There can be a fine line between having genuine faith and taking things for granted. The problem Jeremiah seeks to expose in this chapter is that people in Jerusalem were taking for granted that because they were God’s covenant people and because they had the temple where the Lord dwelt among His people, they would never be moved and end up in exile (v4).

It is never enough to just confess thatwe belong to the Lord, we need to show by our lives that we are possessed by God (v5-7). Or to put it in more modern terms, it is not enough to talk the talk, we need to walk the walk. We’re not saved by our good deeds, but good deeds will be evidence of the reality of our salvation (see Ephesians 2 v8-10).

The people were mistaken in thinking that they could live lives of sin and idol worship and then come to the temple and be okay (v8-10). Verse 11 was famously used by Jesus when He cleansed the temple .

The temple which the Lord wants to cleanse now us our body which is called to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. If this holy God truly lives in us, surely that has to transform our thinking, desires and decisions.

Shiloh was where the Lord dwelt in Samuel’s time (v12, 1 Sam. 1 v3). That place was destroed as aplace of worship and the emssage is that the same will happen to Jerusalem and its temple if the people do not repent (v13-14). These challenging verses remind us that the great God of love despises our sin more than we can ever imagine. Fleee from all sin!