Is that the Trinity I Spy?
As I was reading the opening to Jeremiah 7, I couldn’t help but
notice the message that the people proclaimed in verse 4. The people were saying, “This is the temple
of the Lord.” In fact, they were saying
it three times. The Hebrew people
believed that God’s number was 3. So to
say something three times was evoking God’s power to make it true. In this case, they said that Jerusalem had
the temple of the Lord multiple times to try and invoke God’s protection over
Jerusalem.
However, that doesn’t change two facts. First, how neat is it to see that even in the
Old Testament that people use the number three symbolically to represent
God? They may not have had a concrete
understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but they absolutely understood
that the number 3 was connected to the presence of God. The foundation for the concept of the Trinity
was being laid.
Second, in one respect the Hebrew people were absolutely
right. Jerusalem was God’s city. But that means that it is God’s to do with as
He pleases. God can build up, tear down,
protect, or destroy. It’s God’s city to
do with as He desires! It’s like an
artist making a sketch. He can lay down
some charcoal lines and then erase where needed. He can fix things and add to it. Or ultimately he can take the work, toss it
away, and start all over again.
Ownership does not convey guaranteed protection. Ownership conveys guaranteed authority.
A Lesson from the Past
God tells the Hebrew people that they are hypocrites. It is bad enough that they sin. It is bad enough that they sin and then come
into the temple. But what is absolutely
abominable is that they sin, come into the temple, and then proclaim faith in
their forgiveness without ever once thinking that they might need to
change! They are blind and ignorant as to
how their lives and their faith are not compatible. They live their life the way that they want
to live their life and then they turn to the temple and say, “God will protect
us, we are fortunate to live in space He calls Holy.”
Talk about cheap grace! I
think as I read these words in Jeremiah that I heard both Luther and Bonheoffer
roll over in their graves! God does not
offer cheap grace, God offers costly grace.
God offers a grace that will cost His Son dearly. God offers grace that cost the lives of those
who follow Him!
Look at the sacrifices Jeremiah is making to follow God! Jeremiah is quite unpopular. He has to go against the crowd. He has to speak a publicly unpopular
message. And it’s not over yet.
Look at the sacrifices that God’s followers throughout time have
made. Abraham gave up home and
family. Moses gave up luxury in the
Pharaoh’s house. Elijah and Elisha gave
up a normal life of teaching and simplicity.
Jesus gave up His life. Paul gave
up his heritage. Peter and James gave up
their work. James and John gave up the
family business. I can keep going on and
on. The point here is that grace is not
cheap. We cannot enter into the worship
of God and believe we can walk out the same person who came in. That is not possible! It is inconsistent with the call of the God
who sent His Son to die for our sake.
To prove this point, God tells Jeremiah to remind them about
Shiloh. Shiloh was the place where the
Ark of the Covenant rested before it was captured by the Philistines and
eventually brought to Jerusalem. It is where
Eli – the priest with the horrible two sons who also trained Samuel – had his
place of worship. Because of the
unfaithfulness and hypocrisy of Shiloh, God abandoned Shiloh and took the Ark
of the Covenant elsewhere. That is the
point that God asks Jeremiah to drive home.
If we think that cheap grace is going to cut it, God will take His
presence and move along. How dare we ask
God to work in our midst when we are not willing to recognize the hypocrisy in
our life and repent of it?
God Makes a Hard Request
Then God turns to Jeremiah and says, “Stop praying for them.” From a leadership perspective, this is the
death blow. This is the moment where the
heartbeat of hope stops beating in Jeremiah.
To make an analogy to David’s life, this is the moment when David finds
out that the baby born to Bathsheba has finally died. When God asks us to stop praying for
something, it is over.
God has asked for obedient hearts.
God has asked for followers who repent and rend their hearts. God doesn’t want people who go through the
motions. He doesn’t want some Faberge
Egg that is absolutely gorgeous on the outside but completely devoid of
anything true on the inside. God wants
people who are going to wrestle with their imperfections and struggle with
their inconsistencies. He wants
obedience and repentance, not perfection.
I cannot tell you how hard it is to hear God say, “Stop praying
for them.” As a spiritual leader, you
truly grow to love those whom you are called to serve. You love the ones who are repentant towards
God and you love the stubborn ones who are blindly wrapped up in their
sin. You love them all. When God says, “Stop praying for them, stop
crying out for them, stop interceding for them” it breaks your heart. I can only imagine what Jeremiah felt as he
obeyed his Lord and cut his hair, signifying that the time for mourning is both
present and past. I wonder what
Jeremiah’s lamentation – literally, funeral dirge in the Hebrew – sounded
like.
God’s decision has been made.
The people will be brought under judgment.
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