Love, Not Ritual

Jeremiah 6:16-21 ESV

16 Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ 17 I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not pay attention.’ 18 Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. 19 Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it. 20 What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me. 21 Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish.’”

There are several states which have in place what is called the three-strikes law. According to the three-strikes law, after an offender has committed three consecutive felonies, he receives a mandatory life sentence.

Therefore, when someone in one of these states commits a crime and is charged with a felony, he knows that if he commits more crimes and is charged with a felony two more times, he will be put away for life.

The purpose of such laws is to deter criminals from being repeat offenders, hoping that if they realize that they will spend the rest of their lives in prison if they continue on the path that they are on, that they will cease their life of crime.

But there could be a certain criminal who may doubt that that would actually happen to him; he may say, “I know about the three-strike law, but the consequences of that law, they don’t apply to me!” But all he would have to do is keep on committing crimes and he will quickly discover the validity of this law after being convicted of his third felony and being sentenced to life in prison.

Well, as we finish our series this morning from the 6thchapter of the book of Jeremiah, we see God reveal to the people of Jerusalem the fate that awaits them because like a hardened criminal, they have persistently rebelled and sinned against God, refusing to believe that God would ever execute His threatened judgment on them.

God gave them His law and sent them His prophets. His law showed them the way that He commanded them to live and the way that He commanded them to worship Him.

When they failed to do this, God would send curses upon the people to remind them that they have a responsibility to obey the commandments of God in an attempt to spur them to repentance.

When even this failed, God would send His prophets to reveal His will to the people, showing them how they had strayed from Him and thus called them to obey His commands found in the law. But when the prophets declared this message to the people, not only did they refuse to heed to their call, but they typically persecuted them, beat them, and even killed some of them.

They had been consistently warned and called to repentance, but their course was to hate the God Who called them, refusing to believe that any ill would come their way for hating Him, and even expecting God to bless them while they hated Him.

We see God recall this consistent rebellion by the people whom He had called to Himself in verses 16 and 17 of our reading, where it says:

Jeremiah 6:16-17 ESV

16 Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ 17 I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not pay attention.’

We see in these verses God speaking of how His people have wandered away from His commands and how they have persistently rebelled against Him in spite of the fact that common sense tells them that they are foolish for doing so.

The first way that God speaks of this is found in verse 16 where God compares the people of Judah to a group of traveling people who wander from the path and need to return to the correct way. As they stand by the side of the road, wondering where to go, there is one who calls them to take the ancient paths, the good way, and to walk in it, for if they do, they will find rest for their souls.

This is in reference to God calling Judah over and over again to obedience to His commands found in the law, telling them that if they do so, they will find rest for their souls as God blesses them abundantly. But though this was the case, the reply of the people was, “We will not walk in it! We will not do what is necessary to find rest for our souls!”.

Then in verse 17, God compares Judah to a nation of people who set watchmen to watch for enemies who may come to try to conquer them, and then when seeing the enemy approach, the watchmen sound their trumpets so that the people will prepare for the attack.

This is in reference to God sending His prophets to His people to let them know that disaster was at hand because of persistent disobedience to His law so that they would turn to Him in repentance, but though that was the case, the reply of the people was, “We will not pay attention! We would rather ignore the fact that we are going to suffer tremendously for our sins rather than turning to the Lord!”.

Thus, we read in verses 18 and 19:

Jeremiah 6:18-19 ESV

18 Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. 19 Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it.

The first word of verse 18 is “therefore” which means “because of this”. Because of what? Well, in verse 19 we read of Judah’s “devices”, and these devices are described as not paying attention to the words of God and rejecting the law of God, those things which we discussed when expositing verses 16 and 17.

These are the “devices” of the people, and God says in verse 19 that these devices have fruit attached to them. In other words, failing to heed to God’s prophets and rejecting the law of God then resulted in something. And that something that it resulted in is described here in verse 19 as God bringing disaster upon this people.

The disaster that is spoken of here is the Babylonian conquest. Therefore, God says that the people of Jerusalem are going to be conquered and carried away, and the city and temple will be destroyed by the vast Babylonian kingdom because of their willful, consistent rebellion against God.

God calls the nations and the congregation in verse 18 to hear what will happen to Judah, signifying that He calls all the peoples of the world, even the heavenly host to observe and understand what happens to this people who have rejected their Master.

Because they have refused to hear God’s prophets and because they refused to obey the will of God found in His law, He will not accept the “worship” that they offer Him. We see this in verse 20, where it says:

Jeremiah 6:20 ESV

20 What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.

Because these people were disobedient to God, their “worship” of Him was not accepted by God. It is in no way pleasing to Him.

The people of Judah and those particularly in Jerusalem were a religious people. They claimed to worship the God of Israel. They offered burnt offerings to God, they offered sacrifices to God, they performed all of the religious rituals that they were supposed to perform.

But though they performed all of the religious rituals that they were supposed to, God proclaimed that He would not accept their religious sacrifices and offerings, because they were not pleasing to Him. But if they were performing all of the right religious rituals and offering all of the right sacrifices, why was God not pleased with them?

He wasn’t pleased with them because of what was just said in verse 19, for while the people were faithful to show up to the temple and offer all of the right sacrifices, they nonetheless disobeyed the law of God and rejected His prophets.

In the prophecy of Hosea chapter 6, verse 6, God proclaims:

Hosea 6:6 ESV

6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

God says, “I desire steadfast love” steadfast love of Who? Of God! And loving God means obeying Him, which the people had not done. God says, “I desire the knowledge of God”, God desired that they pursued Him and desired Him above all else, but this they had not done eithet.

And God says, “If you don’t love Me. If you don’t desire Me, if you don’t truly reckon Me as the God of heaven and earth, the One Who demands and deserves absolute submission and obedience to My commands, then your supposed worship of Me is not legitimate, it means nothing.”

Therefore, in the last verse of our reading, God says that because the “worship” that those in Jerusalem were offering Him was not legitimate worship, the result will be this:

Jeremiah 6:21 ESV

21 …‘Behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish.’”

God says that this people may have avoided legitimately worshipping Him, but He is about to lay a stumbling block before them, and stumbling over it cannot be avoided.

This stumbling block which God speaks of was the Babylonian invasion. God says that the people may hate the revelation of God and thus dismiss it as not truly being from God, but regardless of what they think, it WILL come to pass, and they will see it come to pass with their own eyes.

And because of this stumbling block, fathers, sons, neighbors, and friends shall perish.

Great is the Word of God! Great is the wrath of God! Great is God Himself!

As we finish this series of sermons from Jeremiah chapter 6 and we recognize that this is the unchanging Word of God, we ask what this means for us today? We have no threat of a Babylonian invasion like those in Jerusalem did, so how can we apply this to ourselves today?

What was the fault of those in Jerusalem? They offered all of the right religious rituals, but they did not love and obey the God Who instituted these religious rituals. We need to ask ourselves if the same fault lies with us.

We may be going through all the right motions here at church, we may be singing all of the hymns, tithing every last bit of our income, praying all of the right prayers, and doing our best to stay awake during the sermon, but do we truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind?

What we need to do is examine whether or not our worship is legitimate worship.

Beloved, God is worthy of legitimate worship. God is worthy of our obedience. God commands our obedience.

May our minds, our thoughts, our actions, may the entirety of our lives be filled with things of the awesome God of heaven and earth!

Amen?