“Your words were found and I ate them, And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart; For I have been called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.” Jeremiah 15:16 (NASB)
In Jeremiah 36, God told Jeremiah to write down His words on a scroll to encourage the people of Israel to repent and turn back to God. When the scroll was read to King Jehoiakim, he showed his rejection of God’s Word by cutting it up and throwing it into the fire. When I tell this story, I begin cutting a scroll up and putting it in a pretend fire of yellow, brown, and red construction paper. I tell the children it would be like our taking our Bible and cutting it up and burning it. They are all appalled at the very idea.
The bad King Jehoiakim burned God’s words; they made him angry. Jeremiah ‘ate’ God’s Words and they made his heart happy. Let’s be like Jeremiah and love to hear and obey God’s Word so we can have happy hearts – and a healthy heart as we learn from Job that God’s Word is more valuable than our physical food:
I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. Job 23:12 (NASB)
Children tend to be very literal minded and we don’t want them to think we have to actually eat the Bible 🙂 So emphasize that just as we need to eat food in order for our bodies to grow strong so that we can play and work, we also need to take in God’s Word so that we can be strong in our hearts which will help us make right choices – to obey, to listen, to be kind, etc.
As you talk about these verses, make scrolls out of pretzels sticks and fruit roll-ups. Lead them to say the verse ‘your words were found and I ate them’ and then – eat those scrolls! As you can see my grandsons, Grant and Hudson, had fun with this.
Here are two other posts directly related to this topic: