Slogans Won't Save You

Transcript

Auto-generated from the audio. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

[0:01] Thank you, Pastor Victoria. And we're going to start now with Jeremiah. And today our text is Jeremiah chapter 7, verses 1 through 20. And just so you know, like I said, we're starting a new series on Jeremiah. It's a great book. It's a very interesting book. It's actually a challenging book. It's one of the longest books in the Bible by length, by number of words. And like I said, we're kind of breaking it up. So today, think of it as an introduction. It's going to set some of the grander themes of the book. And then next week, we have the Clausens. Very excited about that. And the week after that, we're really going to dig in to some of these themes that even today will start to show up. A little bit of background of the geopolitical situation around the time of Jeremiah. It actually spans many decades, and there were a lot of changes in the ancient Near East at that time. If you read the book, you'll see that there's a lot of changes in the ancient Near East at that time. And so you remember from maybe eighth grade social studies, where you start learning about how civilizations formed. You heard or read that sometime about 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 years ago, people stopped being nomadic, and they began to learn how to do agriculture. So they began,

[1:11] instead of following their animals everywhere and looking for grains here and there, where they could find them, they figured out they could plant all this stuff. And so people began to stay in the same place. And so then villages formed, and then towns formed, and then cities formed, and then city states formed. And so then, you know, you're going to see a lot of changes in the ancient Near East and people found, tried to find ways to organize themselves. And with that came a lot of misery, of course, because you had somebody had to be in charge of it all, and they weren't often the nicest people. And after city states, we started to see the development of empires. And so we had something called the Assyrian Empire, which spread and spread and spread. It sort of spread across a good part of what we call the Fertile Crescent. The Egyptians had their own empire. They had a very strong base because of the Nile. It was great for watering all their crops. And so they were able to build just a massive civilization there. And it wasn't long before those two empires were going to start touching each other. And whenever there's sort of this overlap of empires, there's a lot of friction, and there's a lot of trouble. And as it turns out,

[2:11] ancient Israel, ancient Judah, ancient Jerusalem was in that zone between two major empires, between the Assyrian Empire and the Egyptian Empire. And they would kind of cross over each other. And Israel was the battleground between them. And that was a tough thing. So wars and peoples would come through there and ravage things. If an invading army came through, they didn't just, you know, they trampled your flowers, basically. They took your stuff as they needed it for their war machine. So that was a real challenge for God's people. And the Assyrian Empire, in the course of Jeremiah's lifetime, it actually fell. And the Assyrian Empire fell to an upstart that was in the south of it called Babylon. And the Babylonian Empire came and basically replaced the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rose up and fought the Assyrian Empire at Nineveh, which is the town that, if you remember, Jonah said was going to be overthrown. But it was only 40 years after Jonah said that. The Lord spared it in Jonah's lifetime. But 40 years later, Nineveh did fall to the Babylonians. And from that point on, it became known as the Babylonian Empire. A lot of the people were the same, but they retired.

[3:30] So if you remember how great the great great great great to see that God is faithful, even if we're getting trampled underfoot? It's an important question that Jeremiah kind of has to help these people grapple with. And what are the temptations? What are the challenges that come? Now, one of the things that happens whenever you're what's called a vassal state in a larger empire, so at times Israel was part of the Egyptian empire, only for a brief moment of time was actually Israel its own empire under King Solomon. There were other times when the other empires were weaker, and so it had a relative amount of autonomy and independence. During Solomon's time, it actually became its own tiny empire. But when you're part of another empire, they're going to come after you. They're going to take, they're going to, they're going to extract a toll or a tax on you. One is to get as much as they can from you. The other is to keep you weak so you don't have enough money to produce weapons and raise your own army. So it's going to keep you in a state of depression. And so it's going to dependence. But this leads to some very difficult social problems is when the whole land is being taxed. So there's scarcity is intensified. When scarcity is intensified, the injustice is

