SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah chapter 7, starting in verse 1, the Lord of uh the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah, who enter these gates to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.
SPEAKER_00: Do not trust in these deceptive words, this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail.
SPEAKER_00: Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known?
SPEAKER_00: And then come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name and say, We are delivered, only to go on doing all these abominations?
SPEAKER_00: Has this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes?
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: I will cast you out of my sight as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Father God, this is your word.
SPEAKER_00: This is a declaration of you, both to your people Israel, during the time of Jeremiah, but also now here this morning as we are gathered in your name.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that our hearts would be softened to hear your words.
SPEAKER_00: Break the hard and stony ground of our pride.
SPEAKER_00: May your word be effective this morning in calling us to Christ and then also calling us to repent.
SPEAKER_00: May we not this morning just learn a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: May we live as a result in a life more pleasing to you.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Few years ago, there was a police who cited a woman for speeding.
SPEAKER_00: And with every speeding ticket, it's always in the hope of the police officer that it would serve as a warning that you would not continue speeding.
SPEAKER_00: As a frequent offender of multiple tickets, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: They pulled this woman over, gave her a cite.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't speed anymore, okay?
SPEAKER_00: That lies behind me.
SPEAKER_00: Um they they gave this woman a citation, hoping it would slow her down, but those hopes were in vain.
SPEAKER_00: Uh deputies with the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department, they pulled over a woman named Chantel Wilson who was driving her yellow 2018 Ford Mustang.
SPEAKER_00: She was clocked at going 92 miles per hour in a 75 zone.
SPEAKER_00: For most of you driving down the highway, that's just Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but issuing, after issuing the citation and letting after letting her go, the deputies were surprised when after everybody went to their cars, they gave her back her information and everything like that.
SPEAKER_00: The citation was issued.
SPEAKER_00: Everything's done.
SPEAKER_00: She gets in her car and she speeds off going down the highway.
SPEAKER_00: The officers jump in their cars, they're driving after her, and they clock her again, going at a speed of 142 miles per hour, almost double the legal limits.
SPEAKER_00: After engaging her in a pursuit, this woman, she initially resisted but eventually relented, and she was eventually arrested and charged with willful, reckless driving.
SPEAKER_00: And police also discovered a small amount of marijuana, which resulted in further charges.
SPEAKER_00: The moral of that story is don't speed and don't do drugs.
SPEAKER_00: But for our purposes here this morning, I want to relate it to the situation that the people of God in Jeremiah find themselves in.
SPEAKER_00: You could say they are high on their own idolatry and driving recklessly down the highway of their own destruction.
SPEAKER_00: They're intoxicated with the Kool-Aid of worshiping false gods and worshiping statues and observing pagan religions that often involve grotesque and wicked practices.
SPEAKER_00: And you would naturally think, since the people of God are worshiping idols at this time, that they've given up their worship of the one true God, of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not, they still show up to the temple and they act like true believers.
SPEAKER_00: So in our text, God sends Jeremiah to the temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar with the temple, the temple in Jerusalem was the central hub of religious life for God's people in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to worship God properly, you came to the temple to do that.
SPEAKER_00: There were a number of sacrifices and rituals that had to be performed, but they could only be performed in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: God instructs Jeremiah to go to the temple, stand in the gate of the house of the Lord, and declare a message of warning to all the people of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that this message is declared in the temple to all of Judah indicates that this was happening during a time where all of Judah might have been assembled in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: It could have been one of the number of uh feasts where the people would all pilgrimage into Jerusalem to observe the Passover or the feast of booths or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: So God sends Jeremiah to the gathering of God's people to warn Judah of their unrepentant actions and not just to warn them of their unrepentant actions, but to warn them of the judgment that will come on account of them.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to find a similar message for us this morning, especially if you consider yourself to be a religious person.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jeremiah was not sent to convert and evangelize the non-believers.
SPEAKER_00: He was not sent to the pagans.
SPEAKER_00: He was sent to the church.
SPEAKER_00: He was sent to speak to God's people, to those who have this veneer of religiosity, who practice and say and do all the right things, but something's off in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: Even for us, we're going to see that God wants to warn us of our unrepentant actions and the judgment that will come on account of them.
SPEAKER_00: So what is the warning that God is sending to his people?
SPEAKER_00: If you're a note-taking type, here's my outline for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: God gives a warning for how we act, of how we act.
SPEAKER_00: It is a warning of what we trust in, and it is a warning to remember.
SPEAKER_00: So first, God's warning of how we act.
