Jealous God

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This is Mike Abendroth, your host. It's a very strange thing going on. We have the engineers here today working on the sound quality from yesterday.

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I go talking until 350, 400. Welcome to the show. Wednesdays we usually talk about books, and today will be no different, but I also wanted to give you a little update of what's going on.

Next Thursday, even though we're supposed to talk about books on Wednesday, I will have the privilege of interviewing Al Mohler live for that show.

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Also, if you don't have a Bible teaching church in Booth, Bethlehem Bible Church in West Bolston, bbcchurch .org,

you can go there as well and have the privilege to preach into those dear folks every single week. Well, today we're going to talk about a topic and a book, and that topic is the jealousy of God.

Did you know that God is jealous? So many times we hear that, we immediately think of a sinful jealousy, green with envy, and we run away from that, and we forget to think biblically.

In this little show at the prison, I dare you to think biblically. I dare you to stand up for truth, which means to stand against error.

You can't only stand up for truth and not stand against error. You can't just stand against error and then not stand up for the truth.

You have to be known for what you're for, and you have to be known what you're against, because that is propositional, antithetical, black and white truth.

The Bible teaches clearly and regularly that God is more than just close to us, that He is not just eminent, that He is not just liking candles and labyrinths and kind of an emergent church deal and icons.

All those things talk about the closeness of God. He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way.

And while it is true that God is eminent, He is close, specifically found in the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the

God -man. Here Jesus, the eternal God, cloaks Himself, adds human nature to Himself, yet remains sinless and undefiled.

And so there's more to God than that, though. There's the transcendence of God. And so our culture tends to focus on the eminency of God, the closeness of God.

I have a personal relationship with Jesus. By the way, a throwaway line, unbelievers have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that is one of an enemy.

But that's for another show. God is both close and He's over us. He's far, He's different.

He is transcendent. And so if you only live in a culture where God is really close and He's kind of a buddy,

George Burns God, kind, nice, He's always there. When chips are down, I drove by a sign the other day, when all else fails, try

Jesus. This kind of close Jesus will make us repulsed and rebuke, will go away from like a magnet would against the jealousy of God.

And so God has granted to us many gifts in a local church, including teachers, and some of those teachers might be your own pastor, but some of those teachers might be other people who are either living or dead, and they have written books.

And so the book that I want to recommend today positively is called Godly Jealousy, subtitle,

A Theology of Intolerant Love by K. Eric Thonis, T -H -O -E -N -N -E -S.

And the book really helps. It's written, not some kind of devotional book, you'll have to study a little bit when you get it, but it's written to teach us about the jealousy of God, and we're going to look at what the scriptures say about that in just a moment.

But we want to say from the get -go that this is a mentor book. He is an associate professor of biblical studies and theology at Talbot School of Theology.

And listen to the back of the book, divine jealousy plays a central role in God's activities throughout human history, yet is virtually ignored among those in the church today.

That's exactly right. Christians desire leaders who are dynamic, educated, and entertaining, but it is highly unlikely you will ever see jealous as one of the desired qualities of leaders within the local church.

However, jealousy is one of the primary attributes of the greatest leaders in the Bible. And the back of the book goes on to say, mentorbookschristianfocus .com,

as human jealousy is seldom uncontaminated with sin, it tends only to be understood as a negative emotion.

However, the Bible tells us that God is a jealous God, and Eric Thonis offers us unique insights into godly jealousy as taught in the scripture.

This book is a must -read for anyone who is concerned with character development and who seeks to know the central values needed in the church today.

Isn't that fascinating? You'd like to be a better leader? Forget the John Maxwell books. Forget Churchill on leadership,

Spurgeon on leadership, all these other kinds of leadership books. Why don't you look at who God is and understand

God better? That would be the best thing you could do when it comes to leadership.

That's what we're after, spending more time on understanding who God is, and then that would help us in every single area, including what we have known as leadership.

Everybody's leadership this, leadership that, and I have a little quote from A .W. Tozer along the same lines.

