Jeremiah Calls the People to Obedience
Study: Jeremiah 7: 1 – 11, 21 – 23
Background: Jeremiah 7: 1 – 26
Devotional: Luke 6: 40 – 46
Lesson 6 October 11, 2025
Key Verse
But this is]what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you shall walk entirely in the way which I command you, so that it may go well for you. Jeremiah 7:23
INTRODUCTION
Are we in a time of tragedy just as the nation of Judah was in a time of tragedy?
Why are the features of our times and the behaviours we display so similar?
Is a change of mind and actions necessary for us today?
What therefore is the true nature of repentance?
Can we live and commit sins and say we repented when in fact we are fooling ourselves?
Our Study examines the tragedy of people today, a tragedy which is the same as that of the nation of Judah. Its relevance and pertinence to people and nations today is quite startling for it is a tragedy when people and nations start turning away from God, the living fountain of God and forsaking their only source of worth and hope.
The tragedy is that when people ignore the First commandment they begin to lose their sense of who God is and automatically begin to lose the sense of who they are and hence violate the Second Commandment.
God is infinite in His perfections and attributes and they all harmonize; thus His love, mercy, justice, wrath and judgment to mention a few, all operate in unison.
First His love and mercy were evident in His gracious choice of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the progenitors of the nation Israel. These attributes were behind the Covenant He authored with that nation.
In fact, all who ‘come’ to God, do so as a result of His gracious, Sovereign choice and enablement.
It is quite baffling that when one looks at people in the world, and this includes Christians, we see them picking out certain promises God has given and expect Him to act as what we expect given these promises. Under certain circumstances But understand that under certain conditions He acts to ignore His promises and so we often are dismayed when in our eyes His actions are not predictable.
Of course the problem we face comes from the fact that we look at the promises of God, pick out a part of what He had said which suit us and gaily ignore the balance. We pick out our favourite Texts in the Scriptures and loudly proclaim that this is how God is going to act. We therefore have trouble when we read passages like 1 Samuel 12:23 in which God tells Israel that they have rejected Him as their King and forsook Him and He will accordingly give them a king but they will not like it.
In that case the prophet Samuel said that notwithstanding their gross sin in rejecting God as their King in favour of the kind of king the pagans had, he would not sin against God by ceasing to pray for them. In the case we study today however God told this prophet Jeremiah that the people had so crossed the line he should not pray for them. The prophet is told,
“As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you”.
What a tough assignment!
God is telling Jeremiah to keep on preaching, not praying. You must preach or proclaim My message ‘but they will not listen or pay attention to you, but they will continue to go right along as they want to go’, in their own way.
So what is it that is really happening to Judah and as well to us!
We now therefore in our Study Scripture will begin by referring to a scene in a disturbing film which shows us the disturbing truth as one writer puts it,
“Our culture would tell you that, not only does religion not make anything better, it is actually the source of many of the world’s problems. Wars, genocide, inequalities—religion seems to cause a lot of these things.
So religion itself must be evil. If we could escape religion entirely as a global commitment, then things would work out much better”.
But this writer illustrates what it is in us that force us to look deeply at this Study Scripture. He looks at a movie that make an important point about us so that we will stop fooling ourselves about what is really happening and why it is happening and look deeply at what God had commanded us. He states:
“In the movie, The Godfather, Michael Corleone aspires to the position of Godfather, the supreme head of the mafia organization. One particular scene shows him standing as godfather at the baptism of his nephew.
The priest chants in Latin as he sprinkles water on the infant’s head.
But interspersed with the scene of the baptism, we see Michael’s hired assassins brutally murder the leaders of five other rival families.
We hear the priest ask Michael a series of questions:
“Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
“Do you renounce Satan?”
“Do you renounce all of Satan’s ways?”
Each time we hear Michael reply, “Yes,” we see Michael’s men execute another of the targets”.
So ask yourself now, ‘What is wrong with me?”
What is it on my heart that inclines me to behave away from what God has instructed?
As one writer asks, “Do we have a terminal disease in which our hearts are predisposed to reject God’s initiation in our lives?
But deep down we have some awareness that God is there. Each of us knows that God is real on some fundamental level, but we don’t really want anything to do with Him. Our solution is to ignore Him, to claim that He doesn’t exist.
But there is another solution, a way to manage the fact that God exists without actually having to address the reality that your heart is turned against Him.
Religion makes that possible”.
Our Study Scripture shows the prophet Jeremiah telling us what is wrong with “religion” in a sermon at the Temple.
