Chapter 7

Note to my readers:

The last two days I have been doing my devotion very late at night, and they haven’t really met my own standards. On the one hand, I can simply leave them as they are; after all, they’re just my personal devotions. But since friends of mine are now reading this regularly, I owe you more than that. So after I upload this installment, I intend to go back and do a bit of a facelift to chapters 5 and 6. If you get this via email, I’ll send you the uprated version.

Thanks for your help in keeping me on track!

PS – Blog readers, I haven’t actually succeeded in uploading either of the suspect episodes, so I’ll clean them up before you get to see them! :-)

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The Temple was a potent symbol to the Jews.

Every single part of it was carefully crafted, with some deep significance. For example, the two pillars at the front had specific names (Jakin and Boaz), and represented aspects of the nature of God. The carvings on the walls each had a meaning. The Holy of Holies (the room where the Ark of the Covenant was stored) was a specific size, and the size was chosen for a reason.

When we were looking at the book of Numbers, we looked at the building of the Tabernacle, and we saw how intricate that was. The Temple was even more so, and no surprise there. It was a permanent building, whereas the Tabernacle had only been a tent. Years of time and effort had gone into its construction, and the people of Israel were incredibly proud of it.

So imagine the shock that Jeremiah would have engendered by these comments – that the Temple itself wouldn’t protect people from God’s anger!

It would have sent disquiet throughout his audience. “Surely, he must be kidding! Why should we worry? God’s always gotten us through!”

But there is more. God isn’t going to leave people wondering why He is angry.

He catalogues a list of sins, in grisly detail. Many of them are bad. But the one that upsets Him the most is one which He has mentioned many times before in this book – the exchanging of Him for other gods!

Some might ask if God is being insecure here. That kind of misses the point. God made these people His own. He came down to them, brought them out of Egypt and turned them into a rich and prosperous nation.

One might expect that the people would be grateful to Him. It would be reasonable when you consider how much He has done for them. But people forget things, and the next thing you know the people are cooking sacred meals for other gods, and offering sacrifices to them.

So far, most people of today might say “Okay, but is that so bad?”

Yes. The sacrifices they were offering were THEIR OWN CHILDREN.

The thing that had God upset wasn’t just that they were offering to other gods. He didn’t like that, but he could take it. It was that they were killing their own kids as a sacrifice to these other gods. In other words, we’re not talking about an incident in which they thought they were doing right but simply misunderstood. When one had to burn their child on an altar, there was no way that they could possibly have seen the god they were worshiping as Holy, righteous or good. Some people ask about Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac – but that’s kind of the point! When Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his own son, God made it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that it was not necessary!

In contrast, the people of Israel not only did this horrendous act, but they did so IN GOD’S TEMPLE. It’s hard to find a way to express God’s disgust at this, but you see stirrings here of what was to become known as the Exile.

Incidentally, one of the places where this human sacrifice was done was in the Valley of Hinnom (see v 32). In time it eventually fell into disuse, and eventually was used as a place where human remains were cremated (presumably because, with its grisly past, nobody wanted to use it for anything else). The term that Jesus uses for “Hell” is “Gehenna” – the name this accursed valley had by Jesus’ time.

So what does this mean for us?

If I were in more of a gadfly mood, I could compare the similarities between abortion and sacrificing one’s child on the altar, but I choose not to. Instead I want to discuss “Grace abuse”.

The Israelites had come to the point where they thought the temple itself would save them from whatever came their way, despite God’s anger. They had forgotten that the God who owned the Temple was what was important, not the building itself. Rather than a relationship, they had reduced their religion to a simple ritual – do the sacrifices and everything will be alright.

It seems distasteful to us, but I wonder if we could be said to be doing the same.

We have it drummed into us that God operates by grace alone, and all we need do to be forgiven is to come to God and confess to Him.

Sometimes, though, I think we might treat this grace mechanically – say the magic words and you’ll be forgiven.

I wonder how God feels about that – when we simply say to Him “Yes, I did X Y or Z” and expect His forgiveness.

Yes, God DOES operate solely by Grace, and anyone who repents and turns to Him, no matter how great their sin, is forgiven. However, the other side of the coin is that it isn’t magic, and there’s no formula.

Because in the end, what God is wanting is a relationship, and forgiveness is part of the relationship between us and Him being restored. How much relationship is expressed in a mechanical transaction where confession is exchanged for atonement?