[5:09] intensified. And the rich, while they're not getting richer, they find ways to protect their wealth because they have the power to do so. But the poor have no such defenses. And so the gap between the rich and the poor grows in times like that. How do God's people remain faithful to take care of the least as it's all over their law, to take care of the widow, the orphan, the stranger in the land? Jeremiah is going to talk about that in chapter seven, as we're going to read. So the temptation in the time of empire is to hoard and to hold on and to take care of just yourself. But the call from God is to do the opposite. And so that's a temptation in a time of empire. The other thing that Israel is tempted to do is because it's in this borderlands between two empires, is to play one empire off the other. And this is how King Josiah loses his life. And it was against Jeremiah's advice that he does. So we'll see that later. And so there's this temptation to kind of try to control things that are beyond us. And then there's another temptation was to attempt their own independence. And normally you would think that this is always a great thing. And in America, we love, you know, the Fourth of July, the War of

[6:21] Independence. We always think independence is a great thing. But this is a great thing. And so God doesn't promise the people that independence at this point in time is a good thing. He doesn't promise them that. Yet they want it. And so that needs to be tempered by the prophetic word of Jeremiah, and they don't necessarily listen to it. So the other thing I just want to say about Jeremiah real quick is that if you read it from beginning to end, be prepared because it's not arranged chronologically. And so that you can get a little confused. We have a list of how maybe the chapters would go. Chronologically, it's more arranged thematically. And you're going to see in a little while, we're going to show a video about how it is arranged. It's very fascinating.

[7:05] But the general idea is that Jeremiah has a prophetic word about the injustice and the problems of his country. He says those words. He has prophetic words against other nations. He has to say those words. He is persecuted, imprisoned. He has a lot of trouble because he's being faithful to God, saying God's word. And so it's a rich, it's a beautiful book, and it's full of just incredible power. And God's also redemptive word is in it too. So I'm really looking forward to the series. I'm really looking forward to introducing it a little bit more. In just a second, we're going to show you a video from the Bible Project. I want you to find this at home. It's called the Bible Project. Just type it in, the Bible Project, and Google. They have a YouTube page. They have their own video page. Basically, they have created these videos, which are introductions to all the books of the Bible. You can find them on the Bible Project. You can find even topics in the Bible. They're done really well. You're about to see it. There's sort of an animation style with narration over it. As far as I can tell, and I looked as far as I could, we have permission to show this in our worship service if we say that this is from the Bible

[8:08] Project, which is what I'm saying in this moment. And so it's about seven minutes long, and we're going to show that now. And they're going to introduce Jeremiah and give an overview of it in a way that I never could in a much better way. So I'm going to ask Yanni to show that now, and when it's done, we'll come back.

[8:26] The book of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was an Israelite priest who lived and worked in Jerusalem during the final decades of the kingdom of southern Judah. He was called as a prophet to warn Israel about the severe consequences of breaking their covenant with God through their idolatry and injustice. And he even predicted that the empire of Babylon would come as God's servant to bring this judgment on Israel by destroying Jerusalem, taking the people into exile. And sadly, his words became reality. Jeremiah lived through the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and witnessed the exile personally. Now this book came into existence in a really interesting way. Chapter 36 tells us that after 20 years of Jeremiah's preaching in Jerusalem, God called him to collect all of his sermons and poems and essays and commit them to writing, which Jeremiah did by employing a scribe named Baruch, who wrote down and compiled all of this material into a scroll. Now Baruch also gathered lots of stories about Jeremiah, and he linked all the pieces together. And so this is why the book reads like an anthology, a collection of collections. It's all been arranged to present this prophet as a messenger of God's justice and grace. So the book begins with God calling Jeremiah to be a prophet, and he's given a dual vocation.

