#1056 Jeremiah 7 Part 3 Just Eat It

 

21 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24 But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. 25 From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. 26 Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

27 “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28 And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

29 “‘Cut off your hair and cast it away;

raise a lamentation on the bare heights,

for the Lord has rejected and forsaken

the generation of his wrath.’

The Valley of Slaughter

30 “For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. 31 And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. 32 Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. 33 And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. 34 And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste. Jeremiah 7: 21-34 ESV

Jeremiah 7: 21-34

21-26. Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices - Leviticus 1 gives a great outline of the burnt offering, how it would be carried out. I encourage you to read the link above for a more in depth look at the burnt offering, but in the context here, understand, this is not an offering with apportionment to the priest and the people did not eat this meat either. It was to be totally consumed in the fire, an offering unto the Lord, atonement. But now God is saying, "it doesn't matter, you might as well eat the burnt offering too, because you do it all for show." God didn't institute these sacrifices as a legalistic system that overrides the call to genuine faith and repentance. The Creator is not an idol made by their hands and imaginations so He is not going to accept their empty gestures. 

Obey My voice and I will be your God - Do this and you shall live. They had agreed to these terms long before the picture provided in the sacrifices. Read this in Exodus 24. This people knew what God desired, obedience, mercy and truth. The sacrifice taught both physical and spiritual realities.

…21In the same way, he sprinkled with blood the tabernacle and all the vessels used in worship. 22According to the law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. 23So it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.…Hebrews 9: 21-23

…4because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me. 6In burnt offerings and sin offerings You took no delight.…

…7Then I said, ‘Here I am, it is written about Me in the scroll: I have come to do Your will, O God.’ ” 8In the passage above He says, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not desire, nor did You delight in them” (although they are offered according to the law). 9Then He adds, “Here I am, I have come to do Your will.” He takes away the first to establish the second.… Hebrews 10: 4-9

27-29. Truth has perished - The heart is wicked and deceitful above all things, and they chose to follow the feelings and desires that came from such a place, to the extent that they would no longer recognize the truth. Jeremiah's ministry didn't hold a lot of selling points. God tells him, you are going to talk, but they aren't going to listen, you will call, but no one will answer you. This is a horribly dark place, and one can watch these things start in quarters on a small scale, but eventually it becomes city wide, and then at some point the darkness is global. "Peace, peace, peace, a time of healing,' cries the propaganda machine, 'the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, bring your sacrifices, everything is going to be okay." Watch, the truth becomes a hated, detestable thing, and the ones that speak it, well just look back at Isaiah, look forward to John the Baptist, people cannot stand being confronted about their sin. Remember, these people see themselves as righteous in this too, because they are religious and have hundreds of prophets that agree with them, plus culture, so who is this Jeremiah? 

Cut off your hair - They were unclean.

“The charge stems from the fact that the Nazirite’s hair was the mark of his separation to God (Numbers 6:5). When he was ceremonially defiled, he had to shave his head. So Jerusalem because of her corruption must do likewise.” (Feinberg)

30-34. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name - King Ahaz had a replica altar built to match that of the Assyrians. He swore his allegiance to the Assyrian king, and even moved the Judean king's Sabbath walkway to go around the house of the Lord, to further vest his loyalty to the dark side.

They have built the high places of Topheth - High does not always infer a mountain top, since these were also found in this valley, so probably just a raised building, a shrine. These were not places of worship that God condoned.

“Topheth probably derives from the Hebrew word for ‘fire-place’ (cf. Isaiah 30:33).” (Cundall) Kidner also points out that the name Topheth rhymes with bosheth, the Hebrew word for “shame.” 

In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, 3 but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering,[a] according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 4 And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. 2 Kings 16: 1-4

To burn their sons and daughters - People haven't evolved over the years, but technology has, and so we offer our children upon the altar of self, inside the womb. We think we have come so far, but we do it for the same reasons, lack of truth, love of pleasure, selfishness, but we have the audacity to say, my truth, compassion, and a sacrifice against over population. 

…2In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for bread to eat—for He gives sleep to His beloved. 3Children are indeed a heritage from the LORD, and the fruit of the womb is His reward. 4Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are children born in one’s youth.… Psalm 127: 2-4

The voice of mirth - The gage that they go by, celebration, fun, happiness at any cost, if we are laughing then it is good and right, but He will take all that away. Their smugness will be gone, those that boast how they would rather be in hell with their friends then in heaven with God, well they will get what they asked for, but the reality will not be mirth. Pride never leads to good, for it is disconnected from reality. 

…9For three and a half days all peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will view their bodies and will not permit them to be laid in a tomb. 10And those who dwell on the earth will gloat over them, and will celebrate and send one another gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them. 11But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered the two witnesses, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell upon those who saw them.… Revelation 11: 9-11