Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: You and I, we were created to glorify God. And in glorifying him, we enjoy him. The more jealous we are for the glory of God, the more we pursue his glory, the more joyful and whole and content we will be as a people.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. Today, we're continuing our message, The Jealous God. Jonathan, as we began to talk about last time, there may be a reframing or a rethinking of jealousy when we think about the jealousy of God. But it sounds like you're saying here, we actually need to be jealous for the glory of God in our own lives.

Jonathan Griffiths: Jealousy, as the Bible teaches us about it, means being concerned for the protection of things that are vitally important, supremely important. The Bible teaches us that God's honor, God's glory, is the most important thing in all the universe. As those who come to love God through knowing Jesus Christ, we come to be concerned about his glory. The Bible teaches us an appropriate kind of jealousy, and we're going to try and dig into that a little bit and learn a bit about that today.

Steve Hiller: For the person who says, "I just don't know what that looks like for me. I don't know that I am jealous for the glory of God," how would I begin to cultivate that?

Jonathan Griffiths: I think it's about getting to know who God is and what he's like, understanding what he's done for us in Christ, what is his character, and what is his nature. As we get to know God as he is revealed in the Scriptures, we have to come to the conclusion in a developing way, in a growing way, that he is wonderful and he is good and he is holy and majestic and praiseworthy.

As our hearts become filled with this adoration for God and this love for God flowing from who he is, I think we grow in our jealousy for his glory.

Steve Hiller: We're going to continue to look at that in today's broadcast. I hope you will stay with us as we continue the message, The Jealous God. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: When we think of God's astounding work in pursuing the lost and sending his Savior for us, we think immediately of his love and his mercy and his grace. Those are very appropriate divine attributes to be thinking about. God does save 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. 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 in Ezekiel 39 and verse 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."

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. 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'm 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. 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.

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.

In this vision, here is what he sees and here is what he hears. Zechariah chapter 1 and verse 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 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. 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 the context of judgment for sin, the Lord says he's going to spare them from destruction. Here's why he's going to do it.

Isaiah 48 and verse 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."

One of the most beautiful stories, one of the most beautiful books really in all the Bible, is the story of Hosea. I wonder if you know it, if you're familiar with that story. God calls the prophet Hosea and he gives him a very strange commission and a very strange message. He calls Hosea to go and marry an immoral and an unfaithful woman. And to do so for this reason: because the people of God had been unfaithful to the Lord.

Hosea's life as a prophet now is going to be an acted-out parable of the Lord's response to his unfaithful people. Hosea is to go and pursue this unfaithful wife and take her back despite her unfaithfulness. Just as Hosea is to go and win her back and bring her back and take her back, the Lord says that he is going to do the same thing for his unfaithful people.

Hosea chapter 2 and verse 14: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt." The Lord is a jealous husband of his people and he pursues us. The whole story of the Bible is really a story of God's jealous love for his people, his pursuit of a wayward people.

The Bible is the greatest love story actually that's ever been told. Of course, it is the jealous covenant love of God that brought the Son of God down from heaven to pursue an unfaithful people, to pursue us to the cross, to die in our place, to offer us forgiveness for all our unfaithfulness and all our disdain for him. It's the jealous love of God that desires to have us back, to put an end to our mockery of his name, and to have in us and from us and through us the glory and the honor that are his due.

That's the jealousy of God. It's important to say, of course, that if you don't yet know the Lord and don't yet belong to the Lord, you need to know today that he is jealous for you. He created you for his glory. He created you to honor him and serve him and worship him and obey him. Actually, that's your life's ultimate purpose. That was what you were made for.

God sent his Son to get you back, to bring you home, to save you from the judgment that all of us deserve. He sent his Son that he might have you for his very own possession. I wonder, would you respond to that rescue, to that offer, to that call, to that invitation, by receiving Christ as your Savior, as your Lord, by faith, even today?