[9:40] He will be a prophet to Israel, but also to the nations. And his words will both uproot and tear down, but also plant and build up. In other words, he's going to accuse Israel and warn them of God's coming judgment, but he also has a message of hope for the future. Now this opening perfectly summarizes the first large section. Chapters 1-24. It's a collection of Jeremiah's writings from before the exile. And the core idea here is that Israel has broken the covenant with God and violated all the terms of the agreement they made that were written in the Torah. And in a number of ways. They've adopted the worship of all kinds of Canaanite gods. Building idol shrines all over the land. And Jeremiah develops the metaphor of idolatry as adultery. And uses the language for idolatry for his end. language of prostitution, promiscuity, unfaithfulness, to describe how Israel has given their allegiance to other gods. Jeremiah also repeatedly accuses Israel's leaders, the priests, the kings, the other prophets, have all become corrupt. They've abandoned the Torah and the covenant, which has led to a tragic result, rampant social injustice. The most vulnerable people in Israelite communities, the widows, orphans, the immigrants,

[10:50] were all being taken advantage of in clear violation of the laws of the Torah. And Israel's leaders didn't even seem to care. So a classic place where all of these ideas come together is in chapter 7. It's called Jeremiah's Temple Sermon. The Israelites are coming to worship their god in the temple as if everything is just fine, but outside the temple they are worshiping other gods. And some were even adopting the horrifying Canaanite practice of child sacrifice. And so Jeremiah makes his very unpopular announcement. The gods are coming. The God of Israel is coming in judgment. He's going to destroy his own temple and punish Israel by sending an enemy from the north. This is an army that God would allow to conquer Jerusalem. And as you read on, you discover he's talking about the great empire of Babylon. And so this all leads up to a transition in chapter 25. Israel hasn't turned back to their god. And so in the first year of Babylon's new king, Nebuchadnezzar, God tells Jeremiah to announce that the Babylonian armies are headed for Israel and all of its neighbors to conquer them and take them into exile for 70 years. He compares Babylon to a cup of wine filled to the brim with God's just anger at all of Israel's injustice and idolatry.

[12:01] And God will make Israel and the nations drink from this cup. Now this chapter is key to the book's design because everything that follows is going to focus on Babylon's coming attack. First on Israel in chapters 26 to 45 and then on the other nations in chapters 46 to 51. The section about Israel first contains stories about how Jeremiah begged Israel to turn back, how he warned them right up to the last minute, but the leaders of Israel kept rejecting him. The section concludes with a large collection of stories about how Jerusalem was under siege and eventually destroyed by Babylon and about how Jeremiah was persecuted all through that time and eventually kidnapped and taken against his will to Egypt by a group of Israelite rebels. Now right here in the middle, in between all of these dark stories of Israel, the chapter that is called the chapter of disaster and judgment is a collection of Jeremiah's messages of hope for Israel's future. So he picks up on Moses' prediction that after Israel had broken the covenant and gone into exile, see Deuteronomy 30, God would not abandon his people. Rather he would renew his covenant with them and transform their hearts. Jeremiah develops this promise and he says that God is going to one day inscribe the laws of the Torah,

[13:12] not on tablets but rather on the hearts of his own people. And he says that God will heal their rebellion so that they can truly one day love and follow him fully. And so one day Israel will return back to the land and the Messiah from the line of David is going to come and that's when all nations will come to recognize Israel's God as the true God. So these chapters are showing that despite Israel's apostasy, God is not going to let Israel's sin get the final word. Rather, his own faithfulness will bring about the fulfillment of his promises no matter what. After this we find the large collection of poems about how God is going to use Babylon to judge the nations around Israel. So Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Edom, Ammon, Damascus, Hazor. But then surprisingly, the longest poems are saved for last. And they're about God's coming judgment on Babylon itself. So although God used this nation to execute his justice, God doesn't endorse their violence and idolatry. And so Babylon too will come under the standard of God's justice. And so Jeremiah denounces this nation's pride and injustice as well. Now, Babylon is larger than life in these poems. And it reminds us of the image of Babylon all the way back from Genesis chapter 11.

