“The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?” Jeremiah 7:18-19
At least a dozen times in scripture, God describes Himself as being jealous over His people. In Exodus 34:14, He says that His name is Jealous. In the passage above, we can feel God’s jealousy as He describes the family activities that His people were involved in. The children were dutifully gathering wood, the fathers took the wood that the children brought in and kindled a fire, and the mothers were working in the kitchen, kneading the dough to bake cakes to offer to their false gods. When the whole family is working together to make something happen, it means that it is pretty high on the priority list. God was jealous of the teamwork that characterized their worship of false idols because it demonstrated the degree of importance that the people placed upon their pagan sacrifices. It is disappointing to see people who claim to be Christians behaving in much the same way today. They work together to get everything packed and make all of the preparations necessary to put something temporal ahead of their relationship with God. How must this make God feel? If we really want to please the Lord, we will get our families involved in worshipping Him together.
Morning: Jeremiah 6-8
Evening: I Timothy 5