SPEAKER_00: It's a warning of correction.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 3 with me.
SPEAKER_00: As we've previously seen, if you if you've read anything in the book of Jeremiah, the book of Jeremiah is a book of a prophet sent to take an unpopular message to a people who are unwilling to hear what he has to say.
SPEAKER_00: This whole book is filled with Jeremiah calling out the idolatry of God's people and saying that judgment is coming on account of their idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah is tasked with taking this message.
SPEAKER_00: God sends Jeremiah to tell the people of their guilt and worshiping idols and in their wicked actions.
SPEAKER_00: But God is not callous.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the warning, we have God indicting his people further because he keeps saying, I keep sending people to warn you, but you haven't listened.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah is given such a task.
SPEAKER_00: He is sent to warn his people because ultimately the desire of God is not to bring judgment, but that his people would repent.
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I were talking about this on a walk just the other day.
SPEAKER_00: About, isn't it interesting?
SPEAKER_00: God already knows what the people are going to do and where their hearts are, and yet he sends Jeremiah, not on a fool's errand, with the full uh hope that his people would repent.
SPEAKER_00: And we can't quite make sense of all of this.
SPEAKER_00: We can't explain all the intricacies of how this all works, but we do know this to be true.
SPEAKER_00: God is gracious and merciful and does not desire or delight in bringing judgment.
SPEAKER_00: He wants his people to be warned.
SPEAKER_00: He wants his people to repent.
SPEAKER_00: The warning that Jeremiah is sent to the temple to deliver begins with a conditional statement.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.
SPEAKER_00: If you correct your actions, then I will let you continue living in this land.
SPEAKER_00: And particularly, he's referring to Jerusalem, this place that the people take so much pride in, and in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: But God is reiterating the terms of his promises to them.
SPEAKER_00: He is stating that he will honor the terms of the promise that he made to them if they are willing to return to the terms that they made to God.
SPEAKER_00: We see this summarized in Deuteronomy 30.
SPEAKER_00: In Deuteronomy 30, verse 16, God says, If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, by comm uh keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the promise.
SPEAKER_00: I will be your God, I will make you prosperous, I will cause you to be fruitful and to multiply and to have this place I'm giving you.
SPEAKER_00: It will be yours if you obey me, if you are faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish.
SPEAKER_00: You will not live long in the land that you were going over to the Jordan to enter and possess.
SPEAKER_00: I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
SPEAKER_00: Here's here's what here's a key.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, choose life.
SPEAKER_00: Choose life.
SPEAKER_00: The call that God is making in Jeremiah to his people as he's recalling them to repentance is a call for them to choose life rather than death.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting in Deuteronomy 30, if you look at verse 19 where he says, Therefore choose life, what follows after that is this that you and your offspring may live, that you and your children may live.
SPEAKER_00: As a side note, it's always interesting that the actions of parents always have implications for future generations.
SPEAKER_00: The people of God did not just end up here.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't just wake up one day and decide, hey, I want to worship idols.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a fun idea.
SPEAKER_00: The people of God are in this current state after repeated, deliberate intentions by people who should know better to indulge in idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: You have children raised up in a house full of idols.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what those children are going to raise up and worship?
SPEAKER_00: Idols.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to do what mom and dad have been doing all their lives.
SPEAKER_00: And then they're going to have children, and guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Those children are going to be raised up the same.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to be raised up in a household that worships idols.
SPEAKER_00: And the cycle repeats itself.
SPEAKER_00: God in Deuteronomy 30, where he is laying out the simple terms of the covenant, he says, choose life, not just for you, but also for your children.
SPEAKER_00: And here in Jeremiah 7, God is making a callback to this covenant because God doesn't give up on his people and he doesn't give up on his promises.
SPEAKER_00: If God's people correct their ways and their actions, he will allow them to live in the land that he promised to them.
SPEAKER_00: There's more to this promise than just having a homeland.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the people of Israel were wanderers in the desert for so long, holding out to this promise that God was going to give them a land, but it was not just so that they would have a place to call home.
SPEAKER_00: This land was going to be the setting where God would come and meet with his people on a permanent basis.
SPEAKER_00: And not just that, it is through this land that God was giving them that God's people were going to be a blessing to the entire world.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that his people have chosen not to meet with God.
SPEAKER_00: God came to meet with them, they've chosen not to meet with him.
SPEAKER_00: God's relationship with his people was contingent on their obedience to him.
SPEAKER_00: If his people decided to disobey, they were effectively annulling the covenant and estranging themselves from the relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the what kind of actions did they need to amend?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of things did they need to correct?
