In Jeremiah, chapter seven, verse eleven, “Is 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.” Robbers often used a den to hide in and plan their next crime. Jeremiah adopted this picture to depict people who come to the temple to offer sacrifices, thinking they would hide their sin from God. At the same time, they were planning to continue in their sinful ways. Jesus quoted part of this verse in His indictment of the leaders in His day.
God refers to the temple: Become a den of robbers in your eyes? Or do you look upon it, and make use of it, as thieves do of dens; who, when they have robbed and murdered men, betake themselves to them, not only to share their spoil, but to hide themselves? Just so those thieves, murderers, adulterers, perjurers, and idolaters, after they had committed such gross enormities, came into the temple and offered sacrifices; thinking hereby to cover their sins, and expiate the guilt of them, and to be looked upon as good men, and true worshippers of God, when they were no better than thieves and robbers; and such were the Pharisees in Christ’s time, and such was the temple as made by them.
“And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves, as in Matthew twenty-one, verse thirteen. It is impossible to serve God and mammon. Either a person will love the one and hate the other, or vice versa. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” What a person does to themself is their fault.