Will you please turn to the book of Jeremiah? Jeremiah 7, the first fifteen verses.
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,
Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear ye the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these.
For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor;
If ye oppress not the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt:
Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old even for evermore.
Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.
Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods that ye have not known;
And come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, We are delivered; that ye may do all these abominations?
Is this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, saith the Lord.
But go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel.
And now, because ye have done all these works, saith the Lord, and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not:
Therefore will I do unto the house which is called by My name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.
And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim.
Jeremiah 8:4-7.
Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord: Shall men fall, and not rise up? Shall one turn away, and not return?
Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? They hold fast deceit, they refuse to return.
I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright; no man repenteth him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? Every one turneth to his course, as a horse that rusheth headlong in the battle.
Yea, the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle-dove and the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but My people know not the ordinance of the Lord.
Jeremiah 9:23-24.
Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he hath understanding, and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exerciseth lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.
In these three chapters, we have another prophecy of Jeremiah. In this prophecy, once again, we are shown the heart of God, as well as the heart of His people Israel. How tender was God’s heart towards His people, but how hardened was the people’s heart towards God.
What a difference we find between the things that God looked for among His people and the things in which His people put their trust.
Now, in these three chapters, we would like to fellowship on three things.
First, in Jeremiah 7:12:
But go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel.
Jeremiah was sent to the gate of the temple in Jerusalem to declare to all the people who entered the temple to worship. Here you find a great number of people, the people of Judah. They all came through the various gates into the temple in order to worship God.
By all outward appearances, they were a godly people, a most religious people. They came to worship.
They had such confidence in the temple at Jerusalem. They said, “This is the Lord’s temple. This is the temple of the Lord. Therefore, we could not go wrong. We have the temple of God here. We have the priests here. We have all the sacrifices here. And we are here to worship God. What else do You want?”
And yet, God said, “This is a falsehood.”
Now, the temple was given by God to the children of Israel. The temple was given that God might put His name there, that by the temple God might dwell among His people. All the sacrifices were ordered by God, that by these sacrifices there might be salvation of the Lord. All these things came from God.
And yet God said, “This is a falsehood. You just deceive yourselves by thinking that this is the temple of the Lord; therefore, everything is all right. If you do not amend your ways and your doings, then this temple is nothing. It has no value whatsoever, and even all the offerings and the sacrifices will not do you any good.”
Now, isn’t that strange? Things that come from God, things that are ordered by God, and yet they can turn into falsehood. Truth can turn into falsehood.
In the beginning, it is true, but it ends up as falsehood. Not meaning that the temple itself is false, or that the sacrifices are false; but when the life of God’s people does not correspond with the meaning of the temple and its sacrifices, when these two do not agree with each other, then there is a problem.
The temple is to bring the people to God. The sacrifices are to bring the people to a place where they become a holy and righteous people. But instead, they continue on with their evils, and after that they come to the temple and say, “Now we are covered. We are delivered.” Then they go out and continue on with their evil works.
Brothers and sisters, isn’t this strange? Things that come from God in the beginning can degenerate into falsehood. In other words, in the beginning it is of God, but towards the end God is no longer in it. It is just an empty house. It is just an outward action without a reality.
And worse than that, because they have the temple and the sacrifices, they have a kind of false confidence in these outward things. After they have done lots of evil, then they come to the temple, to the house of God, and offer their sacrifices. They say, “Now we are delivered,” and they go out and continue on with their evil works.
God said, “This is a house called by My name, but you make it a den of robbers. You are robbers. You rob Me of My glory, and yet you come here as to a den to hide yourselves, to be covered.”
Instead of being something that really leads them to the Lord, it becomes the ground of their false hope and confidence.
God is always looking for reality. He is never satisfied with outward appearance. Even though the outward things may have been given by Him in the beginning, His purpose in giving these things is to lead us into reality, into Himself.
If they do not serve that purpose, and if God is not in them, then these things are common things. There is no value in these things, and God has no delight in them at all.
How easy, brothers and sisters, for us to base our hope upon things instead of upon God. How easy for us to be tempted in such a way that we would base our confidence upon things that are given by God. We say, “Well, these are God’s things. They come from God. Surely, if they come from God, we can trust in these things.”
But is God in these things? If God is not there, then these things are nothing. We cannot base our hope upon anything less than God Himself. We cannot base our hope even upon things that come from God, because these things can degenerate through the wickedness of those people.
What God desires from us is a life that corresponds to Himself. All these outward things may help, but these are not the objective; these are just the means. If they help us to draw closer to God, these are things of God. But if we base our hope upon these things instead of coming to God, then these things become abominable in the sight of God.
God will get rid of all these things. He has no pity, no love, for these things.
And brothers and sisters, you will find that throughout the Bible. Even our Lord Jesus, in His days, entered into the temple. He looked around, and He said, “You make My Father’s house a den of robbers.”
Not only did the temple built by Solomon become a den of robbers, but even the temple rebuilt by the Jewish remnant when they came back from the Babylonian captivity had become such. At the time of Christ, the Lord said, “You make it a den of robbers.”
And this is true. It can be true today.
