When God Said “Do Not Pray!” Jeremiah 7:1-24 Compass of Salinas/Marina Life Group Discussions January/February #2 1. Please read Jeremiah 7:1-24 slowly for comprehension. Underline in your Bible anything you want to remember. Turn your Bible into a library; underlining helps you find things a year from now. • In the first 8 verses what is the ‘false security’ of the people? • How does God assess the behavior of His people and yet they still think consequences will not come? • What does God say their biggest mistake is in 7:12-14? • Then in one of the most shocking verses in the Bible, God tells Jeremiah not to pray for these people. Why? 2. Consider this quote: It’s about 700 BC. For 10 years Jeremiah has been pleading with God’s people to change, to stop doing what is wrong in God’s eyes. But the people did not listen. In fact, they got worse. God declares in verse 24: They went backward and not forward. Do you know anyone who is sliding backward morally and spiritually? Maybe some of us have been sliding backward. Israel was still worshipping in God’s Temple on the sabbath, but God says they were sliding backward in their behavior. Going to the Temple did not stop them sliding backward in their behavior. They knew better but they didn’t want to behave better. And when someone doesn’t want to behave better – they don’t stop gossiping or being divisive, they don’t forgive, then what happens? They keep on BACKSLIDING. They go backward and not forward! Whatever we practice, we get better at, and that includes repeating bad behavior. We OSSIFY. Our conscience hardens until we don’t think how we are behaving is wrong in God’s eyes. We lose touch with reality. That was God’s people in Jeremiah’s time. They were calling wrong….right. In fact, a sure sign that a person is backsliding is what God said of Israel in chapter 6, verse 10, “The Word of God is offensive to them.” When the Word of God in a sermon becomes OFFENSIVE to us, that is not a good sign, is it? • Summarize in a couple of sentences what that quote says. • The Word of God became offensive to them. Is that America today? People leave a church because of a moral stand taken and go find a church that never says anything that is offensive to them. The new thing in our universities and culture in general is that no one is to be offended. If someone is offended, we must stop saying or doing whatever offends them. This is a sneaky way to silence Christianity because all one has to say is “That offends me” and we are supposed to go silent. The politically correct idea of offend no one is an attack on free speech and thought. Free speech inevitably means sooner or later we will hear something we do not like or disagree with. So political correctness is actually an attempt to control us and eliminate challenges. What is sad is Christians claiming they are offended and closing their ears to biblical teaching. Actually, we should EXPECT God’s Word to occasionally, even often, offend our old nature! Being offended by God’s Word is actually a good sign, a sign we are hearing truth, and it is a tip that perhaps we need to do some soul searching. • Underline what you think is most important and say why. • What would you counsel a Christian who is leaving a church because a sermon offended them? 3. Consider this quote The latest polls show that 81% of Americans believe morality is a personal decision. Right and wrong is a matter of personal opinion. And since everyone has a right to their own opinion, what happens? That’s right. No one can say that what someone is doing is wrong. Why? Because they have a right to their own opinion. Moral chaos develops. And a country deteriorates. And the result is the death of moral truth. And when there is no longer moral truth, then inevitably there is moral chaos, which is exactly what happened in Israel and is happening in America today. Can anyone honestly say America is NOT in moral chaos, that we are moving forward morally and NOT sliding backward? It’s because political correctness says morality is a matter of personal opinion. So it should not be a surprise that the only sin left in America today is to say something is wrong. If you dare to do that, you will be accused of being JUDGMENTAL AND INTOLERANT. It has been said that - - The fear of being called judgmental turns people into moral cowards. Does it? That accusation is an attempt to silence moral truth. It has been very successful. So God says in verse 28 “Truth is dead”. (Jeremiah 7:28) Why? Because if right and wrong is a matter of personal opinion, and if it is intolerant and judgmental to ever say something is morally wrong, then nothing is wrong anymore. If everyone’s opinion is right then of course nothing is wrong anymore. Truth is dead. That was Israel. That is America. It is Gallop Poll morality. Morality by the numbers. If lots of people think a behavior is NOT wrong, then it can’t be wrong. Gallop Poll morality. Morality by the numbers. That’s what’s happening in America on high school and college campuses, where we work, in Washington politics. Check the polls and then politicians know what to say and how to vote. Gallop Poll politics. It is the death of truth just like in Jeremiah’s day. God’s people had backslid so far that they placed in God’s Temple the statues of foreign gods including ASTARTE. Astarte is a multi-breasted idol because she is literally a sex goddess. Worship of her involves orgies and sex with cultic prostitutes. In Jeremiah’s day her prostitutes were even in God’s Temple serving worshippers of Astarte. Political correctness of the day said the world is a big place, and we have to respect the religious beliefs of other nations and make room for their gods in our country….. Multi-culturalism. Respecting other cultures means making room for other religions and their gods. It is concluding that respecting other people’s religious beliefs means to say they are as true as Jesus’ claims. Politically correctness says all religions are true; to deny that all religious are true is to disrespect people. So seeking truth is disrespectful. It is the death of truth about God. Therefore the statues of other gods moved into God’s Temple. And of course, with other religions come other ideas of right and wrong, and if Astarte is worship through sex with her prostitutes, then don’t call that wrong. Respect Astarte. The death of truth about God. Horrible things happened because of the death of truth in Israel. The death of truth about God. The French existentialist Albert Camus wrote a famous book called A Plague in which he showed that evil grows and multiplies just like bacteria. It grows. It spreads. Immorality is accumulative. That was Israel. Morally it became a slum society because political correctness said it is judgmental to call anything wrong. The problem with backsliding is that it never stops. It goes farther and farther until God’s people put their babies and their children in the arms of Baal over a roaring fire, and saw nothing wrong with it. When a nation, or parents, backslide away from God, it is always the children that eventually suffer. • Underline the most important sentence in your opinion and say why. • What is multiculturalism as defined in the quote and what is the problem with it? • Is that happening in America? Defend your answer. • So what would you say to a person who tells you that all religions are the same and lead to the same God? 4. Consider the following Secondly, God is telling Jeremiah - - You can’t change someone who doesn’t want to change. You can cry, plead, beg, threaten, but you can’t change a person who does not want to change. No you can’t! Maybe the most important sentence I came across last week in my research was this: God can only help a person so far! Not even God can change a person who does not want to change. God has given us freewill. We have the freedom to keep on doing what is wrong in His sight, to keep on taking drugs, to keep on damaging people with our mouth, we have the freedom to backslide and deteriorate as a person. Not even God can improve a person who does not want to improve. You can only help a person so far! Only people in Washington seem to have no consequences for their behavior. But for the rest of us non-elite people, every choice has consequences. Choices and consequences are a package deal. Delay doesn’t mean consequences are not coming. Then the Babylonian army came and turned Jerusalem and the Temple into rubble and carted the people off as slaves to Babylon. The preachers of the day said “God forgives. There are no consequences.” But they were wrong. Very wrong. And their lives turned to rubble. God tells Jeremiah not to pray for these people because only pain will change them. C. S. Lewis famously said: “God whispers in our blessings, but shouts in our pain.