I am very grateful that the Lord established in His Word that men should be the leaders of the church, as well as the leaders of the family. That idea is not popular today, but you see it all through the Old Testament and see it affirmed in the New Testament.
God began to teach the human race this principle after the debacle of sin in the Garden of Eden, when he told Eve in Genesis 3:16 that, because of hers being the first sin, Adam would "rule over her". He told Adam that, basically, he should not have allowed himself to be led astray by his wife. They both, then, inherited the sin curse, as did all their descendants, including you and me.
In Jeremiah 44:15-28, we read that the Hebrews living in Egypt at the time (also a mistake) have violated this principle, to their detriment. Things in their families and churches have gotten tremendously "out of whack".
15-18 The men who knew that their wives had been burning sacrifices to the no-gods, joined by a large crowd of women, along with virtually everyone living in Pathros of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: “We’re having nothing to do with what you tell us is God’s Message. We’re going to go right on offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, keeping up the traditions set by our ancestors, our kings and government leaders in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem in the good old days. We had a good life then—lots of food, rising standard of living, and no bad luck. But the moment we quit sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out offerings to her, everything fell apart. We’ve had nothing but massacres and starvation ever since.”
19 And then the women chimed in: “Yes! Absolutely! We’re going to keep at it, offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out offerings to her. Aren’t our husbands behind us? They like it that we make goddess cookies and pour out our offerings to her.”
20-23 Then Jeremiah spoke up, confronting the men and the women, all the people who had answered so insolently. He said, “The sacrifices that you and your parents, your kings, your government officials, and the common people of the land offered up in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem—don’t you think God noticed? He noticed, all right. And he got fed up. Finally, he couldn’t take your evil behavior and your disgusting acts any longer. Your land became a wasteland, a death valley, a horror story, a ghost town. And it continues to be just that. This doom has come upon you because you kept offering all those sacrifices, and you sinned against God! You refused to listen to him, wouldn’t live the way he directed, ignored the covenant conditions.”
24-25 Jeremiah kept going, but now zeroed in on the women: “Listen, all you who are from Judah and living in Egypt—please, listen to God’s Word. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You women! You said it and then you did it. You said, “We’re going to keep the vows we made to sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out offerings to her, and nobody’s going to stop us!”’
25-27 “Well, go ahead. Keep your vows. Do it up big. But also listen to what God has to say about it, all you who are from Judah but live in Egypt: ‘I swear by my great name, backed by everything I am—this is God speaking!—that never again shall my name be used in vows, such as “As sure as the Master,God, lives!” by anyone in the whole country of Egypt. I’ve targeted each one of you for doom. The good is gone for good.
27-28 “‘All the Judeans in Egypt will die off by massacre or starvation until they’re wiped out. The few who get out of Egypt alive and back to Judah will be very few, hardly worth counting. Then that ragtag bunch that left Judah to live in Egypt will know who had the last word.
The Message translation says that the women were worshipping idols by "making goddess cookies".
What in the world?!
In those days, a woman's self-worth was totally wrapped up in her ability to conceive and bear to her husband children. There was a foundational belief in pagan cultures that in order for a woman to be fertile, she had to worship the fertility goddesses. When a Jewish woman was having difficulty conceiving, this pagan worship was very seductive to her. And, many Jewish women fell prey to it. They, in turn, led their husbands to commit this same idolatry.
As you read the Old Testament, you will notice that God repeatedly commanded His people not to marry pagan wives, women from non-Jewish, polytheistic cultures. This is the reason why! Women have a powerful effect on their men, including the power to lead them into idolatry. Even the kings of the Old Testament were not immune to this siren's call of idolatry. Yesterday, we talked about King Solomon. Not only did he marry non-Jewish women, he had literally hundreds of them as bedmates. This was a contributing factor to his downfall, because through these women, idol worship became more prominent in his kingdom.
When you read the passage in Jeremiah 44, the attitudes of the men and women are appalling. The women are defiant in their defense of their evil practices, and the men back them up. Jeremiah is quick and strong in his message that judgment will come upon them because of their idolatry, despite their claims that the sacrifices to idols ("making goddess cookies") is what they believe has brought them prosperity.
Later on, in the New Testament, we find Jesus giving women a tremendous amount of respect, much more so than was common for that day and culture. However, in dealing with the woman at the well, he asked her about her husband, affirming that the expectations for family order and leadership were still in place. He worked his first recorded miracle at a marriage in Cana. On the cross, he made provision for his mother by asking the apostle John to care for her. The apostle Paul goes on in Ephesians 5 to explain clearly the order of relationships in the family, and in the church.
Both men and women have been assigned vital roles in the church and home. Both are indispensable. However, we must have both parties playing their rightful parts. This begins by both men and women being submissive to God. Unless that happens, proper roles cannot be fulfilled. Then, men must lovingly lead their families and their churches, so that women can fulfill their God-given role. In Jeremiah 44, the women would not have wandered off into idolatry if their men had been leading them as God had ordained.
In a broader sense, we must ask ourselves not only if we are following this God-given principle in our own homes and churches, but also if we are "making goddess cookies" in other ways.
We cannot be resplendent if we are worshipping idols, which means putting anything before our relationship with God. This is a constant battle for me, in how I spend my time, for example. We show what is important to us by the amount of time we allocate to it. This is a hard truth. I challenge us all to ask ourselves as we "walk the walk", if we are "making goddess cookies", and then to ask the Holy Spirit to root those habits out of our lives.
Father God, some commands in your Word are harder to follow than others. Teach us the wisdom of submitting to You, daily, many times daily. Teach us to examine our hearts and our practices, to see if we are wandering off into idolatry. And, if we find anything in our hearts that runs contrary to your Word, pester us, Lord, until we root it out of there so that we can single-mindedly, whole-heartedly follow Your desires, not our own. In Jesus' name, amen.
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