DAILY DEVOTIONAL – July 28, 2020
“Yes, Jealous!”
Prayer: Our Righteous God and Father, You alone are worthy of our worship and praise because You alone are God and we would have no life apart from You. Forgive us for the times we allow other things and other people to become false idols in our lives, and by Your Spirit call us back to an undivided devotion to You in all that we think, say, and do. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Scripture: Genesis 3:9-13
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
Devotion – “Yes, Jealous.”
I remember years ago watching a segment on television where the famous talk show host Oprah said that she could not bring herself to believe in a God who would be jealous of anything or anyone. Recently, I saw a another video of her retelling that story and re-affirming that God’s jealousy is a reason that she has concluded that the God of the Bible can’t be the true God. Instead, Oprah said she believes deep down we are all gods. Of course that’s what she believes, right? Ironically, that only proves that Oprah fell for the very first temptation of the Devil in the garden of Eden, “God knows that when you eat of the fruit He told you not to, you will be like Him.” – Genesis 3.
Oprah’s argument sounds okay on the surface, but it is only on the surface. To use a term that has recently come into modern vernacular, I believe this argument (that not just Oprah has against God) to be a kind of “virtue signaling”.
Even just an honest evaluation of our own human experience of jealousy would prove that jealousy is one of the characteristics of God that makes Him worthy of our worship.
Maybe a practical example here will help. If a husband sees another man flirting with his wife and behaving inappropriately towards her, would you say he is right to be jealous? Of course! I would hope his wife would want him to be jealous for her. Only the husband has the right to flirt with his wife because they were committed to each other before God with an oath and made to be one with each other, no one else. This type of jealousy is not sinful. Rather, it is entirely appropriate. Being jealous for something that God declares to belong to you is good and appropriate. Jealousy is a sin when it is a desire for something that does not belong to you.
When God says in our passage from Exodus 20 that He is a jealous God, we should not ignore who He is talking to or what the context is. God is talking to His people. God makes this clear right up front, doesn’t He? In verse 1 God said, “I am the Lord your God.” How do the Hebrew people, the Israelites, know this? As God continues to say, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” The Israelites pleaded for God to free them from a false god, Pharaoh, who was jealous in all the wrong ways; jealous of men, of power, of wealth, and Pharaoh’s jealousy was a jealousy that took from others and enslaved them. In contrast, God’s jealousy is a jealousy for that which is rightfully His. As Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” God’s jealousy is a righteous jealousy because He is the only true God who is all powerful (as He proved with the 10 plagues against Pharaoh), and who is eternal and the author of life and death (as He proved by crushing arrogant Pharaoh who believed he was god and dared to send His armies against God), and God is the only good God who does all things good and is pure in all of His ways (as He proves by saving repentant Israel from the bondage they could not free themselves from).
It is precisely because He is God, that God can be and should be jealous of the glory and honor and worship that should be His alone. If God were not jealous for His own deity and glory, then it would necessarily mean that He was not God alone, just as a husband who allows his wife to flirt with and share a bed with other men, and in doing so would prove to be no husband at all.
We should praise and thank God for His jealousy for His creation and for His created people that reflect His glory and deity. We should praise God for His jealousy for us, not of us, because it was His jealousy for us that so moved the perfect love of God to send His perfect Son to die in the place of sinners and rise again so that through faith in Christ’s selfless sacrifice we would be saved. You see the difference? Sinful jealousy is envious of something it doesn’t have and that belongs to another. Righteous jealously, the jealousy only God can have, is a jealousy that desires, defends, and even sacrifices for that which He loves because it is His.
Knowing and trusting God’s jealous love for us is what should convict us of our sin, bring us to repent of our idolatry big or small, and surrender all to the God of all glory, power, and grace. This is why immediately after God declares He is the God that saves Israel, He calls them to live as He directs them in the 10 commandments and elsewhere. Why should we obey God? Simply put, because He is worthy, because He is God, and because He has proven that being jealous for righteousness leads to life, and God wants us to live! It is this proper understanding of jealousy that compelled the Apostle Paul to later write to the Corinthian church in 2 Corinthians 11 that, “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” You see, Paul knew his jealousy was divine, and not sinful, because his jealousy was for Christ’s glory and for the salvation of those he was writing to. It was not a jealousy that desired something from the Corinthian church, but instead something for them; for their eternal salvation.
The Almighty God of the universe is absolutely and magnificently jealous for you my friends. May the truth and power of His love be your strength and comfort, and may it be what compels you to live jealousy for Him in all of your life. Remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
