Deceptive Words

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).

Imagine arriving at church one Sunday morning and finding a wild-eyed prophet

preaching in the parking lot, warning people on their way to worship that the church is

spiritually toxic! He claims that the sins on the inside of God’s house are worse than

those on the outside. “Don’t listen to your preacher,” he shouts. “And don’t pretend that

the praise choruses you sing are pleasing to God. If you worship here, your spiritual

condition will get worse, not better!”

This is precisely the situation that confronted worshippers in the 6th century BC when

the prophet Jeremiah stood on the steps of the temple in Jerusalem and warned those

entering God’s house about how poisonous things were inside. We could understand if

he had preached such a message on the steps of the temple of Baal, Amen-Ra, or

Dagon. But Jeremiah’s assignment was to preach these words at the entrance to the

temple of the one true God! “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house,” God said, and say,

“Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the

Lord.” (Jer. 7:2).

Jeremiah’s “Temple Sermon” (see Jer. 7:1 – 8:17) is surely one of the most provocative

sermons in all the Bible. After getting the people’s attention, he gets right to the point:

“Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the

Lord, the temple of the Lord’.” (Jer. 7:4). The three-fold repetition undoubtedly

referenced a liturgical refrain, or perhaps a praise chorus, that the people used in

corporate worship. The words themselves were, of course, true. This beautiful building

was indeed the Lord’s temple, the one place on earth where God could be worshipped

as he ought to be worshipped. However, the sins of the people had become so great

that the words used in worship were empty and meaningless; they were “deceptive”

(misleading, disingenuous).

When we examine Jeremiah’s sermon, we discover four characteristics of toxic

worship. When these traits characterize a church community, you can be sure that their

worship is actually leading people away from God rather than toward him. Church

becomes toxic when:

Words are divorced from truth.

Many worshippers seem to believe that if a phrase is repeated over and over, it

somehow becomes more spiritual. “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the

Lord, the temple of the Lord.” The preachers in Jeremiah’s day showed their homiletical

eloquence with similar repetitions: “Peace, peace” (Jer. 6:14; 8:11) and “I have

dreamed, I have dreamed” (Jer. 23:25). In the New Testament, Jesus warned that just because people piously say “Lord, Lord” does not mean they are in a right relationship

with God (Matt. 7:21-23). Unless words reflect reality, worship is toxic.

Worship is divorced from obedience.

It is the purest form of hypocrisy when people come to church and sing “Holy, Holy,

Holy” while their lives are sinful, sinful, sinful. Although worship is supposed to be a

time of confession, repentance, and renewal, in Jeremiah’s day the situation had

devolved into something toxic.

Do you really think you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and burn incense to

Baal and all those other new gods of yours, and then come here and stand before

me in my Temple and chant, “We are safe!”—only to go right back to all those evils

again? (Jer. 7:9-10 NLT)

Life is divorced from reality.

Perhaps the most inflammatory part of Jeremiah’s sermon was when he suggested that

many people go to church for the same reason robbers go to their caves (see 7:11): to

hide, to conceal things. The prophet is asserting that many people go to church not in

order to meet with the Holy One, but to hide from him! After all, where could one find a

better hiding place from God than in church? Worship is the perfect occasion to

conceal the truth, live in denial, and to pretend to be what one is not! Here, one can lift

one’s hands in praise, sing with gusto, and take copious notes on the sermon and live

like the devil the rest of the week! Little wonder that Jeremiah lamented, “Truth has

perished.” (Jer. 7:28).

Blindness to their own blindness.

Perhaps the most troubling truth about toxic worship is that those who belong to such a

community are blissfully unaware of their hypocrisy and sin. They don’t know what they

don’t know. The can’t see the truth about themselves. These worshippers actually

believe they are spiritually mature and in a right relationship with God when the truth is

they are spiritually lost and under God’s wrath. Jeremiah is dumbfounded: “How can

you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us?’” (Jer. 8:8). Toxic churches

don’t know they are toxic, and this is precisely what makes them so toxic!

Dear friend, is it possible that your church has an element of toxicity in its worship? Is it

possible that the songs, the liturgy, the prayers, and the sermon contain “deceptive

words”? More to the point, is it possible that your worship is an attempt to hide from God

rather than a desire to step into the light of his holiness? I know of no better preparation

for authentic worship than to passionately pray David’s prayer:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24).

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