Real vs fake forgiveness

Jeremiah 7:1–7 “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “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. 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. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 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, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.”

In your life, whether it be in the past or even now, do you feel like your spiritual life just hasn’t changed even after going to church every Sunday for however long you’ve come to church for, even after church camp a month ago, even after you might do something nice for someone, donate to somewhere, or do any of these things that we consider as “morally” good for a Christian?

Why? Why doesn’t it feel like you have gotten closer to Jesus, why do I continue to sin and why can’t I stop? why doesn’t it feel like you’ve grown closer to Christ? In fact, at times it feels like you have actually have grown further away from Christ !

And so today, we will be looking at one of the reasons as to why you might feel this way, where this is the fact that we have established and believed in a distorted definition of forgiveness of our sins in our lives. And so we will see how this plays out in the passage and also look at what true forgiveness looks like.

Imagine that someone has done the one thing that you absolutely hate once and they say sorry but let’s say you’re a loving Christian and so you forgive them this time. But then they do the same thing again and them come to you saying sorry, and then they do the same thing again. What is it and how would you feel?

This situation that you have in your head, I want you to remember this situation as we go along through todays passage

And so this was the start of his sermon:

Jeremiah 7:1–4 “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “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. 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. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’”

Context of passage

Jeremiah was a prophet chosen by God and most of his ministry was based in the last few years before the big empire of Babylon came and took the Israelites into captivity. But in this specific passage, many scholars believe that the specific time was during a large festivals like Passover where people from far away lands would come to the temple in Jerusalem and worship God which meant that alot of people heard his sermon.

But in the time before Jeremiah was preaching his sermon, the state of these people in this passage was absolute chaos and this is because the people were doing all sorts of sinful things and disobeying God, they were worshipping idols and built shrines all over the land of Judah where they even sacrificed their children for these idols, there were priests, kings and prophets who all abandoned the law given by God to Moses, stealing, committing adultery, probably going against most, if not all the 10 commandments pretty much every single day.

And after all that they came to the temple to worship God and this time of year to be forgiven.

And so why is he saying “Do not trust in these deceptive words?, this is the temple …”, the people were physically going to the temple, and giving sacrifices to him and worshipping him.

Why is God saying to not trust in these deceptive words (this is the temple of the Lord)?

Because God knew that they were in fact believing in another idol, a fake God and they were just unaware that they were believing, they were being deceived.

They thought that just because they were in the temple of the Lord and not in idol shrines, they thought that just because they sacrificed animals and not children, that this was the way of receieving forgiveness from God.

But just because it’s CLOSER to the real God it doesn’t mean its the true God, where everything that is NOT the real God is an idol no matter how close you get.

So what were the characteristics of this fake God that God was telling them not to be deceived by?

They thought that God forgives easily

Thinking of the discussion question - if that person continues to do it, again and again, do you think you can forgive easily and say “all good” every single time? I don’t think so, I even think it would be extremely hard to say “all good” even if its the first time if it’s the thing I absolutely HATE the most

But the Israelites thought that God would just say “all good” every single time for the thing which he absolutely hates and cannot tolerate. And this is because the Israelites simply don’t understand how intolerable sin is to God. They thought that they could then continuously sin and it wasn’t a big deal and God would forgive them.

Jeremiah 7:8–10 ““Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations?

And so God is saying that you’re sinning again and again and you’re expecting me to forgive you just by coming to the temple?

And I think for us, we think that God forgives easily because we have been living in a society where people have started to treat sin lightly, people have started to treat sin which is something intolerable into something that is tolerable by God or even worse, people have just stopped talking about sin altogether. And I think this has made us think that God easily forgives sin

One of the most common phrases you have probably heard is “God loves the sinner, but hates the sin”. This phrase isn’t inherently wrong but it is very dangerous in that it is misleading especially for people who have little to no faith because it subconsciously (whether they notice or not) makes them think that God won’t send them to hell but the sin to hell and so they feel like they can just continue on living a sinful life and God will love them, but God doesn’t send the sin to hell - he sends the sinner to hell.

