Names | Jealous - Exodus 34:14 | April 26

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So as Sandy mentioned and recapped a little for us, we've been talking about the names of God.

It's really cool that God reveals himself in scripture, not just through these

awesome stories, but also through these tangible descriptions of who he is.

And a lot of them aren't names.

Most of them are at least descriptions or attributes, maybe positions.

And last week, we talked about one that wasn't a name at all.

It is a name of God, but God's never called that name, a place is called God

will provide on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.

So it's a place that's called this name that we now have attributed to be a name of God.

This week, we're talking about a name that probably we wish wasn't a name,

or at least a lot of people, this is for a lot of people.

This is a name that we'd probably prefer God didn't call himself because it

causes some confusion and misunderstanding. It's not as easy like provider and

banner and shepherd and peace, the things that we can kind of rally behind.

But it is a name that if we look at last week, provider, God's not really called

it and it only shows up in one place.

This is a name that shows up too many times to be ignored.

So we can't just avoid it because it is uncomfortable.

I was telling Sandy this morning, as she was kind of struggling this week,

how do I teach this to the kids?

I was kind of like ambivalent this week to the realization that this might be difficult for people.

It seems like the harder a subject is to talk, the more unaware I am of the difficulty of it.

And I'm just like, yeah, like years and years ago, So I taught something and

Isaac was visiting, if y'all remember Isaac, and he was like,

you're so brave. I was like, what? Why am I brave?

And so all the things that are hard for people, I'm just like,

I don't think about. And this is one of those things.

And all the ones that I think about way too much are probably the ones that

aren't as difficult for people. But this is the name Jealous.

And like I said, it shows up many times in Exodus 34. It's kind of just going

to be our verse that shows up.

And you could probably either keep it on this one or keep it on that scripture

the whole time just to be a reminder, but this is where specifically God says,

you shall worship no other God, for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God.

A Lord whose very name is jealous is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.

And this is the heavy subject, the name, perhaps the name or attribute of God

that feels the most offensive to our modern ears, more than even his wrath, I would say.

Because at least with wrath, we understand, we want, as a people,

we want justice. So we understand wrath in some ways.

And we might not want God to be that way, but in an evil world, we want justice.

But jealousy, because all the weight and baggage we bring into it feels like

it is something that should be beneath God.

That it's something that shouldn't even come close to the way God describes himself.

This is a name that has caused so many people in their misunderstanding to walk

away from God. This is the name that.

Oprah Winfrey is kind of like not the, she's still really famous,

right? But she's not in the spotlight like she used to be.

But this is the name that, as she told people in interviews,

this is the name that caused her to walk away from traditional evangelical Christianity

back in the day when she was 27, 28.

She was sitting in a sermon and she talks about how the preacher,

spoke about the attributes of God. And he got to this phrase that the Lord,

that God is a jealous God and something within her that didn't sit right for her.

She paused and wondered, why is God jealous of me?

So it starts with this understanding, of course, but the fact that God is a

jealous God, but he's also a God of love.

How can these two things be together?

How can they coexist this together aren't in some ways the opposite, she might have thought.

And this is a question that resonates with lots of people. How can God be a jealous God?

How can he be love and jealous? Because we pour all of our modern understanding into that word, right?

We hear small, we hear petty, we hear insecure, we hear needy.

And of course, God is none of those things.

God is not needy. He is not insecure. So, there's this level of misunderstanding

that accompanies God's jealousy.

It also is directly offensive to our overarching North American Christianity.

Which could be described. Tim Keller uses these words.

He says, moralistic therapeutic deism, which is essentially deism is the idea

that there is a God, but God is kind of distant. He's not really involved in life.

And this moralistic therapeutic idea is that God is a God who exists to help,

that he is a God who generally wants us to be happy, and that he is a God who

remains mostly uninvolved in the daily routines of our life unless we call upon him.

So if I do my part, if I do good, then God is responsible for making me happy.

This is this moralistic therapeutic deism, which is rampant in our culture.

That God is around, but He's certainly not the center of my life.

But when I call Him, when I need Him, then He is responsible for doing good and bringing help.

And so this name Jealous.

It blows that whole paradigm apart. A jealous God cannot abide in this moralistic

therapeutic deism because a jealous God is not the name of a God who is detached.

It's not the name of a God who is uninterested.

A jealous God is not the name for this therapeutic God that generally just wants

you to be happy and is uninterested in the rest of it.

He is a God who, he says in that name.