The Lord said, “You look. You consider Shiloh, the place where God put His name at the very beginning when the children of Israel entered into the promised land.”
We know that after the children of Israel entered into the promised land in the days of Joshua, the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, the ark, and all the things in the tabernacle were settled in Shiloh. Shiloh was the first place where the tabernacle, the ark, and all the vessels of the tabernacle were set.
In Shiloh, the children of Israel gathered year after year. Three times a year, they had to come to Shiloh to worship God. Even in the time of the judges, you will find that it was still Shiloh, the place which God had chosen to put His name there.
Even in the time of Eli, the tabernacle, the house of God, and the ark were still in Shiloh. People had to go to Shiloh to worship God. You remember Samuel: his parents went to Shiloh to worship God there year after year. When he was weaned, he was brought into Shiloh to serve God in the temple.
Shiloh was the place that God had chosen. There was the ark, there was the tabernacle, and God was there. What happened?
If you read 1 Samuel, you will find there was a war between the Israelites and the Philistines. The children of Israel said, “Well, let us bring the ark here with us, because if the ark is with us, then God is with us, and we will overcome our enemies.”
They did not know that they had departed from God and that the glory of God was going to depart from them. They put their trust in the ark, the symbol of God’s presence, instead of God Himself.
They brought it out to the battlefield, and they shouted. They said, “Now God is with us. Surely we will overcome our enemy.” Even the enemies were frightened. But the result was that the ark was captured. The ark of God was taken into captivity in the land of the Philistines.
God would rather have His ark captured because of the wickedness of His people. And when the ark was finally brought back by the sovereignty of God, it never returned to Shiloh.
It stayed in Kiriath-jearim for a long, long time, forgotten. Later on, you find that not only did the ark never return to Shiloh, but the tabernacle, the altar, and all the things in the tabernacle were removed from Shiloh to Gibeon.
If you read 1 Chronicles 21:29, you will find that David could not go to Gibeon to offer sacrifices at the altar there, because the tabernacle and all the vessels had been removed from Shiloh to Gibeon. In other words, God forsook Shiloh completely.
A place which God had chosen in the beginning, with the ark and the tabernacle, had now fallen to such an extent that not only did the ark not return, but even the tent was removed from Shiloh. Shiloh became just another place. It was not a favored place at all. It became common, just another city. That was all—nothing.
David brought the ark out of Kiriath-jearim, the city of the forests, into Mount Zion. It was not until Solomon built the temple that he brought the ark from Mount Zion to Mount Moriah, to the temple. He brought the tent, the tabernacle, and all the vessels from Gibeon back to the temple he built in Jerusalem.
So God said, “Now you just see what I have done to Shiloh. I will do it again to Jerusalem if you do not repent. I will do it again. I have no love for a place, even if it is chosen by Me. But if it has lost its meaning, it just degenerates into another city.”
And worse, Jerusalem was to be leveled, and the people would all be taken into captivity.
So, brothers and sisters, I think there is a warning to us today. We need to understand what it is that God is looking for among His people. He will never be satisfied just with outward appearance.
We can keep on being religious to the extent of being superstitious. When God is not in it, it is superstition. It degenerates into superstition, even though the things in the beginning came from God.
And yet, brothers and sisters, it can become just a religion. It can degenerate into superstition. We think that if we hold on to these things, then we are all right. We are delivered. We are covered. No such thing.
If we really come to God, if we touch reality, we have to repent. There has to be exercise of heart. We have to amend our ways and our doings. There is a certain price we have to pay.
But if we put our confidence in things, in religious things, then we do not need to amend our ways. We can go along as usual and just come back and think we are covered.
Many years ago, we were in the Philippines. Every year, at the time of Passion Week, there would be a parade. During the parade, you know what they did?
Usually the robbers—and actually we lived in the robbers’ den, because our neighbors were great robbers; but because of that, we were never robbed.
Usually at the time of such a parade, the robbers would come out. They would take a cross, a wooden cross, a heavy cross. They would be chained, and people would strike them until blood came out, to show their repentance to God. You know, they put their trust in these things.
Sometimes after they robbed a person, the first place they would go was to the cathedral and pray. Then everything was covered. That was it. Everything was all right now. They could keep on going as usual.
Brothers and sisters, cathedrals and places of worship have today become places of tourism. God is no longer there.
Even in Russia, you may still visit a cathedral, but it is a planetarium. God is not there.
What God looks for is reality. If we get into reality, then we have to humble ourselves before God. Things in our lives that are not at one with God have to be repented of. Our ways have to be amended.
Then Jerusalem will be needful. The temple and the things in the temple will be needful.
So, dear brothers and sisters, first of all, let us take this lesson to heart. Look at the house at Shiloh. Look at Jerusalem. What happened to these two places, the houses of God? This may happen to us too, because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
I think if we learn this, it will help us.
Number two: in Jeremiah 8, you find God saying:
Shall men fall, and not rise up? Shall one turn away, and not return?
Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding?
Now, if you fall, what will you do? Suppose you fall here. What will you do? Will you just lie there forever? Certainly not. You get up.
If you turn away, if you get astray, you will return. You will try to find your way back. But God said, “Why is My people slidden back by a perpetual backsliding?”
