They Burnt The House of God

2 Chronicles 36:18-19 "And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon. And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof."

God is many things, but one of His qualities that we have a hard time accepting and wrapping our heads around sometimes is that of jealousy. To us, it is a negative emotion that we try and subdue, as well we should. However, since another of God's qualities also includes perfection, we know that He has the ability (unlike us) to be 'perfectly jealous' just like He has the ability to be 'perfectly angry' in a righteous way. This is unattainable for us considering the fact that we are not perfect (in case you hadn't noticed).

So we know God is a jealous God and that His dwelling place (at that time in Jerusalem in the temple) was a holy place. Yet God allows this destruction of that holy place. He could've stopped it and still had Judah go into captivity. But He allowed it to happen, I believe, to demonstrate a very important point. Judah had already done wickedly and polluted the temple. In essence God was saying "This temple is not what I care about, it's you that I care about. I want that relationship with you."

Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. In his book we read over and over again about how desperately God desires His people to turn back to Him. Just read Jeremiah 2, you can feel the emotion, the utter heartbreak of the Living God over His wayward people.

He is jealous, but not for physical things. He is jealous for His name and He is jealous for His children. Am I one of those children? Do I feel God's jealousy in my own life, pulling me back toward Him when I stray?