By profession, Jeremiah was a priest who lived in the village of Anathoth (Jeremiah 1:1), about three miles northeast of Jerusalem. Regarding his appointment to the office of prophet see Jeremiah 1:5.
A trip from Anathoth to the Temple would have taken him an hour or so. This made it possible for him to come quickly to the Temple in his role as a prophet and deliver a message from the Lord.
Presently, the nation is in a state of political upheaval with serious social, moral and spiritual decay. The evil king Manasseh had totally reversed the glorious reformations of his father Hezekiah and promoted the idolatrous practices of his Assyrian overlords. As a result, Judah went into irreversible moral and spiritual decline. Everyone participated in this toxic mixture, where the worship of the God of Israel took a back seat to the worship of every conceivable pagan god. Priests, prophets, nobility, leaders, officials, the aged, the young, the old, the women, and the men, went along with the rebellion against God. The steep and rapid spiritual decline continued with Manasseh’s son Ammon.
A temporary reversal happened under the reign of King Josiah who made a valiant effort to reinstitute covenant conditions in Judah with spiritual and social reforms and by forcefully ridding the land of idolatry and other pagan practices.
Sadly, Josiah’s reforms expired with him as the nation relapsed and plunged to its final demise. Jehoiakim succeeded Josiah but unlike his father proved to be a wicked king and in his short reign was able to virtually undo all Josiah’s reforms and put the nation on its final course to destruction. One writer note:
“Judah’s day of grace had expired; the longsuffering mercy of God could no longer postpone the deserved judgement of a rebellious nation; the calamity stored up for the chosen people could no longer be averted or postponed; the time of judgement was at hand!”
One writer remarks of Jehoiakim’s government which can also be applied to the final two kings that followed him:
“It was a wretched government, characterized by public wrong, violence, oppression and covetousness. While the land was impoverished, the king indulged in luxury, and built magnificent palaces or towns by means of forced labour, which remain unpaid, and at the cost of a miserable enslaved people” (Jeremiah 22:13-18; Habakkuk 2:9-17).
Notably, God provided a continuous stream of prophets, including Isaiah and Micah to expose the nation’s sins, each prophet giving equal weight to the social, moral and spiritual transgressions of the people and with warnings of God’s sure judgment.
Jeremiah like the other prophets called the nation to repentance with the promise that God would allow them to remain in the land, if they showed true repentance. So despite assured judgment, God’s mercy was still fully extended, awaiting a repentant response from His covenant people.
Jeremiah and his message were met with outright hostility that endangered his own life. Still the prophet persisted as God commanded. Chapter 7 records his first formal sermon that interestingly enough was delivered at the gate of the Temple in Jerusalem. This means that the sermon was delivered in the ear of the leadership of Judah and where both the faithful and unfaithful, the righteous and the hypocritical men came to worship.
The leadership, both religious and secular would have been ill at ease at this interruption of their sacred assembly and the people whom God was about to declare hypocrites, would have been uncomfortable to pass by this fiery preacher.
Jeremiah has been called the “weeping prophet”, for he was deeply touched by the desperate situation of his people, as he watched their relentless march to destruction and exile.
It was with much anguish, sorrow and sadness of soul that he carried out his ministry. Over and over he repeated the same message that God had commanded him to preach. But the people kept on sinning as before, and Jeremiah had to keep repeating his dire warnings.
He strongly condemned the idolatrous worship and the superficial pretense at piety on the part of the people. He rejected the false sense of security that the people had, and the false complacency that the false prophets and priests encouraged.
He preached about repentance more than any of the other prophets and pointed to the great promise of a New Covenant that would give the people the necessary New Heart for God accepting them. But now his message was harsh and full of accusations.
So let us look at ourselves in a deep fashion. Spare nothing.
What was wrong with their religious practice? Does “religion” get you what you want?
Commentators tell us that it appears that the people were forgetting what was true of their heart.
“So here are all these Israelites coming in from all parts of Judah to participate in this grand assembly and they are singing about the temple.
They are so happy to be able to go to the temple; they are so excited for this feast.
And they feel close to God because they’re here. They are in the right place, they are doing the right thing, they are saying the right words. And that makes them feel good
Because it means they can forget about what is true of their hearts.
This word of deceit told them that God would protect them from harm if they just said the right words and did the right things”.
So an important question comes to us. Think about it!
In doing so think about what it means to be religious and note carefully what is happening.
“So here’s the first thing we notice that is wrong with religion; people become religious to get what they want.
Do you realize that this is why ancient people worshipped idols. You see, most of the pagan religious rituals had to do with getting something that you wanted. So there were ceremonies associated with the Asherah pole that was supposed to help you to conceive if you were trying to get pregnant.
There were ceremonies associated with farming so that you could do certain things to try to convince the gods to give you a good harvest.
There were ceremonies you could perform that were supposed to give you success in military conflict.
There were ceremonies you could perform that were supposed to keep you healthy.
And so worshipping idols for the ancient Israelites had to do with getting what they wanted. If their God didn’t let them get pregnant or have a good crop or win a battle, then they tried another god to see if that one would get them what they wanted.
Instead of trusting that their God might know what he was doing, they were obsessed with getting what they wanted. So they tried worshipping other gods. They used religion to get what they wanted….
Religion gets us what we want, but a real relationship with God does something deeper.
Our God is not a vending machine, dispensing easy lives for worshippers.
He is personal. He relates to us, in love and in discipline with gentleness and wisdom”,
says one commentator.
So, does “religion” hide your heart?
Does “religion” make you better?
Think about that!
The time was in effect the last days of Judah and the Lord commanded the prophet to a dramatic course of action in an attempt to have His people repent and avert disaster. His message at the Temple was a direct confrontation but sadly the people seemed to be in oblivion in the face of imminent invasion and exile. They were content with the trappings of religion without the reality and form without substance.
THE TEXT
- This verse introduced the one who received the prophecy as Jeremiah, “The word that came to Jeremiah…” and it was intended for him to relay the message.Very often the phrase “the word of the Lord …” is used in this way and very importantly implies that the message was not the invention of the self-righteous indignation of a prophet, (2 Peter 1:21). The prophecy will not only serve as a warning and pronouncement of judgement, but as evidence of the true and living God.
What followed was from God!
Note that the word of the Lord is to be unchallenged. It is to be accepted, difficult though it might be.
2. The Templewas properly restored and refurbished by Josiah, so there was a sense of enthusiasm, celebration and excitement, a ‘feel good factor’ that this was what God wanted and since it was being done everything was OK. When everybody came out to enjoy the newly renovated, remodelled, cleaned up sanctuary, the orders came to Jeremiah from God to go and interrupt proceedings with a message of the true reality of their situation. The message was to all of Judah that came to worship!
Jeremiah was now to give not his, but God’s opinion on worship and the style of living that God desired. He was sent to stand at the gate of the Lord’s house. This place belonged to God, which meant that it was a venue for only the pure worship of God. God owned it and everything that went on inside was to be dictated by God.
One scholar Ryken advises:
“Since this message was delivered to all the people, it was most likely preached during one of the great religious festivals, such as the Passover ot the Feast of Tabernacles, when the whole nation came to Jerusalem to worship”.
Since they were going to God’s house one could rightly presume that they were interested in seeking God, in hearing from God and worshipping Him. Their very attendance indicated that they knew about God and knew about the Covenant and its terms.
It is helpful to know that the word worship describes prostrating oneself before his or her Sovereign. Jeremiah was saying to the men of Judah, when a person comes to the sanctuary to worship, that person is acknowledging that they have a Sovereign, that He is in control, that they are dependent on Him, that they desire to obey God’s words and that this Sovereign demands certain things from His “worshippers”. As Paul tells us: “You are not your own, you are bought with a price”.
3. … amend your ways … whatever the mindset of the people and their perception of their relationship to Yahweh, in God’s eyes things were far from acceptable.
The prophet’s message began on a loud, clear note. The people of Judah lived in the land by God’s permission and God’s gift. Their standing was conditional. Only by submitting to Him could they remain in the land He had given them, a point repeatedly made in their Covenant with Yahweh! Presently they did not submit, as evidenced by the fact that Jeremiah confrontationally said amend your ways and your doings. The people must reform their walk before God.
Typically, God graciously left the door open for repentance. The prophet announced that the Sovereign God of Israel, promised that if the people would repented (change their thinking, actions, and way of life), He would allow them to continue to dwell in their land.
4. Lying words are especially powerful and tragic when the lie is to one’s self! So it was for Jeremiah’s audience. They convinced themselves that the existence of God’s Temple in their midst provided absolute assurance against disaster. The Temple was being used as a charm to protect them from evil. This is just like people wearing guard rings” or “crucifixes” to ward off satanic attacks.
