping (10:1–25).”[1]
In 7:1 we read, “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying…”[2] The message that Jeremiah preached, though unpopular, came directly from the Lord. Jeremiah was God’s called man to deliver a message to the people of Judah.
There is a parallel here between Jeremiah and the office of a Pastor that cannot be ignored. A Pastor is called of God to serve with many different hats. However, his primary responsibility is the preaching of God’s Word. The Pastor is God’s mouth-piece to the people. When a Pastor stands in the pulpit to preach, he is to proclaim the Word that God gives him. Therefore, it is important that congregants have a respect for God’s man and listen and obey the Word that is preached. Too often, we tend to critique the Pastor’s sermon. Rather than listening and obeying, we compare the Pastor with other preachers or question his delivery or even the chosen text or topic. It is important to “test the spirits” to see if they are of God. The measure of that testing is the Bible. As long as the Pastor is preaching the Bible and everything he says can be confirmed by the scriptures, we have a responsibility to accept the message as coming from the Lord and we are to respond in obedience. It is not our role to ‘grade’ the Pastor on his preaching. It is our role to accept that the message is coming directly from the Lord, through God’s mouthpiece, the Pastor. Jeremiah was given a message from the Lord. Now, he must preach that message even though the content of the message would invite tremendous criticism and persecution. So it is with the Pastor. He must be obedient to preach what God gives him, no matter how it is received.
Jeremiah is instructed to go and preach this message from the Lord at the gate of the temple. He probably preached the sermon at a time when a large crowd was gathering at the temple. “It may have been a gate that connected the outer and inner courts through which the worshipers would enter the sacred precincts. It was undoubtedly a place where great throngs of worshipers congregated.”[3] The sermon Jeremiah was tasked to preach was directed toward temple goers. He was preaching to church people! And what a sermon he preached!
Your worship is useless. The primary reason the people would go to the temple was to worship God. However, Jeremiah made it abundantly clear that their worship had absolutely no meaning. It was useless. Notice what Jeremiah says in verses 1-15: “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord!’ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Do not trust in these lying words, saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.’ “For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor,if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or walk after other gods to your hurt, then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.“Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations’? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” says the Lord. “But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. And now, because you have done all these works,” says the Lord, “and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you, but you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to this place which I gave to you and your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren—the whole posterity of Ephraim.”[4]Jeremiah comes out swinging. There was no cute introduction or attention grabber, he just started preaching! He tells the people that their worship is in vain. The people declared that they were faithful temple goers. However, they went for the wrong reason. They went to the temple so they could feel good about themselves. False teachers gave them the idea that they could live any way they desire as long as they go to the temple regularly and bring their sacrifices. Jeremiah declares that they have made the temple a ‘den of thieves.’ This is the same statement that Jesus made when He cleansed the temple as recoded in Matthew 21:13. It is known that a ‘den of thieves’ is a place where criminals would go to hide after they committed a crime. The people had the false idea that they could live in sin throughout the week and as long as they went to the temple, their sins would be overlooked. Many people today share the same idea. They live like the world and indulge in sinful behavior, then come to church on Sunday, thinking that doing so appeases God so that He would overlook their sin. Warren Wiersbe said, “Any theology that minimizes God’s holiness and tolerates people’s deliberate sinfulness is a false theology.”[5] It is a sad reality that there is often very little difference between those who call themselves Christians and those who are not. Jeremiah told the people that they were wasting their time coming to the temple. Their worship was not getting past the ceiling. Their sin hindered their worship. As wonderful as the worship services in church may be, when there is unconfessed sin in our lives, our worship gets nowhere. I for one, would love to experience worship every Sunday that touches Heaven. I pray that my praise does not fall on deaf ears. I pray that my praise reaches Heaven and is acceptable and pleasing to the ears of God. The only way our worship will be acceptable to God is when we approach Him with a pure heart. This why Jesus said that if we come to the altar and realize we have a broken relationship, we should leave our gift at the altar and go and make things right before we come to worship. It is only when our vertical relationship with God is right and our horizontal relationship with others is right, that our worship will ever be acceptable to God. We cannot worship Him with dirty hands and an impure heart. We must be right with Him before we can truly worship Him.
Jeremiah declares that unless they repent, God would do to them like He did with Shiloh. The Bible Knowledge Commentary says, “If Judah did not change her ways God would thrust her from His presence just as He had done with the Northern Kingdom (Ephraim) in 722 b.c.”[6] How many churches there must be in America today that is void of God’s presence! We may have our well-planned worship services and trusted programs, but is there any life? The one thing the church needs now more than ever is a mighty move of God. We need His presence. It is my prayer often for the church that I pastor, that a lost person could not come within a mile of the church without falling to their knees in repentance. Oh, that the glory of God would overshadow us. That His presence would be real amongst us. That everything that is done, is done by His power. I pray that God would do something that is beyond us. I pray that He would do something that only He can do. However, if there is continual unconfessed sin in our lives, He will remove Himself from us. His presence will be gone and He is favor removed.