SPEAKER_00: To bring them back into obedience, to bring them back in line with the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: We see that in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, Jeremiah says, For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly correct your actions, if you truly execute justice with one another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm.
SPEAKER_00: These are the actions that God's people are called to correct, and it's a very specific list.
SPEAKER_00: God could have said a lot more, but he also could have said a lot less.
SPEAKER_00: He focused in on these specific things.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what they needed to correct.
SPEAKER_00: First, how they treated one another.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to execute justice with one another.
SPEAKER_00: To act justly means to be free from favoritism, self-interest, bias, or deception.
SPEAKER_00: The culture of God's people at this time was very corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: The only motivation that they had was to look out for themselves, to look out for number one.
SPEAKER_00: If you couldn't benefit them in any way, they wanted nothing to do with you.
SPEAKER_00: They needed to correct how they treated one another.
SPEAKER_00: They needed to correct how they treated foreigners.
SPEAKER_00: Similar to the previous point, the people of Israel took advantage and mistreated foreigners who settled among them.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't uncommon during biblical times for people in another land to be impacted by famine or political unrest, where mom and dad would say, you know what, let's let's go ahead and pick up and pack up and move the family to uh this land over here, which is uh this seems more peaceful.
SPEAKER_00: There hasn't been a war there in like two years, so it seems pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, there's no famines there, so let's pick up and move there.
SPEAKER_00: But one of one of the expectations if you went and settled in another land is that you'd have to adopt some of their culture and customs.
SPEAKER_00: You'd have to become one with the people.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you would fit in.
SPEAKER_00: But what would happen is that as people are moving into the nation of Israel, the native population, the Israelites, would take advantage of foreigners since the foreigners didn't speak the language, they didn't have the right type of currency, and they had no job or home.
SPEAKER_00: They would typically have to purchase uh land, and what would happen is Israel, uh the corrupt Israelites would charge more than what the foreigners could afford.
SPEAKER_00: And it would put them in this situation where they would eventually sell themselves into slavery in order to purchase this land.
SPEAKER_00: Practices like that, taking advantage of people who were settling among them.
SPEAKER_00: They were to correct how they treated the fatherless, the widows, and the innocent.
SPEAKER_00: These are three categories of people who didn't have much value in the culture of God's people: the fatherless, the widows, and the innocent.
SPEAKER_00: This last group, the innocent, is a reference in all likelihood to young children and infants.
SPEAKER_00: You see, one of the practices of idolatry that they were steeped in was the practice of child sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: They worshiped gods such as Molech, and there were some practices with Baal where you would take a child and you would essentially murder this child in the hopes that this false God would offer you more fertility, more blessing.
SPEAKER_00: God's people were guilty of shedding innocent blood.
SPEAKER_00: The other two groups were vulnerable because men were the primary means of protection and financial security in ancient times.
SPEAKER_00: If your husband or father died, you had no way of being protected from evil people looking to take advantage of you, and you had no way of financially providing for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You were on the fringes of society.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, what they worship.
SPEAKER_00: They were worshiping statues and idols, false gods crafted from the imagination of men.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's interesting that God adds this phrase.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just say, stop worshiping false gods.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Stop worshiping false gods to your own harm.
SPEAKER_00: This informs us that idolatry is not a harmless practice.
SPEAKER_00: Simply choosing to worship something else is not a harmless practice.
SPEAKER_00: According to the Apostle Paul, idols are the personification of demons.
SPEAKER_00: Demons are not interested in your health and well-being.
SPEAKER_00: Demons have no interest in humanity flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: Demons would love to see humanity destroy itself, which is why idolatry often involves self-inflicted pain, abortion of children, adultery with prostitutes, and so on.
SPEAKER_00: Worshiping what is false ultimately destroys and tears away at our humanity, whereas worshiping what is true, the God of Scripture, actually restores our humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we're made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: You'll also notice that the areas that God calls them to repent of has to do with who they worship, but notice that's only one area of what he calls them to correct.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the material provided here and what they needed to correct has to do with their interaction with other people.
SPEAKER_00: That's because you cannot truly worship God while also treating people like garbage.
SPEAKER_00: Worship of God is not just showing up to a religious place and offering a sacrifice and saying the right things, it is also in how you treat your neighbor, foreigners, and those who are the most vulnerable in society and have the least to offer you in return.
SPEAKER_00: True worship is not just loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: It is also loving your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Nine months after SEAL team six took out the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.
SPEAKER_00: I said that on Wednesday.
