Jeremiah 7:1-15 Oct. 6, 2019 5 |13 In contrast, here in Jeremiah 7:3, God says, “Amend your ways and your deeds”, and then maybe God will allow Judah to stay in the promised land.
We can’t just change the laws to match our behavior. This to me seems a most disingenuous form of righteousness – more accurately self-righteousness. It would be self-serving like a sheriff arresting his deputy for a murder only to change the existing law against murder, making it legal, allowing the culprit to avoid prosecution. We’ve wrongly concluded we can’t expect people to change, so we should instead change the rule of law so the guilt and tension of our cognitive dissonance disappears.
But isn’t that what repentance is for? Repent and turn from your evils ways and the Lord will allow you to dwell in the land - in the land where God’s presence dwells. But today, God does not limit experiencing His presence to a place, in the temple as He did then. Now His dwells in all who repent and believe and receive Him into the temple that is their bodies. This is why repentance is so important. It is important both initially for salvation but also in an ongoing way for the living of life of healthy fellowship with God. (1 John 1:8-10)
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