[14:28] Babylon has become the archetypal rebellious nation. In their glorification of wealth and war, God's going to give this nation over to its own destruction. The book concludes with a story taken from the end of the book of 2 Kings. It tells about Babylon's final attack on Jerusalem. How they destroyed the city walls and burned the temple and took the people into exile. The story shows how Jeremiah's warnings of judgment from chapters 1 through 24 were fulfilled. But then the chapter ends with a short story about the captive Israelite king Jehoiakim. He's heir to the line of David. And the king of Babylon releases him from prison. And shows him favor and invites him to eat at the royal table for the rest of his life. And that's how the book ends. So it's a little glimmer of hope. And this recalls Jeremiah's words. He says, God has promises of hope from chapters 30 to 33. God hasn't abandoned his people or the promise of a future coming king from David's line. And so while this book contains a huge amount of warning and judgment, the final words conclude with a note of hope for the future. And that's what the book of Jeremiah is all about.

[15:37] Well, thank you. And wasn't that great? We're going to do a reading now. And I'll put a note in the chat log if you want, if you enjoyed that. We can use those other ones in the future. But I don't want to rely on them too much. As pastors, we need to do our own homework. They've done such a good job with the drawings and things like that. It's just really great. So you kind of get the idea of what Jeremiah is and what it's for in a way that we couldn't have done. Let's go now to our reading. They even mentioned it in chapter 7. We call it the Temple Sermon. Jeremiah is in the courts of the temple. He's preaching. He's saying, you know, you are corrupt, unjust, and the temple, which you think will protect you, it's not going to protect you. So don't lie to yourself. And that's kind of the theme that we're going to be looking at. So we're going to go to our reading now. It's Jeremiah chapter 7, verses 1 through 20. Jeremiah 7. The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship the Lord.

[16:51] Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.

[17:33] Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to bulls, and go after other gods that you have not known? And then come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name, and say, We are safe.

[17:56] Only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your sight? You know I too am watching, says the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first. And see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.

[18:18] And now because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer. Therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave you, and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim. As for you, do not pray for this people. Now this is the Lord speaking to Jeremiah. He's telling Jeremiah, don't even pray for these people. I'm so mad at them. As for you, do not pray for this people. Do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. God is mad. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger.

[19:25] Is it I whom they provoke, says the Lord? Is it not themselves to their own hurt? Therefore thus says the Lord God, my anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on human beings and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground. It will burn and not be quenched. Let's pray.

[19:48] Heavenly Father, thank you for this word, this difficult word. We ask that you add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. So maybe you haven't seen God quite this angry before. I hope that we kind of are, that got our attention. It definitely got my attention. You know, God is mad. He's so mad he doesn't even want, he doesn't want Jeremiah to pray for these people. He's like, nope, I'm just so fed up, I can't even hear another word about this. They're in trouble. And you need to tell them that they're in trouble. So there's a lot here. And this kind of does set the tone. And so we're going to come back to chapter seven, at least touch back on it in future sermons, because it kind of lays the table for a lot of things. But here are some highlights for today. And this is more of an introduction to the whole, sort of the whole thing, is that there are three large problems for Jeremiah. That he points out today. And we're going to talk about, I'm going to mention three of them, but we're really just going to talk about one of them today. The first is that the people are idolatrous, right? It says they're baking bread for the queen of heaven. And you may say, who is that? That is probably the goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth or Ishtar.

[21:00] She has many names. So the people leave the temple, they go home. The children gather wood for the fire. And the women in their homes knead dough and they bake bread. And they bake bread for the queen of heaven. So they're engaged in idolatry at the same time that they're coming to the temple, asking for God's protection. God has had enough of that. And Jeremiah is telling them, you can't do that anymore.

