Preaching at the Doors of the Church
I am slowly but surely making my way through Jeremiah in my Bible study. I have now arrived at chapter 7! I have many chapters to go to finish up my study on Jeremiah, but I am surprised at how much I have enjoyed this book thus far. I look forward to seeing the spiritual truths this book has in store for me!
Many Christians tend to view the Old Testament as just that… OLD and out-dated. But that can’t be further from the truth. Every time I study in the Old Testament, I find that the messages contained within are completely relevant for today! In fact, God’s people battled many of the same issues that we struggle with now. We all know the saying, “those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.” I love this expression because it is such a basic and obvious truth, but for some reason, we prefer to stay ignorant on the past. This quote certainly applies to the Bible and to the Old Testament and to Christians!
Jeremiah prophesied at a time of great idolatry in the nation of Judah. Not only did the people practice basic worship of idolatry such as worshipping graven images like the nations surrounding them, they actually even stooped so low as to practice child sacrifice! In their every day lives, the people oppressed each other and did not execute justice. They even killed the innocent people around them. God sent Jeremiah to stand up and proclaim God’s disdain for the actions of the people of Judah. God prophesied that due to their rejection of His Word, the people will be destroyed. And sure enough, Judah was eventually destroyed by the Babylonian army and many of the people were killed and taken captive. The walls, city, and temple of Jerusalem were brought down. They would not be rebuilt until the Jews returned from exile in Babylon 70 years later.
In chapter 7 of the book of Jeremiah, we see God command Jeremiah to preach God’s message at the “gate of the Lord’s house” (vs 2). I found this simple statement very compelling. The “gate of the Lord’s house” is the entrance to the temple in Jerusalem. This would be the way that any worshipper would enter in to the temple to worship God. Think about it: if Jeremiah is issuing a prophecy at the gate, he is speaking to people worshipping at the temple. The prophecy being issued was not a good one, by the way. Jeremiah was pointing out the evil hypocrisy these people were participating in and promising a coming judgement on them. It would be like a preacher standing at the front doors of the church and preaching at the people walking into a church service telling them that they are evil hypocrites soon to be destroyed. Wouldn’t that be a memorable and shocking event!
We NEED more preachers to stand at the doors of ‘churches’ and to preach the truth to so-called ‘Christians’! We need more Jeremiahs! We feel good about ourselves because we go to church, sing some songs, and listen to a nice message about Jesus. But, we leave the church building go home and….what then? We focus on preaching to ‘the world’ but forget that the world is infiltrating our churches at an alarming pace.
The people of Judah participated in spiritual hypocrisy just like we do today. And guess what! God hated it. He still does!
Jeremiah 7:8-10 (KJV)
Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.
Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;
And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?
God, through Jeremiah, pointed out that this hypocrisy is nothing new to the Jews. Their ancestors had done the same thing since being miraculously brought out of Egypt (vs. 22-25). They refused to obey God. In fact, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had recently been destroyed for the same spiritual hypocrisy and still Judah continued in their idolatry (vs. 12-15).
Their idolatry even culminated in the horrific practice of child sacrifice in the Valley of Bin-Hinnom also called Tophet (vs. 31-32). The child sacrifice that the Jews participated in took place right outside of Jerusalem, basically next to the temple of God! I have written before on child sacrifice in Israel and how we continue in this practice today, so I will not go into detail more here. Please see my previous articles for more information on this particular subject.
The result of this hypocrisy and evil is destruction. Not only did God promise it, He accomplished it.
Today, our churches are filled with people who claim to be Christian. These people may even really think that they are Christian but are not. They go to church but live a life opposite of what God commanded. They worship God on Sunday but worship their ‘idols’ every other day. Just like the people of Judah, they feel that they are ‘good with God’ because they worshipped for an hour. But, let’s look at history and learn something: God can see what we do everyday. He knows when we are fake. He hates it. Just as Judah ignored their past and therefore fell prey to the same sin, so too we ignore the past in the Bible and also repeat the same sin.
I feel that we are so concerned with ‘winning over the world’ to Christianity that we forget that we need to preach at the people who claim to be Christians. We need to keep our churches clean if we are going to actually be able to reach the world. Our churches are full of false teachers and hypocrisy and no one seems to care. Well, that is how Judah acted and they were destroyed. Our fate will be the same.
So, let’s be the preachers who preach at the doors of the church!