God is Jealous
AI Transcript
Amen. Amen. Thank you, Ryan. Good morning, Redemption Parker. So good to see you guys. why don't you begin opening your Bibles to Exodus thirty four? That's where we'll be this morning, Exodus thirty four.
When Oprah Winfrey was in her late twenties, she was going to church. And her church affirmed historic Orthodox Christianity. Her her church seemed to be doing a series like ours, looking at the attributes of God. Oprah was enjoying, learning all about how great God is.
is. As she heard God is omniscient, that that he's all knowing. Oprah says, Amen. As she hears he's omnipotent, all powerful, again,
Amen. Then this pastor begins to explain his omnipresence that God is everywhere. Young Oprah again says, Amen, preacher. Then everything changed. Here's why Oprah says she left the Christian faith. Quote Then the great minister said, The Lord your God is a jealous God.
And I was, you know, caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said jealous. And something struck me. I was, I think, about 27 or 28. I was thinking God is all. God is omnipresent. God is everything. And God is also jealous. God is jealous. Jealous of me? Hmm. Something about that didn't feel right in my spirit. God is jealous.
Jealous. And Oprah is not alone. Brad Pitt left his childhood faith because he heard something similar and thought to himself, God's got an ego problem. I want nothing to do with this narcissistic Christian God. How do those three words hit you? God is jealous.
God is jealous. There may be no attribute of God more offensive, at least to modern ears, than his jealousy. We're down with a God of love. We're grateful for a God of mercy. We can even tolerate a God of justice. But a God obsessed
With his own glory? A God who commands worship? A God who is so committed to himself, a God who is constantly seeking his own praise, a God who is jealous for you. Now if this is what the Bible teaches and if this is what
historic Christianity claims, then why does what Oprah says resonate somewhere in many of us? Why when we hear God is jealous for his own glory, something in us feels off if we're honest. Well, when a a king demands absolute loyalty, we call him a tyrant.
If the husband says to his wife, I want all your worship, all your affection. We might call him a psycho. So yeah, I get why God is jealous, doesn't sit well with many. But maybe the reason that this rubs against us so deeply is because we've never seen God.
Truly who this God is. Maybe the issue is not that God thinks too high of himself, but that we see him too lightly. Maybe the reason his jealousy feels offensive is because we've spent our entire lives at the center of our universe.
But what if God's jealousy is not that of an insecure king, but the holy zeal of the most glorious being in existence? This is what I want us to wrestle with this morning. And I believe when we understand and delight in a jealous God, we begin to understand why we were created. So
If you're not already there, Exodus 34. Exodus 34. We're gonna pick it up in verse 10 this morning. A little context before we just jump into the end of Exodus. we jump into these seven verses. So rewind two chapters. We have Exodus 32. This is when Israel creates the golden calf. This is where the the people of God.
commit idolatry against God while their leader Moses is literally in a meeting with God on the mountain. God just rescued them from slavery in Egypt. In in in in recent memory, these folks were walking on dry ground.
As God had parted the Red Sea and destroyed their enemies. These people have seen and heard God in ways that we can only imagine. So as they worship this lifeless image, this golden calf that they create, instead of worshiping the God whose image they are, who created them, it's not unreasonable when God's anger burns.
burns hot against them. This would be like committing adultery on your honeymoon. And so God is finished with them.
Until Moses intercedes for them. This is all Exodus thirty-two. Well, by chapter thirty-three, God answers his prayer as he intercedes for Israel, and Moses wants more of God. So he prays in chapter thirty-three, God, show me your glory. Chapter thirty-four is God's answer to that prayer. Now verses one through nine.
God tells Moses to come back up to the mountain. He gives him the ten commandments all over again. And he reveals to Moses who he is, that God is faithful, that God is patient, and God is just. This is where we'll we'll pick up our passage starting in verse 10. And he said, Behold, I am making a covenant.
Before all your people. I will do marvels such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take care.
Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst, you shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their ashram. For you shall worship no other God, for the Lord whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. This is the word of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
People will often ask the question when struggling with the doctrine of hell, what about the innocent man on the island who has never heard of Jesus? Will he go to hell even though he's never heard of Jesus? And the biblical answer is no. If there were an innocent man.
On an island, who had never sinned against God, he would not be condemned. He doesn't even need to hear about Jesus. But the problem, according to Scripture, is there is no such man. None are innocent, no not one. All have sinned and fallen short of.
