Commentary - Jeremiah 7:8-15

Bird's-eye view

Jeremiah is a prophet sent to Judah in her final, decadent days. The nation is coasting on the fumes of past reforms, but the corruption is deep and the rot has set in. This passage is part of Jeremiah’s famous Temple Sermon, where he stands at the very gate of the house of God and confronts the people with their hypocrisy. They have turned the grace of God into a license for sin, treating the Temple as a kind of magical amulet that protects them regardless of their behavior. They are like a man who cheats on his wife all week and then brings her a box of chocolates on Saturday, expecting all to be well.

The core of the message is a direct assault on a dead, formal religion that is divorced from ethical reality. God, through Jeremiah, lists a shocking catalog of sins, violations of the second table of the law, and then points out the absurdity of thinking that participation in Temple rituals could possibly cover for such rebellion. The warning is stark: God is not mocked. He reminds them of Shiloh, the previous location of His tabernacle, which was destroyed because of Israel’s wickedness. The Temple in Jerusalem has no special immunity. A building, no matter how glorious, does not obligate God to bless a people who despise His commandments. Judgment is not just coming; it is deserved.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This sermon is delivered early in Jeremiah’s ministry, during the reign of King Jehoiakim. The reforms of the good king Josiah were still a recent memory, but they had clearly not penetrated the heart of the nation. The people had the external forms of religion down pat. They had the Temple, the sacrifices, the festivals. What they lacked was the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. They had come to believe that their covenant relationship with God was an unconditional guarantee of national security.

Jeremiah’s task is to disabuse them of this deadly notion. He is a true patriot, but he is branded a traitor for telling the hard truth. The nation is spiritually sick, and the sickness is a terminal hypocrisy. They honor God with their lips, and with their presence at His house, but their hearts are far from Him, chasing after every lust and every false god. This passage sets the stage for the rest of the book, which is a long, sustained denunciation of Judah’s sin and a prophecy of the coming Babylonian exile. God is cleaning house, and the cleaning will be severe.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 8 “Behold, you are trusting in lying words to no avail.”

The sermon gets straight to the point. The central issue is a misplaced trust. The people are banking their entire future on a lie. What are these "lying words?" It is the smooth preaching of the false prophets, the comfortable assurances that "all is well." It is the popular lie that says, "We have the Temple of the Lord, so we are safe." This is the essence of superstition. It is treating a created thing, even a holy thing like the Temple, as a mechanism for manipulating God. They believe the building itself, the real estate, guarantees their protection. But God cannot be managed or domesticated. Their trust is not just mistaken; it is worthless, "to no avail." It will not profit them one bit when the Babylonians are at the gates.

v. 9 “Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear while lying, and burn incense to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known,”

Here Jeremiah lays out the evidence. He runs through the second table of the Decalogue, pointing out their flagrant violations. Stealing, murder, adultery, perjury, these are not minor slip-ups. This is high-handed rebellion against the plain commands of God. And it is not just their horizontal relationships with men that are a wreck. Their vertical relationship with God is a disaster. They are burning incense to Baal, the cheap Canaanite fertility god. They are chasing after every new deity on the block, gods "that you have not known." This is spiritual adultery of the grossest kind. Notice the connection. A people who are unfaithful to God in worship will inevitably be unfaithful to their neighbors in their ethics. Idolatry and immorality are two peas in a pod. You cannot serve God and Mammon, and you cannot serve God and Baal.

v. 10 “then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’, that you may do all these abominations?”

This is the height of their audacity. After a week spent in blatant sin, they have the gall to show up at church on Sunday, stand in the house that bears God’s own name, and declare themselves "delivered." Delivered for what? Jeremiah throws the question back in their faces. Have you been delivered so that you can go back out and continue in your abominations? This is cheap grace. It is a damnable heresy that treats God's house as a car wash for the conscience, a place to get spiritually rinsed off before heading back to the mud pit. They see deliverance not as freedom from sin, but as freedom to sin without consequence. God’s salvation is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for a life of wickedness. It is a radical transformation that makes a new kind of life possible.

v. 11 “Has this house, which is called by My name, become a robbers’ den in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” declares Yahweh.”

