Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the ways in which the Lord helps us to understand his jealousy for his people is to compare his relationship with us to the relationship between a human husband and wife. Human marriage is given to us as a picture of the Lord's relationship with his people. It's a relationship of love, faithfulness. It is a covenant relationship.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller. Glad you're with us and we've been taking a look at the characteristics and the attributes of God in our series "Who is Like our God?" Today, we take a look at the jealousy of God. And Jonathan, when we hear the word jealous, at least when I do, the first thing that comes to mind usually is not a good thing. But when it comes to God, it sounds like we may need to reframe or reshape our thinking of jealousy as it relates to God.

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, that's right, Steve. We can import our human categories to thinking about what God is like. And when we hear the word jealousy, that often doesn't have a very positive ring to it in our thinking about human interactions. But we need to define the term in the ways in which the Bible does.

And when the Bible talks about God's jealousy, it's talking about his covenant love for his people and his concern for his own glory. And he doesn't want either of those things in any way to be compromised or anything to take away from them. And so his jealousy protects both.

Steve Hiller: So when we hear the phrase or we come across the phrase in the Bible that God is a jealous God, that's actually a good thing.

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, the Bible teaches us to understand that it is a good thing. But we really need to dig into the pages of Scripture and the ways in which it teaches us about God himself to see how that is a good thing.

Steve Hiller: Well, we're going to do just that today. Hope that you will grab a Bible and join us in the book of Exodus. We also may spend a little time in Ezekiel. So join us there as we begin the message "The Jealous God." Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I do wonder if you've ever thought of the fact that our God is a jealous God. Maybe the idea actually seems a little bit strange to you, a little bit surprising. After all, jealousy as you and I experience it and as we see it in the world around us, it tends to be a pretty ugly thing. Human jealousy is born very often of envy and pride. It is frequently grounded in vanity and materialism, and it easily leads, doesn't it, to malice and to hatred.

And so jealousy as we know it is not something that we quickly associate with God. But perhaps to our surprise, the Bible insists repeatedly that God is a jealous God. And in fact, in one place at least, we are told that the word "jealous" is one of God's names. To get to grips with this intriguing but possibly surprising attribute of God, we need to begin by asking the very basic question: What is divine jealousy?

We know that God's jealousy can't be a vindictive envy like our jealousy so often is. It can't be like that because God is holy. It can't be a sinful kind of jealousy. It's got to be something else. And I think that if we look at the Scriptures carefully and study what the Scriptures teach us on this theme, we find that God's jealousy is his rightful passion for his glory, his appropriate commitment to upholding the honor of his name.

That commitment which the Scripture is very clear about, it might seem questionable to you and to me. The person who is deeply concerned about their own glory and their own honor, that person we might call a megalomaniac or an egoist. We might think of a king like King Louis XIV of France who in the late 17th century built for himself the glittering Palace of Versailles and gathered all the nobles of France to live there and to watch him all day. That was the idea.

A king who centralized all power to himself, who fought wars for his glory and commissioned statues and paintings of himself for his vanity. But there is a crucial difference between the egoists of this world and the God of heaven. Whereas the egoists and the megalomaniacs grab hold of power and glory out of an ugly, selfish ambition, whereas they grasp for something that is not rightly theirs, the Bible would remind us that the God of heaven is supremely glorious in and of himself.

He is perfectly and thoroughly worthy of all honor and all glory. You see, it's right for God to be concerned for his honor and glory because he is actually worthy of all honor and glory. And so when the Bible tells us that God is a jealous God, it is simply telling us that he has an appropriate concern, a rightful zeal for his own glory.

Now, in considering this great theme, I want to explore how God's jealousy is expressed in his work of judgment and his work of salvation. And then having said that much, I'd like to think together about how it should shape the way we live as his people. So we begin with God's jealousy in judgment.

When we think of God's work as judge, we might often think of him upholding moral principles of right and wrong, of avenging evil and pursuing the cause of the oppressed and so on. And of course, the Lord in his justice, he does those things. In that sense, the analogy between God the judge and a human judge in a human court, it's quite a helpful analogy. We imagine God operating in that way, and of course he does operate in that way.

But when it comes to God's judgment of sin, his punishment of evil, there is another dynamic at work, perhaps even a more fundamental dynamic that takes us beyond the analogy with a human judge, that goes beyond the simple enforcement of moral rules. For God as judge, when he addresses sin and evil, he is doing more than upholding principles of right and wrong in some abstract sense.

No, when God addresses evil in judgment, he is actually upholding his honor as God. In judging sin, God is demonstrating his jealousy for his name. Now, for a human judge to do that, it would be quite inappropriate. If there's any personal aspect to any case, a human judge needs to back out.

The American Bar Association requires, and I quote, that a judge shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or personal knowledge of facts that are in dispute in the proceeding. You see, the work of a human judge cannot have any personal aspect to it. But you see, for the God of heaven and Creator of all the earth, the Judge of all the world, for him it is always personal.