So its not talking about the severity of sin that makes us think that God easily forgives.

And so going back to the discussion question, just as how hard it is for you to forgive after someone doing the thing you hate most once, how hard do you think it is for God where every single person on earth is doing the absolute worst thing he ever hates at the same time for every second. God doesn’t forgive easily at all

They thought forgiveness starts from them

Thinking of the discussion question - because you’re the one that the wrong has been done to, who do you think determines if they are forgiven? You !

But the Israelites thought the complete opposite and they thought that forgiveness started from them. They thought that IF they did something exactly as the law said, that IF they went to the temple, that IF they sacrificed perfectly, then God WILL and HAVE to FORGIVE them for all their sins that they committed. They had an expectation that God should forgive them because they did something.

They thought that forgiveness came from the wrongdoer instead of the victim.

And we also think the same way where we think that by first doing morally good “Christian” things like coming to church weekly, by going to church camp, by singing to God with our arms lifted high and listening to Christian songs, reading a chapter away to keep the devil away will grant us forgiveness. That because we have done something, God should forgive us.

But going back to the discussion question, imagine that person who has done wrong to you just says “sorry” and then straight after walks away, expecting you to forgive them. Aren’t you just like what da hek, I know you’re not sorry at all. But then they do it again and they say the exact same “sorry” and then walk away again where they genuinely expect you to forgive them. And now you’re just like okay just stop.

But what the Israelites and what we are doing is this exact same thing, thinking that the one who has done wrong can determine when forgiveness is given. But the only one who can truly determine if forgiveness is granted is God who is the victim and not you who is the wrongdoer.

They thought forgiveness only came from external change

In the discussion question - say you have the ability to see their intentions, and once they have done this thing you absolutely hate they become really fake nice to you BUT you know that they’re not actually sorry. How would you feel? You wouldn’t really care if they are nice to you because it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean they are actually sorry and so you won’t want to forgive them.

But the the Israelites thought that by just changing how they looked on the outside, by just changing how they acted on the outside, that God would forgive them and this comes from the belief that they thought that God couldn’t see what their intentions of going to the temple, of what doing sacrifices were.

We have the tendency to also think like that, where because alot of the time we have seen that just being nice to someone after we have done something wrong has worked and they have forgiven us if you hide it well enough, that we can also copy and paste that same logic onto God.

But then you’re forgetting one crucial thing, and that is the fact that God is God, and humans are humans.

Humans can hide their internal intentions from humans, but humans will never be able to hide their intentions from the true God, in fact - the true God knows more about you that you do about yourself.

Back to discussion question - God has the ability to see every single person’s intentions and knows everything that we are thinking about and so if he knows that you are just being fake nice to him and truly not sorry and so why would he forgive us?

And so it is these 3 reasons that God is telling the Israelites and also us to not be deceived, where the actual overall idea of these 3 distorted characteristics is that we think that forgiveness comes from only transforming the outside based on what we have done.

And so the big danger of continuing to think like this is 2 things:

It creates a false sense of security/ or an expectation in our minds where we think that this is how we will be forgiven and we keep on believing that until we die

Or that we do see that nothing is really happening in our spiritual life or probably going downhill, that even if I go church, even if I go camp, even if I sing with my hands lifted high,

What will happen is that you will first be disappointed, and then you continue to have this expectation that something will change and nothings happening so you will be frustrated and then you continue to have this expectation which will lead to hatred and then this will lead to ultimately us having no faith in true God at all.

And then no matter which reason it is you will go to hell because we have not been truly been forgiven for our sins.

And so what this idea of fake forgiveness from a fake God will only ever give you is a path straight to hell, because a fake God can’t give real forgiveness, and so if something doesn’t exist then logically it can’t do anything. It might not seem like it, but it’s the same thing as asking a literal rock for forgiveness. Nothing will ever happen, and you will never change

And so now we realise that we’re believing in a fake God, we’ve been listening and believing a fake God with fake forgiveness and that forgiveness is achieved when I do a certain action.

