4 Trust
ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple
of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these. 5 For if ye
throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment
between a man and his neighbour; 6 If
ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not
innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:
7 Then will I cause you to dwell in this
place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever. -Jeremiah 7:4-7 (KJV)
God
made it clear to His people that a change was needed in their lives. It was a challenge for them to amend their
ways and their doings. If they would, the
result would be remaining in the land of Israel.
They would be victorious over those who sought to destroy them. This message of repentance was delivered by
Jeremiah to religious people going in and out of the Temple. The problem was they were trusting in their
heritage and religious experience to get them in right standing with God. What places a person in proper standing with
God? It is having received salvation through
faith in Jesus Christ. These were a
people whose hearts were in need of regeneration. They went to the Temple and worshipped, they
boasted about their heritage as the people of Israel, and yet their hearts
remained far from God.
Jeremiah
warned them not to trust in lying words.
The people were not being taught the Word of God by the priests. The priests were watering down God's Word down by telling the people they what they wanted to
hear. The last thing that we should
preach today is that people are fine just the way they are, for they are
not. What is needed is a heart changed
by the power of Jesus Christ. Only then
can a person be in right standing with God.
The priests were
putting great emphasis on the Temple, telling people that this was their security
and as long as they had the temple they were all right with God. Nothing could have been further from the
truth. They came to find out later on
that their strength did not rest in the Temple, but in God. In 587 BC the Temple was torn down by the
Babylonians, and in succeeding years, after the exile, it was rebuilt. Recall what Jesus said about the Temple
during His ministry on earth. The Bible
says in Matthew 24:1, 2, " And Jesus went out, and
departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the
buildings of the temple. And Jesus said
unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not
be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
These
words were fulfilled In AD 71. The
Romans came in and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and tore down the Temple, and
it stands in ruins even today, with only the Wailing Wall remaining.
Our
hope is always in the Lord. Everything
else is temporal, but God is forever.