When Jesus was asked in Matthew 22 what is the greatest commandment, he replied by saying, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment." The heart of God's commands is the command to love him with all our being. And seen in that light, all sin, all wrongdoing, all of it is a sin against God himself. All sin involves a failure to love God and honor God as we ought to love God and honor God.

You see, that's why King David, when he commits adultery and is involved in murder, it's why he can cry out to God in Psalm 51:4, "Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." Yes, I took advantage of one person and I caused the unjust death of another. I've done wicked things, but at the end of the day my sin was fundamentally against you, God. I didn't love you and I didn't honor you as I should.

Now, in taking that posture and making that statement, David was speaking as one who knew God and understood something of who God is. God is worthy. God is glorious. God's name is very great. He deserves to be loved and honored and worshiped and obeyed with every breath that we take and with every fiber of our being. That's so for all God's creatures, all people, whether they acknowledge him and worship him or not.

And it's especially true for his covenant people, those who know him in this special and saving way. The Lord's first commandment to Israel was to have no other gods before him, and his second was not to make or worship idols. And as he lays out that commandment in Exodus 20, he makes it clear that his concern is grounded in his jealousy for his people and for his name. And you might actually like to turn to this with me, Exodus 20:5.

The Lord says this: "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 fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." The Lord warned Israel again and again that if they were to forget the commandment and turn to other gods, he would judge them out of a jealousy for his name. Just a few pages over in Exodus 34:12, perhaps notice it with me, Exodus 34:12.

"Take care lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim, for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited you eat of this sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods."

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths, and a message called "The Jealous God." It's part of our series "Who is Like our God?" where we're taking a look at some of God's characteristics and attributes. Now, we're going to get back to this message in just a moment. But if you ever miss part of a program or maybe you miss it in its entirety, you want to go back and catch what you missed, you can do that really easily.

Just come to our website, it's encounterthetruth.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, our website address encounterthetruth.org. All right, let's get back to the message. Once again, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the ways in which the Lord helps us to understand his jealousy for his people is to compare his relationship with us to the relationship between a human husband and wife. You may know that throughout the Bible, human marriage is given to us as a picture of the Lord's relationship with his people. It's a relationship of love and of faithfulness. It is a covenant relationship.

And the Lord makes it very clear that when his people turn from him to worship idols, to serve other gods, he views it as a terrible affront to that covenant relationship. He views it as unfaithfulness, he views it even as spiritual adultery. And in various places in the Scriptures, he shows us that this spiritual adultery, it rouses his jealousy.

In Ezekiel chapter 16, the Lord pictures his people as his wife, and he speaks of their idolatry as this kind of a spiritual adultery. And when he promises to judge that sin as he does promise to judge it, listen to how he describes that coming judgment. Ezekiel 16:38, the Lord says this: "And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy."

It's very arresting language. It's hard to hear that on one level, and the rest of the chapter Ezekiel 16 is similarly unsettling. But I think those words in Ezekiel 16 actually give us a deep insight into the heart of God. They teach us something profound about him. You see, if you picture a husband or a wife whose beloved has been unfaithful to them, if you consider that heartbreaking scenario, for that person to react to the discovery with a kind of a shrug of the shoulders, with indifference...

...for that spouse to declare that they don't really care all that much anymore, see, that would be absolutely shocking, wouldn't it? Actually, it would say that the spouse who has been wronged actually didn't love their husband or their wife all that much anymore. Indifference to unfaithfulness, it shows a lack of love, doesn't it? But the Lord, he is passionate in his love for his people. He's passionate for the glory of his name. And because of that, he is a jealous God.

Ultimately, God's jealousy for his glory will move him not only to warn his people but to judge the world. Zephaniah 3:8: "Therefore wait for me," declares the Lord, "for the day when I rise up to seize the prey, for my decision is to gather the nations, to assemble the kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed."

Now, on one level, I think we do find this a little hard to process. We get the idea of right and of wrong, of punishment for infractions against legal principles that exist for the common good. The thief and the murderer, they should be paid back for their crimes. That makes some sense to all of us, I think. But this deeper principle of God's glory and his jealousy for his name as a basis for judgment, that's a little harder for us to get.

But I want to suggest to us today that understanding God's jealousy actually helps us to comprehend more deeply why he judges sin as he judges sin, why he takes sin as seriously as he does take it. It actually helps us to understand even the fearful doctrine of hell. Why after all should there be a never-ending punishment for sin? I mean, in human courts, we put time limits on pretty much every punishment.

The worst it can be is a lifetime punishment, sometimes multiple life sentences for very serious crimes, multiple murders and so on. It's thought that the longest sentence ever handed down in any court was the sentence handed down in 1989 by a Thai court to a financial fraudster of 141,078 years. That's a pretty long sentence, all things considered. Although I gather the law actually limited this fraudster's jail time to 20 years maximum.

