The Verse You Won't See on Many Church Signs

Providence Baptist Church

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A really fascinating person in U .S. history, and that is Thomas Jackson, better known to you probably if you know who

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I'm referring to as Stonewall Jackson, General Stonewall Jackson. And I've got, in the culture we live in,

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I've got to preface this by saying of course I understand that he had his faults, absolutely.

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But he is a man, I believe, that we'll see in heaven, and one of the things he became known as Stonewall Jackson because in the midst of battle, his regiment stood there like a stone wall, they said, and he was fearless in battle.

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We just had this, he had this resolve that God was sovereign.

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And like Psalm 4 -8 says, in peace I will lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

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And he had that kind of confidence. Now that leads us into the sermon this morning in considering the great problem, you understand that the

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Stonewall Jackson knew God. And the great problem in our country today, the great problem in America today, is not that we have a political problem, although there are certainly political problems, it's not moral problems, although there are certainly moral problems, it's the sin of our nation is not the ultimate problem, though that certainly is a problem.

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But you understand that all of these are fruits. The problem in our nation, the root problem in our nation, is that we don't know

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God. Understanding who

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God is, is the most profoundly transformative.

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And most pivotal element in your life, knowing

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God rightly changes everything.

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In fact, I'll go so far as to say this, nothing in your life makes proper sense.

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You don't fit the pieces together rightly if you get God wrong. And none of Nahum's prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh is going to make proper sense if God's eternal nature is misunderstood or suppressed.

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What's going on? Why does God one day show favor to Nineveh and the next day just destroy them?

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Has he just moved on a whim or whatever? Well, no, we need to understand who God is and so much about your life, what is good, what is evil, what worship is, what

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Christianity is, what the church is, what right is, what wrong is, what political system is righteous or whatever the case may be.

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None of these things never actually stick with so many people.

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They don't they don't have a proper foundation with so many people. Why? Because they don't know who

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God is. And Nahum begins this prophecy, consider, not by offering us any promises, not even really by offering us any warnings, so to speak, not even telling us what

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God is going to do. He begins this prophecy simply telling us who

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God is. And this morning, the title of the sermon is just the verse you won't see on many church signs.

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That is, you got a lot of verses on church signs today, and there's nothing wrong putting a Bible verse on a church sign, but you don't see

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Nahum 1 -2 on many church signs. But it's true and we need it and we'll consider that this morning.

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So we're going to focus on verse two, but just for context sake, we're going to read two through eight.

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So would you stand with me? So we honor the reading of God's. The Lord is a jealous and avenging

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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. And just in case you didn't get it a third time, the

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Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.

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His way is in the whirlwind and storm. The clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry.

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He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither. The bloom of Lebanon withers.

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The mountains quake before him. The hills melt. The earth heaves before him.

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The world and all who dwell in it, who can stand before his indignation?

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Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

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The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him.

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But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

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Father, could our. Hearts just have this one.

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Cry this morning. That we would know. Who you are, help us to know who you are, to understand this text, to understand the scriptures, to see it's a glorious reality that you are a jealous and avenging

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God, this is not something to be embarrassed by. It's something for which you are worthy of our worship.

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Penetrate our hearts with your truth this morning. Draw sinners to yourself, convict and encourage the saints as as it is needed.

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We know that the Holy Spirit, that you know, Holy Spirit, the needs of your people this morning, and would you just speak to them in in your word as we sit under the preaching?

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Give me utterance to speak and to preach rightly. Prevent me from saying things I shouldn't say.

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Let me only speak the truth and preach what your word has given us. We confess that it is enough.

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We trust it. We trust its sufficiency. We bow before its authority.

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We confess its necessity. We believe in its clarity and we know that it all points us to Christ and we pray in his name.

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Amen. You may be seated. So listen carefully for just a moment and put this together rightly, but when

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God gets a hold of a person. When God gets a hold of a church, when

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God gets a hold of a nation. The ultimate thing that he does to them, the ultimate thing, the chief thing, the highest thing that God does is not reform them morally, though, listen, moral reformation is an absolute outflow of encountering

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God. You haven't encountered God truly without a moral reformation, but that's not the ultimate thing.

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It's not ultimately a rejection of sin, though repentance is certainly an unequivocal reality.

