Just because someone is a dedicated member of a church does not necessarily mean he is truly a Christian. Today, R.C. Sproul cautions against the dangers of faithless religion. Get R.C. Sproul’s book Hard Sayings, plus lifetime digital access to his four teaching series on the hard sayings of the Bible, the prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles, for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3648/hard-sayings Meet Today’s Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God’s Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
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God is saying centuries before Jesus cleansed the temple that the people had already defiled the temple. They're going through the ritual on the Sabbath day. They're going through all of the machinations of religion, but their lives are pagan during the rest of the week. They are religious, but they are not faithful. Their religion is phony.
In response to the hypocrisy and unfaithfulness of the people of God, the Lord used the prophet Jeremiah to deliver a warning and a message that R.C. Sproul called the hardest message a prophet ever had to give. And it's that message that we'll consider today on Renewing Your Mind. R.C. Sproul recorded four teaching series surveying many hard sayings that we find in the Bible.
The message you'll hear today is from his Hard Sayings of the Prophets series. And until tomorrow, you can request access to all four of those series, plus Dr. Sproul's hardcover book simply titled Hard Sayings, when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. So what was this hard saying from the prophet Jeremiah? And how can his strong message serve as a warning even for people today?
Here's Dr. Sproul.
As we continue now with our study of the hard sayings of the prophets, those sayings that when we read them or hear them strike us as either being extraordinarily harsh or unusually difficult to understand.
We now turn our attention to one of the most famous speeches that was ever given by a prophet in the Old Testament, and I'm thinking of the famous so-called temple speech of the prophet Jeremiah. We have the record of Jeremiah's temple speech in the seventh chapter of his book. Let's look then at Jeremiah chapter 7, beginning at verse 1.
"...the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel." amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
Do not trust in these lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. All right, now what's going on here? Jeremiah is instructed by God to go to the very gates of Jerusalem. there at the entrance to the temple itself in Zion, the holy city of God. God requires Jeremiah to deliver God's message.
He tells Jeremiah to preface his sermon or his announcements by saying, "'Thus saith the Lord.'" Now the way in which Jeremiah begins is to call the people to solemn attention. Hear, O Israel. That is reminiscent of the Shema in the book of Deuteronomy. When God is calling for the attention of all of the people, He says to them, Hear, O O Israel, hear, O inhabitants of Jerusalem.
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