By their wilful misunderstanding of their sinful condition and misplaced trust in a physical structure, the people of Judah had become like pagans in their worship as they believed that repeating certain words or creating certain objects provided magical power. The Judeans’ trust was empty, their words, trite.
The prophet warned the people that they were not to assume that just because they had the Temple, the Lord would keep them safe. Many of them believed that the existence of the Temple guaranteed Jerusalem’s inviolability. God’s supernatural deliverance of Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s reign probably accounted for some of this mindset (2 Kings 18:13 – 19:37).
They might have argued that God had choose Zion as His earthly dwelling place (Ps. 132:13-14) and promised David and his descendants a kingdom for ever (2 Sam. 7:12-13). In the light of such promises it seemed to be a natural conclusion that God would not allow either His dwelling place (the temple) or His chosen ruler to come to any harm. They conveniently forgot what God did to their brothers in the Northern Kingdom a century earlier. They ignored the stipulations of their Covenant with Yahweh.
5. thoroughly amend your ways and your doings … in contrast to the people’s self-satisfied mantra ‘the temple of the Lord’, Jeremiah proclaimed that they must change their lifestyles completely.
We are told that behind the two-word phrase thoroughly amend in the original language is a single word meaning “make good” that is repeated to emphasize the idea.
… thoroughly execute judgment… the duplication for emphasis in the first phrase of the verse is also behind this phrase.
… judgment … is justice as God intends for it to be practiced among people. He Himself is the model for such justice.
6. The prophet proceeded to describe what the peoples amended ways, especially in terms of executed judgment (justice), should entail. God demonstrated His just judgment in rescuing the Israelites from their unjust bondage in Egypt (Genesis 15:13; Exodus 12:40, 41; Acts 7:6).
Such action on His part called for obedience, thankfulness, fairness, generosity, and humility on the part of those who so benefitted from His actions. Their liberation should have taught them that justice meant fair, merciful, and respectful treatment of all (Exodus 22:21; 23:9). Such was to be the hallmarks of God’s people, not empty reliance on a physical structure.
Note, society’s most vulnerable were to receive the greatest protection in God’s program.
The vulnerable included the stranger, referring to non-Israelites who settled in the Promised Land. Judah’s forefathers knew what it was like to be a stranger in the land (Genesis 23:4), and King David set an example of the right attitude when he wrote,
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, … for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were” (Psalm 39:12).
The fatherless and the widow typically had no one to support and protect them in the culture of Jeremiah’s day; they depended on the generosity of others. As God provided and protected, so must the Judahites act toward society’s most vulnerable.
The Mosaic Law demonstrates a profound concern for human welfare (Deut. 14:29; 24:19-21). The prophets reminded the people periodically of their obligations in this regard.
And shed not innocent blood in this place … ensuring justice for the vulnerable paralleled renunciation of violence. Shedding of innocent blood (murder) represents the complete denial of God’s creation of humans in His image (Genesis 1:26, 27; 9:6). Such violence was driven by radically selfish desires. It represented the ultimate injustice. Jeremiah 22:17 is pointed in revealing the people’s tendencies in this area.
… neither walk after other gods to your hurt … the list of transgressions ends with the problem of following other gods, prohibited in the First Commandment (Exodus 20:3). One writer comment: “Idolatry is an affront to the being and nature of God. Made to suit the desires of the worshipper, idols represent humans’ attempts to gather spiritual power for their own uses. Devotion to other gods becomes, in many cases, the justification for all kinds of crimes (Psalm 106:38). Ultimately, the one harmed most by idolatry is the idol worshipper because of the eternal consequences”.
Godly repentance meant not worshipping other gods, which the people were doing to their own ruin.
7. God’s promise was always clear: obedience was the condition for remaining in the land that God gave to the forefathers as stated in the Covenant, the formal basis for God’s relationship with His people. Jeremiah repeated this promise to his temple-gate audience as a warning: the people must change their ways if the promise was to remain in effect.
8. The people’s confident chant “the temple of the Lord” (v. 4) was an exercise in misplaced trust. This self-delusion would prove to be their undoing and the prophet knew it! He announced that this misdirected faith was a fatally, dangerous sham. It was time to abandon lying words and face the truth.
Jeremiah insisted they were believing a lie. The deception was that they could do all these abominations without any consequences. They were deceived into believing the false teaching that simply because they were worshipping in God’s house, they would be delivered from all harm. They would be protected simply by going to church, going through the right motions, singing the right songs.