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You haven't encountered God if you haven't repented from sin. Of course, that's true, but it's not the ultimate thing.

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It's not an improvement in society or an improvement in life. All of those things that I've mentioned, they are true.

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But listen, church, very carefully. They are not ultimate. They are fruits.

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They are branches, if you will, that flow out of the vine. You see, the ultimate thing that God does to a person or a people or a church or a nation, the ultimate thing he does when he gets a hold of them is that they have an increased awareness of who he really is.

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Everything else flows out of that. He captivates them. With himself, he reveals himself and all the other things that I mentioned are good things, but they flow out of that thing.

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So let me ask you a question as we begin. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God, the

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Lord is avenging and wrathful, the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

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The question is this. When is the last time, friend? That you were captivated with God, that you were in awe of God, friends,

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I'm not talking about some sort of emotional experience, I'm not talking about you sang a song and it was so beautiful, it made you cry.

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Do you understand this is, side note, things pop into my brain sometimes, you know, one time I read a story about a young lady who left the faith because of a

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Taylor Swift concert. So listen to the story. But basically, she always got emotional during youth group and she loved the songs and all that.

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Well, one time she went to a Taylor Swift concert and she realized this brings the same emotion that I thought I was feeling in youth group.

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Now I get the same emotion from these songs. Well, what was the point? She thought she knew God, but she had no idea.

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Well, when is the time? So I'm saying not an emotional experience. When is the last time that you feared

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God, that God was big to you and that the people around you and the events of our world today were small?

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You want to know the number one problem in churches today and we can argue and I understand our church, we try to do things a little bit differently.

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I believe that what we do here is biblical. Do you know the number one problem in churches today is not the lack of the regulative principle.

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It's not about church membership. It's not about getting their soteriology right.

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I understand all of those things are absolutely important. I'm not diminishing those things. But the number one problem in many churches today is they don't know who

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God is. Some people, as I said, try to drum up a feeling.

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They try to play certain songs. They try to create an emotional experience.

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A lot of churches spend a lot of money on lighting, you know, and fog machines.

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And it would be funny, but it's true. It happens. Or they try to run around.

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Some of you, I've not been in a service like this. Some of you have. We've talked about it. People like to run around in laps.

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Again, it would be funny, but it's not because it's true. People try this. They try speaking in tongues or something.

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They try to conjure up a feeling of the presence of God. And then people have services like that.

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And then they leave and they say, we met with God today. And then they get back to their lives. They get back to their 401ks and their bass boats and the little toys that they have amassed over the years.

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And they don't really know God at all. But then you have the other side. And I'd put a warning here to us.

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You get folks who say, we don't need an experience. That's dumb. We know everything about God.

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We've got our theology precise. We can discuss divine simplicity. And we know the ad extra and ad intra operations of the

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Trinity. And we know the pactum salutis and the ordo salutis.

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And we understand the fallacy of transubstantiation.

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And we can say all the Latin terms and the big words. We're fine. And yet there are many on that side who smoke their cigars and their smug discussions because they're not captivated by God.

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And so Nahum begins this prophecy by simply introducing us to God.

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The Lord, Yahweh, is a jealous and avenging

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God. Now what is going to happen to Nineveh is coming.

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But before it comes, you have to understand who God is. The Lord, Yahweh, the covenant name of God.

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And we could get in discussions about whether or not that should be translated. But I will say this, it's really frustrating to me to live in the

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Bible Belt and that we've given a tool into the Jehovah's Witness. Because they'll come around and they'll say, you know,

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God has a name. And then they'll talk about how for years there's been a conspiracy and that we've covered up the name

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Jehovah, which I don't think that's a good translation. That has to do with the Masoretic text and the vow pointings.

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But you can save that for when you discuss it with the Jehovah's Witnesses. The point is, I think Yahweh is a good translation.

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But the point is, this is the covenant name of God. It's used here. You can see it in your Bibles, right?

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Because it's all most of your Bibles, unless you're using the LSB. It's capitalized L -O -R -D.

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If you're using LSB, it says Yahweh, the Lord. The eternal I am, that's his name, the self -existent one.

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And then the text says that he is jealous and avenging and we're prone.