[21:24] The other thing that's going on here is that the geopolitical situation, I referred to this earlier, has led to a lot of scarcity, right? So those with resources have really clamped down and they've been victimizing those without. The widow, the orphan, the stranger in the land, and the poor. And so they've been living in an unjust way. And God is going to bring them to task for that. And then finally, and this is what we're going to spend our time on today, is that the people have a false sense of security, right? They have a false sense of reality, right? They think, this is what they think, it's almost as if you imagine, that they think that the temple has created this invisible protective shield all over them. That no army can conquer. It's almost like a sci-fi movie, right? Like this shield generator emanates from the temple and it rings around the mountains of Jerusalem. And as long as they're here, no army can poke through there. God is always going to protect them. And Jeremiah is going to explain to them with a lesson from history, that that's absolutely not the case. But they believe it. They believe it. So there's a false reality that they're living in and Jeremiah needs to help them. Wake up from that false reality.

[22:41] So in short order, there's idolatry, there's injustice, and there's living in a false reality that they are safe. So, today again, I said we're going to look at the last. It's the delusion that the people are safe. And I want you to look again at verse 4. Yanni, you can pull it up again real quick. It's the very first of the ones there. Look at verse 4. It says, Do not trust in these deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord. And you can almost imagine that like Jeremiah is, this is what God says, go to the temple, stand outside there. And he's bringing the word of the Lord to them. And the people are saying, we're in the temple, you can't bring us negative thoughts right now. And they're almost going like this, this is the temple. If I say this loud enough and long enough and as many times as I want, I won't have to hear what you're saying because I have this magical view of the temple that will always protect us. And that even when I'm here, I'm protected from the consequences of my sin when I leave this place. So this is false thinking, false delusional thinking about reality.

[23:52] And so you can even imagine that there's a slogan somewhere in here, like this is the temple of the Lord. You can't say that stuff. We're just going to chant this over and over again until you go away. I'm going to drown you out with that.

[24:07] I'll say this. You can also think of it in a way as if you play tag when you're a kid. And of course you play tag. And some versions of tag, you just run around until you're totally exhausted. Others, there's like a home base. And if you're touching home base, you're safe seas, right? And if you're touching home base, no problem, you're safe.

[24:25] And you can't, you know, and then somebody counts to 10 and you have to leave by 10 and you can run around a little bit more and you can come back to home. So the people think that the temple is safe seas. Like if I'm touching this place, nothing can happen to me. I can go home and do a bunch of crazy stuff and come back and I'll be safe. If I'm here, the enemy armies just can't penetrate. I'm safe seas. You're not safe seas. It's not going to happen. They're going to learn that there's no safe place from the Syrians or the Babylonians or the Egyptians. All these empires wake up every morning wanting to eat them for breakfast. That's just how the world is. And your delusion or your false belief that that can't happen will not protect you in the end. And in the end, it doesn't.

[25:11] And he's getting to one big problem. Jeremiah is getting to one big problem that all humanity has, which is that we lie. And the most sort of devastating and the original lie is the lie that we tell ourselves. We begin always by lying to ourselves. I'm safe here. God isn't that mad about this. I don't need to take care of my neighbor. Right? Those are these lies that we start telling ourselves. The people are starting to tell themselves. They have a slogan to sort of plaster over all of it. They have a false belief that they can relax into so that there's nothing that they have to do that God demands, right?

[25:53] And Jeremiah says, do not trust these deceptive words. Don't come into the temple courts and tell lies. Don't lie in this holy place. And if you look at verse nine, and when I read it, I kind of read some anger into it, and I think it's right. Look at verse nine, where God says, will you steal and murder and commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house? You just hear the parental, like God is mad at his children, the parent, and then come into this house, which is called by my name, and say, we are safe. Don't come in here and lie.

[26:39] Only to go on doing all these things, all these abominations, has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight. Your words and your actions have no match. They have no match. You cannot come into the temple with blood and injustice and greed on your hands. You can't come in here and do that. There's a consequence to be paid, and it's coming in time. It's Babylon. It's going to come.