I will not be peripheral in your life. I will not be treated as optional.

I will not share your worship with lesser loves, with other things, with idols.

And this is not some embarrassing characteristic flaw that God wants to hide or apologize for.

It shows up again and again, as plain as ever. It's not hidden away.

Scripture explicitly says over and over that He is a jealous God, whose name is jealous.

And even more times than that, God demonstrates his jealousy in the way that

he acts towards his people.

So this is not hidden in some strange remote corner of the Bible.

It appears in the very core moments. It appears in the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20.

Here in Exodus 34, it appears in the prophets, appears in Deuteronomy. I skipped that, happen.

It's in the New Testament. Paul even says to the Corinthians,

I think, I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy.

So Paul takes this idea, this name of God, who God reveals himself,

and he adapts it for himself and says, yes, all of these other times when I

mentioned jealousy in Galatians and whatnot, and your selfishness,

it's been a sin, but I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy.

Jealousy, like I said, is usually mentioned as a sin, but when it shows up for

God, there's something different about it.

Something different that makes godly jealousy not just okay,

not just approvable, but actually needed and righteous.

Our jealousy, when we experience jealousy as human beings, as in this fallen

and sinful world, we, what we're experiencing in a sense is selfishness.

It is fear, insecurity, comparison. It is kind of born out of this apprehension

for superiority, like somebody being superior to us or having something superior to us,

envious as we talked about with the kids, that we covet what is not ours.

But God is not jealous because he wants what belongs to someone else.

God is not jealous because of something that has been lost.

God is jealous not because he needs something as River so boldly shouted,

like God doesn't need anything from us.

I love those scriptures that where people just confess that true truth,

that God doesn't need me. God doesn't need anything.

God can't dwell in this house that we built him because he's too great for it.

I love these confessions, but it's true that God doesn't need anything from

us because everything belongs to him.

What he's doing in his jealousy is longing for what has already is his to be restored.

He's longing for what is his to be restored. So God, when Oprah thought, why is God jealous of me?

She completely missed the mark because God is not jealous of us. He is jealous for us.

That he idols. We're going to use this word idol a lot today.

And I will kind of explain it.

But in essence, God's jealous is jealous because idols steal from God what is

rightfully his. and also idols steal from you what God lovingly made you for.

So it steals from God what is his and it steals from us, from you, what God made you for.

And actually, because God made you for the only things that can truly make you

happy, the only thing that can truly bring you joy, idols steal that from us.

And that is why God is jealous.

Do we really want a God who is uninterested? Do you really want a God who is

aloof, who is unengaged, who is emotionally unavailable and distant?

I don't know, maybe you do, because then that would make justifying some parts

of our lives a little bit easier.

But would we want a spouse who doesn't care?

Would we want a father who shrugs and says, I don't care? I tell my kids way too often, I don't care.

Especially when they're not eating the food that we cooked for them.

And because they don't like it, my response is, I don't care that you don't like it.

I tell my kids way too much that I don't here, but we don't want a father who

is uncaring, at least in the moments that really matter.

I hope that I care in the moments that matter.

Who wants a God who watches you slowly, hands your heart to things that will

hollow you out and says nothing about it?

This isn't love, this is indifference.

I was hanging out with a college kid a few weeks ago, and we were talking about

God's love and also the idea of God's justice.

And I asked him, what would it look like if God was only love without justice?

And it sounds pretty good at the beginning, but then like you follow that down

the rabbit hole and God's love without justice leads to indifference for your actual life.

Because if he just is okay with anything, then he's really doesn't care what you do.

It's only tampered and melded with his justice that we get a love that cares so much for you.

This is the God of jealousy, the God who loves us too much to leave us the way

that we are. It's indifference if he didn't.

And indifference to me is more terrifying than jealousy.

I did, I don't know that we have time for it. I think a few of you,

especially the college kids would really love this.

But you guys remember that movie Taken with Liam Neeson?

I'll say it every single time. Any movie I mentioned here, probably I don't

recommend for you to watch.

But there is that scene where he calls the kidnappers who have taken his daughter.

And he has that famous dialogue that they even use to promote that film,

right? That I will find you.

It was funny. As I prepared it, I watched the end as well, the little clip at the end.

And when he meets them for the first time, they have no idea who he is.

He's standing around and he goes, I said I would find you.

It's a great full circle moment in that movie.

As I was thinking about God's jealousy, that scene came to mind because we might

think that that's anger. We might think that that's love.

