Jeremiah 7:8-11
“Get smart! Your leaders are handing you a pack of lies, and you’re swallowing them! Use your heads! Do you think you can rob and murder, have sex with the neighborhood wives, tell lies nonstop, worship the local gods, and buy every novel religious commodity on the market—and then march into this Temple, set apart for my worship, and say, ‘We’re safe!’ thinking that the place itself gives you a license to go on with all this outrageous sacrilege? A cave full of criminals! Do you think you can turn this Temple, set apart for my worship, into something like that? Well, think again. I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see what’s going on.’ GOD’s Decree!”
“Don’t be fooled into thinking that you will never suffer because the Temple is here. It’s a lie! Do you really think you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and burn incense to Baal and all those other new gods of yours, and then come here and stand before me in my Temple and chant, ‘We are safe!’—only to go right back to all those evils again? Don’t you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the LORD, have spoken!”
God is no respecter of our cultural institutions, places, and ideas we build our security upon. They are only as solid and dependable as we, their people. Their integrity is dependent upon the cultural mores of those who created them. When we choose to live otherwise, they lose their power to protect us. This world God made works in a particular way. Nature has its rules. Why should we expect we can throw them into the wind without consequence?
Lord, I fear for my country and the world. It seems to be coming apart, a big conflagration imminent. Help me to be all you want me to be in this corner I live in. Make me salt and light, able to comfort, with your wisdom to share. Help me and others to be ready.