[27:06] You may have noticed now our second reading that Victoria read from Matthew, right? There's a connection here to that gospel reading. Jesus comes to the temple too, remember? And he overturns the table, and he quotes from here. He quotes from this passage right here. He says, I have returned my father's house into a den of robbers. And in a future sermon, we're going to develop this connection even more because Jesus, in that moment, is taking on the mantle of Jeremiah, which is huge. It's part of the reason why he's killed. He's identifying himself with Jeremiah, whom nobody loved back then, right? And Jesus is saying, you can't come into this house and lie.

[27:49] And by doing what he does, by making that quote and by overturning those tables, he's saying the same thing that Jeremiah said. He says, you can't do this. He's making a huge statement by quoting Jeremiah. He's validating Jeremiah's prophetic words. And he's taking on the mantle of Jeremiah to his generation. And that move, it was not lost on the religious leaders of his time. And it led to him dying, among many other things.

[28:17] Now, that's the premise though, is you say you're safe, and it's a lie because you're not safe. And Jeremiah doesn't just leave it at that. He wants to back things up. And so maybe I'll ask, can you show the slide that has verse 12 on it, Yanni? It's probably the next one there. It's not, it's not, it's on there? Okay, good.

[28:35] He reminds them of what happens at Shiloh. He says, go now to my place in Shiloh. You know, and then most of us are like, well, what, you know, what happened in Shiloh? Well, luckily for you, we had Victoria read it at the beginning, 1 Samuel chapter four.

[28:51] And it says, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. Remember what the people did at Shiloh? The Israelites were fighting against the Philistines and they're like, instead of trusting in God for help, trusting in God for salvation, they said, well, let's get this thing. Now it was an important thing, no doubt. It was the Ark of the Covenant. Let's get this thing and bring it with us into battle. And it'll create this magical shield around us that will keep us safe. And we'll just mow down our enemies with this symbol that we take with us into battle.

[29:31] And so if you look at 1 Samuel four, which we read earlier, what does it say? The Philistines heard that the Ark was coming. They kind of got scared, but then they gave themselves a pep talk and they wiped out the Israelites. They killed 30,000 of them.

[29:48] And so that was no protection at all. And then as if to sort of underline how futile that thinking was, the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant. How could this be? Well, they were putting their troops in battle.

[30:09] So if you look at 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. 1 Samuel 4.3. made it at Shiloh and we lost the Ark of the Covenant for a season. And so there's no protection in that. There's no protection in these things, only in being just people, only in doing what the Lord requires, right? So here's the word. The Ark won't protect you. The temple won't protect you. Your faithfulness to God alone will protect you. Your shalom and your justice will protect you. But your sacrifices won't protect you. Your slogans won't protect you and they never can. That doesn't work. So I really want, we're almost done now. I really want to say, where does this bring us now for today? And what I am realizing is that we live in kind of a slogany delusional landscape. I'm going to say that again because it's a little bit there, right? We live in a slogany, and I just made that word up because it feels good. We live in a slogan filled, if you like. We live in a slogan filled. And delusional landscape, right? It reads a lot more like a dystopian novel, and it would be so interesting to read it if it wasn't true, you know, but it's reality. Can you think of some slogans? Can you think of any slogans that you might have heard in the last few years?

[31:43] Slogans don't work. Slogans create enemies almost all the time. Be wary of slogans. Be wary of repeating them because there's always an enemy that they create. There's always an other. When you listen to the words of Jesus, nowhere does he say you need to make more enemies. No, you need to love your enemies and pray for them. You need to be different from this world. This world is always going to have slogans, and they change every 20 years or so. There's always new ones. Don't get on every little bandwagon. They come and go. We pray for our enemies. This is the call on us. We pray for those who would persecute us. We live a Christ-like lifestyle. We accept the cross as our lot in life. Other people may abuse us. Jesus says in John chapter 16, 33, in this world you will have trouble. He was right. He was right. So we don't do slogans. We don't do slogans. This is the temple of the Lord. This is the temple of the Lord or some other slogan. They hide a reality that's really there, and they create enemies that we don't need to create. Be careful. The other is delusional thinking, and delusional thinking is super powerful, and I've said this before. There's a lot of conspiracy theories going around. To the shame