All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God, that He is, what

He is like, and what we as moral beings must do about Him. The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long.

But even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty, single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled upon one another.

That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love

God with every power of mind and soul to obey Him perfectly and to worship Him acceptably.

And when the man's laboring conscience tells him what he has done, that he has done none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolt against the majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self -accusation may become too heavy to bear.

Now, here's what Tozer says at the very end of this quote from the knowledge of the holy. The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes and garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

But unless the weight of the burden is felt, the gospel can mean nothing to the man. And until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden.

Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them. And so I would affirm that for both believers and unbelievers, a view of God is the necessary solution.

It will provide problems as a man will see his sin, but it will also reveal the solution.

How can man be right with God? How can sinful man be right with holy God? And God's jealousy will give us an insight into this very thing.

If you have your Bible, you might want to turn to Exodus chapter 20, verse five, and let me just quote you this.

And this is the thesis of Thony's book. You shall not worship them, Exodus 20, verse five, you shall not worship them or serve them for I, the

Lord, your God, am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

God says there in Exodus 20, number one, don't worship those false gods. Don't bow down to them.

Don't give them homage. Don't lie in your face. Don't get prostrate before them and worship them.

Don't do that. Why? Because that should be for me, God says. Then he also says, don't serve in Exodus 20, verse five.

Don't give all kinds of make high places, make altars, burn incense, make vows, give sacrifices to make gestures, do genuflects toward.

No, don't do any of those towards idols, because I am God and I am jealous.

I literally, in the Hebrew, am red in the face. Of course, we're not talking about sinful passions that God would have.

God's perfect. We're not talking about disgraceful envy and small pettiness or some kind of sinful suspicion.

No, we are talking about true jealousy. And I want to commend this book today, Godly Jealousy, a theology of intolerant love by K.

Eric Thonis, because it is so good for him to go through this and teach us. Here's the first paragraph of the book that God is jealous, that God is a jealous

God is the clear teaching of the Bible. That should blow us away right there. When I first was taught that God is just,

I about had a and my mind was messed up. I needed kind of a mind reboot.

I couldn't figure out what was going on because I only thought of things through my own paradigm.

I wasn't thinking about God's perspective. Gerhard von Raad considers

God's jealousy to be one of the most foundational divine attributes. He understands it as an emotion springing from the very depths of God's personality.

Walter Eichrod believes divine jealousy to be the basic element of the whole Old Testament idea of God.

And it is the reason why God gave the second commandment. And that's what we just quoted. Exodus chapter 20, verse five.

My question for you today is, do you believe God is jealous? Does it come into your mind at all to believe the jealousy of God or do you say, no, that's not my

God? Well, your God, if he's not jealous, isn't really a God. He's an idol made from your own mind when you say, well, my

God would never send anyone to hell. Your God isn't a real God. He doesn't exist because the real God is holy and righteous and just and does punish sinners for eternity.

And so your God is just one that you've created. And if you want to create a God in your own mind, I don't care.

I wish you wouldn't. But just don't call that God Yahweh. Don't call him Jesus. Don't call him.

Don't call yourself a Christian because that name, as John MacArthur says, is already taken. Just say

I've made my own religion and I've cut and pasted the scriptures to suit me. I have the final authority.

I'm the one who determines truth and which things I want to discard. And I'll just do what

I want to do. That's sadly what so many people do today. And I don't want you to do that.

I want you to say this. If the Bible teaches that God is jealous, I will accept it.

If the Bible teaches that God is jealous, I will have to learn about that and understand

God better because I want to do what the Bible says and I want to believe what the

Bible teaches. Here is what Thonis says on page eight. The Hebrew and Greek words kena and zelos, which may be translated jealousy, have similar and broad range of meanings.

It talks about to become red or alternatively black. BDB provides ardor, zeal, jealousy as possible translations.

He quotes a professor named Peels as describing this word for jealousy as an intense energetic state of mind towards action, which is caused by an infringement of someone's rights or injury to the subject's honor.

