The Shiloh Precedent
Introduction: The Religion of Presumption
There is a kind of religion that is far more dangerous than honest atheism. It is a religion that uses the vocabulary of Zion while living by the standards of Sodom. It is a religion that loves the symbols of faith but despises the substance of it. It is the religion of presumption, the great and damning assumption that because we have the right buildings, the right songs, and the right ceremonies, that God is somehow obligated to bless our personal and corporate corruption. It is the belief that the grace of God is a fire escape, a way to avoid the consequences of our sin, rather than the power of God that liberates us from our sin.
This is the spiritual disease that Jeremiah was sent to diagnose in Judah. The people were not secularists. They were deeply religious. They were diligent in their temple attendance. They could not imagine God ever abandoning His own house, the place where His name dwelt. And so they used the temple as a talisman, a magical charm. They would live like pagans all week, breaking the covenant in the most flagrant ways, and then come to the temple on the Sabbath as though they were wiping a slate clean, saying to themselves, "We are delivered," which gave them the spiritual and psychological clearance to go out and do it all again. They treated the house of God like a criminal hideout.
We must not read this and thank God that we are not like them. This temptation is perennial. We can do the same with our baptism, our church membership, our doctrinal statements, or our regular attendance. We can trust in the forms of godliness while denying its power. Jeremiah's message, delivered at the very gate of the temple, is a divine wrecking ball aimed at this false security. God is telling His people that no institution, no ritual, and no building is too sacred to be judged when it is used to conceal a rotten heart.
The Text
Behold, you are trusting in lying words to no avail. 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, 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? 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. “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. 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, 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. I will cast you out of My presence, as I have cast out all your brothers, all the seed of Ephraim.
(Jeremiah 7:8-15 LSB)
The Indictment of a Double Mind (vv. 8-10)
The charge begins with the root of the problem: a trust in lies.
"Behold, you are trusting in lying words to no avail." (Jeremiah 7:8)
These "lying words" were the soothing sermons of the false prophets, the ones who preached "peace, peace" when God was declaring war. But more fundamentally, these are the lies the people told themselves. The central lie was this: God cares about ritual, not righteousness. He cares about where we worship, not how we live. This is a lie that profits nothing; it is a spiritual Ponzi scheme that is about to collapse.
God then lays out the evidence, and it is a systematic dismantling of the covenant law.
"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, 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?" (Jeremiah 7:9-10)
This is not a list of occasional slip-ups. This is a lifestyle of high-handed rebellion. Look at the charges: theft (8th commandment), murder (6th), adultery (7th), perjury (9th), and idolatry (1st and 2nd). This is a society-wide rejection of God's moral law. They are covenant breakers through and through. And the pinnacle of their sin, the thing that makes God's anger burn, is the sheer audacity of it all. They do all this, and then they have the gall to show up in His house, the house that bears His very name, and declare, "We are delivered!"
They are not coming in repentance. They are coming for ritual absolution. They are treating God's house like a car wash for the conscience. Their statement "We are delivered" is not a cry of grateful faith; it is a declaration of immunity. They believe that by touching the base of the temple, they are safe to continue in their abominations. They have turned the grace of God into a license for wickedness, which is the very definition of antinomianism.
God's House, The Robbers' Hideout (v. 11)
God then gives their sin its proper name with a searing question.
"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." (Jeremiah 7:11)
This is the verse that Jesus would later quote with righteous fury as He cleansed the temple. We have to understand the metaphor. A den of robbers is not where the robbing takes place. The robbing, murdering, and adultery happened out in the world. The den is the safe house. It is the place where the criminals retreat after their crimes to count their loot, divide the spoils, and plan their next job, all while feeling secure from the authorities. Judah was treating the temple of Yahweh as their criminal hideout.