[33:06] of the church, there are many Christians who believe in conspiracy theories, and for a while I just thought it was kind of weird, a little bit funny, kind of goofy, like, oh, that's kind of funny. That's a little fringy, a little eclectic. Now I'm a little bit more of a, I don't know, a little more like the level of my concern about it has really gone way up because, again, a conspiracy theory is a convenient way to wrap up all our fears, all our anger, all our mistrust of the world, and identify it with some person or group and conveniently put it all there so that that can be the enemy, and we have created this false narrative about it so that we know that's true, which it's not because the world is more complex than that. And then we feel more safe. Well, God didn't call you to feel safe, and God certainly didn't call you to bear false witness about your neighbor, and that's your neighbor. And so this delusional thinking is like a plague. It's like a plague in the world, and it's definitely a plague in the church, and we need to repent of that. We can't believe that. We can't believe that Jewish space lasers caused all the California wildfires. Like, that's what some people have said. That's absurd.

[34:23] The fact that rationalization is a false narrative, and that's a false narrative, and that's a false statement. The fact that rational people would believe that is absurd. The fact that Christians might believe that is a disgrace to the name of Jesus. So we can't be in delusional thinking. We have to be in reality. And the reality of the world is that it's far more complex. The reality of the world is that the world is dangerous. The reality of the world is that we may not ever be as safe as we want to be. There's no safety in saying this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

[34:54] Telling lies to ourselves doesn't make us any safer in actuality. What makes us safe is the embrace of God. What makes us safe is living a life that God ordains for us, a life of shalom, a life of justice, a life of obedience. Now, safe is relative. It may not be physically safe, but we're spiritually safe in all those situations. And I'd much rather be spiritually safe than physically safe. And physical safety is a bit of an illusion anyways. I'd much rather live in the reality that God has created all around me than a fantasy that somebody else has created for me. That will never help me. And if we're stuck in a delusion about who we are and where we are and what our world is like, what our nation is like, what our culture is like, if we only live in delusional thinking, we will never progress beyond those problems. Those problems will hang around our necks forever. Because we're never actually dealing with them because we deny their existence. So Jeremiah is saying to the people, your problems are real. The temple will fall. It will not protect you.

[36:07] Because God cares about your heart. He doesn't care about what you say. He cares that you not leave this place and go do these other things. Your actions out there have to match your words in here. That's how you stay safe.

[36:23] So God says, God is on the side of the Jeremiahs of this world. And that's the other thing. The final thing I'll say today is this is your call. If you're looking for something to do, it's not the easiest thing in the world. It's to be a Jeremiah in your world. It's to be a prophetic voice and say to our culture and to our church and to ourselves, you're living in a false reality. It won't hold up.

[36:47] Start clearing away the falsehoods and the slogans. Start living in the reality that God has put you in. Start addressing the reality that God has put you in. Start addressing the injustice that you have in the world. And God will save you through that.

[36:59] Not just that. Obviously, Jesus Christ is the redemptive word that's going to come even in Jeremiah. And we're going to get into that more later as we move on. But that's what God calls for in this passage.

[37:10] Live justly. Live in shalom. And it's not all bad news. There's, as we saw in this introduction video, there's a soaring promise of hope that we're going to get to. In the spite of God's judgment, in spite of God's anger, he will turn from his anger and he will bring salvation to his people. And we have that to look forward to. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for this book, which we're just beginning to crack open.

[37:40] Help us to live in the reality that we're actually in. Help us to set aside slogans. Help us to have a prophetic word for our world. Give us the courage and the spirit to do it. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. We go now to worship. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.