Your prayers don’t work. Jeremiah goes on to tell the people that they can pray all they want to, but it will not get them anywhere. Because of their sin, their prayers will simply not work. Look at what it says in verses 16-20. “Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to Me; for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger. Do they provoke Me to anger?” says the Lord. “Do they not provoke themselves, to the shame of their own faces?” Therefore, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place—on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched.”[7] Can you imagine God shutting His ears to our prayers? That is exactly what happens when we live in continual unconfessed sin. Our prayers are hindered by our sin. We may often wonder why it seems that God does not answer our prayers. Could it be that there are sins, that we have yet to repent of? Instead of answered prayer, we incur the wrath of God. My friend, sin is no laughing matter. We will never experience God’s best for us until we repent of our sin. Our prayers will never avail to much unless we repent.
Sacrifices are not accepted. Just as we were hoping the message was coming to a close, Jeremiah hits us hard again. He tells the people of Judah that not only is the worship useless and their prayers do not work, but also, their sacrifices are not accepted. Notice what Jeremiah says in verses 21-26. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat. For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have even sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them. Yet they did not obey Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.”[8] This may have been the one point that brought the strongest conviction to the people of Judah. Making sacrifices was something they were used to. It was part of their routine. It was their tradition. However, Jeremiah says that their sacrifices are unacceptable to the Lord. Imagine, the one thing you have to give to the Lord, and He refuses. There are a lot of things that we may do for the Lord. We volunteer and serve faithfully with various ministries at church. We may teach a class. We may sing in the choir. We may serve on a church committee. We may go on a mission trip. All of these things are wonderful and good, however, these things in and of themselves is not what God desires. He is not necessarily concerned with what we do. Rather, He is concerned with who we are. He wants us. When He has us, it results in acts of service motivated by our love for Him. However, God is not pleased by our empty religious acts. He wants our hearts. If you want the work you do to be acceptable to God, you must first make sure you belong to Him. What God desires is our obedience. He does not want us to be conformed to religious practices. He wants our obedience. The people of Judah fell very short on this point. They were good at making sacrifices. They made many sacrifices. But, they still would not repent of their sin. They practiced religion for Him, but would not engage in a relationship with Him. Therefore, their sacrifices were not acceptable to the Lord.
Correction is ignored. In verses 27-8:3 we find that despite Jeremiah’s bold sermon and the call to repentance, the people ignored any correction. “Therefore you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not obey you. You shall also call to them, but they will not answer you. “So you shall say to them, ‘This is a nation that does not obey the voice of the Lord their God nor receive correction. Truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth. Cut off your hair and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on the desolate heights; for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’ For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight,” says the Lord. “They have set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to pollute it. And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart. “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when it will no more be called Tophet, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Tophet until there is no room. The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. And no one will frighten them away. Then I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land shall be desolate. “At that time,” says the Lord, “they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves. They shall spread them before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served and after which they have walked, which they have sought and which they have worshiped. They shall not be gathered nor buried; they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth. Then death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of those who remain of this evil family, who remain in all the places where I have driven them,” says the Lord of hosts.”[9] The people of Judah committed the most grievous of sins. They desecrated the house of God. They came to the temple to worship God, but also brought their idols. They literally placed idols of other gods in the temple. They ignored the correction of the Lord. They refused to repent of their idol worship and they basically slapped God in the face by bringing idols into the temple. It really does not get any worse than this. However, before we make quick judgement on the people of Judah, we should examine our own lives. How often have we brought our idols into the house of God? It may not be idols like the people of Judah have, but we have our idols nevertheless. Think about it. We bring with us into the house of God our selfishness, personal preferences, and man-made traditions. We even elevate physical items such as specific musical instruments or a piece of furniture as sacred. In a sense, when we do such things, we are no different than the people of Judah. Since they ignore the correction of the Lord and they turn a deaf ear to Jeremiah’s sermon, they will reap what they have sown. Just as they have desecrated the temple, their enemies will desecrate their graves and steal the buried valuables. Such suffering that comes upon the people of Judah is all of their own making. It is never a good thing to ignore the discipline of the Lord. As Christians, when the Holy Spirit convicts us and the Lord allows something in our lives to get our attention, it is best that we respond. Refusing the correction of the Lord will only lead to more turmoil.
The people of Judah engaged in false worship. It was not sincere. They held on to their idols and refused to repent. As a result, God’s hand of favor and protection was removed and the people of Judah faced the threat of the enemy. When we engage in false worship, we too will miss God’s favor. Without God’s hand of protection, the door is open for Satan to attack in various ways. To avoid such a plight, we must repent of our sin worship the Lord with a pure heart.
[1] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). Be Decisive (p. 42). Victor Books.
[2] The New King James Version (Je 7:1). (1982). Thomas Nelson.
[3] Huey, F. B. (1993). Jeremiah, Lamentations (Vol. 16, p. 105). Broadman & Holman Publishers.
[4] The New King James Version (Je 7:1–15). (1982). Thomas Nelson.
[5] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). Be Decisive (p. 43). Victor Books.
[6] Dyer, C. H. (1985). Jeremiah. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 1140). Victor Books.
[7] The New King James Version (Je 7:16–20). (1982). Thomas Nelson.
[8] The New King James Version (Je 7:21–26). (1982). Thomas Nelson.
[9] The New King James Version (Je 7:27–8:3). (1982). Thomas Nelson.
Pastor Chris Noland 