“The Failure in Conviction”

Scripture: Jeremiah 7:1-11

Today, we continue in our study of Jeremiah’s call to proclaim the word of God to the people of Judah. Last week, we saw how the people had stopped trusting in the Lord, even though they had received so much from him. The prophet had pointed out all that Yahweh had given during their time in the wilderness, as well as his gift of a land that was already producing fruit and crops and livestock when they arrived. But for some reason, the people had either forgotten about all that the Lord had done for them, or they just decided to ignore the fact that it all had come from their Lord God..

The words of Jeremiah and the other prophets seemed to make no difference whatsoever in their lives, but they never gave up trying. In today’s text, we will consider a portion of a sermon that the prophet preached while standing at the entrance to the temple, and his focus will be on their failure in faith and the effect that it has on the depth of their worship. It is a message that all of us need to consider – when we come to the Lord’s house, what do we bring with us? Is it truly a love for our God Almighty, or is it a shallow, half-hearted offering that gives little, if any, meaning to our words of praise?

Let’s see what the prophet has to say to the people as they venture into temple to offer their hearts to the great God Jehovah.

Read Jeremiah 7:1-4

The prophet’s opening call – “Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah” would seem to imply that this is a festival time during which many would be coming to Jerusalem to make sacrifices at the temple. A prophet’s job was seldom focused on a very select and small group of people. He was to carry the Lord’s message to as many as he possibly could. So why not stand at the entrance to the house of God and speak out on the occasion of worship?

The truth is that this is the perfect place to share the Lord’s thoughts regarding the people’s debased sense of God! Did they really think that they could offer him a few token offerings two or three times a year, and the rest of the time give their allegiance to some dead and worthless god? Worship is supposed to be a time of expressing our joy at all that our Lord has done, and continues to do for us, and he should receive our complete and undivided loyalty! But if worship has become just a rote exercise, what good is it?

Jeremiah calls the people to change their ways. He is, in essence, reminding them that the Lord has called them to be caretakers of this land – HIS land – a land that he promised to Abraham and his faithful descendants. The covenant that God made with Israel was that he would free them, and lead them, and give them a marvelous land to live in. (Exodus 6:6-8) The Lord was even committed to living among the people so that they could know him intimately. (Exodus 29:45-46)

But hollow words of praise mean less than nothing to Almighty God. In truth, they are actually an insult. And the prophet tells the people in no uncertain terms, that unless their hearts begin to match the words they are speaking, that they will very shortly loose the promises and protection that their Lord God Jehovah has always provided. “Reform your ways … and I will let you live in this place.” The Lord is patient, but even God will eventually reach the point in which he can no longer tolerate our foolishness – not because he is fed up with us, but because we have repeatedly rejected his call to faithfulness and we need to receive his correction.

And correction will come – either by our submission to his ways, or by God’s holy intervention.

Read Jeremiah 7:5-8

They have been trusting in deceptive words. Now understand that it isn’t God who is being deceived! The people are deceiving themselves. Judah had deluded themselves into a false sense of security, and that is what sin always does to us – it makes us believe that everything is going well, and that there is no cause for concern. We misinterpret the Lord’s patient and loving attitude toward us as a sign that he has no objection to our flirtations with false gods! And that is a dangerous assumption on our part.
So God sends his messengers, like Jeremiah, to show us the errors of our ways. Judah had been oppressive of those who were helpless, instead of caring for their needs. Their concept of justice had become a self-serving tool for personal gain. They worshipped falsely, and had placed their dependency on the idols of earth. They had looked to the norms of earth instead of to the glory of God for guidance. Their lives had become a bold-faced lie, and unless they made some radical changes in their lives, the Lord Jehovah would make the changes for them.

Nearly 100 years earlier the prophet Micah had told the people that justice – Godly justice - was vital to their lives, that they were to not only offer mercy to others, but that they were to love sharing that mercy, and that humility was the far better way to live than in the arrogant and egotistical and sinful lives that had come to define them. (Micah 6:6-8)

They had betrayed the faith and conviction of their forefathers, and had set up their own brand of faithlessness.

How about us? Do the lives we live on Monday through Saturday reflect the words we speak on Sunday? Do our prayers and praises and testimonies have any depth to them? Is our Sunday worship just some obligatory offering that we make grudgingly to God, or does it become the basis for the rest of our week? If we are truly honest with ourselves, who do we more closely identify with – the people of Judah, or the prophet Jeremiah?

Read Jeremiah 7:9-11

False faith is far worse than no faith at all. It demonstrates a willful disregard for not only God’s commandments, but for his love and provision, and Judah was denying God at every turn. They cried out that God’s house was their temple, but their lives cried out otherwise. The claimed that because of the covenant that they had with God that nothing could harm them, even though they had irreparably damaged that same covenant. As far as the Lord was concerned, the temple was no longer a place where he wished to reside – it had become the fraudulent home of thieves.

Dire consequences were about to fall upon Judah, but they had no intention of ever listening. 600 years later, they were still living corrupt lives, and Jesus would also condemn them as thieves and robbers (Luke 19:45-46). But the people rejected the condemnation because they had been deceived. They thought that nothing would ever happen to either themselves or to their temple because God was with them.

How they could possibly think that they were getting away with defiling God’s Holy Name is beyond me! Did they think that the Lord didn’t know? Had they forgotten that the Lord knows everything, and that nothing slips by him?

The temple and the people’s faith had become useless in God’s eyes, and radical changes were about to occur to both. Neither one would have the Lord’s blessing any longer – the temple would be destroyed and the people would be taken off into captivity by Babylon. That’s what happens when God’s people lose both their perspective and their conviction. His love for the people will always survive, but his provision will not. And as much as stepping back from the nation would break the Lord’s heart, it would have hurt even more to allow them to continue in their apostasy.

That’s what comes of complacency in faith. The Lord will send messenger after messenger, with warning upon warning, and if hearts still don’t change, the Lord will do the changing for us. Conviction, which is what our change of heart is all about, is an interesting word, in that in a secular context it means that a verdict of guilty has been handed down by a court of law, and that punishment will soon begin. In faith, conviction is a positive term, for it is a sign that we have admitted our sin, and by our confession of guilt, and repentance for our sin, forgiveness becomes ours. The difference in these two concepts is that in the secular sense, punishment is ours to endure, while in a Godly sense, Jesus Christ has already accepted and endured the penalty that is rightfully ours.

Complacency in faith results in the penalty being moved out of Christ’s hands and into our own. And that can never a good thing. We need to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8) The prophet Micah had it right centuries ago, but the people of this world still don’t get it.

Share the prophet’s warnings with all who you meet, and some may actually accept the word, and discover the blessing that “conviction” can bring.