We might think that that is whatever we might think it is, vengeance.

But I think at the heart of it, that's a godly jealousy that says,

I want what's best for my child. And I will do anything to make sure that you don't get in the of that.

And of course, not inside of that movie, but inside of God's jealousy is the

addition of that God is also not a commandment breaker and He wants what is

rightfully His, which is worship,

which is honor, which is the things that are only due Him in His name.

And it's not selfish for Him to desire those things. God does not break the

first commandment either.

So that was just a funny thing that came to mind as I was thinking about jealousy.

What is jealousy look like? A godly jealousy.

There's this guy who is an apologist. He goes around with his son and they argue for Jesus.

I don't know. He's really gracious about it. He's not mean, but something that

he has said when somebody asked him about God's jealousy, he said,

I hope that God is jealous.

Because jealousy in God is a selfless love that refuses surrender.

It refuses extinction. It refuses to let that love die.

It's the father's jealousy for his child's attention because he sees what's taking them away.

If your child is becoming very close with the drug dealer, your jealousy as

a parent is going to want them to get away from it. right?

It is the jealousy of a father.

It's a jealousy of a husband who is jealous for his covenant love.

It's the opposite in many ways of what normal human jealousy is.

Jealousy for us is a love that has already gone extinct. It's a love that has already been lost.

And so that what was once loved when we experienced jealousy turns into anger

and it turns into what harms other people because we want them to feel the loss

that we've experienced. That's our human jealousy.

It's experienced in so many different ways. But in a marriage relationship,

if your spouse values their parents more than they value you,

if they value their parents'

opinions more than they value your opinion, if your spouse goes away to work

and that's their real life apart from you, if you are so poured into your children

that that's where your heart lies,

that's where your priority is, that's where your joy is.

All of these good things that we turn into idols, if hanging out with our friends

becomes our real love apart from our spouse,

then that falls into a marriage that falls apart and results in a human jealousy

where the love has been lost.

Human jealousy that's emoted in the form of anger that pushes away.

But since God's jealousy is not insecurity because he is fully complete and

secure in who he is, it is, I'm going to say this, don't get caught up in this. It is an angered love.

God's love is an angered love. Of course he is angry about idols and about the

things that steal his heart and his heart breaks for his children.

So it is, it is an angered love because it's a passionate love. The word jealous.

Is the same word as the word zealous. Those are cognates or I don't know,

they're basically the same.

We get both of our words, jealous and zealous from the biblical word for jealousy.

It also has its simplest meaning. That word is something like red.

Kind of indicating this idea of passion.

So it is this passionate love, perhaps that's better for you to hear that way.

It is this passionate love that refuses to let the relationship go extinct.

It's fighting against extinction. And this is why when Paul writes, this is what he meant.

I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy.

And he says, afraid that your minds are being led astray from pure devotion to Christ.

It is an impassioned love that stays love and that refuses to let the relationship die.

Refuses extinction. This is where we stumble.

We think that God demanding worship sounds selfish, but suppose that God is

the only one worthy of worship.

Suppose that God alone has the right to tell us what to do.

Suppose that He alone knows what is best for us.

Suppose that we don't know what's best for ourselves and that we get it wrong a lot.

Suppose that He is the greatest good, the greatest joy, the all satisfying pleasure.

Suppose that we are dependent on Him for lasting joy, for lasting happiness, for lasting pleasure.

Suppose that if we turn away from him, we turn away from our greatest treasure,

our greatest joy, our greatest pleasure.

Psalm 16, love Psalm 16. At the end of it, it says that in your presence is

fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Psalm 37, it says, delight yourself in the Lord.

Delight yourself in the Lord that apart from Him, we can't find these things.

The problem is that people don't want to be told where to find their greatest pleasure.

We don't want to be told that. We want autonomy. We want self-defining moments.

And then so the way that we justify that our greatest delight right now isn't

God is that we take offense at his jealousy.

The way that we justify that we are not finding our greatest delight and our

greatest happiness in God in this moment is that we find a fault with his jealousy.

But God knows that false gods, these idols that we make, that someone once said

that our hearts, the human heart is an idol factory.

These idols that we constantly churn out for ourselves are always over-promising and under-delivering.

They're never fulfilling.

They give nothing back and they take everything. And this is why God is so blunt.

He never snuggles up to idols in the Bible.

He never is okay with sharing or making room for them. What he does is he smashes them.