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Do you understand you're prone? You are prone. I'm telling you, if you think that I'm talking about you, the answer is yes,

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I am talking about you and myself, because you and I are prone to this false idea that God is ultimately about me.

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God is about my happiness. God is about my free will.

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God is about trying to get everyone to like him. God, this is a good year to use this illustration.

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God is on the campaign trail and he's vying for votes. And Nahum 1 -2 comes in and shatters all of that.

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The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

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The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

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It turns out who God is really about is God. And what

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God does flows out of who he is and what God is going to do to Nineveh flows out of who he is.

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Dr. James Hamilton says Yahweh's jealous justice roars with fury through the 47 verses of Nahum.

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So you understand here in verse 2 who God is. And then as we walk through the rest of the prophecy, you say, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

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Now, I understand. The question I have, though, is I wrestle with this and, you know,

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I just have a problem. I do have a problem. My problem is like I'm like, look, we're going to spend probably, you know, three months in Nahum or something.

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Look, we're not it's not going to turn into years. OK, it's not it's just not right. Right. It's not. It's not.

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But I just contemplate, meditate and think about Nahum chapter 1 verse 2.

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And now it's going to turn into two weeks at least. But the point, no, three weeks, actually, at least.

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But the point is, why don't we preach more on verses like this? Well, why don't we know these verses?

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Everybody knows, judge not. Everybody knows, for God so loved the world. Everybody knows, hey,

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God is love. Why don't we know verses like this? Why don't we teach these kind of verses to our children?

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Because when we come upon verses like this, we have this thought in our mind. God, you really need a new

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PR department. Ain't nobody going to vote for you if they know stuff like this.

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But don't worry, God, don't worry. You got us. Here's what we'll do.

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We're going to bury this truth. We'll hide it. Our world isn't ready for that.

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You know, you see what they need first is they need to know that we care about them and we'll spend a few years or decades or centuries working on that department.

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We'll feed them. We'll clothe them. We'll give them water. And if we get around to it, you know, obviously we'll talk about your love.

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That's obviously we'll do that, Lord. And maybe one day in a Sunday school class somewhere for the senior of the senior saints.

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We'll bring up Nahum one, two. Because if we talk about this, it's just going to turn people away.

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And I want to tell us this morning that that is highly offensive. To a good and holy

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God. And our God does not need our defense. And if we really want to understand first John four, eight,

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God is love, then you have to understand Nahum one, two. They go together.

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God is jealous. God is avenging. And these two truths are as equally as true as God is love.

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Now, I'm not trying to make this too much out of this. But let me just say this in in first John four, eight,

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God is love. But you never have a verse that says God is love. God is love. God is love. Now, you you can't see it really well.

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We'll talk about this in a couple of weeks when we get to this part of the verse. But three times in Nahum one, two, it says

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Yahweh is avenging. The Lord is a jealous and avenging

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God. But that's actually put together. So so the Lord is avenging. Then it says it again. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

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Now, the ESV says the Lord takes vengeance. But it could be translated like the

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Lord is avenging again on his adversaries. So three times it's the same Hebrew, two words, the word for Yahweh and the word for avenging.

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And it's used three times in the text. In other words, the point is, it's kind of like Isaiah six, six, three.

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God is holy, holy, holy, a repetition to stick it in your mind and heart to remember the holiness of God.

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But then you have this verse, Nahum one, two, that is calling to your mind and to your heart.

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The Lord is avenging. The Lord is avenging. The Lord is avenging.

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Now, this does not mean that God's vengeance trumps his love. I'm not saying that. It simply means that if you don't understand

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God's vengeance, if you don't understand God's jealousy, then you don't actually understand the love of God.

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Like maybe you think that you do. You understand that you allow love because you we hear this stuff all the time.

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Love is love. Or we say or we're guilty of saying things like, I love pizza, you know, which

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I do love pizza. But it's not the same type of love that we're talking about here. And so we're guilty of watering down love.

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And so that's a good place to ask ourselves this question, seriously, kids, adults, men, women, you need to ask yourself this question.

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Will I allow God, which is kind of weird to say it, but will

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I allow God to shape my view of God? Will I let this book, will

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I let the Bible tell me who God is or will I just make it up myself?

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Will I pull the truth of the Bible that I like and dismiss the things that I don't like?