Glory of God. And the reason I bring that up here is because when dealing with a passage like the one we just read, I've heard people say things like Sucks to be an Amorite. I guess it's cool for God to destroy random innocent people because he prefers Israel. Okay, God.
Your world, we're just living in it. The problem with this logic is these are not innocent people. For instance, these Canaanites, those dwelling in the land of Canaan. God tells Abraham back in Genesis 15 that Abraham is not going to get to to inherit the promised land yet. Why? The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
These people dwelling in Canaan were not morally neutral. Their sin had been building for centuries. God has been delaying judgment for generations. Talk about slow to anger.
Impatient, but but at some point their evil reached its fullness. Their practices included idolatry, sexual immorality, cult worship, and child sacrifice. It's important you understand this about God as you're reading your Bibles. These people hate God.
They're in rebellion against him. And you can see from this passage that God destroys false worship because false worship destroys people.
People made in his image. Be careful where you get your theology from. Many, like Oprah, we go with our gut and we create a God who gives us good vibes, and before long we're worshiping another God. Look at verse 14 again. For you shall worship no other God.
For the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God.
A jealous God rubs us the wrong way, especially in the West, because I I think we we spend our entire lives being at the center of our universe. When we hear when we have a a small God theology, in other words, when we're at the center, when we're at the top, God is jealous, sounds ridiculous, like he's some megalomaniac.
This is why theology matters. For most of human history, people assumed that the sun revolved around the earth. Why? Because from where they stood, it looked that way. Every morning the sun would rise and at evening it would set. So A plus B equals C. Everything revolves around us. Until this.
Dude Gopernicus. And with a name like Copernicus, of course he was gonna turn the world upside down. He he came along and said, I think we missed this one. The earth revolves around the sun. Of course, people resisted it. It shattered their entire system.
And it dethroned humanity its center. Now I wonder, I wonder if we make the same mistake with God. When we hear that God is jealous for His glory, that God demands worship, that God does everything for His name. Something inside of us says, mm, that feels wrong.
Because from where we stand, if any of us said that about ourselves, it would be narcissism, self-obsession, pride, things that we rightfully despise. But if God, like we've been seeing in this God is series, if God is utterly other,
Then maybe how we understand something like his divine jealousy needs to be seen from a different vantage point. I just watched Project Hail Mary last week. And so I'm on a space kick right now. I wish I would have paid more attention in school as a kid. Awesome.
Well, in the un in the universe, things don't just orbit randomly. They orbit around what has the greatest mass, the the greatest weight, the strongest gravitational pull. The reason planets orbit the sun is because the sun is massive. Its weight or glory, and that's what
Glory means weight. It's weight holds everything together. So when God insists that everything revolve around him, that's not divine narcissism. If God is a being whom none greater can be conceived, then it's simply reality. There's nothing in existence more beautiful, more
Weighty, more glorious, more worthy than God Himself.
Jonathan Edwards wrote a book called The End for Which God Created the World. I read it years ago, but I picked it up again last week. Wow, wow, wow. We're talking about a big God theology. And this book's all about what we're talking about right now, the weight of God's weight.
Glory. He wrote it to answer one huge question. Why did God create anything at all? Why did God create anything? His answer: God created the world for himself. God created the world for himself. Not because he's
Deficient, not because he needs worship, but because there is literally nothing higher, better, or more beautiful than God himself. And if Edwards is right and that God created the world for his own glory, then anything that competes with his glory is cosmic rebellion. God's jealousy.
Is his holy refusal to allow his glory to be traded, his worth to be diminished, and his people to destroy themselves or
with idols. When you realize the earth revolves around the sun, it changes everything. And the same is true when you see God for who he is. Instead of God is jealous, I don't like that, it doesn't sit well with me, it becomes God is glorious. And I can't believe he allows me to orbit around
him. And what's crazy is that God is most glorified in you when you are orbiting around.
Him when you are satisfied in him. Friends, the the human soul will orbit whatever it believes has the greatest worth. The question is not whether you will worship or orbit. The question is what does your life revolve around?
Ask yourself that question even now. Be honest with yourself. What does your life revolve around? What are you orbiting? God is jealous. And this is not an attribute we should seek to imitate. You should not be jealous for your own glory.
But there is also a righteous jealousy all throughout the Old Testament. The relationship that God has with Israel is one of husband and wife. Israel is his bride, his spouse.
