Tuesday 8th September
Read Jeremiah 7:5-11
“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the foreigner, 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, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave to your ancestors for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. 9 ‘“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ‘We are safe’– safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.” (NIVUK)
Faith in anything other than God Himself is a dangerous thing. Their security was found in a promise that God would dwell in Jerusalem, and an assumption that meant they were inviolable because He would not allow His place to be destroyed.
This faith, that they are justified by the word of God, required no holiness from them at all. In the ancient parlance they believe they can be justified without also being sanctified. They are saved and safe with no obligations. They can sin because grace abounds.
This sin is made clear by the heartfelt plea to repent and return to the covenant. Spend time comparing their behaviour with the ten words, the decalogue (Exodus 20), and you will see the complete disdain in which they held their covenant obligations.
To hide out in the temple, going through the religious motions, whilst pleasing themselves in every way is an affront to God’s grace. A covenant is a relationship. Relationships have obligations but they are not transactional. Grace is free, but not cheap.
“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘“My house will be called a house of prayer,” but you are making it “a den of robbers.”” (Matthew 21:12-13) (NIVUK)