And that's why, because God is a jealous God. And there's not a lot of resources

out there for the discussion of God's jealousy, as you might imagine.

There's certainly more now than there used to be in our current age and level of technology.

A really good one would be if you want to watch something else, Tim Keller.

Tim Keller talks about jealousy in a profound way, as he does about most things,

sometimes perhaps too smart for us.

But he talks about it as if you're going to encounter God's jealousy,

chances are people are going to use the metaphor of a marriage because that's

how God presents his own jealousy.

So he presents it in this idea of God's jealousy is about the relationship,

the marriage relationship of the groom, Jesus, and the bridegroom, us, the church.

And it takes the shape of priority, fidelity, and intimacy.

This is what God is jealous for.

Of course, jealousy in the Bible also shows up in this father-child metaphor,

this father-child relationship.

And so that is also worth investigating. We often want God to be a grandfather.

Any of you who are grandparents immediately know what that means.

Fill them up full of sugar and give them back.

No discipline, all any of that stuff. We make the word of fun,

and then we give them back to the parents, right?

We want God to be a grandfather and not a father.

We want God to, we certainly don't want God to be a husband God who says your heart belongs to me.

But that's exactly what this covenant is about. Purity, fidelity, and intimacy.

Purity is three quarters of the time that God is mentioned as a jealous God.

It is mentioned in the context of idolatry.

And idols are not just, as I mentioned, they're not just the bad things in our lives.

Idols, the ones we struggle with most, probably are really good things that

we have elevated to make God things.

Interestingly enough, I came across that parable that Jesus is telling about

the feast where the guy sends out invitations and then the time for the feast

comes and he goes and invites everybody who he is invited.

And I always focused on the fact that after they refuse, then the king or the

guy goes and sends his servants to just go collect everybody, right?

So it's this beautiful picture of the kingdom of God that I think I mentioned

even this last week or week before, that we get in because the king says we

can be there. It's a beautiful picture of the kingdom.

But I've missed the fact that all of the excuses the free people give are good things.

I just got married I can't come sorry I just

got a new cow or horse or whatever and I

got to plow my field sorry I can't come I just

I forget what the other one is no that's a different part that's a different

one that's not a good thing I forget what it is but they're all good they're

all good things that people are too distracted by to to go and find their way into the celebration,

It's always the good things.

Of course, there's a lot of bad things that we make idols as well,

but these good gifts that become rival gods and suddenly the functional title

of our heart no longer belongs to the one who alone is worthy of it.

This is what we make idols. Our real joy, whatever our real joy is,

whatever you make your real heart, whatever your real purity is,

whatever you prioritize in your life.

That takes a place above God is an idol.

And what it is, is we're slowly in those moments, placing ourselves in the arms of another lover.

This is this idea of purity, God and God alone, a wife to her husband,

a husband to his wife. We'll get to that in just a second.

This idea of God's jealousy in the sense of fidelity, that God says,

love me and keep my commandments.

That this idea that what you want right now, if it's not God,

is not going to necessarily make you happy, even though we believe it will.

The truth of scripture that we are presented with is that your happiness lies.

On the other side of your holiness.

That your true happiness lies as you become holy.

And that's why God tells us, you shall be holy as I am holy.

It's because it's for your good and it's for your happiness that God wants this

because all true happiness is on the other side of holiness.

C.S. Lewis said it this way, what we would hear and now call our happiness is

not the end that God chiefly has in view.

But when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be

happy in a far deeper and more exquisite fashion than we can now conceive.

That what we now call happiness on this earth is too small of a definition of

what happiness truly is.

That this idea of moralistic, therapeutic deism, where we want God to make us

happy and give us what we want, to be comfortable on our own terms.

This is not God's chief aim for us.

His chief aim is to make you the kind of person who can fully receive and fully reflect divine love.

This is what Lewis is getting at. That our true happiness and God's plan for

us is found as we become the person who he wants us to be who can fully receive

his love and who can fully reflect it into the people around us.

God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself.

God cannot give us happiness or peace apart from himself because it's not there.

There's no such thing as that.

And elsewhere, Lewis would write that God is not content to leave us as we are

because love is not kind enough to remain indifferent to what destroys us.

That God will make the feeblest and filthy of us into a dazzling and radiant

immortal creature if we let him.

And that process might be long and that process might be full of pain,

but God is like an artist who loves his work too much to leave it unfinished.

And his jealous love for us It's turning us, it's turning you into the person

who is wise, holy, and yes, ultimately happy.