Isaiah says, For the maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name. This is the picture that we see all throughout Scripture. God calls his covenant people his bride. And like any marriage, when when entering into a covenant like this, there is a promise of exclusivity.
God, as Israel's husband, for instance, expects his bride to be faithful. This is why in Exodus twenty, at the marriage covenant ceremony on Mount Sinai, we get in one of the ten commandments, you shall have no other gods before me, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.
No, righteous jealousy within the confines of marriage is a good thing. Shame on the wife who's totally okay with her husband's porn addiction. Or a husband who doesn't burn with jealous anger that his wife, whom he is in a marriage covenant with, is sleeping with another man, does not understand his covenant of marriage.
So yes, as a husband, God is jealous for his bride. This is a good thing. Any Francine Rivers fans in the house?
Ryan and me, that's okay. Andy, a a few. You guys gotta read some Francine Rivers. I've only read one of her books, actually, but I highly recommend it. Redeeming Love. it wrecked me. like Ryan, probably I was a sobbing mess. It's histor it's a historical fiction. It's it's basically the retelling of Hosea, set in the eighteen fifties in California. There's this man named
Michael Hosea, and God tells him to marry a prostitute, Angel. Angel doesn't know how to receive love, so she runs and runs and runs from her husband who loves her. She resists his pursuit of her, and instead she goes back to what has enslaved her. But Michael keeps
Pursuing her. It's quite inspiring. He doesn't pursue her because she's faithful or lovely. He doesn't give her love because she shows him respect. If you know the story of Hosea in the Bible, it's the it it's it's that exactly. God trying to show Israel what they are doing to him.
God calls the prophet Hosea to marry a wife of Hordom, Gomer. And as she keeps abandoning their covenant, God tells Hosea, Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and
And is an adulteress. I'm sure Hosea is like, Man, I thought being a prophet was gonna feel a little bit more like my childhood hero Elijah. I wanna throw down some fire from heaven. This is brutal. But God uses Hosea to show Israel what God's jealousy looks like.
To show Israel as you decide to have other gods besides me, this is what you're doing to me. You're breaking my heart. So when God has Hosea named one of his kids, not my people. Must have been rough in middle school. And and another kid, no mercy. God is not being jealous like an insecure boyfriend.
God is being jealous like a faithful husband whose bride keeps running back into the arms of another lover. He's telling them what their unfaithfulness has done to their marriage covenant. It has broken it.
God through the prophet Jeremiah goes so far to say, I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. And yet and yet even that is not the end of the story. Hosea two twenty-three says, and I will have mercy on no mercy.
And I will say to not my people, You are my people, and he shall say, You are my God. Well, how does that happen? The hymn by Samuel Stone called the The Church's One Foundation says it like this. The Church's One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.
She is his new creation by water and the word. From heaven he came and sought her. To be his holy bride with his own blood he bought her and for her life he died. From heaven he came and
And sought her. Or again, Jonathan Edwards, God created the world. Edwards is obsessed with this idea. God created the world for his son, that he might prepare a spouse or bride for him to bestow his love upon, so that the mutual joys between this bride and bridegroom are the end of the creation. God created the world to get a bride.
His son. In other words, God has mercy on no mercy and says to not my people, you are my people through Jesus and what he did on our behalf.
God shows his love to us and that while we're still sinners, Christ dies for us. And he doesn't just live the life you couldn't live and die the death that you deserve and rise from the dead. He does all of this to make you his blameless bride.
Now by faith and faith alone as his bride we can orbit orbit the sun. S-O-N. This is why you exist. God is jealous. He's jealous for his own glory. He's jealous for his bride's affection. Is this how you understand who God?
Is. Church history has always viewed the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon not as a guide for a healthy marriage or a great sex life, but as John Owen calls it, the Holy of Holies. Next time you read this book in your Bible about the intimacy of two lovers, know that this is a picture of Christ and his bride. The church.
You. When you hear the words, I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine, ask yourself, is this how you view your relationship to Jesus? Friends, you were made for so much more. To be united to your Lord, your Savior, and your bridegroom.
Well, in light of this idea that that God is jealous, how then shall we live? The Apostle Paul says this in his own jealous words, for I feel a divine jealousy for you.
Since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ, how shall we then live? Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. let's live out our days faithful to our bridegroom. Imperfect, of course, but faithful to our
to our bridegroom longing to see his face at the great wedding feast. Amen. Amen. Let me pray.