You know, when we turn away from God and God tries every means to warn us, even to discipline us, and still we are so stubborn, we will not get up and we will not return.
You say, “This is impossible.” But this is what has happened all the time.
As Jeremiah was saying these words to those people, they came to the temple to worship. Now, they were worshipers. Here Jeremiah spoke to these worshipers, saying, “Why do you not return? Why do you backslide with a perpetual, eternal backsliding?”
Just as he was speaking, great crowds of birds flew past through the air because it was the time of the migration of these birds.
You know, the land of Palestine is situated in such a way that every year, in April before summer, you find many kinds of birds flying through the air of Palestine. Some stay there, and some fly on to Europe.
Then, before the winter comes, they fly back and pass the winter in Africa. So Palestine is a place where you can see these migratory birds.
Among those migratory birds are the stork, the turtle-dove, the swallow—some say it is a swift—and the crane. These are migratory birds.
Aside from the turtle-dove, the stork, the swift, and the crane are all daytime migratory birds. When they fly over, they fly over in the daytime, so everybody sees them—thousands, tens of thousands of them flying overhead. Even the dove, which usually migrates in the evening, makes such a noise that everybody knows they are there.
Now, these birds, every year at a certain time—from April to October—begin to fly from Africa over Palestine. Some stay, and some go on even to Western Europe. They fly thousands of miles.
Then, during the fall, before the winter, they fly back again to rest in Africa. These birds know their appointed time. They know the time of their coming. They know that the time has come; now they have to go. They cannot stay.
If they stay on in Africa through the summer, they will be roasted. In the winter, they cannot stay on in Western Europe; they will be frozen.
So somehow, by instinct, they know that they have to migrate. They have to fly; the time has come. They have to fly thousands of miles for their very existence.
And think of God’s people, we who have the Spirit of God in us. Does not the Spirit of God warn us and tell us that, for our very existence, we need to return to God? If we do not return, we will die out.
And yet we are so dull. We are so hardened in our hearts. We do not listen. We do not know the judgment of the Lord. We do not know.
Brothers and sisters, our Lord Jesus said that sparrows were sold for a penny—by our money, two cents—and for two pennies you could get five sparrows. The fifth one was just added on, worth nothing. But even that little sparrow would not fall to the ground unless it was permitted by your heavenly Father. How much more precious are you than these sparrows?
Now, thank God, as far as God is concerned, He loves us more than these sparrows, these birds. But strange to say, we are even more foolish than the birds. They know their times, and we do not.
Is it not time that we should return to God? Is it not time that we should see the falsehood of trusting in outward things, even religious acts or religious things? Is it not time that we should seek God sincerely and earnestly and return to Him?
The days are short. We cannot go on like this any longer. It is time to return. Look at these birds: they are returning. Why do we not learn from them?
And finally, in Jeremiah 9, the Lord said:
Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he hath understanding, and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exerciseth lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.
You know, people who do not return to God often think that they are wise. But let not the wise man glory in his wisdom.
People who are not with God always think they are mighty, strong. Let not the mighty man glory in his might. People who do not serve God may think themselves rich, but He said, “Let not the rich man glory in his riches.” These things are not dependable.
But if anyone should glory, let him glory in his knowledge of God. He knows God.
How do you know God? How do you know that you know God?
You know that you know God not because you have the law with you. The children of Israel thought they were wise because they had the law of the Lord, but they broke the very spirit of the law. They were foolish.
How do you know that you know God? Not because you have these outward things. Well, these outward things come from God, and thank God for that: the temple, the sacrifices, the Ten Commandments. They come from God. Yet, just by holding on to these things without allowing them to lead us to God Himself, these things do not help.
How do we know that we know God? When we begin to know His character. When we begin to know that He loves righteousness, He loves lovingkindness, and He loves justice.
Now, when you begin to know the character of God, the nature of God, then you really have the knowledge of God. The knowledge of God is not just in these external things.
The knowledge of God is knowing God’s nature, knowing God’s character, knowing what He loves. If you know that, you cannot help but be transformed and conformed to His image. You will begin to love lovingkindness. You will begin to love justice. You will begin to love righteousness.
Now, that is transformation, and that is real. Only that is true knowledge.
So, brothers and sisters, what God looks for is His own character in His people. If He can see His own character reproduced in His people, this is His temple.
This is His temple. This is where He will put His name. This is where He will rest.
Now, if not, you may have everything religious, everything traditionally coming from God, and yet God says, “Just remember what He did to the house at Shiloh.” That is not what God wants.
So, brothers and sisters, here in another prophecy of Jeremiah, you find once again God pleading with His people that they may enter into the reality of God, and only that.
O heavenly Father, we do praise and thank Thee for Thy word, because when Thy word shines, it shows us Thy heart and Thy mind.
Lord, we do pray that through Thy word we may touch Thyself. We may see what a God we have, and how to be true worshipers—not just worshiping in a place, not just worshiping with outward things, but that we may be true worshipers who worship Thee in spirit and in truth.
And Father, Thou art seeking such worshipers. By Thy grace, we do desire that we may be such. O, have mercy upon us. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.