God's jealousy, his righteous, appropriate jealousy, it stands behind his work both of judgment and of salvation. What then does all this mean for the Christian life? What does it mean for you? What does it mean for me in the days ahead as we walk with the Lord? Very simply, I think we need to learn to share God's jealousy for his name.

If we know the Lord and we love the Lord, if we recognize his honor and his worth, we are going to learn by degrees to share this deep concern for him to be honored, for him to be glorified by all people. That's going to become our life's passion and our life's joy. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, a famous summary of Christian belief, asks the question, "What is the chief end of man?" Or, to put it more simply, "What is the chief purpose of humanity?"

It answers that question in a way that's familiar to many of us. I've mentioned this a number of times before. It says, "Man's chief end, humanity's chief purpose, is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." You and I, we were created to glorify God. And in glorifying him, we enjoy him.

The more we see and the more we recognize his sheer worth, his holiness and his beauty, his power and his might, the more we recognize his supremacy, the more that we see that he is all in all, the more we lose ourselves in pursuing his glory and not our own. The more we do those things, the more we enter into the fullness of all that we were created to be as human beings. To put that another way, the more jealous we are for the glory of God, the more we pursue his glory, the more joyful and whole and content we will be as a people.

Key servants of God in the Scriptures model this for us and show us how this is true. In the Bible, the language of zeal and the language of jealousy are very closely related. Being zealous for the Lord and being jealous for his name, they're very closely related ideas. The words in the original, both in the Old Testament and the New, they overlap.

In Psalm 69, David pours out his heart and he expresses his heartfelt desire for God's glory. He speaks of the way that he has faced reproach for his hope in the Lord. Psalm 69 and verse 7, listen to what he says: "For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons. For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me." David, as a servant of God, as one who knows God, he is filled with zeal for the Lord and for his house.

Now, if those words are at all familiar to you, if they ring any bells in your mind, it may be because when Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem and finds that it's been overtaken by commerce, he drives out the business people and overturns their tables. When he does that, John chapter 2 and verse 17 tells us that the disciples remember that it was written in Psalm 69, "Zeal for your house will consume me."

Jesus in his life and ministry showed his zeal for the honor and glory of the Father. And that zeal, as we said already, it took him ultimately to the cross. When the apostle Paul grew concerned that the Corinthian Christians were in danger of drifting from the true gospel, he wrote to them with a sense of divine jealousy in his heart.

2 Corinthians 11 and verse 2, Paul writes, "For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ." And he urges them to stay true to the authentic gospel. Paul was zealous for the Lord's glory. He was jealous for the Lord's name. That was the driving concern of his ministry. It was actually the passion of his life. It was his purpose. It was his goal.

I wonder if today as believers we've really understood what David understood and what Jesus understood and what Paul understood: that life in this universe, life in this world, is about the glory of God; that we were created by him and for him; that true life and full life are found in pursuing his glory, the glory of the one who is jealous for his own name.

It may be that this is a truth that some of us have never really taken hold of this before. We've accepted Christ, we rejoice in his forgiveness, but we're actually still living for all kinds of other things—hobbies, career, wealth, pleasure, you name it. And the danger is, of course, that as those things take over our lives, they become idols. They become God-alternatives for us.

Maybe today, as we consider the jealousy of God, maybe this is actually a very timely prompt for us, a prompt for you, a prompt for me, to refocus and recenter our lives not on those petty things, but on God himself, who is rightly jealous for us, jealous for our allegiance, jealous for our honor, jealous for our worship.

If you're a young person today, maybe thinking about the future, your direction in life, here's food for thought: God is jealous for you. He's jealous that your life might be spent in his service. Your life purpose, the Bible would tell you, is to bring him glory and honor. What's that going to mean for your decisions about education, about marriage and singleness, about career?

