Jeremiah 7:2 “Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: “ ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord.
If you are anything like me, my natural tendency is to back away from people who want to jump into the middle of a fight, whether it is a physical fight or argument fight. I tend to lean toward more subtle ways of confronting issues. I tend toward softer and gentler ways of pointing out people’s faults.
And that is why is surprises me when someone is willing to sacrifice themselves, their reputations, their livelihoods to stand up and oppose something. We have it happening right now in our country with the ‘cancel culture’ running amuck. And yet people are willing to put it all on the line and speak truth. And then the incoming missiles of attack and criticism come flying.
What I find interesting is that the LORD sends Jeremiah right into the middle of the seat of power and has him proclaim His message to those in power. Jeremiah is told to go and stand at the front door of the Temple area, the center of religious and civil power in Jerusalem.
And the message he is sent to proclaim is very confrontative. He stands and tells everyone coming into this area that they need to change their ways. They are not living in conformity to the will of God. They are violating the most basic principles of the Old Testament. They are trusting in the leader’s words rather than the Word of God.
Their actions betray their inner thoughts and attitudes. They aren’t doing justice toward the disadvantaged. Instead they are using their own power to protect their interests. They have power and prestige and are working to protect it.
The leaders have been reassuring the people that the coming judgment isn’t coming by claiming that the LORD would never abandon His Temple. They conveniently forget that all those promises came with a big “IF.” The “IF” outlined their necessary response to the grace of the LORD. They had responsibilities to be the people of God and be the city on a hill, light to the world so that the Gentiles would desire a relationship with the LORD.
But their conduct, led by the leaders themselves, was anything but this. They shamelessly disobeyed the commandments, civil, ceremonial and moral. The civil laws governed their conduct as a nation with each other. They were to take care of the poor, not charge interest to their fellow Israelites, and not move their land boundary markers. These laws only applied to their place in time and history. They were culturally narrow and time limited.
The ceremonial laws were those in connection to their worship. These dealt with how and when to deal with their sin, both through regular sacrifice and cleansing rituals. They were failing to fulfill this. The Year of Jubilee had not been celebrated. It was supposed to happen every 50 years, but in all their history, it didn’t happen. These types of laws were only in effect when the Temple worship existed. No Temple, no way to fulfill these laws.
The moral laws are the core of their problem. The Ten Commandments fall into this category of commandments. These are the principles that transcend time and space. They apply to all people, all places, all times. They are central because they reflect the character of God as shown through the lens of humanity. And they engaged in the violation of these core laws.
And this is where Jeremiah hits those entering the seat of power. He goes and stands and calls them to account for their behavior. He doesn’t really care about their intentions or their desires, he confronts their behaviors. They don’t get credit for knowing the right thing to do but doing the opposite. It is how we live that counts.
This confronting of the leaders is picked up by Jesus Himself when he confronts the religious leaders in Matthew 21:13. Jesus quotes from this message of Jeremiah. He calls them “a den of robbers” as He speaks as a prophet in His final week in Jerusalem. He does this to carry the message of Jeremiah forward to His day.
The religious leaders in Jesus’s day were just a corrupt as those in Jeremiah’s day. Judgment came on Jeremiah’s leaders and on the city of Jerusalem. The Temple was destroyed and the city ransacked. Their religiosity did not save them.
So in Jesus’s day, the Jewish leaders were violating the Law by their conduct, and Jesus warns them of Jerusalem’s destruction less than 40 years later. This is a frequent practice of the writers of Scripture. They pick up a theme introduced earlier in Scripture and count on us to know the context of the previous citing and carry that meaning forward.
So, what is the meaning for us. We aren’t to keep the civil or ceremonial laws. We aren’t living in ancient Israel and Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the ceremonial laws in His life, death and resurrection.
But our conduct still needs to demonstrate loving the LORD and loving our neighbors. When we do this we are doing all the Big Ten. The Big Ten provide us a beginning point to help us be the People of God in the world, reflecting His character and love. The Big Ten should shape our relationship with the LORD and with our neighbors.
The Arnold Journey 