What does the real God tell us real forgiveness is?

Jeremiah 7:5–7 ““For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 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, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.”

Now if you glance over it you might think again that if they JUST do this list of things (say the things in the verse) then he will forgive them for their sins. But then you miss the word “truly” and what this “truly” means is to not do these things to be forgiven, but to sincerely and truthfully change so that you actually are sorry and this, we will see that real forgiveness is in fact the complete opposite of the fake forgiveness we were looking at before.

God doesn’t forgive easily

First recognising the weight of our sin and that it is impossible to ever pay for this sin.

Even just having sinful thoughts is considered sin and I’m sure over the past week you have sinned - in fact I can be 99.9999% sure that we have. We continue to do wrong to God and God isn’t just saying “all good” but rather he is saying we all deserve to be punished for this sin where the wages of sin is death.

Where even if you just have an INKLING of sin within your body - God cannot tolerate that at all, you will never be able to pay it on your own because this payment is infinite

God doesn’t forgive easily

Forgiveness starts from God

Then recognising that it is God forgiving us

That for the Israelites: his absolute grace and by his absolute mercy is shown by him continuously providing opportunities to be forgiven, that even though they continuously disobey God, he continues to provide countless opportunities for them to turn back to him. Even now God is giving them an opportunity for forgiveness !

That for us: He has given Jesus Christ to take the penalty for the infinite amount of debt that we deserve to pay. That God gave Jesus freely WHILE we were still sinners - WHILE we still disobeyed, WHILE we continue to believe in a fake God, WHILE we still do absolute wrong to God. - he gave us an opportunity to be sinless in front of him.

Forgiveness comes from internal change

The finally, recognising that forgiveness isn’t given from external transformation but internal change.

Now you can believe in YOUR HEAD that God did all these things, but do you inherently believe with YOUR HEART?

And the reason I say that is because Satan 100% logically believes that Jesus Christ is the one and only savior, otherwise why would he want to mess you up. But is Satan forgiven? No.

So then what is a sign that you inherently believe with you heart? Repentance

Following the 2 realisations that God doesn’t forgive easily and that forgiveness starts from God, is it to be pierced to the centre of your being which is your heart because of knowing how good GOD REALLY IS and WHAT HE HAS DONE, SO THAT you are turned upside down and some call it a MORAL U-TURN from sin (from the very thing God HATES) and to not want to do it ever again from the realisation of how offensive it is to God.

It is the Holy Spirit changing your life from one that was taken over by sin and had no essence of righteousness to one that it is filled with righteousness and absolutely hating sin.

It means that your heart has changed into a new heart, that your heart has transformed from one that was not at all sensitive to sin, to one that is filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit which is SO sensitive to sin that whenever the heart is near sin it can’t handle it and tries everything it can to repel it away because it will find it so offensive.

And when this truly happens, you will have no choice BUT to believe in Jesus Christ who has paid it all for you. And this is how God says you are forgiven.

Conclusion

And so supposed you were to die tonight and you stood before God, and God said to you “Why should I let you enter into heaven”, what is your answer going to be?

Is it going to be that you did all these good things in your life? that you went to church every week? that you did good things in your life?

Well guess whats going to happen to those people, Jesus will “Depart from me, I never knew you”

Or is it going to be that you have true transformation in the heart and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ our savior who was given by God freely and died on that cross to pay for your infinite debt that you deserve to pay.

And so the question I want you guys to ask yourselves this week and maybe even everyday is “If someone was to write about my life in the bible for 20 verses or a whole chapter, what would that look like? Would it look the same as these people Jeremiah is preaching to (external change), or would it be a life worshipping God with our hearts (internal change)

Forgiveness of sins isn’t given from only transforming the outside by what we have done, but it it is given from the transformation on the inside from what God has done.

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