Sermon Notes

7 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah, you who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” 5 For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, 7 then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave to your ancestors forever and ever. 8 Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? I, too, am watching, says the Lord. . . . 21 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. 22 For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you. (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, NRSVue)
7 1-2 The Message from God to Jeremiah: “Stand in the gate of God’s Temple and preach this Message. 2-3 “Say, ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship God. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, has this to say to you: 3-7 “‘Clean up your act—the way you live, the things you do—so I can make my home with you in this place. Don’t for a minute believe the lies being spoken here—“This is God’s Temple, God’s Temple, God’s Temple!” Total nonsense! Only if you clean up your act (the way you live, the things you do), only if you do a total spring cleaning on the way you live and treat your neighbors, only if you quit exploiting the street people and orphans and widows, no longer taking advantage of innocent people on this very site and no longer destroying your souls by using this Temple as a front for other gods—only then will I move into your neighborhood. Only then will this country I gave your ancestors be my permanent home, my Temple. 8-11 “‘Get smart! Your leaders are handing you a pack of lies, and you’re swallowing them! Use your heads! Do you think you can rob and murder, have sex with the neighborhood wives, tell lies nonstop, worship the local gods, and buy every novel religious commodity on the market—and then march into this Temple, set apart for my worship, and say, “We’re safe!” thinking that the place itself gives you a license to go on with all this outrageous sacrilege? A cave full of criminals! Do you think you can turn this Temple, set apart for my worship, into something like that? Well, think again. I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see what’s going on.’” God’s Decree! . . . . 21-23 “The Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God: ‘Go ahead! Put your burnt offerings with all your other sacrificial offerings and make a good meal for yourselves. I sure don’t want them! When I delivered your ancestors out of Egypt, I never said anything to them about wanting burnt offerings and sacrifices as such. But I did say this, commanded this: “Obey me. Do what I say and I will be your God and you will be my people. Live the way I tell you. Do what I command so that your lives will go well.”
(The Message, MSG)

The second unit of this fall 2025 quarter of lessons (“Jeremiah and the Promise of Renewal”), focuses on the theological, social, religious, and political decline of the people of Judah as witnessed through ministry of Jeremiah—the second of the major prophetic books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel). Jeremiah’s call centered on a prophetic ministry that compelled and constrained him to speak truth to power during one of the most chaotic and catastrophic times in Judah’s history. Jeremiah’s commitment to speak what, “thus says the LORD,” regardless of the personal costs and consequences consistently set him at odds with kings and empires, priestly personnel and competing prophetic guilds. Jeremiah was even rejected by the general populace of Judah and tearfully lashed out at God for deceiving him into a prophetic ministry of tears, suffering and “fire shut up in his bones.”
Ultimately, history reveals that Jeremiah’s warnings against forsaking the LORD for idol gods, ignoring issues of social justice, aligning with foreign nations in global geo-political standoffs, and tolerating the lying tongues of temple leadership and elected officials were not heeded. Judah’s theological and spiritual decline spiraled into disobedience that resulted in the temple’s destruction; Jerusalem’s obliteration; the starving trampled murdered bodies of Judah’s children; and the deportation and captivity of Judah’s artisans, architects, builders, craftspeople, educators, engineers, musicians, scientists, philosophers, theologians, and royal leadership.
However, even in the midst of these traumatic calamitous events, Jeremiah’s 40-year ministry provided challenge, conviction, reproof, rebuke, comfort, and promise of restoration with the God that never abandoned Judah, even though Judah abandoned their God. Jeremiah’s ministry helps the people of Judah to remember that God weeps along with God’s people regardless of their messy ways, self-obsessed lives, backwards theology, and raggedy worship, and muddled, messy, attempts to live right, think right, and do right. Jeremiah promises renewal out of the ash heap of exile.

Jeremiah is one of the three major prophetic books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament which collectively cover events from the eighth century BCE until the sixth century BCE (733 BCE – 515 BCE). In preaching and prose, poetry and psalms, Jeremiah describes the ministry of a prophet who wrestled with the pain and pathos of preaching God’s truth to people within the final tumultuous days of an imploding southern kingdom of Judah (627 BCE – 587/6 BCE).
Because Jeremiah does not progress in chronological order, repeats certain events like flashback sequences in a Hollywood movie, utilizes numerous types of writing styles and writing collections, features a Broadway-sized cast of characters, represents opposing theologies, and plunges the depths of human trauma and emotional despair, it is exceptionally difficult to both comprehend and interpret. In the words of Rev. Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams—a Hebrew Bible/Old Testament scholar and Minister of Christian Education at Alfred Street Missionary Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia—“Emotionally heavy, this is not a book that makes logical sense. However, a case can be made that Jeremiah makes sense dialogically . . . it forms a dialogue, albeit an anguished one, that bears witness to and makes meaning out of the trauma of exile.”
Although the book of Jeremiah is attributed to the prophet “Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign,” (Jeremiah 1:1–2, NRSVue), since ancient times biblical interpreters recognized a separation between the words and sermons of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, who prophesied in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, and the final form of the book of Jeremiah that we have received. This final form reflects both the