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And then I'll just kind of put it in a melting pot with kind of what culture says, what my great grandmother always used to say and what

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I read in a book somewhere. And I'll put that all together and then we'll have my concept of God or will we allow the scriptures.

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To shape our view, are you OK with having God in a little box in your pocket and you carry him around and every now and then before a ball game, before a meal, you pull him out, you you pray to him.

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But as far as your day to day, you just live life. Or are you willing today to be confronted and captivated by who the

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Bible says God is? Now, the verse.

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In Hebrew, the text begins with the word for God. So this the the common word for God.

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And then it has the word jealous. So it's a little bit out of order. It's still a good translation, but I'm just telling you it's a little bit out of order in verse two.

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So it'd be like this, a God jealous or you could say a jealous God. A jealous and avenging

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God is or sorry, a jealous God and avenging is

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Yahweh. That's what the text says. So what we're going to do is take this concept of jealousy.

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And that's why it's going to take us two sermons on jealousy and maybe probably one sermon on vengeance, but we're going to talk about jealousy.

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And today we're just going to consider big point number one, jealousy defined. So the text says the

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Lord is a jealous and avenging God, or like I said, you just mix up the words a little bit.

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God is jealous. The jealousy of God, this is not like the only place it's there, right?

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So you're like, man, is there any verse in the Bible that talks about the jealousy of God? Well, Nahum one, two, certainly.

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But Gregory Cook identifies six passages that Nahum draws from in Nahum one, two.

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I'm just going to give you the passages. I'm just going to read them. You can look them up later for context, but I'll just kind of do this quickly.

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So the first is Exodus 20, verse five, where the Lord says you shall not bow down to them or serve them.

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For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

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Exodus 34, 14 is number two, for you shall worship no other God for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous

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God. Deuteronomy 4, 24, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous

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God. Deuteronomy 5, 9, you shall not bow down to them or serve them for I, the

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

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Number five, Deuteronomy 6, 15, for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God.

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Lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you and he destroy you from the face of the earth.

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And then sixthly, Joshua 24, 19. But Joshua said to the people, you are not able to serve the

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Lord for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.

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This is the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is a jealous

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God. Now, what does that mean? Because and we'll talk about this more next week, because oftentimes, really, the pushback is that jealousy is a bad virtue, but not when it comes to God.

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And it is right in human. Jealousy can be right as well. And we'll talk about that next week. But it is always a perfection when it comes to God.

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So MacArthur defines it this way, his zealous protectiveness of all that belongs to him.

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So what is the jealousy of God? His zealous protectiveness of all that belongs to him.

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Jobiki says God's jealousy is the fervent energy of his of his holiness.

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That's Jobiki. So the jealousy of God is not like a human passion.

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We're not equating jealousy and envy. Right. God is not envious. That would that would make

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God like us. He's not envious. Rather, his jealousy is an eternal attribute that reminds us that God has a white hot zeal for his own glory, for the fame of his own name that drives everything that he does.

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So let me give you a few thoughts here. The Lord is jealous for his name.

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So Exodus 27, the third commandment says, you shall not take the name of the

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Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

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That is, God is jealous. God is zealous to protect his name.

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The way that we speak of God, God cares. Think about this. Students, teenagers out on the football field, you're practicing, someone flippantly uses the name of God.

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You need to remember God cares about how his name is used.

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Not just I'm not only talking about cuss words, like if you use his name and then and then a cuss word, that's not what

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I'm saying, though that obviously is true. But it's not just that to speak of God flippantly,

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God cares about this, to to think of God flippantly. God cares about this, the how we think about his attributes.

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God is jealous for his name. He cares about how you speak and think of him.

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Secondly, he's jealous for his creation. God made the world and everything in it.

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He's a God of order. He is not a God of chaos. To reject God is to introduce chaos into this creation,

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God's creation. We see that all around us, chaos, sin, disorder. And we know in the

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Bible that God is going to restore creation one day. But he's going to do that because he's going to defend his own honor.

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God is jealous for everything that he has made for his creation. Thirdly, he's jealous for his worship.

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Deuteronomy 32, I didn't quote this earlier, 32, 21 says, they have made me jealous with what is no

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God. They have provoked me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are no people.

