Ephraim is a faithful Jewish man who lives in the 4th century BC. He has a business, a wife and 4 kids. Ephraim is faithful to go to the temple and he keeps the feast days and the law of Moses with all seriousness. He makes sure his children do what good Jewish children are supposed to do and Ephraim has a good reputation among the elders.
The problem is that Ephraim has weighted scales at work…he cheats his customers, but just a little bit, it is not a huge amount that he takes, just a little from each client. He is tired of others doing better financially than he is and he is determined to fill his money sack more than his peers. This seems to have been a growing practice for him, to cheat his clients, over the last few years, and his conscience no longer bothers him. He has stopped giving alms for the poor, but just for the time being, or so he says, and he fully intends to give again later, but he has financial goals and the poor never seem to have enough and they never go away.
Then there is the walk home from work. He knows that he takes the longer route, but there is a woman who will be outside, she flirts with him, she is quite provocative in her dress and speech. Mind you he doesn’t “do” anything, he just flirts a bit and then thinks about her the rest of the walk home. He has become quite unresponsive to his wife and kids, but come on, he works hard and is tired.
He gets home one evening and the prophet is waiting outside and has a very serious look on his face. He says to Ephraim, “Shalom my brother. Let me get to the point, you must not come again to the Temple to offer your worship and participate in the sacraments. Yahweh is not pleased with you…amend your ways Ephraim and do not think your worship is acceptable to the Lord.”
Now, to the Jewish mind, this would have made perfect sense. They were taught to see things, to see all of life, as connected to and flowing out of their worship. If there is no holiness, righteousness, no caring for the poor, the widow, the unlovely, if there was no justice and love for brothers, fairness in how you treat others, then the sacraments were being violated. That’s right…you are violating, profaning the sacraments.
Everything is connected and the doing of the liturgical rites were supposed to be forming God’s people into ritualized agents, sacramental agents, people that lived the life that the sacraments were promoting. To cheat your neighbor, to despise the poor, to have idols in your heart, this is to deny the sacraments that God had given, to set one’s self against the worship of God.
We have to understand that the Bible teaches that we do, that is we obey and keep the commandments of God so that we might know, understand and trust. From birth, Jewish children would be told, here is the law of Moses, he is the authority from God, who teaches us what to do…how to live. And the children grow up doing, obeying, even before they understand…in fact, they would do, in order tounderstand.
But if our lives are not holy then we are abusing not only the life God has given, the commandments of God, but we are abusing the sacraments themselves, for they are inseparably connected to life itself. Again, everything is connected. This is a truth I tried to impress upon my children, we taught it, over and over again. And the children had a wonderful example of this truth lived out in their mother. Over and over again, we told them, everything is connected. You have to see your life as one big tapestry, as God does. If you are unfaithful in one area of your life, God might ‘touch’ a completely different area to get your attention, and you are to make the connections.
My daughter went to college and came home at Thanksgiving and was so excited to sit Dana and I down and tell us all that the Lord was doing in her life. She told us of this great truth she had learned at her Christian college from her godly professors. I sat with bated breath waiting to hear this new insight that had changed my daughter’s life: Mom, dad what I have learned for the first time in my life is that everything in life is connected. I thought, you have got to be kidding me! I say it for 19 years and nothing. They say it for 3 months and THEY are brilliant!!!
The poetry of chapters five and six, with their powerful imagery and devastating critique come to an end for a brief time and give way to prose…so that we can catch our breath for the moment. We probably would be crushed if that kind of intensity continued. I am not saying that chapter 7 is any less pointed or that it is smooth sailing. Only that as a sermon, which it most definitely was, probably preached a number of times in Jeremiah’s life, gives us a bit of a change up in the way the message comes to us.
The sermon here, sometimes called Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon summarizes and brings together the material that preceded it, as if to say, this is what all of that means. In 5:19 the question was asked, “why”, why has the Lord dealt so harshly with his people? And the answer given in chapter six was that the people would not listen to the Lord’s gracious warnings…He had been patient, warning them for years and years…and they continued to go their own way, well the other shoe is about to drop.
The first 15 verses of chapter 7 answers the why question with devastating logic and then the rest of the chapter expands on this theme of not listening to the Lord. The Hebrew word for listen appears five times in verse 21-28. Going into the foyer right before the beginning of church is a good way to get folk’s attention, that is in essence what Jeremiah did. But they would have thought his message to be appalling, scandalous and if done today, legalistic, and lacking grace.
Jeremiah is clear and he states his two main points right up front in verses 3 and 4. In verse 3 there is a command, “Amend your ways and your deeds…” and in verse 4 a warning: “Do not trust in deceptive words.”
Have you ever noticed that, in the Bible, when God’s people, when church folks, are being rebuked, when they are being called to account, it is almost always with regard to their behavior? I am not saying that the Bible never speaks of thinking correctly, only that without a doubt the emphasis is not on what is to be believed, but how we are to live.
Amend your ways. Look at the way you live your life. It is in verse 3 and then again in verses 5-7. You want to truly walk with the Lord? You want to truly be pleasing to Him, having his blessings, and having him countenance your life? Then change the way you are living.
There is some debate as to what the end of verse 3 means, that if they change, if they repent, if they begin living differently that God will let them dwell in the land, or that God will dwell WITH them in the land. Regardless, the message is perfectly clear. Unless they amend their ways…repent and live rightly, holy, truly as the Lord has instructed them, God will remove Himself from them and remove them from the land.
Remember, Jeremiah is telling them that their worship is a sham, because they didn’t live right, more to that in a moment, but apparently they were thinking that they could go to Temple and do all the liturgical things required and then live however they wanted. Worship is an abomination if, when you leave you are not just, if you oppress the weak, speak and act in violence toward others, and worship false gods, including the god of self. If you and I leave the church only to take up our self-centered, God neglecting lives right where we left them to go to church, then not only is our life a joke, our worship is a stench. It is all connected.
Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and deal with a theological enigma. Look at verse 5: If you truly amend your ways…
So, our repentance must be true…real…and we fool no one with false repentance, or half-hearted repentance. We just end up in the same mire of sin as we were at first. And although we all know this is true, I certainly do, that is not the point I want to make.
If you truly amend your ways, and then examples of what that will look like in verse 6, and we get to verse 7, “Then I will let you dwell in this place.” So, if you do this, God says, then I will do that. If…then. If the people repent and obey the Lord, God will dwell with them. And, if they do not TRULY repent, then God will NOT dwell with them.
So, is our relationship with God conditional or unconditional? Does your standing with the Lord depend on your faithfulness to the Lord, or on the Lord’s faithfulness to you? Hmmm.
To be continued…
Prayer: Father, I too often forget that life is connected. I like to live my life in and with many compartments and closed off areas that are just for me…as though I can keep you out of those areas wherein I live for myself. Forgive me for my foolishness. Help me to see and to live a life where all aspects touch and where Christ Jesus is at the center; Lord over all things in the world and all things in my living, thinking and desiring, for then will Jesus truly be Lord of my life. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
Hymn: Nunc Dimittis