Jesus quotes this very verse when He cleanses the Temple centuries later. A den of robbers is a hideout, a place where criminals gather between their raids to feel safe and divide the loot. This is what the Temple had become to them. It was not a house of prayer, but a hideout for covenant-breakers. They would go out, plunder their neighbors through theft and deceit, and then retreat to the Temple for sanctuary, thinking God would not touch them there. But God sees. The declaration, "Behold, I, even I, have seen it," is chilling. They may be able to fool themselves and their neighbors, but they cannot fool God. His eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. He is not an absentee landlord. He sees the desecration of His own house, and He will not tolerate it indefinitely.

v. 12 “But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I made My name dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of My people Israel.”

God now directs them to a history lesson. He tells them to take a field trip to Shiloh. Shiloh was the first central sanctuary in the promised land, the place where the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant resided for centuries. It was "the place where I made My name dwell." But what happened to Shiloh? It was utterly destroyed. The Philistines captured the Ark, and the city was laid waste. Why? "Because of the evil of My people Israel." The priesthood was corrupt, and the people were idolatrous. The point is inescapable. If God did not spare His first house, what makes them think He will spare the second? There is no such thing as geographical holiness that is immune to the spiritual condition of the people. The presence of a holy building is no substitute for the presence of a holy people.

v. 13 “And now, because you have done all these works,” declares Yahweh, “and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you but you did not answer,”

The case against Judah is now summarized. It is not just that they have done "all these works" of sin. It is that they have done so in the face of God's persistent, patient appeal. The phrase "rising up early and speaking" is a beautiful picture of God's earnest desire for His people's repentance. He is like a diligent father, up at the crack of dawn to instruct his children. He sent prophet after prophet. He spoke, but they plugged their ears. He called, but they refused to answer. Their sin is compounded by their stubborn deafness. They are not ignorant sinners; they are willful rebels who have stiff-armed the grace of God time and time again.

v. 14 “therefore, I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave you and your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.”

The verdict is delivered. "Therefore." Because of their sin and their refusal to listen, judgment is now inevitable. And the judgment will strike at the very heart of their false confidence. The house "in which you trust" will be destroyed. God is going to perform a radical surgery, cutting out the cancerous tumor of their superstitious pride. Notice the repetition: He will do to Jerusalem "as I did to Shiloh." History is about to repeat itself. The sins of Eli's sons at Shiloh are being re-enacted in Jerusalem, and the consequences will be the same. The place God gave to their fathers will be taken away. Covenant privileges do not guarantee covenant faithfulness, and when faithfulness is gone, the privileges will be revoked.

v. 15 “I will cast you out of My presence, as I have cast out all your brothers, all the seed of Ephraim.”

The final blow is the sentence of exile. To be cast out of God's presence is the ultimate curse. This is what happened to their "brothers," the northern kingdom of Israel, referred to here as "the seed of Ephraim." About a century before Jeremiah's time, the Assyrians had conquered the northern kingdom and deported its people. Judah had witnessed this, but they had not learned the lesson. They foolishly thought they were immune because they had Jerusalem and the Davidic king. But God plays no favorites when it comes to sin. Unrepentant rebellion will lead to judgment, whether you are from the northern tribes or the southern. Judah will be cast out, just like their kinsmen. The family reunion will be held in exile.

Application

The warnings of Jeremiah are not just for ancient Judah. They thunder down through the centuries to us. The temptation to substitute external religious activity for genuine heart-felt obedience is a perennial one. We can have our beautiful church buildings, our sound doctrine, our regular attendance, and our Bibles on the coffee table, and still be trusting in "lying words."

Do we think that because we are members of a good church, or because we were baptized, or because we say the right things, that we have a license to live like the world from Monday to Saturday? Do we steal through dishonest business practices, commit adultery in our hearts with pornography, murder with our hateful words, and lie to get ahead? And then do we come to worship on Sunday and say, "We are delivered," as though the worship service magically wipes the slate clean without any need for repentance?

If so, we are turning the house of God into a den of thieves. We are using the grace of God as a cover for our sin, and God is not fooled. He has seen it. The lesson of Shiloh is the lesson of history: God will not honor a people who will not honor Him. He will gladly remove a lampstand from a church that has lost its first love. Our security is not in a building, a tradition, or a denomination. Our only security is in Christ Jesus, and true faith in Him always, always produces the fruit of repentance and obedience. Let us therefore hear the call of Jeremiah, examine our own hearts, and flee from the dead religion of hypocrisy to the living God.