Jeremiah 44:18-19: “But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring our libations to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine. And when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven, and were pouring out drink offerings unto her, did we not make cakes to worship her and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men?

Jeremiah has now proved himself to be a true prophet.  The economy of Judah was in ruin, people lost everything and were starving.  Did people finally turn to God?  You bet they did. They gave up their pagan worship and started worshiping only God Jehovah.   Unfortunately, their fortunes were not restored.  Things only got worse.  They finally cried out to Jeremiah.  “Look, our fathers and grandfathers worship the queen of heaven and they never went without. They always had plenty of food and saw no misfortune.  But we stopped doing such foolish things and now look at us, we lack everything, we have met our end by the sword and by famine.”

Sounds like a legitimate complaint. They worshiped the queen of heaven and things were great, they started worshiping God and things really went South.  Did you ever notice that whenever you start to really search for the heart of God, you go on a season of fasting and prayer, you go through a period of repentance that things just seem to get worse rather than better?  Maybe that is not your story but it sure is mine.  I find myself getting a little apprehensive when God calls me to a season of fasting and prayer. Past experience dictates that rough weather is ahead.   We tend to follow this course of logic:  God is a God who blesses us. If we sin, he will not bless us.  If we are not blessed, we are in sin. That logic makes a lot of sense in the natural, but it is not entirely Scriptural.  Scripture seems to be quite clear that God does not always strip away His blessings when you cross some line. Sometimes He does, sometimes He doesn’t.  Along the same line, God does not always bless those who walk the narrow way.  Sometimes He will, sometimes He won’t.

For generations the people of Judah worshiped the queen of heaven.  This goddess was believed to be the provider of their prosperity.   Along comes a Godly king named Josiah who forces the people to get in line spiritually and what happened a few years after his death, the nation collapses.  Some good their worship of God did. So the people decided to go back to their worship of the queen of heaven, at least that worked a lot better than this orthodox religion.

I have heard people say: “Yeah, I tried to become a Christian, I accepted Jesus, but it just didn’t work.”  What didn’t work?  Your sins were not forgiven, you were not redeemed?  Most likely the person was not looking for redemption, but a winning lottery ticket. This was the case with the people of Judah.  They did not worship God to seek His heart, they worship Him only because they felt they would get better pay.

“Did we not make cakes to worship her?”  That word worship is very interesting.  Practically every translation has it’s own take on that word.  The word in Hebrew is ezev.   This word basically means sadness, suffer, pain, or grief.  It also means to serve out of fear or for gain.  In fact if you read the word backwards you have veze which means unjust gain.  There are two types of worship.  There is ezev and there is shachah.  If you remember from an earlier devotional, shachah is to worship God in the sense of joining with him as one, of knowing His heart.   Ezev is to worship with the expectation of some form of payment.

Next time you seek to worship God, ask yourself, are you like the people of Israel.  Are you seeking God only because he can pay really well?  Do you worship Him because you need something?  Is your worship ezev?  Or do you worship Him so you can discover the depths of His heart, to know Him?  Is your worship truly shachah?