And I think Eric really hones in on the problem right there. When used of God, jealousy, number one, talks about how

God demands exclusive devotion to him. Would you believe that that God wants exclusive devotion to him?

He doesn't want you to worship other gods. He doesn't want you to worship yourself. He doesn't want you to worship the

Patriots or the Red Sox or the Bruins and the teams that we love or the Celtics.

He doesn't want us to worship Neil Diamond. He doesn't want us to worship our children.

He doesn't want the focus to be on the family. He wants all the devotion. And so Exodus 34, 14, you shall not worship any other

God for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. So in Exodus, he's just called jealous, a description, an adjective.

Here in Exodus 34, the name of God is jealous. What does that denote or connote?

The God, the jealous God, his holiness is jealous. His immutability is jealous. His righteousness is jealous.

His grace is jealous. Everything about God is jealous. And so jealousy demands exclusive devotion.

Jealousy also, number two, is an attitude of anger that goes against all opposition.

And that's what the Bible would teach. Listen to Ezekiel 16. And they will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women.

Then I shall stop you from playing the harlot and you will no longer pay your lovers. Verse 42.

So I shall calm my fury against you and my jealousy will depart from you.

And I shall be pacified and angry no more. God's jealousy is not a sinful jealousy of some husband.

God's jealousy is against those that would worship other gods. And it is a form of anger when people oppose him.

God's jealousy. Thirdly, in the Bible talks about how God will vindicate his people.

When God is jealous, he vindicates his people. Second Kings 1931. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant and out of Mount Zion survivors.

The jealousy of the Lord shall perform this. And so what we have in the Bible is we have a

God who says he is jealous and his name is jealous. And we want to make sure we think about God properly.

When we look at scripture, we have to, again, just be under it. Now, listen what K. Eric Thonis says on page 14.

This is the cauldron for godly jealousy. This is what precipitates real jealousy.

Godly jealousy of all kind found in humans are in God himself. Five components. And I think you'll agree with this once you hear it.

One, a lover. Two, a beloved. Three, a rival.

So you've got a lover, a beloved and a rival. Some intruder, some interloper, some stranger trying to break into that bond.

Infidelity expressed in some way by the beloved. And then number five, an emotional response to that infidelity.

Doesn't that make perfect sense? The lover is God. The beloved would be Israel or for us, the church.

The rival could be our own attitudes, actions, the world's pleasure, the passing world and its lust, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life.

Some kind of other rival is breaking our devotion to God. We we're no longer worshiping him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength because our energies are someplace else.

The fidelity expressed by us, the beloved, it makes God respond emotionally to that fidelity.

Now, some can't stand the jealousy of God. In Thony's book, he quotes other people like psychologists and things like that.

He quotes Ashbrook that talks about God's jealousy as being a great evil and the result of, quote, territorial imperative of the primal mind.

Somehow it's just, you know, evolutionary process. God was never jealous. We're never jealous.

The only reason why God is jealous is we have evolved and then we've made a God in our own image who has to evolve as well.

That's completely crazy. Thony's also talks about Ashbrook when he's talking about if you believe in a jealous

God, that is just a vestige of our, quote, reptilian brains, end quote.

And so what happens is you get a culture and that culture magnifies God's closeness,

God's kindness, God's compassion. And of course, we want to magnify those as well, though they're clearly taught, but we don't want to magnify them at the expense of God's transcendent qualities.

His transcendent attributes, his holiness, his righteousness, his otherness.

And once that happens, then we slide into things like denying the jealousy of God.

Do you believe God is jealous? Do you believe God did not like it when

Israel went whoring away to other gods? That's how the ESV translates it.

Whoring. Try reading all the Bible to your children sometime. And I remember the time when my children, if I was going over some sex part or some kind of other difficult part,

I would just keep reading and I wouldn't look up to see if the kids had a question for kids different ages. And so I just kept reading.

Then they got older. They would stop me. And I'll never forget the day I was asked this question, Dad, what's a prostitute?