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I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. And that's one truth I wish that we could get into more evangelicals minds, is that God cares about how he is worshiped.

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He's jealous for his worship. He is jealous to be worshipped rightly, and he is jealous to not share his worship with false gods.

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Put this one in the back of your mind. It'll be important later. Isaiah 42, 8, I am the Lord. That is my name.

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My glory I give to no other. Nor my praise to carved idols.

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Fourthly, I'll mention he is jealous for his people. Now, all of this brings us to verse two, the

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Lord is jealous, is a jealous and avenging God. It's interesting to me.

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That God uses the word jealous in a prophecy regarding the Assyrians, the

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Assyrians were not part of the physical lineage of Abraham. Covenantially, that is that they're not the nation of Israel.

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There's a couple of reminders here, though, about Assyria. Number one, Nineveh had heard the gospel.

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In 750 B .C. at the preaching of Jonah, they had understood in some capacity by God's grace their need for the

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Lord's mercy. And they turned to God and they repented of their sins. And God had a right to be jealous over Nineveh's departure from him.

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But also another reminder is that regardless of that idea, all nations, whether they know the gospel or don't know the gospel, oh,

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God, worship. You understand all nations, oh, the all peoples, oh,

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God, worship. So God has a right to be jealous over the nations, even the nations who haven't heard the gospel, because all nations owe him by his divine right, worship.

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Romans 1 teaches that God is clearly perceived from creation. Creation inexcusably shows all mankind

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God. There is a sermon that's being preached 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 .25

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days a year. And that is that God is glorious.

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Creation preaches that message. It's understood in a universal language, yet it is also universally rejected.

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Suppression of the truth. Worshiping creation. Instead of the creator.

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But then there's something else to consider, too, about this prophecy, the Lord is a jealous and avenging

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God. Is that God is jealous over his covenant people.

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He will not stand. For the Assyrians to plunder his people forever.

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They are going to pay. You mean that God has a special love for his covenant people that he didn't have for the

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Assyrians. Now, when you get to the Old Testament, most people don't have a problem with this. But the answer is right.

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Yes. In the words of John Frame. God is not obligated to distribute his love equally to all.

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God has a special people that he has chosen to place his love upon in a special way and whom he is.

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Particularly jealous over. And let's be clear, so crystal clear,

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I'm not talking about physical Israel, I'm talking about those who are in Christ.

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Zechariah 8 to God says this, thus says the Lord of hosts, I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy and I am jealous for her with great wrath.

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But then in Hebrews 12, 22, the writer says that the people of God in the church have come to Mount Zion, the heavenly

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Jerusalem. So listen carefully. It is indisputable that in the

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Old Testament, God has a jealousy, as it were, over the physical people of Israel. As they're the physical offspring of Abraham, they're under the

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Mosaic covenant. But what we see is this pointing forward to God's jealousy over his spiritual people.

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That is the true heirs of the Abrahamic promise are those with faith in Christ. Now, that's certainly included some within physical

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Israel, and it certainly does today. That's why what is physical Israel need today? They need the gospel.

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Well, let's just put it plainly here. God is jealous for his church.

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So Nahum 1 ,2 teaches us that God has a holy jealousy over his people.

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The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. God has a holy jealousy over his people, and his jealousy will ultimately destroy the enemies of his people because their enemies are his enemies.

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Now, listen, shall we understand the Old Testament? This is typified in what happened in Nineveh and its destruction in 612

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B .C., but its ultimate manifestation. So Nineveh's destruction is just a type of what is to come.

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The ultimate manifestation will be at the last day when God judges the nations through the man whom he has appointed,

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Jesus Christ the righteous, and all of the enemies of the church will fall, and the

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Lamb and his bride will reign in holy splendor for all eternity. You can look, and you should be careful here, but you can look at the faces on the television that mock the church that spit in your face.

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Pastor Jacob was preaching at harps yesterday. I won't tell you what this guy said, but this guy uttered three explicitives.

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Explicit, explicit, explicit to what to what Pastor Jacob was preaching.

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Well, if this man doesn't repent and believe the gospel before he perishes, then what will happen is one day he'll stand before God and he will be uttering no explicitives and God will destroy him.

