The Temple Gate
In the manual: Come, Follow Me lesson 43, “Before I Formed Thee in the Belly I Knew Thee,” on Gospel Library
Start
The Lord sent Jeremiah to stand in the gate of the temple and preach to everyone coming in to worship (Jeremiah 7:2).
Read Together
Many people in Jerusalem believed the temple would keep the city safe no matter how they lived. They repeated, “The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these” (Jeremiah 7:4).
3Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. 4Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these. 5For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour;
11Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord.
What It Teaches
The Lord called those words “lying words” (verse 4). He cared how the people treated each other. In verses 5 and 6, he asks them to deal fairly with their neighbors and to stop oppressing the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.
Then he asks, “Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (verse 11). Robbers hide in a den between crimes. Some people were treating the temple as a hiding place, as if going there made up for how they lived the rest of the week.
More than 600 years later, Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the temple. He quoted Isaiah, “My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer,” and then Jeremiah, “but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Mark 11:15–17).
Verse 23 says what the Lord wanted from the start. “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people.” The Lord’s house blesses us most when we bring him a heart that is trying to follow him every day.
Talk About It
What does it look like to worship the Lord at school, at work, or at home? How can our family carry the way we act at church into the rest of the week?
Take to Church
Jesus quoted Jeremiah when he cleared the temple. The Lord’s house is for people who are trying to follow him every day of the week.