SPEAKER_00: And I asked the students, I was like, you guys remember that?
SPEAKER_00: Blank stairs.
SPEAKER_00: We're all getting old.
SPEAKER_00: We're getting old.
SPEAKER_00: Nine months after SEAL Team 6 took out Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man.
SPEAKER_00: They completed another dramatic and secret mission rescuing Jessica Buchanan, who was an American aid worker, who was captured by Somali pirates.
SPEAKER_00: And in response to her situation, two dozen SEALs parachuted into Somalia.
SPEAKER_00: They killed all nine heavily armed kidnappers with precision and liberated not just Buchanan, but also another aid worker.
SPEAKER_00: All without any American casualties.
SPEAKER_00: It's very impressive.
SPEAKER_00: The heroic acts in the final moments of this remarkable rescue revealed something of the culture and character of the Navy SEALs.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Jessica Buchanan wrote of them.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, this group of men who have risked their lives for me already asked me to lie down on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Because they were concerned there might be more terrorists out there.
SPEAKER_00: So they made a circle around me, and then one by one they began to lie down on top of me in that circle in order to protect her.
SPEAKER_00: And they lied like that until the helicopters came in.
SPEAKER_00: To the world, it might have seemed odd or extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: But to the Navy SEALs, it was another day's work.
SPEAKER_00: Because that is what they were taught.
SPEAKER_00: That is what they had trained themselves in.
SPEAKER_00: That is who they were laying down their lives, willing to sacrifice themselves for another.
SPEAKER_00: God's people compartmentalized their faith so much that their professed beliefs in God had no bearing on their actions.
SPEAKER_00: They were fully convinced that belief in God was sufficient and that they could live however they want and treat people however they want.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the Bible paints a much different picture of what true faith looks like.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 3.15 says, Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
SPEAKER_00: Hatred for your brother, according to the disciple whom Jesus loved, hatred for your brother is the equivalent of murder.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot make a claim to eternal life in Jesus Christ while also being characterized as a hateful person.
SPEAKER_00: And you might say, Pastor Jeremy, I am not a hateful person.
SPEAKER_00: I love everybody.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a very loving person.
SPEAKER_00: I always smile, I always wave, say good morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very friendly.
SPEAKER_00: I think our culture is actually dealing with the worst form of hatred at all, and that is apathy.
SPEAKER_00: Hatred, at least, is the emotional display that you care deeply about something, even if it's not for me.
SPEAKER_00: Apathy, on the other hand, says I don't care at all.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less about you.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less about what happens in your family.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less about how you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less about your employment situation or your grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less if you are in financial difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less if I even say hi.
SPEAKER_00: I could care less about getting to know you because, frankly, that's a little too, it's going to take up too much of my time.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, Pastor Jason a few weeks ago was going through Matthew 24, talking about the last days, the time of tribulation, and he says, uh Jesus says that because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see in the culture now is the multiplication of lawlessness.
SPEAKER_00: It's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We entertain ourselves with it.
SPEAKER_00: We have TikTok streaming incessantly into our kids' phones of people going and doing uh horrific things to innocent people, and we consider it forms of entertainment.
SPEAKER_00: We've completely disconnected ourselves from communities like the church.
SPEAKER_00: Lawlessness is just multiplying and multiplying and multiplying, and because of that, people don't have love for anybody.
SPEAKER_00: God's people are known for their love.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle John would go on to say in his first letter, beloved, let us love one another, for God is from love, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who does not love does not know God because, as Nick told us this morning, God is love.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 5, 44, from Jesus I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so now love is expanding beyond just the people we like and the people in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's going to even people who hate you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus famously gave the parable of the Good Samaritan to exemplify the principle that loving your neighbor is not just loving people who are like you or even believe similarly to you or live in the same area as you or have the same interests as you.
SPEAKER_00: Your neighbor can encompass anyone at any time, and you, as God's people, have an obligation to love them.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it is the nature of the God you worship.
SPEAKER_00: It is the nature of the God you love that you claim to follow.
SPEAKER_00: God's people have no love for their neighbor, revealing that they have no love for God.
SPEAKER_00: God's warning here is a warning of repentance, and he calls people to correct how they treat others.
SPEAKER_00: Is this a call of correction in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Let's do a quick inventory.
SPEAKER_00: How do you treat your parents?
SPEAKER_00: How do you treat your siblings?
SPEAKER_00: How do you treat your boss?
SPEAKER_00: You talk poorly about him behind his back?
SPEAKER_00: The other co-workers?