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That sounds harsh, right? I get it because we kind of have a bit of a squishy evangelicalism sometimes.

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I'm just telling you that the people who mock God. They will face his judgment and wrath.

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The enemies of the church will be put asunder. And the church will be victorious.

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This is the jealousy of God. God is zealous to defend his honor and extol his glory.

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Look at verse three. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. Oh, he is slow to anger.

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But listen, the day for Nineveh came swiftly and the day that God will judge the world is coming swiftly, too.

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I was talking with some brothers just yesterday. We talk about the difference in our country from 2008 to 2024.

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We believe that, you know, in that just 16 years, we have really accelerated our decline as a nation.

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And to put that in perspective, my son, Braden, just happened to be born at the end of 2007.

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So he was born at the end of 2007. So basically, he began new life right there at the beginning of 2008.

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So he's 16. His life has gone so fast before my eyes. And in just those 16 years, we've seen a rapid decline of our nation.

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I want to tell you that judgment will come more swiftly than we are ready for.

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And all of this, all of this, friends, must shake us out of our complacency.

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I'm pleading if I could just grab myself and you by the collar and just say, what have we allowed

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Christianity to become? We are far too preoccupied with ourselves and with our reputation and with our preferences and with our needs and with our wants.

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And we are not occupied with the glory of the jealous God. We focus on our own kingdom or the lesser kingdoms of this world and not on Christ's kingdom.

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We are so infatuated with the temporal things.

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That's a good question and place to ask ourselves, have we forgotten

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God? Or some of you, maybe the answer is you've never known

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God and the text screams at us, yells, leaps off the page.

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The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

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God is love. Amen. But it is a pure and holy love, the purest and holiest of love.

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It is a love that originates and terminates. That is, begins and ends, if you will, even though it's eternal.

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Hard for us to wrap our minds around. But the point I'm saying is it begins and ends in God himself. Or to put it more simply,

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God's greatest love is God. He doesn't have a divided heart and what he requires from us is the same.

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An undivided heart. Your whole heart. Samuel asked Saul, King Saul, hath the

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Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the

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Lord? All over the Old Testament, Isaiah, Amos, other places, God says things like this.

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I can't stand your outward worship practices because I don't have your heart.

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This sounds crazy coming from a Baptist preacher, but I'll put it to you this way. Some people would be better off not going to church because God hates it.

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He hates that they show up to church and that they go through the outward manifestations of religion.

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But he doesn't have their heart. Now, of course, the best thing is that they would give him their heart.

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But you understand what I'm saying. We're very good at giving

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God lip service. I sing, I show up, well, I mean, sometimes

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I show up, right? Throwing some money in the offering plate. But then our hearts are given over to other priorities.

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Created things become God's to us. They become idols. Or then we have to always be competing with the

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God of self, self -righteousness, self -importance. I am God. But the jealousy of God demands our total allegiance.

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The Lord is jealous, a jealous God. We'll talk about this more next week, but I'll just drop this here for you right now to chew on.

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God's demanding our total allegiance, God's demanding our undivided heart, friends, this is a good thing.

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In fact, it is the very best thing for us. It is not

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God being an egomaniac. God is jealous for our delight in him.

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And our delight in anything else is ultimately going to leave us empty at some point.

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I don't know why this shook me so much. Maybe it was like one of the first celebrities

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I remember passing away, overdosing or whatever. But as a young child,

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I have the memory I was probably like 10. And maybe I was younger than that, but I have the memory of Chris Farley dying.

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I was a crazy guy, but I remember thinking that he was funny. I still think some of the things he did was funny.

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He died like you're at the pinnacle, man, a Heath Ledger, Robin Williams.

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Now, Robin Williams, I think, was actually suicide. But the point is, you've got these people with all this stuff and all this money.

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And it's like, from my perspective, like, dude, you're on top in this world. Like, you've got it all, right?

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You've got everything that the world can offer you. And then you're putting substances in your body. Why?

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Because it doesn't satisfy you. Because you don't believe that. You don't really believe that.

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You're like, yeah, I didn't satisfy them. But I'm still going to chase these things. I'm still going to see if I can catch the tiger by the tail, right?

