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Jeremiah 44:15-16 "Then all the men who knew that their wives had offered incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who dwelt in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: 'As for the word which you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you.'"

 

Jeremiah had just delivered a dire warning to the Jews now living in Egypt after having fled the fall Jerusalem. Through Jeremiah, God reminds these Jews what just happened to their homeland, and warns that they are continuing to provoke Him to great anger by burning incense to false gods. If they don't change, then this remnant "shall be consumed; in the land of Egypt they shall fall; by the sword and by famine they shall be consumed." (Jeremiah 44:12). Despite this, the people answer that they will not listen. They counter Jeremiah by saying when they burned incense to the "queen of heaven" in Jerusalem, they had blessings and plenty. When they ceased, they came to lack everything and were consumed by the sword and by famine, so they vow to continue. (Jeremiah 44:16-18) 

 

The people are correct that they as they went further into idol worship in Jerusalem things seem to be fine, they continued to have "plenty of food, and [they] prospered, and saw no evil." (Jeremiah 44:17). This worship was interrupted by the Babylonian attack and the fall of Jerusalem, but rather than understand this as the punishment for their idolatry, they instead equate God's patience and mercy with blessings from the goddess the call the "queen of heaven". Jeremiah tries in vain to explain exactly what happened and why (Jeremiah 44:20-23) but the people cannot or refuse to see it, and so God declares He will leave them to their idolatry and punishment. (Jeremiah 44:24-30) 

 

God does not work the way we do. When we are hurt or betrayed by someone we tend to react right away. Even if we don't, we typically retreat from them in our pain and we certainly don't continue to bestow blessings on them. So it is very hard for us to understand how God lets us slide so long before resorting to chastisement. We keep on in our sin, going further and further away from Him, and yet we continue to have plenty. The whole time that God is allowing this, He is sending us messages to try and get us back on track. But it is easy for us to ignore these messages when we are comfortable. We can even come to believe, as these Jews did, that it is the idols themselves that are bestowing the blessings. That is usually when a fall is coming. 

 

As God is patient and loving with us in our sin, we can become so blind to our wickedness that His only choice becomes to allow our punishment. When we come to believe that the very replacements for God that we have adopted are the things keeping us going, often the only chance we have of being saved is for God to allow us to fall. This only happens after He has exhausted all other attempts to get us to come back, and it is only done out of love for us. Even as we test God's patience, He blesses us, sometimes with chastisements, but always for our ultimate good.