If you're someone who's in the middle of life, maybe busy with work or family and all kinds of other things, maybe overwhelmingly busy and just caught up in what you're doing and getting through the week and getting through the month, what's it going to look like maybe to step back for a moment and recenter on the glory of God as you contemplate the years ahead?

If you're retired and maybe thinking about how to fill the years post-career, where to invest, what to do, you have the privilege of time, you have the privilege, perhaps, of options. How will the jealousy of God for your time and your talent and your treasure, how will a zeal for God's glory and a zeal for his name shape your priorities going forward?

The jealousy of God, it is, by the way, the supreme motivation and the supreme reason for evangelism and for world missions. I don't know if you've ever thought about those things in those terms. But in reaching the lost with the gospel, which is something we long to do, in reaching the lost with the gospel, we are rightly concerned for the awful plight of those who don't yet know Jesus.

We're rightly concerned about the terrible prospect of a lost eternity in hell. That should move us very deeply. Pity and compassion, it should drive us to the ends of the earth with the gospel of grace. But even more than a concern for the lost themselves should be our concern for the honor and the glory of God.

The worst thing of all about a world where many don't know God is the fact that it is a world in which many of God's creatures don't give him the honor and the glory that are his due. And so we go out with the gospel in the work of evangelism and the work of world missions. We go out with a deep compassion for the lost, but we go out as well, even more than that perhaps, with a jealousy for God's name.

For those who don't yet know the Lord, I wonder if you've ever considered that the Lord is jealous for you, for your worship, for your allegiance. He created you for his glory. Your life's purpose, actually, is to honor him. I wonder if you've ever heard that before. Maybe you haven't. I wonder if you've ever given thought to it.

The idea, I think it could sound very, very strange, and maybe it sounds strange to you. Maybe it's uncomfortable, even offensive to your ear. But I would encourage you, as you process that, to consider it carefully and to see if, as you ponder these things, the idea actually finds some kind of resonance in your heart.

You see, there is something inbuilt within all of us that longs for a greater purpose beyond ourselves. We sense that we are made for more than just going to work and mowing the lawn and paying our taxes and watching Netflix. We get that we're made for something bigger and grander and greater than those things.

We get glimpses of this truth when we do get caught up from time to time in a great cause—when young people perhaps are willing to fight and to die for their country, or when a great social movement sweeps through our world and folk are willing to risk all to join it, and we've seen just a little of that just lately, I think.

But the instinct that drives us to give ourselves to a cause beyond ourselves, I think it is actually an echo of a more deep-seated instinct in the human heart—the instinct now darkened and damaged by sin, the instinct to give ourselves to the greatest cause of all: the glory and honor and service of the God of heaven above.

God is jealous. He's jealous for his glory. He's jealous for my worship and for your worship. And in his gracious, loving, passionate jealousy, he sent his Son to bring us home, to make us his own, to forgive us and to cleanse us and to redeem us. I wonder if you would respond to that kindness and to that invitation even today.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths wrapping up our message, The Jealous God, part of our series Who Is Like Our God? And if you've missed any of the broadcasts in our series, come and listen online. That's encounterthetruth.org. Encounter the Truth does depend on your generosity to keep this program on the station. So thank you for giving to and supporting this ministry. As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book called Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel. Jonathan, I understand you appreciate this book so much, you've actually used this in your home church.

Jonathan Griffiths: Yeah, we've just finished working through this book as an elder study for our leaders within the church. We found it to be so rich and helpful. It was just good for our hearts and for our personal discipleship, because the call of this book is to live in a manner worthy of the gospel.

If we know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, we want to do that. And we need to be encouraged and helped and reminded to do that all the time. This rich but very accessible and pretty brief study is a tremendous encouragement in doing that very thing. We were helped by it and we were grateful for it ourselves.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to send you a copy of this book, Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel, as our way of saying thank you for your financial support. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or over the phone when you call 833-99-TRUTH. That's 833-998-7884. Again, the website is encounterthetruth.org.

You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, PO 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 Breda, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.