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And what will happen if I catch him, right? Or you're just running, running, running. And if I just make this amount of money, if I can just win this trophy, if I can just reach this stage of life,

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I will be satisfied. Not without God, you won't. And this is what the jealous

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God of the Bible says to us. You find at your right hand,

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Psalm 16, our pleasures forevermore. You're not going to find that in anything created.

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It's only God. God's zeal for his glory is not at odds with our satisfaction, because we were made to glorify

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God and enjoy him forever. Why won't we believe this? Why will

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Quatro Nelson not believe this? Why do we believe other things are going to satisfy our hearts?

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Well, let me ask you this way. Does God have your heart today? Children, does

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God have your heart? Church members, does our jealous

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God have your whole heart? Do you know the God that we've seen from our text today?

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The Lord is jealous and avenging. You know, the fact that God is jealous and jealous for his own glory, it really sheds some light on what

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Jesus says in John 17 5. I talked about Jehovah's Witness. Put this in your Jehovah's Witness notebook or whatever, if you have one.

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John 17 5. Jesus says, and now,

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Father, and I told you to remember Isaiah 42 8. Isaiah 42 8, remember what

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God said, I will not share my glory with another. Isaiah, John 17 5, and now,

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Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

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Yahweh says in Isaiah 42 8, I will not give my glory to another. Asterix, except.

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My created son, no. No, don't you understand? Don't you understand what

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Jesus is saying in John 17 5? I had glory with you before the world created because I am

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Yahweh. Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh.

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How can he ask to have glory that he had with the father before the world existed?

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The glory that Yahweh shares with no one else because he is Yahweh. Jesus is

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God. God is so jealous for his glory that he would send no one else, could send no one else to deliver his people from their sins and his avenging wrath other than the son of God.

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And Jesus steps onto the scene in the flesh, that is 2000 years ago. And Jesus is jealous, jealous for God's plan, jealous for God's people, jealous for God's praise.

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He says things like this. He takes a ride. You want to talk about what kind of person was Jesus? Well, at times, pretty sure he would have shocked our modern evangelicalism.

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He picked up whips and drove people out of the temple. Why? He said, zeal for your house has consumed me.

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His food, he says, was to do the will of the father. His delight was to do the will of God.

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And then on Calvary, it was the will of Yahweh to crush him. This Jesus, the son of God, who gave the father his whole heart every day of his life, in perfect love, in pure devotion to secure for us a righteousness we do not have in ourselves.

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This Jesus, the jealous one, cursed on Calvary. The Bible teaches that he became a curse for us under the law.

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Because the avenging God avenged his white hot wrath against sinners by unleashing it in all its fury on the cross where Jesus bled.

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This Jesus died, was buried, and on the third day, the Bible says, rose again from the dead.

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Why? So that we could have a new heart. A heart that God gives us and a heart that is given to God.

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That's why the Bible says you must be born again.

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God must have your heart. But the good news is that this can be true of you because of what

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Christ has done. This is the beauty of the gospel. It is the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes.

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And the call goes out even to us in this assembly this morning. Will you believe? Will you accept this this jealous

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God? Will you bow down before him? You need to know that if you reject this gospel, well, what a thing that you are rejecting this morning.

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This very act of God crucifying his son on Calvary to bring sinners into the fold.

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Who gives promises like John 6 37. All that the Father has given me will come to me.

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And we talk about a divine election and all that. And we can take that for another sermon.

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I preached on that a couple of weeks ago on Sunday night at the at the park. But then there's that promise at the at the end of that verse.

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And whoever comes to me and it's stuck in my head in the King James, I will in no wise cast out.

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This is a promise. You come to Christ. He ain't casting you out. Right.

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So so come hear the gospel and come hear the gospel and repent, believe on Christ and be saved.

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But be warned today, if you reject this gospel, you are contending with a holy and jealous and avenging

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God. Dear Christian, you need to be reminded, too, of the gospel.

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Because you have struggled with idolatry this week, you've thought of yourself more highly than you are this week.

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You've struggled this very week with giving God your whole heart. You've been tempted this very week to put things in front of God and to disobey his commands and justify your disobedience because of your sin.

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You, this very week, have chosen to do other things than to spend time with God in prayer.

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This very week, you have chosen to do other things than to spend time with God in his word.

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And God will not stand for that. God will not share his throne with you. He will not share his glory.