SPEAKER_00: How do you treat the McDonald's cashier who messed up your order?
SPEAKER_00: You treat them with disdain because they're not doing their job?
SPEAKER_00: You people should know.
SPEAKER_00: How do you treat people with different political views?
SPEAKER_00: We live in this time where, like, if you don't accept a certain view, then you must hate me.
SPEAKER_00: God's people are like, no, I I I reject your views, but I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Have you bought into that?
SPEAKER_00: How do you treat people who look different, talk different, act different, and think different than you do?
SPEAKER_00: I think right now uh we have the issue of the southern border in our minds a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not intending to make a statement on the border situation, but right now we have millions of people pouring into our nation.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when those people, those image bearers, end up in this church?
SPEAKER_00: Because you disagree with policies and what's happening down there, do you then treat them with disdain?
SPEAKER_00: The genuineness of our worship is evidenced not just in showing up for church, but in how we treat others.
SPEAKER_00: God wants to warn us that if we want to receive the promise of eternal life, we need to examine our posture, demeanor, and attitude towards others.
SPEAKER_00: How we treat others is the evidence of our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Evidence, not the means.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot love people and get yourself into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You love people because you are going to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You're not a Christian by loving others, but if you are a Christian, you will be loving towards others.
SPEAKER_00: God wants to warn his people about correcting their actions towards others, but he also wants to warn them about false assurances of what they trust in.
SPEAKER_00: The two go hand in hand, and I've kind of alluded to it already as I've talked through how they're acting, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're treating people like garbage, but they're showing up for worship.
SPEAKER_00: And in this, God wants to warn them about what they are trusting in.
SPEAKER_00: That's our second point this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Part of correcting their actions is correcting their false sense of security and what they're trusting in.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4 says, Do not trust in these deceptive words.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, it's it's translated as these lying words.
SPEAKER_00: These are lying words.
SPEAKER_00: They bear no truth in them whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Do not trust in these deceptive words.
SPEAKER_00: This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, in the time of Jeremiah, God's people had adopted this practice of chanting this form of reassurance that nothing bad will happen to them so long as they come to the temple and worship.
SPEAKER_00: If you say it enough times, it must be true, right?
SPEAKER_00: They have nothing to worry about if this is a protected place watched over by God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, they can continue to live however they want and still show up to worship.
SPEAKER_00: God won't let anything bad happen to them, since this is where the temple of the Lord is, and they're doing their religious duty.
SPEAKER_00: These words are, as I said, according to God, deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: They are deceitful in that God's wrath and anger towards their actions towards other people is not going to be withheld simply because they show up.
SPEAKER_00: If this is God's house, he can do with it as he pleases.
SPEAKER_00: And if he wants to destroy it because his people are making a mockery out of it, then he has every right and authority to do so.
SPEAKER_00: They are convincing themselves of a lie by simply repeating it over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And despite God's call for them to stop believing in these deceitful words, to repent, he points to the fact that they just can't help themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, you keep trusting in these deceitful words.
SPEAKER_00: You trust in these deceitful words to no avail.
SPEAKER_00: That's not just an empty accusation by God.
SPEAKER_00: He points back to their actions as evidence of the fact that they keep trusting in these deceitful words.
SPEAKER_00: He presents this as a question: Will you steal?
SPEAKER_00: Will you murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal and go after other gods that you have not known?
SPEAKER_00: And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered?
SPEAKER_00: Only to go on and go about doing all these abominations?
SPEAKER_00: God points back to the actions of his people as evidence of what they ultimately trust in.
SPEAKER_00: They live in sin and they're not bothered by it one bit.
SPEAKER_00: They show up to the temple and they think they're good.
SPEAKER_00: They're delivered from judgment.
SPEAKER_00: God's gonna rescue them.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying the right things, doing the right things, and so on.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, they can go on living however they want.
SPEAKER_00: Their faith is not in the God of Scripture, their faith is in a God that they've made up in their heads and have confused for the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And what's more is that their worship indicted God as morally corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: If they invoked the temple of God as a safe haven for them, and yet they live in constant disobedience to him, they are turning his house into a den of robbers.
SPEAKER_00: The temple which bears God's name implicates God in sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point God is trying to get at there.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Has this house which bears my name become a den of robbers?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I too have seen it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration.
SPEAKER_00: One commentary noted that bandits often took refuge in the caves of the in the Judean hills for protection until their pursuers gave up searching for them.
SPEAKER_00: They would then emerge to commit other crimes.