They thought their sin was their own business, and that the temple was a separate, sacred space that would protect them. But God says, "Behold, I, even I, have seen it." The repetition is for emphasis. There is no hiding. The God who is present in the temple is also the God who is present in the marketplace where they steal, in the bedroom where they commit adultery, and at the high places where they worship Baal. God is not mocked. You cannot use His house to hide from Him.
A Field Trip to the Judgment Site (v. 12)
Because they are deaf to His words, God tells them to look at the evidence of history.
"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." (Jeremiah 7:12)
This is a devastating argument. Shiloh was the first central sanctuary in the promised land. The tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant resided there for over three hundred years. If any place had a historical claim on God's permanent presence, it was Shiloh. But the people and the priesthood became corrupt. Eli's sons treated the sacrifices with contempt and committed sexual immorality at the entrance to the tent of meeting. So what did God do? He abandoned it. The Philistines captured the Ark, and Shiloh was so utterly destroyed that its ruins served as a proverbial warning (Psalm 78:60-64).
The message is brutally clear: God has no sentimental attachment to real estate. His presence is conditioned on covenant faithfulness. If He was willing to abandon and destroy the original sanctuary because of the evil of His people, what makes you think your more glorious temple in Jerusalem is immune? Your trust is in a building, but God is looking at your hearts, and He has done this before.
The Inevitable Consequence (vv. 13-15)
God now pronounces the sentence, and the logic is inescapable.
"And now, because you have done all these works... and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you but you did not answer, therefore, I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust... as I did to Shiloh." (Jeremiah 7:13-14)
The reason for judgment is twofold: their sinful works and their stubborn deafness. God emphasizes His own patience and persistence. "I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking." This is the language of a diligent father trying to reach a rebellious son. God sent prophet after prophet. He warned, He pleaded, He called. But they refused to hear. They would not answer. Their sin was compounded by their contempt for His Word.
And so, the verdict. The very thing they trust in, the temple, will be destroyed just like Shiloh was. God is going to remove the object of their superstitious faith in order to deal with their actual sin. Then comes the final blow, the ultimate covenant curse.
"I will cast you out of My presence, as I have cast out all your brothers, all the seed of Ephraim." (Jeremiah 7:15)
Exile. To be cast out of His presence is to be cast out of the land, away from the temple, into the hands of their pagan enemies. He points to the fate of the northern kingdom of Israel, called Ephraim here, which had been carried off into exile by the Assyrians over a century earlier for these very same sins. Judah had seen what happened to their brothers, and they learned nothing. They are part of the same apostate family, and they will share the same fate.
The True Temple
The warning of Jeremiah echoes down to our own time. The temptation to substitute religious activity for true righteousness is ever-present. We do not have a stone temple in Jerusalem, but we have something far greater. The Lord Jesus Christ stood in the temple court and said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). He was speaking of the temple of His body. He is the true place where God's name dwells, where heaven and earth meet.
And by faith, we are united to Him. We have become the temple of the living God. "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). This makes Jeremiah's warning even more pointed for the Church. The question comes to us: has this house, the Church, which is called by Christ's name, become a robbers' den in our sight? Do we gather on Sundays to get a spiritual pass for our worldliness, our secret sins, our compromises, our love of money, our gossip, our adulterous hearts?
God's answer is the same. "Behold, I, even I, have seen it." The solution is not to trust in our traditions, our buildings, or our right doctrine as a fire insurance policy. The solution is to repent. It is to hear the voice of the one who calls us and to answer Him. True worship does not provide cover for sin; it exposes sin and kills it. It is to flee from the lying words of our culture and our own hearts and to trust in the true Word, Jesus Christ.
The good news is that while Jesus cleansed the temple with a whip of cords, He cleanses His true temple, His people, with His own blood. He did not abandon His people to exile forever. He went into the exile of the cross for us. He was cast out of God's presence so that we might be brought in. Because of His work, we can come and stand before God, not with the arrogant presumption of the hypocrite, but with the humble confidence of a forgiven child, and truly say, "We are delivered." Delivered not to do abominations, but delivered from them.