Jeremiah 7:9-11 “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.
This passage is anticipating Christ’s reaction in the New Testament when He cleansed the temple. And God is saying centuries before Jesus, that the people have already defiled the temple. They are going through the rituals on the Sabbath Day, and all of the machinations of religion, but their lives are pagan during the rest of the week. They are religious, but not faithful. Their religion is phony. That is what Jeremiah is talking about here. God says, “I know what you people are doing. You have taken My house which is called by My name and turned into a place that mocks what its about.” Now, we really come to the hard part of what God is going to do about it.
Jeremiah 7:12-15 “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.
Jeremiah is telling the people of God that they feel secure because they have the temple there. Well, God says, “Go to Shiloh and look at it, and that is what Jerusalem is going to look like.” Shiloh was one of the earliest places of worship of God in Israel. It had been the central sanctuary where people came to offer their sacrifices and give worship before their Creator God, until Jerusalem became the capital city under King David, becoming the new central sanctuary where the temple was built. At this point in history, Shiloh is rubble. The city had been utterly devastated and destroyed. Jeremiah is saying, “you think that your confidence is in this building and in the religious traditions and rituals here? Go to Shiloh.” God is saying, “I destroyed it because of the wickedness of the people of Israel, and I will it to Jerusalem.”
This is the hardest message that any prophet ever had to give, to pronounce to the people of Israel that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. Jeremiah taught it, Isaiah taught it, and all the false prophets denied it until 586 B.C. when the Babylonians came in. destroyed the city and carried the people away captive. After the exile, the city, the wall and the temple has to be rebuilt, yet Jesus told His Disciples that soon not one stone would stand upon another and in 70 A.D. Rome ripped the city apart because the people put their confidence in the institution; putting their trust and devotion to the religion rather than to the living God. Go to Shiloh and look at it!
“And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren—the whole posterity of Ephraim.” In every generation, people have put their confidence in their religious connections. The Christian church is indeed a “sacred” institution. The visible church is not to be despised. Christ established His church and the church is to be the body of our Lord Himself. But, it is so easy for the church as an institution to become, instead of the body of Christ, a substitution for Christ. And in that sense, the institution becomes anti-Christ in so far as it is a substitute that stands against the loving Christ. Now, for those who put their faith in the institution instead of Christ, they are trusting in a lie. The church cannot save you. The church did not die for you. The church cannot redeem you. The church did not purchase you. The church is not your Savior. The church is the body of the Savior. It is the house of the Savior. But, we need to understand the difference. In God We Trust.
In Christ, Brian
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