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Writer's pictureBro. Caleb Taft

Morning Manna | Jeremiah 7:12 | My place which was in Shiloh

Jeremiah 7:12 But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.



Our verse today is an instruction given to all the people who would have been coming into the temple of the Lord to carry out their religious duties. Jeremiah was at times, by the inspiration and instruction of the Lord a street preacher. This chapter and the majority of the next is the message that he preached at the opening of the temple, “Stand in the gate of the LORD'S house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the LORD.” [Jeremiah 7:2]

 Dore' Prophet Jeremiah
Jeremiah 7:2 Stand in the gate of the LORD'S house, and proclaim there this word...

He was not crying against their attendance to the temple and the sacrifices they brought, but he was crying against the hypocrisy that the nation was living in.


Israel was as active as ever in the worship of the Lord, which at face value seems to be a good thing. Still, they were also active in the worship of false gods, sinful living, covetousness, and they had stopped their ears from hearing the message of repentance. They had given their ears to the false prophets of the day who soothed their consciences and cast doubt on men like Jeremiah who were preaching that judgment was coming. The false prophets of that day, no doubt used the promises of God about the Temple and God’s loving kindness toward Israel to preach a cheap message of grace, that was not grace at all but lasciviousness.


In verse 4, God warns them about their false security in the outward expressions of religion. They were crying “The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord.” Their confidence was in the temple of the Lord instead of the Lord of the temple. So it is today in many circles within the church, we devolve from true religion that worships God outwardly because of His work inwardly into false religion that has only the outward signs of religion but inside is dead men's bones. Whitened Sepulchers is all we are when our religion emboldens a lifestyle of sin instead of holiness unto our Lord. We may cry fundamentalist, fundamentalist, fundamentalist, or Baptist, Baptist, Baptist or any myriad of a hundred different confidences we have, but are we trusting in the God of these distinctions or the distinctions themselves? 


So the Lord instructs them on that day, and us today who may be trusting in “The temple of the Lord” instead of the Lord of the Temple, to take a short trip, just 20 miles north to a place called Shiloh. Shiloh was the first capital of the nation of Israel, hundreds of years prior the newly established nation set up the tabernacle in this little town, and for centuries God said it was “Where I set my name at the first.” (vs.12) Shiloh lived up to its name, peaceful, for many generations, and no wonder, it was the place where the God of all peace dwelt among men and it was the newborn capital of a nation that had trusted in the promises of God and had received the promises of God by faith and with the winning of these promises peace was established in their nation. Yet on the day that Jeremiah preached this street corner sermon, Shiloh was a wasteland, it was in the province of Israel, the northern Kingdom that had fallen to the Assyrian empire, it was now called Samaria and its name was nothing more than a sad reminder of the peace that was lost.


God’s warning to those at Jerusalem was because they were in the same danger that Shiloh and the Northern Kingdom were in a few years prior. They are living in the same sin, practicing the same false religion and therefore soon to receive the same condemnation that Israel received. Jerusalem, which means the Lord will provide peace, was about to become nothing more than a sad reminder that He will not only provide peace but also remove it.


It shouldn’t be hard to see the practical application of such a warning today. All around us, there are false prophets crying peace, peace, when there is none. Religions and sects are crying “The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord.” Men are living their lives separate from the God of all Peace and yet want to claim the peace of God but If we would live in the peace of God, then we must serve the God of all peace, and our confidence must not lie in The Temple of the Lord, or all the outward expressions of our religion, but our confidence must lie in the Lord of the Temple, and all outward expressions must, first of all, be rooted and grounded in love and Christ must first dwell in our hearts by faith.


Now let’s take a trip, and I suspect you won’t have to travel far to find an instance where His peace has been removed from a person, a church, institution, or a nation for their lasciviousness. We can travel to the example set by some men who at one time lived in the power and presence of God, yet now their lives are only a sad reminder of what they once were. Sin destroys and kills everything it touches, even those people and places that we suspect will stand forever. I could visit churches that once preached the gospel and changed the course of this world; today they are filled with modernists and Bible deniers, and the lives of the people of those place are many times more depraved than the society they are in. We could visit institutions like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and many more that were founded upon the Bible and its teachings, yet today they produce atheists instead of preachers.


Look around and see what dead religion and faith in it has done to others and be warned that if we devolve to the same sins, then we will receive the same judgment. If you are a preacher living in sin, look now to the others who lived in that same sin and how desolate their ministries are now. If you are a pastor tip-toeing around this new movement that brings the world into the church, look now to the churches that are now overrun by the world. May we heed this fiery warning from the mouth of God’s weeping street preacher, “But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.”

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