JEREMIAH - CHAPTER 7 - SIN IN THE TEMPLE

SIN IN THE TEMPLE

JEREMIAH – CHAPTER 7

Pastor Carolyn Sissom

Tuesday Morning Bible Study, 2/22/21, the Year of Our Lord

Jeremiah’s first sermon was “The Sin of the Nation.”  His second message was “`The National Corruption” and his third sermon is “ Sin in The Temple,” (for church goers).

The people are again urged to a true repentance shown by a life according to God’s requirements.

The Holy Spirit surprised me again this past Sunday.  Not that it is unusual for Him to surprise me, but I never stop being amazed.  After I delivered the message on Divine Love, and as is our custom, I started to hand out the roses.  The Holy Spirit stopped me, “Carolyn the people need to repent before you give them the roses.”  So, I thought, “well perhaps we have a couple of people here who are walking in a struggle to overcome the pain of their soul.”  No, when I made the altar call, almost the whole church came up for prayer.  Then the Holy Spirit blessed us with His deposit of Divine Love into those who were wounded and hurt.  Others came to me later as the Holy Spirit had quickened them in areas where they need healing.  Again, we were surprised by Love.  

In this chapter Jeremiah tells Judah that repentance is her only hope!  This whole chapter is the Lord speaking plain talk to those who claim to be worshipping and serving him.

Jer. 7: 1-8: This is 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 who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.”  This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel says: “Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.  Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers forever and ever.  But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.’

Jeremiah delivered this message at the Temple Gate. Michael L. Brown in his commentary believes this to be the Eastern Gate.   

“It is not only because of the prophecies he receives that Jeremiah needs special courage, but it is also because of the places he is told to deliver them.  In 22:1, Jeremiah is instructed to deliver his message at the king’s palace (lit., “the house of the king).  Here it is at the gate of the temple, the house of Yahweh (the first of thirty-three references to the bet yhwh) taken by some to mean the Eastern Gate” (Brown).  

The Lord used sarcastic language (vs. 4) because they constantly referred to the temple of God as being their defense instead of putting their trust in the God of the temple!

What boldness this action takes.  No one would volunteer to carry the mantle of Jeremiah.  One would have to be drafted.  This lone prophet confronts “all you people of Judah!”  These are the worshippers who come through those gates to worship Yahweh, but they are also worshipping idols and are continually guilty of every other kind of mortal sin. 

1. Refusing to incline their ear.
2. Walking in the counsel of their evil hearts.
3. Do not follow other gods.

Like the two preceding sermons it was a stern rebuke, warning, and exhortation, but this message is centered in the religious conditions in Judah. All their sacrifices and offerings were refused.  This was the idolatry of religious formalism. 

They had erected idols in the Temple and felt that God would not let Jerusalem be destroyed because His Temple was there!  Trust in the temple itself becomes idolatry.

7:9-11: Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, “and then come and stand before me in this house which bears by Name, and say, “we are safe” ---safe to do all these detestable things?  “Has this house which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! Declares the Lord.

The use of this passage by Jesus when cleansing the temple is striking:

Matthew 21:13: It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.

Criminal deeds are now being committed in the temple itself, making it not only a place of refuge for robbers but the actual place in which they commit their greed-drive acts.

7: 12-15:  Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.  While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen.  I called you, but you did not answer.  Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your fathers.  I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim.

The Lord reminds them of Shiloh which lay in ruins for centuries.  The same could happen to Jerusalem.  This was where the Ark of the Covenant was stolen.  Thousands were killed and captured by the Philistines.  Ichabod was born there, to the profligate priest, Phinehas, who lost his life, as did his brother, Hophni.  Ichabod’s mother died.  The high priest, Eli, also died in a judgment.  God removed His own presence from the tent of meeting and only returned on special occasions (the dedication of Solomon’s temple).  A terrible mess was occasioned at Shiloh because of an unrepentant people.  God had sent an unheeded messenger, Samuel, to prophesy to a hapless crew of the spiritually weak.  The sons of Eli lay with women other than their wives.  They took enormous offerings and cared nothing for the plight of the parishioners. Even their offerings were not received by the LORD.  Just as God brought judgment on his holy place before, says Jeremiah, he will certainly do it again.  The people had a selective memory and willingly forgotten what happened at Shiloh in the days of Eli and Samuel.  As Jeremiah will soon learn, the threat to do to the temple in Jerusalem what God did to Shiloh absolutely infuriates the religious leadership.

7:16-20: Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen 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 light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven?  They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger.  But am I the one they are provoking? Declares the LORD.  Are they not rather harming themselves to their own shame?  Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says:  My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the trees of the field, and on the fruit of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched.