So the massive sentence, it was more symbolic than anything, but a huge sentence nonetheless. In any case, no human court could hand down a sentence of never-ending punishment for any crime. And even if it tried to hand down such a sentence, it could never enforce it. So why does the Bible tell us that the enemies of God will face a punishment that will not cease?

To get to grips on any level with that fearful idea, to begin to contemplate and to comprehend the concept of hell, we need to move beyond simply God's punishment for individual sins and acts of wrongdoing, and we need to consider the affront of human sin in general to the glory of God, to the honor of God, to the majesty of God, to the name of God.

You see, sin is not merely an infraction of a moral code. It is at its very heart a refusal to honor and worship and obey the God who made us and who deserves all glory from all his creatures. To understand why God judges sin as he does, to understand why sin matters as it does, we need to understand that our God is a jealous God. Now, that's God's jealousy in judgment, and it is a sobering thing to consider.

But now we move on to consider the related question of God's jealousy in salvation. When we think of God's astounding work in pursuing the lost and sending his savior for us, we think immediately, don't we, of his love and his mercy and his grace? And those are very appropriate divine attributes to be thinking about. God does, he saves us out of his love and his mercy and his great grace.

But it's important to recognize as well that God's plan of salvation is grounded in a deep concern for his glory and out of a jealousy for his name. The work of salvation, the establishment of the kingdom of God, the well-being of the people of God, it has always been a matter of the jealousy of God. So for instance, in Ezekiel 39, when the Lord speaks of a coming restoration for Israel after the great judgment of the nation's exile in Babylon, the Lord says this, Ezekiel 39:25:

"Therefore thus says the Lord God: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name." You know, we might think there that God would say that he will have mercy on the whole house of Israel because he loves them or is concerned for them or has pity on them, and all those things are true, of course. But what he actually says there is this: I'm going to save you and I'm going to restore you, and in doing so, I am going to show and demonstrate my jealousy for my name.

The same thought is expressed through the prophecy of Zechariah after the great humiliation of the exile when the people were carried off to Babylon. And then when the Lord allowed many of his people to return from Babylon to Judah and to Jerusalem, to rebuild the city and the temple that were decimated by the Babylonians. But in the time that the people had been away in those 70 years, the people had faced hardship under the hand of their rulers, first the Babylonians and the Persians.

And as they came back, those hardships weren't immediately lifted by any means. Although they were back in the city and back in the land, they were still under a pagan empire, and life was tough. The restored Jerusalem was not glorious as they anticipated that it might be. And so in those discouraging days, Zechariah is given a vision. And in this vision, here is what he sees and here is what he hears. Zechariah 1:12.

Then the angel of the Lord said, "O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?" And the Lord answered gracious and comforting words to the angel who talked with me. So the angel who talked with me said to me, "Cry out, Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. And I am exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease...

...for while I was angry but a little, they have furthered the disaster. Therefore, thus says the Lord, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy; my house shall be built in it," declares the Lord of hosts, "and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem." Lord, have you forgotten us? Are you angry and staying angry with us? No, I haven't forgotten you. In fact, I am jealous for you. And I'm going to act in mercy because I am a jealous God, jealous for my people, jealous for my city.

Again and again we learn throughout the Scriptures that God's salvation purposes are driven in a special way by his jealousy, by this righteous concern for the honor and glory of his name. In Isaiah chapter 48, speaking to Israel in a context of judgment for sin, the Lord says he's going to spare them from destruction. And here's why he's going to do it. Isaiah 48:9:

"For my name's sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another."

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths, and a message called "The Jealous God." Now we have to pause right here, but we'll continue this message on our next broadcast. So hope you make it a point to tune in. If you ever miss a program, come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. That's at encounterthetruth.org.

Encounter the Truth is listener-supported. It is your generosity that keeps Jonathan's teaching on this station. So thank you for giving to and supporting this ministry. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book Jonathan has picked out. It's called "Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel." And Jonathan, how is reading this book going to benefit us?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I hope it's going to impact your heart and your life. I hope it's going to feed your soul. The purpose of this book is simply to encourage us who know Jesus to live faithfully as his people, to allow the gospel to transform our way of life. And I just find I need those encouragements, I need those helps. And I find it especially helpful if the book is readable and not too long.

And this book, which is rich in content and thoughtful, it's written by seasoned theologian Sinclair Ferguson, who's always full of rich insight. But he's made it accessible and it's designed yes, to feed the mind, but to nourish the soul. And I believe it'll do that for you if you read it, and we'd love to get it to you.

Steve Hiller: Well, a gift of any amount and we're going to say thank you by sending you a copy of "Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel." You can call, give your gift, and request a copy. Our number's 833-99-TRUTH. That's 833-998-7884. Or give online at encounterthetruth.org. You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, P.O. Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1. Or in the US at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Brudda, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.