And I had to try to answer the question, what is a prostitute? And so I said to the kids, a prostitute is someone who for money will take off their clothes and do whatever the man wants to do to them.

And they're not even married. And the kids, I can't believe that that would happen. And they were just grossed out.

It was completely gross to them. And I didn't have to get into any details. They understood the issue. They understood that we don't take our clothes off.

We have private areas of our body, etc. Here in a spiritual fashion, the

Bible talks about how Israel has forsaken her lover, God, and have gone off whoring with a rival, not out on a date, not out for fellowship, not out on companion, not just kind of eye aiming back and forth.

But in fidelity, there is worship that God demands that God is.

Oh, here Israel has been redeemed out of Egypt and he should be worshiped. Yet Israel goes whoring away and spiritual adultery.

I think of James 4, for you adulterous, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. God's name must be honored and he will make sure his name is honored.

Thonis talks about Leviticus 10 in his book. Then Moses said to Aaron, it is what the

Lord spoke, saying, by those who come near me, I will be treated wholly and before the people

I will be honored. So Aaron therefore kept silent after his kids had been killed because they did not recognize the jealousy of God over and over and over.

You see God's motivation for his judgment and compassion because of he wants to restore his people.

He is jealous to make that happen. So my question to you again today is, do you believe in the jealousy of God?

Why don't you get yourself a book called Baker's Dictionary of Theology right online? You can go to Crossway .com or I think

Crosswalk rather, Baker's Dictionary of Theology and type up jealousy and you'll understand it right away.

Or why don't you get that mentor book, K. Eric Thonis, Godly Jealousy and study a little bit.

You will see that if you do study the jealousy of God, it should change you. Theology changes people.

Dabney said, rendering God all the affection and service with which our nature requires, then

God will be pleased and his jealousy won't chasten you. If you're a Christian, when we recognize that God is jealous, we should try to love him supremely with all our might, with all our mind, with all our resources, with everything we have, with our cars, with our boats, with our houses, with our wives, with our children, with our possessions, with our couches, with our monies, with our stock market.

You say it's all God's and he deserves it all. And I will live my life in light of him.

If you believe God is jealous, you will also say, I better make sure I do only what God has told me to do in scripture.

That is, obey his commandments. We want to make sure that we observe all that Jesus has commanded us.

Matthew chapter 28. I think God's jealousy should also make you do something else, and that is to confess him before men, to own up to him, to acknowledge him publicly, to say, yes,

I believe in Jesus Christ. I'm born again. I am going to follow this God when they slander him and critique him.

We want to be witnesses like in Joshua 2420. Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourself the

Lord to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. I think that's what we want to do.

What else could we do? We could thank him, our great God, for all the things that he's provided.

Psalm 106. Praise the Lord. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loving kindness is everlasting.

That would honor God. He is the lover. We are the beloved. We don't want any kind of rival there.

And we don't want God's emotion to go ahead and take care of any of that rivalry. We want to trust his promises.

We want to submit to his his discipline and his chasing hand. We want to repent quickly when we have sinned.

Thonis does a good job discussing all these. We need no inordinate affections because that's called idolatry.

We want God as our God. Aren't you glad that God is jealous? Aren't you glad that when you run and you fall away and you do other kind of things,

I don't mean fall away from the faith, but fall away from having God as your top priority, number one, that God will come and get you.

He's jealous to come and get you. He's not going to just let you go. Can't you look back and see that in Israel as God would go run after Israel when they would whore away?

Of course we'd see that. So we want to read about God's jealousy. I would challenge you to read

Exodus 20 and Exodus 34. Read Godly Jealousy, a Theology of Intolerant Love by K.

Eric Thonis or get the Baker Dictionary of Theology and you could read about God's jealousy.

Would you like to go to Israel with us? NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can click on the resources page and go with us.

It's been a fast show and always fast. I taped four other shows earlier today. So you hear those coming up about Seventh -day

Adventism and other things. God is jealous. God brooks no rivals.

You ought to love him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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