SPEAKER_00: So they they'd uh do a quick snatch and grab and then go hide in the hills until the heat uh died down.
SPEAKER_00: The temple had become that kind of place.
SPEAKER_00: It had become the refuge for the people to perform the rituals they believed in, a safe place, a sanctuary, and it they believed that it freed them to continue their wicked practices.
SPEAKER_00: The people have become nothing more than wicked robbers who found temporary refuge in God's temple until they decide to wander out to satisfy their own sinful passions.
SPEAKER_00: Their deceptive words convince them of what wasn't true.
SPEAKER_00: And rather than turning back to God and repenting, they ended up heading for disaster.
SPEAKER_00: Because what is false will be proven when it is tested.
SPEAKER_00: What is false will be proven when it's tested.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a story in the Associated Press about a New Zealander.
SPEAKER_00: I just gotta say, when when I go trying to find illustrations, there's a lot of stuff happening in New Zealand.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for those people.
SPEAKER_00: I I get all these weird stories about people in New Zealand.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what's happening down there.
SPEAKER_00: But this this guy, this New Zealander named Ivan Seginen, he didn't like wearing his seatbelt.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of you can maybe uh empathize with him.
SPEAKER_00: The police ticketed him over 32 times in the course of five years for failing to buckle up.
SPEAKER_00: He's obviously not married.
SPEAKER_00: Even though this was costing him big money, this man refused to buckle up.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, instead of obeying the law, the man decided to rely on a form of deception.
SPEAKER_00: He made himself a fake seatbelt.
SPEAKER_00: It would drape over his shoulder and make it appear that he was wearing his seatbelt when he actually wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: And this trick worked for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't get pulled over by the police, completely fooled them.
SPEAKER_00: But then he had a head-on collision.
SPEAKER_00: He was thrown forward into the steering wheel and killed.
SPEAKER_00: When truly tested, what is fake will fail you.
SPEAKER_00: God's people were trusting in fake religion.
SPEAKER_00: And it was on a collision course to fail them.
SPEAKER_00: We can get trapped into the same false sense of security as they did.
SPEAKER_00: We feel secure in our faith because we we show up to church on Sundays, we volunteer in the children's ministry and in the nursery, we come to Bible studies.
SPEAKER_00: We even have big, thick Bibles with study notes in them.
SPEAKER_00: You prayed a prayer one day, you walked an aisle, whatever it is, you were baptized as an infant into the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, you're on the end, right?
SPEAKER_00: You do all the right things.
SPEAKER_00: You say the right things, you show up to the right places.
SPEAKER_00: So you're secure.
SPEAKER_00: But you're basing your security on your actions, not in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, our lives often don't reflect anything remotely resembling the Savior who we claim saved us.
SPEAKER_00: James 1.22 tells us that we are to be doers of the word, not only hearers, because only being hearers deceives us.
SPEAKER_00: We deceive ourselves if we think we can simply just hear the word of God and not do it.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on to say in James 2, 14, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works?
SPEAKER_00: If your faith is not actively being lived out in your life, can such a faith save you?
SPEAKER_00: Is the question that James poses.
SPEAKER_00: It's a rhetorical question to which the resounding answer that he goes on to elaborate on is no.
SPEAKER_00: It cannot save you.
SPEAKER_00: Simply believing the right things and doing the right things once a week does not save you.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, your salvation is evidenced, not just one day a week, not even just twice a week, but every single day.
SPEAKER_00: The applicational question here demands that we ask this question.
SPEAKER_00: Are you trusting in a false form of faith?
SPEAKER_00: That's hard for us to wrestle with because we believe in the security of the believer, right?
SPEAKER_00: Once God saves you, you're saved.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing Jesus says that can take you out of his hand.
SPEAKER_00: To that we say yes and amen.
SPEAKER_00: Yet at the same time, some of us are not securely in the shepherd's hand because we have deceived ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We simply think going through the motions is what Jesus wants.
SPEAKER_00: Well, all the all the while living for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus tells us that many will tell uh many will claim on that day when they stand before him, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?
SPEAKER_00: Did we not cast out demons in your name?
SPEAKER_00: Did we not do all these mighty works in your name?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus will look at them and say, I never knew you.
SPEAKER_00: You know why?
SPEAKER_00: Because of how they conducted their lives, particularly towards other people.
SPEAKER_00: Are you trusting in a false form of faith?
SPEAKER_00: Is your faith evidenced in your repentance and love towards others?
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah warns the people to change their actions.
SPEAKER_00: He warns them to be careful of what they trust in.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be deceived by these lying words as if you're safe.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of the warning is so that they turn back from their ways because something awful is coming.