They had been fooled into thinking that they did not have to be right spiritually with God or to do the things that God specifically desired. They were tricked into believing that it did not matter if their lifestyle in the community, at home, or in the business world was totally contrary to the life of worship and behavior noted in the Covenant. They thought that judicial murder, oppression of the innocent, exploiting others, racial injustice, ripping off others, cheating, jettisoning all personal morality, was fine as long as they went the sanctuary regularly.
So being in the right place of worship, and using the right words for worship, can often be a respectable front for a corrupt self.
9. Drawing on the litany of sins just mentioned the prophet posed a rhetorical question that showed the people’s hypocrisy. First he listed sins that remind us of several of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:7-21). Theft, murder, adultery, falsehood, and idolatry are obvious violations. In one way or another, such transgressions all involved defrauding the vulnerable.
Another charge was that the people were burning incense unto Baal. The designation Baal means “master” and refers to various gods worshipped by Israel’s neighbors;
Note the plural Baalim in Jeremiah 2:23; 9:14. The Baalim were fertility gods. Their worshippers believed that these gods controlled the fertility of people, livestock, and agriculture. Offering incense to Baal encompassed all acts of worship offered to these gods, which sometimes included sexual immorality and even infant sacrifice. Idolatry invariably produced atrocities in its adherents.
10. … and come and stand … the utter futility of the people’s misplaced faith becomes very clear. Habitual evildoers and idolaters that they were, they nevertheless returned time and again to God’s Temple, to go through the motions of worship.
There they offered sacrifices, prayed, and sang the psalms. These empty rituals assured them that they were delivered from enemies such as Babylon. Seemingly they believed externalism in religion was a substitute for the true heart worship of Yahweh. They thought that God cared more about the form of worship in His temple, or even the Temple structure itself, than He did about His people’s submission to Him. They would go through this ritual only so they could go out and sin again.
11. In every age, professing believers have been called on to examine their attitude towards the ‘House of God’. Understanding the term ‘God’s house’ is extremely important, for it deals with what we think of ‘the life of faith’. Clearly the men of Judah had a particularly warped view of what God’s house was, what it meant and what God’s house revealed about His nature.
Their problem with understanding God had led to their neglect of the “house of God”, a place which was part of their Covenant relationship.
The ‘House of God’ is the place that God dwelt. God is holy, and where He dwells is holy. One cannot expect that this holy God will support sin, for that would be contrary to His nature. He will not support contradictions in doctrine and behavior. There must be word and deed.
One’s treatment of God’s house, as well as what goes on there says a lot about who a person is, for one must have the right spiritual attitude to properly experience the opportunities for the life of faith which comes from being in the House of God.
“This house” refers to the Temple of the Lord in the city of Jerusalem, in the Nation of Judah, the place where God dwelt. God asked a very important question and to get to the crux of the matter, we should focus on the idea that God was asking how they could be so brazen, as to imagine that they could sin with abandon and yet come into the House that belonged to Him.
Disobedience and its consequences are in view. From the earlier verses we can see that their sins had been compounded. In general, they were worshipping other gods, they had moved away from protecting the poor, weak, widowed, and orphaned. Justice had no place in their courts.
Furthermore, they called on the Lord in a vain manner. They visited the Temple ritually three times a year and though they referred in their conversations to the Temple of the Lord as if the Temple was central to their lives, they did not honor it, but they abused it and all that it represented.
The “den of robbers” that Jeremiah refers to represents the place where robbers and thieves resort after doing their evil. They would come for rest and relaxation and the sharing of their ill-gotten gains.
Robbers and thieves live in a world where they do what they want and live as they please, riding roughshod over others to gain prosperity and power. They oppress those that cannot defend themselves and take advantage of others who are weak. They then go to their den for they feel safe in that place.
Jesus used this same phrase fifty years later when He came to Jerusalem, entered the Temple and drove out all those that bought and sold in the Temple. Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers and those that sold sacrificial doves and He refused to allow anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple. Mark 11:15-17 records His words where He told them that the Temple was a place of prayer but they had made it a den of thieves.
We also note that the Apostle Paul warned Timothy that there were many people in the church who held a form of religion but denied the supernatural power. Their religious performance might have been great, but the lives they lived were terrible and corrupt, no content, no substance, just style.