ministry and sermons of Jeremiah and later retellings of his ministry and sermons. For example, the second part of last week’s lesson (Jeremiah 26: 8-16) is a narrative retelling of the temple sermon that Jeremiah actually preaches in this week’s lesson (7:1-23).
This type of scriptural retelling is not foreign to readers who are familiar with the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, as the Apostle Paul teaches the church in Corinthian about Jesus instituting the Lord Supper, he says: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…”. This is Paul retelling the event of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper with a re-presentation of Jesus’ statements to his disciples on the night before he would be crucified. This is same type retelling that is operative in the book of Jeremiah.
Biblical scholars agree that Jeremiah was written during at least two different time periods by a prophetic community for whom the prophetic ministry of the prophet Jeremiah were both instructive and life affirming for their contemporary experience. The book of Jeremiah began as public prophetic sermons, sign-acts, and written dictations of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah which were later remembered, written, and orally transmitted by those who personally knew him then (his secretary Baruch), and those who came to know him later through his letters (Jeremiah 29:1-31).
This week’s lesson from Jeremiah 7 is called the “temple sermon.” It is a public speech, sermon, and judgement oracle that Jeremiah gives on the grounds of the Jerusalem temple at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign (609 BCE) shortly after Josiah’s death. Jeremiah outlines the reasons why the people of Judah, the royal family, and particularly the temple priesthood, is conflict with God because of their failure to keep the teachings of God and live justly in society.
By preaching against the dominant temple theology, which is aligned with the Royal/State/Federal government, Jeremiah is dismantling the theological underpinnings of the establishment—talk about speaking truth to power—which he will pay for by being put on trial for treason. If you want to understand the core of Jeremiah’s prophetic message, we should start with the temple sermon because it has, “the clearest and most formidable statement we have of the basic themes of the Jeremiah tradition.”ii

1-2 The Message from God to Jeremiah: “Stand in the gate of God’s Temple and preach this Message. 2-3 “Say, ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship God. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, has this to say to you:
In the opening verses of the lesson text, Jeremiah is commanded by God to stand in the gate of the temple and deliver a very unpopular message. As the people came in and out of the temple, they were greeted by a prophetic message that attacked their injustice toward each other and their empty worship of God. The prophet declares that God opposes surface and fake worship that doesn’t have a changed life at the end. God not only looks at the temple, but God looks in the heart to see what’s really going on.
Further, it is also instructive that “YHWH Lord of Hosts” is the name accompanied with this prophetic oracle. This name attends to the Divine’s identity as God of the Angel Armies, meaning God who is prepared to allow war to be waged.
3-7 “‘Clean up your act—the way you live, the things you do—so I can make my home with you in this place. Don’t for a minute believe the lies being spoken here—“This is God’s Temple, God’s Temple, God’s Temple!” Total nonsense! Only if you clean up your act (the way you live, the things you do), only if you do a total spring cleaning on the way you live and treat your neighbors, only if you quit exploiting the street people and orphans and widows, no longer taking advantage of innocent people on this very site and no longer destroying your souls by using this Temple as a front for other gods—only then will I move into your neighborhood. Only then will this country I gave your ancestors be my permanent home, my Temple.
Jeremiah’s job was to relate to Judah God’s undying passion for them. He tried to convince them that the drama of going their own way wasn’t worth it. Life would be so much better if they would stay where love could keep them and care for them. But they thought they knew what was best. Love was not on their mind; they couldn’t see past what they thought they wanted. Yet, God still pleads to them, “Change the way you live.”
The main theme of Jeremiah’s temple sermon is stated in verses 3 and 4. Are the people able to change their ways? Or, will they continue to put their trust in the flawed temple theology. God exhorts them to stop trusting in “lies,” a reference to false prophets who were spouting words of consolation and confidence when the reality was that the throne, temple leaders, and people were going to hell in a hand basket. The crucial word that Jeremiah utilizes in his temple message is shoqer in Hebrew which can be translated “falsehoods” or “lies.”
The prophet is calling out the teachings and theological ideas that are a false representation of God’s instruction (torah) and God’s character (covenantal identity.) Deceptive words are meant to mislead one down the wrong path where false hope resides, causing them to place their confidence in that which will not stand the test of time. Listening to false prophets, they erroneously believed that nothing can happen to them. They trusted more in the physical building of the temple to save them than in God who was supposed to reside in the temple.
Further, their worship was as empty as the false prophets’ words. Verse 4 repeats the words utilized in liturgical worship that were repeated over and over without critical reflection on their covenantal meaning, ethical implications, or complicity with the status quo: ”This is God’s temple, God’s temple, God’s temple.” Jeremiah dismisses these “so-called” praise and worship phrases as meaningless noise because they reflect a commitment to spiritual and social manipulation instead of spiritual and social transformation. In essence, the temple—which should enflesh the transformational life-giving love of God—is masquerading as God’s love while wholeheartedly embracing the sinful values, vices, vision, and false promises of the political, religious, and economic “powers that be” during times of national crisis.
Let us pause to think about that for a moment. The temple/church has become the place not for transformation, but for co-option and manipulation of the worldly status quo under the guise of Christianity. Churches become places where prosperity preaching, White Supremacist Christian Nationalist preaching, and Black patriarchal Androcentric misogynistic heteronormative preaching takes place instead of the type of preaching that transforms people with the radical love ethic of God that, “makes you love everybody” because God first loved us!
Thoroughly following God will cause us to treat people fairly. In the prophecies of Jeremiah’s contemporaries, the people were accused of injustices and bribes that would show favor to the more affluent of society while leaving the less fortunate at the disposal of the greed and wickedness of those who had more power. This has been a great grievance of God against the people for some time. Their lack of justice and operating in a fair and balanced system caused oppression for the weakest of society—the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. God says, “Defend the poor and the fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and the needy (Psalm 82:3),” not tear them down.
But if the people of Judah will return; if they will change their ways and their actions, God promises to permit them to continue to dwell in the land and they will not have to suffer the indignation of going into captivity. In other words, God is saying that it doesn’t have to be like this. There is another way, another option: Change your ways!