I feel like the freeze Texas and much of the nation came under this past week was a judgment; certainly, on man, beast, trees and crops. 

Their persistent idolatry works as much against themselves as against God.  The worship of the Queen of Heaven is Ashtoreth, the principle female Canaanite deity, whose worship was accompanied with the most degrading forms of immorality.

The Lord now speaks directly to Jeremiah and restrains His prophet from praying for the people.  “It’s too late for them.  I won’t listen.”  I wish I could convey to people what a serious time we are in.  All the Lord is doing on the earth is God calling not just our nation, but the church to repent. 

The prophet is told to go to the people with a specific message of impending judgment, realizing as he goes, they will not listen to him or hear his words.

7: 21-26: This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says.  Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves!  For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifice, but I gave them this command; obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people.  Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you.  But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.  They went backward and not forward.  From the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets.  But they did not listen to me or pay attention.  They were stiff-necked and did eviler than their forefathers.

The oracle continues with biting sarcasm---on the abuse of the sacrificial system.  God not only tells his people to keep bringing their sacrifices.  He tells them in the most caustic of terms that their sacrifices are of no value.  According to the Torah, the burn offering was the only sacrifice that was not to be eat at all by the worshiper; rather it was to be given in its entirety to the Lord. “The priest is to burn all of it on the altar.  It is a burnt offering an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the Lord (Lev. 1:9b).

It is a strong rebuke to individual Israelites, who were not commanded to bring burnt offerings in the Torah, but rather were given the privilege of doing so.

7:27-29:  When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you; when you call to them, they will not answer.  Therefore, say to them, this is the nation that has not obeyed the Lord its God or responded to correction.  Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips.  Cut off your hair and throw it away; take up a lament on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath.

Judah’s refusal to hear is a foregone conclusion.  So deluded are they by falsehood that truth is gone from the land, cut off from their lips.  We can speak this on our media as well as our government.  Even in Texas, we find there has been misuse of energy power and it was misappropriated through mismanagement and corruption during the freeze of 2021.

30-32: 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.  They have built the high places of Tophet which is in the valley of the son of Hinnon, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart.”

“Hinnon” is the valley on the south side of Jerusalem, where children were insanely sacrificed to the heathen deity Molech (the modern plague of abortion), afterward came to be used as the name of Hell, “Gehenna”. They had defiled the Temple and built Tophet as a place of worship.  It would become “the valley of slaughter”.

God has never changed His mind about what he wants.  He wants a people to dwell and a people to dwell in.  “I will cause you to dwell! (7:7).  

Eph. 2: 19-21: You are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together grows unto a holy temple in the Lord: In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.

Four things are built in the Old Testament:

1. Altars ----in the wilderness
2. Houses – Kingdom begun
3. Cities – Kingdom established.
4. Temple – Worship.

Altars are foundational.  God took Judah back to the wilderness of Captivity so that their foundation could be re-built.  The Holy nation had become a wilderness.  God’s love would not allow them to come to a full end.  Therefore, the Lord chose the wilderness of the captivity to turn the nation.  Jeremiah was the voice crying unto the wilderness.  The wilderness births within us a longing for permanence.  Instead of choosing God, Judah chose the high places of Tophet which is the place of false worship!  The N.T. equivalent of the valley of the Son of Hinnon is Ge-Henna (hell).  Thus, the valley of the Son of Hell, Gehenna, was Jerusalem’s smoldering trash heap and was located outside the walls of the city.

Jeremiah the Spirit Man was crying out to their wilderness to let God first root out, pull down, destroy and throw down, and then build and plant and cause their wilderness to blossom as the rose.  Judah was not going to Hell; she was already there and becoming a responsible citizen of Hell.  They had chosen this location.  Therefore, a new cause was introduced in 7:34.  God has given us the keys to hell and death. 

7:33-34: The carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away. Then will I 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.

Isa. 5:14; Hell has enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoices, shall descend into it.

 They had made an agreement with Hell, but it would not be able to stand. (Isa. 28: 15-18).  The Lord took Israel through the wilderness to dwell in the double portion, the portion of the firstborn.  God in his mercy redeemed Israel and sent His Son to redeem the United States of America and the nations of the earth in each individual who will receive Jesus Christ.

Carolyn Sissom, Pastor

Eastgate Ministries, Inc.

I entered into the labors of Principles of Present Truth by Kelly Varner; Jeremiah, Michael L. Brown; the Road to Captivity by. C. R. Oliver; F. F. Bruce Bible Commentary; Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of those who I entered into their labors.