Den of Robbers

One of a person's most detrimental beliefs is that attending church offers a pass for bad behavior.  The thinking runs like this. I attend church every Sunday. Therefore, God is pleased with me. He gets His due, and I can do whatever the hell I want during the rest of the week.

Meditation
Jeremiah 7:9-11—“Do you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known?  Then do you come and stand before Me in this house called by My name and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts’? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it.” This is the Lord’s declaration.
 
The subtitle in my Holman Bible for Jeremiah chapter 7 says, “Faulty Religion and Unethical Behavior Will Lead to Judgment.” The people of Judah possessed a false belief that God would deliver them from their Assyrian enemy because of their temple worship. “We are safe!” they proclaimed (vs. 10-NET). They were anything but safe. God saw their hypocrisy and called them out for trying to excuse wickedness by honoring His temple. They were making the Temple a hideout for thieves. Their lousy thinking and conduct resulted in their losing their homeland for generations.
           
If you were a parent and your children every year bought you a nice birthday gift, once a week cleaned their rooms, and acted like model citizens at home, would you give them a pass if they bullied the neighborhood kids, were tyrants in school, and were disrespectful to adults?  So what makes anyone believe they can behave in one place yet misbehave elsewhere and call it okay? 

Willam Gurnall  wrote in The Christian in Complete Armour:
False worship is pretending to honor God while actually venerating what He detests, condemns, and will one day judge. We have had, I confess, too many in our late degenerate days—men born, as one saith, to do religion a mischief—who by professing high, and living low in sordid practices, have given religion such a wound in its reputation, as is not like to be cured while they are above ground, who have thus scandalized both it and the professors of it . . . Hypocrisy is the very putrefaction and rottenness of the heart.
 
Inspiration
“We cannot remain hypocrites and at that same time find holiness.”—Francis Frangipane in Holiness, Truth and the Presence of God
 
©2024 Daniel York  ARR.  Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  To receive these devotionals, go to www.firstcause.org and click the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed, subject to the inclusion of this copyright notice.     
 
Ecclesiastes 12:10-The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.  (Holman CSB)