misplaced worship

Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’

Jeremiah 7:4

When our faith is misplaced, when our trust shifts away from the Lord onto even the things that flow from our faith, we are loved enough by God that He won’t allow us to keep missing the beauty of relationship with Him. God will discipline His people when their worship strays from Him. In the case with Israel here, a certain segment of them had developed a superstitious confidence in the temple of God. They had begun to worship the temple of the LORD rather than the LORD of the temple.

God would eventually have to destroy this object of misplaced worship. A sovereign God would let the Babylonians ransack and burn His temple in order for Israel to be broken of this strange “temple-olatry”. He would take away all their familiar trappings that had become false worship so that all they would have left was His Word, and individual worship. And that was a good thing! That would be enough. Having God alone is the best way to know Him, love Him, and worship Him.

TRIGGER WARNING: I will now stir the stick. Read on at your own peril. I wonder right now if the Lord isn’t perhaps doing something very similar with the church worldwide. It dismays me to see Christians talking more about missing indoor buildings and age-graded programs than praising God for the ways we can worship... online, outdoors, house to house. God is using the corona virus and human governments (both of which, by the way, He is firmly guiding) to get the attention of His Church and to get our eyes away from any misplaced values. When this all started in mid-March it was wildly refreshing to be part of the explosion of innovative worship, ministry, and evangelism taking place. Now, just a short four months later I am dismayed to witness some Christian voices whining, sniping at society and one another, and filled with a focus on the past. It is just sad. God brought this wonderful, disruptive, explosive, sweeping cultural opportunity to blow away all that has cluttered evangelical culture for decades and has handed us the perfect opportunity to shine the light on the gospel! And now we want to go back? Why? It is as if like Israel we are stuck repeating our misplaced mantra: “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” That’s just being stuck in the past. O Lord, whatever you need to do to keep us focused only on You! Do it for Your glory and our good! Amen