2 Timothy 3:5 in the Good News Bible contains this solemn warning. In the last days, it says, people 5will hold to the outward form of our religion, but reject its real power.
The New Living Translation puts it like this. 5 They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.
The apostle Paul was right. It will not just be in the very last days, just before Jesus returns, but throughout the history of God’s dealing with men. Starting with Cain and Abel, right up to the present day, human beings have been misled by “empty religion.” Beliefs and practices which appear on the outside to be spiritual but inwardly are worthless.
The prophet Jeremiah was confronting such worthless religion at the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim King of Judah round about 608 BC. This was around half way through Jeremiah’s ministry and roughly 20 years before Jerusalem would be destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon as God brought judgment on his chosen people who had rejected him. Here in Jeremiah 7 we find three characteristics of such “empty religion.”
Trusting in outward ceremonies instead of in God
We find this in Jeremiah’s day
4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!”
8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
The Israelites were fooling themselves. They were claiming promises from God they were no longer eligible to claim because they had wandered away from God.
21 “ ‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! 22 For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, 23 but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. 24 But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.
The Israelites had fallen into the trap of thinking that animal sacrifices were of value in themselves. The truth is that their sacrifices were worthless and meaningless if they were not expressions of faith and obedience! The Israelites had gone so far away from the one true and Living God that they were offering sacrifices to false gods instead.
17 Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. 19 But am I the one they are provoking? declares the LORD. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?
The Israelites had drifted into performing rituals and ceremonies for their own sake, rather than as expressions of faith and obedience in God.
The Pharisees in Jesus’s time had fallen into the same trap. They gave minute attention to the details of the Jewish Law but overlooked the spirit of the Law. Straining gnats while they were swallowing camels!
And there are warnings for us about empty religion from the history of the church. It is sad to say that over the centuries there have been Christians who have made the same mistake of valuing outward ceremonies rather than putting their trust in God. We could look at the Roman Catholic church in the 15th century. They wrapped up all their worship in Latin, the language of the long-dead Roman Empire, rather than in the languages ordinary people spoke and understood. They kept the Bible in Latin and their liturgies in Latin. They had invented so-called sacraments of confession and penances and the priests sold indulgences and built a business around relics and shrines for the saints. All sorts of rituals and practices had replaced true faith in God.
It was Martin Luther and the Reformation which rediscovered the truth that forgiveness comes to us from the grace of God received by faith, not on the basis of good works. Salvation is God’s free gift to all who put their trust in Jesus. Salvation is not earned or deserved and it certainly can’t be bought by empty ceremonies!
So there is the challenge for us. Is our religion genuine? What are we putting our trust in? Do we think we are saved by going to church? Or by saying our prayers or by giving to missionary work? Faith in God is the only thing that matters! Anything else is just empty religion.
Pious words contradicted by sinful disobedient lives.
This was certainly true of Israel in Jeremiah’s time.
3 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
9 “ ‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?
The Israelites were trusting in empty words but practising oppression and theft and even murder. Their actions contradicted their words.
Much the same was true of the Pharisees in Jesus’s time. When Jesus cleansed the Temple and drove out the money-changers he quoted first Isaiah 56:7 and then Jeremiah 7:11, “My house should be a house of prayer but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” Indeed, Jesus reserved his strongest condemnation for the most outwardly religious people of his day. Pious words but unjust actions.
And church history has its warning for us about this as well, and even from the 20th century. There was a time when the supporters of the evangelical gospel of personal salvation received by faith alone were very critical of the “social gospel”, the call to express God’s love to all in actions as well as in words and to especially the poor and the marginalised. Evangelical churches were preaching the gospel but often it was only the theologically liberal churches that were caring for the poor and needy and fighting for social justice. Even up to the 1970s there was a big gulf between evangelicals like John Stott in his book Christian Mission in the Modern World and Ronald Sider in his book “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.” Evangelicals used to view the social gospel as misguided, or worse.
We would like to think that Christians are not making that mistake any more. Now we are concerned with both truth and justice. Both with saving souls and with meeting physical needs. Rightly so. True religion is always expressed both in devoted worship and in loving actions. People should always be able to tell what we believe from the way that we live. People won’t care what Christians believe until they believe that we care! Otherwise it’s just empty religion.
And there is the challenge for us. Do we put into practice what we claim to believe? Pious words should be expressed in lives of holiness and obedience. Which leads us to the third characteristic of empty religion.
Deaf ears which ignore the voice of God
God sent his prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah to warn Israel to turn from their sins. But the kings and the people alike ignored the voice of God. Here was Jeremiah’s message.
28 Therefore say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. 29 Cut off your hair and throw it away; take up a lament on the barren heights, for the LORD has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath.
What a tragic condemnation – deaf to the voice of God. His chosen people rejected and abandoned God. So God rejects and abandons his people.
22 For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, 23 but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. 24 But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. 25 From the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. 26 But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their forefathers.’
27 “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you; when you call to them, they will not answer.
So sad. Deaf to the voice of God. Ears closed to God’s guidance and rebuke.
13 While you were doing all these things, declares the LORD, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer.
The same was true of the Jews in Jesus’s time. God sent his only Son to them and they refused to listen to Him. Jesus summed up the history of Israel and the rejection his own ministry provoked in the Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard. 34 When the harvest time approached, the Vineyard owner sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
God’s chosen people Israel rejected God’s prophets and in the end they rejected the Son of God Himself. So Jesus rebuked the nation in these sad words.
Matt 23 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate.
And there are lessons of the same refusal to hear the word of God from throughout church history. We could talk about the way the papacy and the established church in the 15th and 16th centuries failed to change so that the Reformers had no choice but to break away from Roman Catholicism and start new streams of church. But even our own Baptist forefathers are not blameless. Starting from the reformation, by the 18th century early Baptists had split into two strands, General Baptists and Particular Baptists. Many of the General Baptists ended up denying the deity of Christ and turning into Unitarians. On the other hand many of the Particular Baptists drifted into what was called hyper-Calvinism. They had such a strong belief in pre-destination that they thought is wasn’t just unnecessary to preach the gospel – they actually thought it was wrong to preach the gospel to unbelievers. They became the very closed “strict and particular” Baptists who scarcely survive today. Mercifully at the end of the 18th century a few groups of General Baptists and Particular Baptists did hear the voice of God, turned away from heresy and became the forefathers of Baptist churches today. But so many groups failed to hear the voice of God – and perished. Empty religion.
And there is the challenge through from Jeremiah right to us today. How good are we at hearing and obeying the voice of God? Do we make the time to listen to God through sermons and Home Groups and personal Bible Study? Are we open to hearing God speak into our own hearts in dreams and visions and prophecies? None of us have arrived yet. We have so much more to learn. We must listen and obey. Anything less warns us that our religion may be empty.
Trusting in outward ceremonies instead of in God
Pious words contradicted by sinful disobedient lives.
Deaf ears which ignore the voice of God
Three characteristics of empty religion which challenge God’s people in every age. How genuine is OUR faith?