NOTES FOR REFLECTION: God is always waiting with opened arms for us to change our ways. If we have not held on as tightly as we should, return. If some other thing or person has attracted our desires more, return. If we have turned a deaf ear to the pleas of love, return. If we have refused the embrace, run back and return to God’s arms of love.

8-11 “‘Get smart! Your leaders are handing you a pack of lies, and you’re swallowing them! Use your heads! Do you think you can rob and murder, have sex with the neighborhood wives, tell lies nonstop, worship the local gods, and buy every novel religious commodity on the market—and then march into this Temple, set apart for my worship, and say, “We’re safe!” thinking that the place itself gives you a license to go on with all this outrageous sacrilege? A cave full of criminals! Do you think you can turn this Temple, set apart for my worship, into something like that? Well, think again. I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see what’s going on.’” God’s Decree!
In verses 8-11, Jeremiah presents the people as deliberately sinning and coming to the temple to worship as if everything was fine. They thought nothing could happen to them. During this time, they even mixed their worship of the LORD with false idols. In verses 1-7 of the temple sermon, the prophet sounds as though “changing their ways” is still possible. However, now the reality of impending exile colors every word, image, and phrase within the Jeremiah.
These verses characterize Judah’s disobedience as a failure to observe God’s teaching (torah) and a failure to confess torah transgressions before entering the temple and pretending to worship as if they are in obedience to the Lord who gave the torah. The people have no sense of shame at the distance between their worship liturgy and their lived ethics. The temple has literally become the place where people hide from God’s word in the midst of meaningless worship instead of being liberated by God’s word within authentic unencumbered meaningful worship. Gone are all notions of covenantal obligations or responsibilities. For the temple priests and temple worshippers, temple worship is nothing more than a phony pitiful attempt to hide malevolent motives and wicked behavior. According to Jeremiah, the entire temple system is rotten to its very core.
In the end, the people of Judah will lose out on receiving God’s best for their life. God’s goal for sending Jeremiah was to get the people back on the right track, to get the people to treat God’s house with the respect it deserves, to get the people to worship in wholehearted covenant authenticity, and get the people to treat each other like they’re supposed to. While they can bow their heads in what appears to be true worship; they can utter prayers that may seem sincere to a hearer of it, but God sees what’s really going on. They have treated the Lord’s house any kind of way; they have treated people any kind of way, and God is displeased.
21-23 “The Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God: ‘Go ahead! Put your burnt offerings with all your other sacrificial offerings and make a good meal for yourselves. I sure don’t want them! When I delivered your ancestors out of Egypt, I never said anything to them about wanting burnt offerings and sacrifices as such. But I did say this, commanded this: “Obey me. Do what I say and I will be your God and you will be my people. Live the way I tell you. Do what I command so that your lives will go well.”
In the final verses of the lesson text, Jeremiah asserts the people have a false sense of security in many things in this world today. They find security in their finances, in their accomplishments and education, in their relationships or social status’, titles and the like. People place too much value and importance on the non-relevant things of life while their soul remains in danger. They invest repeatedly in these hoping to find some semblance of safety, but just as Jesus asks in Mark 8:36, “What good is it if someone gains the whole world but loses their soul?”
As Jeremiah continues the temple sermon, his indictments of the temple theology and temple practice center on the sacrificial systems which oppress the infirmed, dispossessed, and the poor without economic means to participate in sacrificial worship. Jeremiah asserts sacrifice was never intended to supplant relational covenant observance with the God who led the Hebrews out of Egypt. What God commands is hearing/listening as evidenced by the shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9.) Hearing and responding to the Word of the Lord means one is willing to submit to God’s control and direction in every aspect of life.
The only place of true safety and security is found in the will of God. God keeps those who cleave to God and hold fast to God’s Word. An abiding relationship with God, and a commitment to Divine will, must take precedence over everything else.

i. .Fentress-Williams, Judy. Holy Imagination: A Literary and Theological Introduction to the Whole Bible. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2021) 179.
ii. Brueggemann, Walter. A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998) 77.
iii. Ibid. 78.