SPEAKER_00: They are speeding down the highway of God's judgment with their false form of religion, with their false sense of security, and it's going to end in disaster for them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why God tells Jeremiah to warn them to remember.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: God says, Go now to my place that was in Shiloh where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.
SPEAKER_00: In order to understand this, we gotta get some context, right?
SPEAKER_00: What is Shiloh what was he referring to?
SPEAKER_00: What is God referring to there?
SPEAKER_00: Um God issues them a command to return to my place that was in Shiloh, so for the purpose of seeing what he did to it because of the evil of his people.
SPEAKER_00: So if we go back, if we rewind the clock a couple hundred years, back to the time of the judges, after Israel had conquered and settled in the promised land, the city of Shiloh became the permanent home of the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle was a large tent that functioned much in the same way as the temple.
SPEAKER_00: It was a proto temple.
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle was where sacrifices were made and people came to worship, and God would commune with his people, typically through a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Samuel 4, Again, this is the time of the judges, and the Bible says that during this time everybody did what was right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of moral decay during this time.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Samuel 4, Israel finds themselves in a struggle against their arch nemesis, the Philistines, holding to some of the false assurances that Jeremiah's people were.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites go out to battle against the Philistines, believing that God is with them.
SPEAKER_00: And in the first round of fighting, the Philistines defeat Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And confused about why they lost, the Israelites send men to Shiloh to grab the Ark of the Covenant and bring it back to the army.
SPEAKER_00: The idea is that this special golden box that contains the law of the testimony, the covenant, right?
SPEAKER_00: That has the Ten Commandments in it, that has all the signs and symbols of God's loving faithfulness in it, right?
SPEAKER_00: If we bring this special golden box with us, then certainly God has to come with us, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Ark of the Covenant was a sacred box.
SPEAKER_00: It was covered in gold, designed with heavenly imagery.
SPEAKER_00: The contents contained things like the Ten Commandments, and it was so sacred that it served at times as the throne of sorts for God when he interacted with his people.
SPEAKER_00: It's why it was called the mercy seat.
SPEAKER_00: It's where God would mercifully meet with his people.
SPEAKER_00: The men of Israel get the idea that, hey, we lost.
SPEAKER_00: What if we grab the ark and bring it with us into battle?
SPEAKER_00: If we bring the ark into battle with us, then God certainly has to come with us too.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a rabbit's foot, lucky rabbit's foot.
SPEAKER_00: And in doing this, they reduce the sacredness of the tabernacle and the ark to nothing more than good luck charms.
SPEAKER_00: And they are falsely learned into thinking that God can be manipulated by using symbols of his promises for their own personal gain.
SPEAKER_00: God is not mocked, he is not deceived, and he cannot be manipulated, and he will not tolerate such an arrogant approach towards his holiness.
SPEAKER_00: So God allowed the Israelites to be defeated again by the Philistines, but this time they are humiliated in the second round with their special box.
SPEAKER_00: After the defeat, they lost more than seven times more than their first loss.
SPEAKER_00: 30,000 men fell.
SPEAKER_00: After the defeat, the Philistines capture the Ark of God, and guess what the Philistines do after that?
SPEAKER_00: They march on Shiloh and they reduce it to rubble.
SPEAKER_00: They destroy the tent, the tabernacle, leaving no more place for the people to worship.
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward back to Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day.
SPEAKER_00: God's people still believe that God can be manipulated and that they can hide their wicked actions behind sacred objects.
SPEAKER_00: God says otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Now, because you have done all these things in verse 13, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently and you did not listen, and when I called you and you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name and which you trust to the place that I gave to you and your fathers as I did to Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: So what happened at Shiloh, it's coming here.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have not listened to anything I've told you.
SPEAKER_00: God's not suddenly flying off a handle towards them.
SPEAKER_00: He has repeatedly spoken to them, he has repeatedly warned them, and they have repeatedly ignored.
SPEAKER_00: Because they refused to listen and change their ways.
SPEAKER_00: The fate of the temple is going to be met with the fate of Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: Goes on to say in verse 15 that he will banish them from his presence.
SPEAKER_00: And that's effectively what happened, just kind of in a reverse way.
SPEAKER_00: And in Jeremiah's day, what's going to happen is God's going to allow nations to come in and deport them to other lands, essentially banishing them from God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: Back in 1 Samuel, God banishes his people from his presence by removing a place of worship.
SPEAKER_00: God was going to remove his people from his presence.