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Idolatry is a very dangerous sin. But the gospel reminds us that the wrath of the holy, jealous

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God is propitiated in Christ. And that there is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

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And so hear me, dear Christian, if anything that I've said has hit home with you, then you don't need to run from God in your sin.

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That's why Satan would whisper to you, as it were, run away from God, ignore God. That preacher don't know.

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That preacher don't care. He's just judgmental. People in the community think he's crazy. You don't got to listen to him.

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But just hear me today. I'm saying don't run away from God. Please listen to me. Run to God.

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Run to him with your sin and confess it to him and repent and understand that he is already forgiven you in Christ and is faithful and just to cleanse you of all unrighteousness.

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Turn your sin over to him and ask him to take your whole heart, to burn all your idols, to help you walk in holiness by his grace.

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I am pleading with Providence Baptist Church not to serve a fictitious

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God of our own invention. See the revealed true God of the

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Bible. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

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The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. But this is good.

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This is good. Verse seven, the Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him.

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Church, we must take refuge in this God. No other God will do.

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And let us live before him. So are we captivated this morning by this

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God? Or are we captivated by lesser things? Oh, did you guys see that new movie?

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He was awesome. Well, in the words of Jay Randall Easter, only God is awesome.

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We're captivated by such foolish things. Oh, did you see this play? Did you see that hit?

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Did you see this catch? Did you see that three pointer? I mean, captivated by God.

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Have you really given God your life, all of it? No locked doors. Not my illustration, but picture your heart as a corridor of doors.

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And most people have lots of doors open. Well, I should say most people in the Bible. Well, most people would profess to be

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Christians. OK, I'll walk that back a little bit. Most people would profess to be Christians in the Bible. They'll have this corridor before God and all the doors are open.

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The Lord looks in and sees those things. Oh, your health. OK, I can be God of that. That's good. Oh, your children's future and prosperity.

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I can be God of that. OK. Oh, that you would have great car or possessions.

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OK, I can be God of that. Right. Well, well, then he gets to the end and there's this locked door. What's in there?

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Can can I go in there? Oh, no, God, you you don't need to go there. You can't you see you can't have that room.

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What do you keep in that room? That's where you keep your idols. God. You can't have that.

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You can be God of everything else in my life, but you can't be God of this. Friends, what

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I'm saying to you is you've got to open that door. We consider the

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God that Nahum reveals to us. He's not a distant deity and different to our lives.

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But he's a jealous God. Passionately protective of his name. Of his worship, his people, his creation.

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Providence, we must let this vision of God shape our view of everything else.

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Everything else must be filtered through this view, our worship, our evangelism, our fellowship, our desire to learn theology, our daily lives, everything we are, everything we do.

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It must reflect that we actually know and understand and enjoy who the

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God of the Bible is. And when you take this seriously today, go to Christ, ask

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God that he would be big to you and that everything else small, may his majesty and holiness consume you and your priorities.

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Confess to him, confess to him your sins, hand over to him all your idols, cast them all into the flames, go again to the

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God of all grace, resting in the finished work of Christ. May we say, come what may,

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I don't care what they say of me. I don't care what happens tomorrow. What I care about most and above all and ultimate is that I know

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God and let everything else. Fall is it may may are sitting under the preaching of the word of God, not just be a task that we check off our

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Sunday list. But may we encounter the living God in his word today and leave changed by his grace, ready to live lives for his glory.

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Listen, some of you, you've got to try to get as practical as I can hear. Some of you've got to reprioritize your lives.

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You're sleeping too much now. That's meddling. I get it. But that may apply to some of you. You may have to give up certain things.

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You're spending too much time doing this, that may apply to some of you. You may need to go home this afternoon and sit down with your spouse or your children or or maybe just by yourself with a notebook and say,

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OK, God, I heard what the preacher says and I believe it. Not because the preacher is great. He's not great.

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But what he preached was great. Not because the sermon is great, because the Bible is great. And it's true and I believe it.

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I'm going to let certain things go. I'm going to spend less time in my phone. I'm going to wake up early, whatever the case may be.

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I'm going to let go of this activity. And I'm going to seek God, because that's why

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I was made. Behold our God, Providence. Behold him and let us live before him, would you stand with me?