This is God's pure and faithful love.

Also, His jealous love is about intimacy.

Before God says, I'm a jealous God, Exodus 20 and these other passages,

the first thing He says is, I am the Lord your God. He says, I am yours.

He says, I'm giving myself to you. And then he says, give yourself to me.

Like I mentioned, as we prayed this morning, everything we do or have is in

response to what God has already done.

God said, I am yours. I'm giving myself to you. Give yourself to me.

James says that he longs jealously.

He yearns jealously over the spirit he's made to dwell in us.

This is this intimate personal covenant language that,

this language that shows up that when we commit spiritual idolatry, we break God's heart.

And it's hard to imagine that. And it's hard to say it in another way.

There's this Psalm that talks about how God suffers indignation every day.

And we can interpret it as him being angry at the evils in this world in the

ways that we as people act unrighteously to others and cause pain.

And I think just as validly, we could say that this indignation that God feels

is this hurt of the results of evil,

not that diminishes God or weakens God in any sort of way, but in such a way

that God is genuinely moved.

Jesus says that he has moved to compassion, that he's not just being descriptive.

We make ourselves idols when we place other things in that position,

that there is this indignation that God suffers.

In Hosea, in this picture, this book that is a picture of God's covenant love

that we keep breaking, that his people keep breaking.

There's this passage in chapter 11, where he says, how can I give up on you?

Oh, Ephraim, which is another name for Israel. How can I hand you over?

Oh, Israel. How can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zeboim?

My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender.

This is the picture we see as Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and all that's going

to happen that he alone knows.

This is his wrath and his holiness and his love all wrapped up and held together at once.

It culminates in the picture of the cross because our jealous love leads to anger that causes hurt.

And God's jealous love leads to the cross.

It leads to him not only saying, I am yours, I give myself to you.

It leads to him demonstrating it as he absorbs that betrayal,

as he absorbs that spiritual idolatry,

as he absorbs that adultery, as he lays the debt on himself to preserve relationship,

to refuse to let love die.

Charles Spurgeon said, did he not choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another.

Did he not buy you with his blood? He could not endure that you should think you are your own.

He loves you so much that he cannot endure that anything should come between

your heart's love in Him.

This is godly, holy jealousy.

So why is God jealous?

Perhaps the wrong question. Perhaps the right question is, why are we not jealous?

Why are you not? And why would we want him to be anything less?

God is jealous for his deity. He's jealous that God remains God in your heart.

He's jealous for his sovereignty, that he would be Lord, not in just theory

and not as we show up and sing songs, but in truth, in reality,

in authority, as we see in the Bible, Pharaoh in the Old Testament, right?

His response to Moses is, who is the Lord that I should listen to him?

And then God just proves to him chapter after chapter who he is.

God is jealous for his lordship, his sovereignty. God is jealous for his glory,

that he alone is worthy of worship, that he alone is holy, that he alone is

ultimate, and that we shouldn't suffer or settle for lesser things.

And so God, because he is jealous for himself, he is jealous for his people, for his children.

He's jealous for you, that your trust.

Be in Him that you wouldn't trust in another. God is jealous for your trust.

He's jealous for your company, that your eyes would be on your husband only,

and that your heart would be His.

In this covenant language, I am yours, be mine.

This is God's jealous love. And this is where jealousy becomes beautiful because

God's jealousy is for your good.

It is for your freedom and it for your joy.

He knows what happens when we worship false gods, when we don't give ourselves,

fully to him with all of our hearts and all of our minds and all of our strength.

He knows the idols, what the idols take away from you. He knows what sin chains you to.

He knows how lesser loves hollow you out.

So his jealousy is for your flourishing as well, for your freedom,

for your fullest joy in His presence.

He is jealous because He loves you too much to watch you be ruled by what will destroy you.

Are you jealous for God's glory?

Is the God you serve worth shouting about, worth singing about,

worth praising, worth worshiping, worth bowing before? Are you jealous?

Is he worth losing everything for? Worth dying for?

If the answer to any of those questions is no for you, then the God that you serve is not God at all.

Why are we quiet?

Has God changed over the years? Is he any less worthy and deserving of worship today?

Is he less jealous for his own glory? Is he less jealous for the spirit that

he has made to dwell in Is he less jealous for his lost children that they should find their way home?

The answer is no, why are we not jealous for him?

Why are we not jealous for others to know this loving God?

Why is God jealous is the wrong question. It's why are we not jealous?