SPEAKER_00: What was the purpose of warning them to remember then?
SPEAKER_00: If judgment is coming, why is God warning them?
SPEAKER_00: Same reason he's been warning them this whole time.
SPEAKER_00: Same reason God's warning us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: God's desire is not to condemn you in your actions.
SPEAKER_00: God's desire is that you would repent.
SPEAKER_00: Shiloh was supposed to serve as a memorial that also issued a warning, and that's how memorials are supposed to operate.
SPEAKER_00: They're not just to commemorate those who are lost in the tragedy, they are also meant to commemorate the tragedy and to warn, serve as a warning against the ideas and philosophies that result in those tragedies.
SPEAKER_00: If you take, for example, the Holocaust uh memorial in Germany, it's a massive landmark.
SPEAKER_00: It's over 200,000 square feet, uh, covered with 2,711 slabs of concrete.
SPEAKER_00: The intention is to memorialize the over 3 million Jews who lost their lives during the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s.
SPEAKER_00: But the landmark is not only intended to memorialize the past, it is also to warn about the future.
SPEAKER_00: If we forget what happens when people dehumanize other people, we risk committing the same evil as the Nazis in Germany.
SPEAKER_00: This memorial is meant to help us remember the consequences of ideas and beliefs.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what God wants for his people.
SPEAKER_00: He wants his people to go to Shiloh, go and walk that ground where judgment came through.
SPEAKER_00: Go walk the ground, stand where the tabernacle was and think about what happened and why it's no longer there.
SPEAKER_00: He wants them to remember, and as they remember, they will be led to repent.
SPEAKER_00: You and I have the same call as well.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we see God's judgment in the Bible, it's meant to serve as a reminder and a memorial that God is holy and just and that he will punish sin regardless of how religious we think we are.
SPEAKER_00: God wants us to return this morning to Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to see the consequences of treating him like a religious gimmick.
SPEAKER_00: This morning, God wants us to return to Jerusalem, where judgment is coming, and we read about judgment that came and see the consequences of idolatry and false religion.
SPEAKER_00: But God ultimately wants us to return to Calvary to see the consequences of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: It is at Calvary where the Son of God, completely perfect, bled and died to pay the penalty for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: All of God's anger and wrath towards our religious hypocrisy was placed squarely on the shoulders of Jesus Christ, not so we could try harder, not so we could do better, not so you can continue living a religious lie, but so that you can turn from your sin to Christ out of your love for God.
SPEAKER_00: I would say this morning, your first step towards repentance is again not trying harder, but to look to the cross, to remember.
SPEAKER_00: First step toward repentance is to remember the cross of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God wanted to warn his people.
SPEAKER_00: They were unapologetic, unrepentant, and unprepared for what was coming their way.
SPEAKER_00: And God sent Jeremiah to warn them that they needed to correct their ways, stop trusting in false forms of religion and to remember God's judgment on sin.
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, they decided to trust in their deceitful words and ignore the warnings of God.
SPEAKER_00: They chose to ignore him completely and continued living life how they wanted to do however they wanted to.
SPEAKER_00: And it ended badly for them.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many of us are under the same impression if I haven't made that point abundantly clear already.
SPEAKER_00: If this is your attitude.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is coming your way because you have chosen to cling to your sin rather than to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Today God is calling on you to stop trusting in the deceitfulness of your religious practices and to truly, fully, confidently trust in Him and be changed by Him.
SPEAKER_00: For those who desire to return to Calvary, to think upon what Christ has done for you, who are willing to turn from their false religion and from their sin, Christ stands ready and willing to forgive you fully and completely.
SPEAKER_00: For those here who have genuine faith in Christ, your challenge today is to guard yourself from idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know if we're falling into idolatry?
SPEAKER_00: How you treat people around you is a good way to determine that.
SPEAKER_00: But again, if you find yourself falling short, the answer is not to do better.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, we are called back to remember, back to the foot of the cross, where we see the Savior's love poured out for you and I, motivating us to others.
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray for with me?
SPEAKER_00: Father God, it is my prayer this morning.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are treating church as a hobby, who treat faith in Christ as nothing more than therapy, a way of of just dealing with trials that come our way.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are entrenched in this idea that if they show up, then they can live however they want the rest of the week.
SPEAKER_00: My prayer, Lord, is that we would all look back to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Behold Jesus on the cross to think upon his sacrifice and your judgment on him on account of us.
SPEAKER_00: May we remember what Christ has done so that we would be motivated to turn from our sin, to flee idolatry, and to love you wholly and completely.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.