Today's Daily Lesson comes from Jeremiah chapter 7 verses 1 through 7:
7:1 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 men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell 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 deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever."
God will not be flattered by a people who take His name in vain. A people who call themselves a Godly nation and who build temples and churches in the name of the LORD, yet who have no regard for justice for the vulnerable and oppressed is a Godly nation in name only. It shall not endure the fire of God's judgment.
God does not abide a people who are cruel to the sojourner, or do harm to those being raised without fathers, or take from widows, or is lethal force without cause, or worship mammon. It is very clear from today's passage that these are serious sins. God is not flattered by a nation which has taken on His name but not His justice.
Writing in 1941, amidst Nazi Germany's so-called 'Christian' ascendancy, the great Lutheran theologian Reinhold Niebuhr spoke warningly against Germany's hubris. “No nation is free of the sin of pride,” Niebuhr said, “just as no individual is free of it. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that there are ‘Christian’ nations, who prove themselves so because they are still receptive to prophetic words of judgment spoken against the nation."
A nation truly under God is not only under God's name but even more importantly under God's will. A truly "Christian" or "Godly" nation is the nation that has heard the prophetic words and, having listened, truly then repents in both heart and also action.
‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord," the people of ancient Israel said. And it was.
But it would not always be.
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