We have to examine ourselves to see whether or not we are behaving the same, treating the Sabbath and our sanctuary today as Judah did then. After we have committed our sins, come Sabbath we go to the church and hope that being there will protect us from God’s wrath
Verses 21 – 23 Useless Sacrifice
21. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; … Jeremiah’s repeated use of the extended title the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel (see Jeremiah 7:3, above) underlines the serious tone of this section as the prophet introduces sarcasm.
In effect, Jeremiah is saying, “Go right on ahead and continue violating the rules about burnt offerings, and see how things turn out!”
Burnt offerings were sacrifices in which a whole animal was burned on the altar in the courtyard of the Temple, a task that Jeremiah himself had likely undertaken as a priest. Such a sacrifice would be fully consumed by fire (see Exodus 29:18; Leviticus 1, 6:8–13). The phrase unto your sacrifices refers to the general (and generally improper) way the original readers are conducting all their sacrifices, burnt offerings being only one part of those.
22. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them … some have claimed that this verse nullifies the entire sacrificial system of Israel and its Temple as a later addition to the duties of the people of Israel, but this is unlikely. Jeremiah has high respect for the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), which include detailed instructions on burnt offerings or sacrifices. We must understand the message here in light of the next verse.
23. But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.
Simply put, proper sacrifices result from obeying the voice of God. While performing Temple rituals may have quieted the consciences of some of the people, they must listen to the Lord’s voice and walk in all the ways that He has commanded, not just some of them or just the ones that are most convenient. Obedience to the law is required. But that by itself isn’t enough. God does not delight in insincere sacrifices (see Amos 5:22). Without the correct posture of heart and subsequent action, their sacrifices are useless and meaningless (Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13; 12:7).
In Jeremiah’s situation, no one seems to listen and repent (Jeremiah 8:6). His numerous enemies include “the kings of Judah, … the princes thereof, … the priests thereof, and … the people of the land” (1:18).
Some readers may wonder whether Jeremiah holds out hope that some will heed his message, turn from their wickedness, and claim the promise of future blessing. That’s a natural question to ask, but the more important idea is that when the fair warning proves to be true, the reality of who is a true prophet of God and who is not will be established (Jeremiah 28:9).
CONCLUSION
God’s message was stern and uncompromising. Yet despite Judah’s failure, God’s promise was still in force to establish David’s throne forever (2 Samuel 7:16). Today we know that we have received the fulfillment of that promise in Jesus. We also should realize that we have a clear responsibility regarding how we are to live before God.
Does religion make us better? Or does it make us like those in Israel think we are better than those on the outside? Does it lead to us establishing some sort of hierarchy of achievement?
So as you look around you be careful how you compare yourself to “other Christians”.
Do you see only a fleshly Christian, a nominal Christian, a Christian “on fire for Jesus”, a Christian struggling with the faith, a Sabbath morning Christian? When you are “religious” you will be tempted to make these comparisons.
As followers of Christ, we are to promote God’s justice. We are not to be hypocrites who worship God outwardly while plotting rebellion inwardly or in secret.
One writer notes: “As the God of the temple would not be mocked, neither will the God of the ‘cross’ the same God.”
Remember the threat in Verse 15:
“I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim”
We can imagine the terrible impact of all of this on Jeremiah. He was heartsick. God chose this time to tell him not to pray for his people anymore, for judgment was certain. God was saying that he had had enough and agony was about to happen. But though He would not forget His people, they would have to undergo judgment and suffering.
God is wiser that we are. Let us listen to Him. Let us beware of the consequences of our disobedience. If you see a righteous man disobey the words of God do not be afraid of him. Warn him of his sins or else his blood will be up on your head.
God is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, but this must not be confused with what might appear to be an uncaring attitude toward evil. On the contrary, God gives time and patiently works to bring about repentance. However, when mercy runs out noting can save us from His wrath.
As it was with Israel and Judah, so it is with us. God has placed before us life and death, blessing and cursing – choose life my friend; it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of God. Repent, turn from your evil ways and your idols and turn to the true and living God.
Jeremiah identified the danger of trusting “lying words” as he spoke to the people of Jerusalem 2,600 years ago. The reason for his warning still holds true today, and the consequences in spiritual matters are far more serious.
But we are confident that those who call on God, study His words, pray without ceasing, and make every effort to love God and love the brethren will be taken by God and become part of His family, inheriting eternal life.
Simply talk to Him. He will hear you. Ask Him to keep you. He will keep you. Lean on His everlasting arms. His mercies are renewed every morning. He will give you a fresh outpouring of His mercies and grace when you wake up. His compassions never fail.