The Temple Sermon

However, it’s not too hard to see examples of our sins in the Old Testament. The history of the church that Jesus established is a history of people who worship auxiliary institutions instead of worshiping Jesus. This worship of the tangential puts us in what we think is an enviable position: We get all the benefits of the kingdom even if our hearts are not fully obedient to the King. But when Jesus established the way of the kingdom (Matt 5–7), it was all about the heart, and it still is. Yes, the church is eternal, but we have no immunity from God’s discipline.

God has established the church as an eternal institution. The gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). Yet the expressions of the church in local bodies may experience the favor of God or incur his discipline. We often don’t think of the church this way. The church that sins corporately is not immune from God’s discipline. All you have to do is look at the earliest expressions of local bodies of believers to whom John writes in Revelation 2 and 3. They were a part of Christ’s bride, yet he told them,

Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. (Rev 2:5)

So repent! Otherwise, I will come to you quickly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth. (Rev 2:16)

Remember, then, what you have received and heard; keep it, and repent. If you are not alert, I will come like a thief, and you have no idea at what hour I will come upon you. (Rev 3:3)

This sounds like it could come out of the mouth of Jeremiah! Yet these are the hard words of Jesus himself. Jesus loves his bride, and he holds her accountable in the same way God held Israel accountable. Jesus said it most strongly this way: “As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent” (Rev 3:19).

Let’s be clear: if you love the institution of the church, you do not have a license to sin. God will discipline both the individual and the church that lives in sin. This is why he ultimately calls us to a heart of obedience.

Jeremiah 7:21-26

God wants a heart of obedience. What we are about to read is going to seem tough—remarkably so. Yet remember that where there is warning, there is hope. Judah has the opportunity to get right and get real. They can make it right and stop lying to themselves. That would be a heart of obedience. Without this obedience God’s character obligates him to punish them.

In fact, his wrath is so set that he tells Jeremiah not to intercede on their behalf (vv. 16-17). He will punish them. But what have they done that is so egregious? The list is long. They were abusing one another (vv. 5-6), they were worshiping Baal (v. 8), and they were worshiping the queen of heaven (v. 18), but that was not the real issue. The real issue was a heart of disobedience. Simply put, they were not listening to God. In verses 23-26 God says, “They didn’t listen or pay attention. . . . My people wouldn’t listen to me or pay attention but became obstinate.” Earlier, in verse 13, Jeremiah used similar language: “I have spoken to you time and time again but you wouldn’t listen, and I have called to you, but you wouldn’t answer.” The root of all this sin was that they did not listen to God.

There is more in Scripture about listening than we have time to express here. The first sin was when Adam and Eve listened to someone other than God. The history of Israel is replete with people who knew what to do but did not do it; they did not listen to God. Jesus warned against having the ability to hear but not listening (Matt 13:9). In that same passage in Matthew, he quoted the prophet Isaiah by saying, “You will listen and listen, but never understand; you will look and look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown callous; their ears are hard of hearing” (Matt 13:14-15). The problem was not with their ability to hear but their willingness to hear. Jesus then goes on to tell a story about a soil that was so hard, like a heart that cannot hear, and it therefore rejected the word. This is the archetype of someone who will not hear: hard soil that rejects the word.

When our hearts are hard against God, there is no hope. When we have a soft heart, we listen to his Word, we long for his Word; we love him, and therefore we want to know what he says to us.

This leads Jeremiah to his conclusion: God is going to punish Israel.

Jeremiah 7:30–8:3

The consequence of disobedience is God’s wrath. God’s anger burns against Judah because they have ignored repeated warnings. This is not the child who slips up. This is the child who is openly defiant, does horrible things, but then shows up at church, kisses you on the cheek, and wonders why you have any problem with this at all. Their attitude is, What’s wrong with you?

God has had enough. So a tragic end is prophesied. The conclusion to his sermon (7:30–8:3) could be summed up in the words of 7:29:

Raise up a dirge on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under his wrath.

During the time of the judges, we have recorded one of the most famous stories of the Bible, the story of Samson. He had everything a man could want. He was powerful with his personality, he was cunning, and he had seemingly unlimited strength. Every boy growing up in church has fantasized about what he would do with unlimited strength. Samson had it all.

He eventually got the girl he wanted, and it cost him everything. Not everything in the sense that he died the next day. Far worse than that! His enemies bound him, mocked him, tortured him, and enslaved him. His slow, agonizing fall was as unhurried and sluggish as his rise was meteoric. He rose fast; he fell slow.

His death began famously when he told Delilah the secret of his strength. She cut his hair, and the next day the enemy came to take him out. Here some of the most tragic words in the whole Bible are recorded. Samson rose to fight, “But he did not know that the Lord had left him” (Judg 16:20). He had everything but God.

The problem with organizations (movements, institutions, or churches) is when they are effective. When they are well managed and doing fine, it is tempting to perceive that the success lies in their leaders or their resources. When a church—or something created by a church, such as a school—thinks it is the end in itself, the favor of God may depart from it.

You might think this is a scary passage, and you would be right. This was recorded so that we might fear God. No one is exempt from loving Jesus. The potential for us to love organizations and fail to be holy is real. Israel was victim of this idea, the early church was, and we are. No one is immune. Fearing God means fearing a fake faith. So, how is your faith?