Sacrilege.
I. WHAT DO WE GENERALLY UNDERSTAND BY THIS WORD?
1. Some use it of disregard of ritual.
2. Others of secular employment of sacred places or things.
3. Others of those persons whom they regard as unauthorized presuming to minister in holy things.
4. Others of robbing churches, etc. But without discussing these, let us note—
II. WHAT GOD COUNTS AS SACRILEGE. It is declared here (Jeremiah 7:11). It is when men turn the Church of God into a den of robbers. Our Lord charged this upon the religionists of his day. Jeremiah charges it, in God's Name, upon those to whom he was sent. Costly, splendid, correct, continual worship was duly carried on. Irreverence—and how much less sacrilege!—would seem to be a charge utterly unfit for those who worshipped in such manner. And yet, though the word be not here used, the thing itself is emphatically told of as the very crime which these people were flagrantly guilty of. Turning God's house, which was called by his Name, into a den of robbers,—if that be not sacrilege, what else is? They robbed one another (verses 5, 6). They robbed God. And the temple was their haunt, as their den is the robbers' haunt; and there they found rest, and prepared themselves for further crime (verse 10), as does the robber in his den. It is an awful indictment. But under one or other of the counts of such indictment they are assuredly chargeable who frequent the house of God, not for the high and holy purposes for which the worship of God was designed, but that, as in verse 10, they may get peace of mind in regard to their past sins and so be free to go and sin again. "With such usage the temple is not a place of salvation, but a refuge for robbers, where they purify themselves from the blood of their evil deeds, so as to be the readier for new ones." Therefore all they who "make Christ a Minister of sin," who, instead of deliverance from sin, get comfort in it by their religious observances, who shelter themselves from all fear of God's anger and silence the warnings of conscience by "coming and standing before God in his house which is called by his Name," though their object be only "to be delivered to do all these abominations," and not at all to be saved from them,—these are the sacrilegious, and their profanation of holy things is the worst of all.
III. THINK OF THE RESULTS OF SUCH SACRILEGE.
1. How God is dishonored!
2. How his service is made hateful in the eyes of men! What a stumbling block it is to those who would turn to God!
3. How it hardens the man's own soul!
4. How it necessitates the judgment of God!
IV. WHAT SHOULD SUCH A SUBJECT TEACH US? Surely, when in the house of God, to pray that if any have come there in sacrilegious manner, God's Spirit, the Lord of the temple, may meet with them and turn them from their evil way. Should we not also search and see if there be any such evil way in ourselves? And let our prayer be unto him who when on earth drove forth with scourges the "robbers" whom he found in the temple, that he would be pleased, by the scourge of his Spirit and his Word, to drive forth from all in his house now all in them that would rob him of his glory and their souls of eternal life.—C.