And you're looking at the side that's in bold type, the Lord whose name is jealousy. And we'll be looking at the outline beginning, a definition of God's jealousy. If you're on the other side, it says adult Sunday school class. And the bad news is you're too late for that. We've been there. We've done that. And we were victorious and had a wonderful time in adult Sunday school class this morning talking about this whole issue of God's jealousy. Let me lead us in prayer. We'll be looking at a number of scriptures today, and I invite you to follow us as I do that this morning. Let's pray together, shall we? Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that there's a reason to be concerned about missions. There's a reason to be concerned about the lostness of people, whether they are overseas or whether they're next door. Lord, we thank you that your word tells us many things about your character. And this morning, Father, we want to focus on the clear, biblical teaching that you are a jealous God. Father, forgive us when we don't contemplate how important it is to you that we are completely loyal to you and that we give you our exclusive love. Lord, guide us and direct us this morning. Give us insight. Give us wisdom as we think about this important subject. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. My message this morning is entitled The Lord, Whose Name Is Jealous? And I have a question mark there, because for many of us, we consider or might consider jealousy only an evil thing. For those of you who are a little older, you'll remember the comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who was always saying, I never get any respect. He was known to grab a tie and talk about how he'd never get any respect. He said this on one occasion. He said, my wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was. Some people look at jealousy that way. One writer said, jealousy is the jaundice of the soul. The jaundice of the soul. And another writer said, jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive. This morning we're going to talk about the fact that God is a jealous God. And part of our difficulty, as we noticed in Sunday school this morning, is that the Bible seems to indicate in a number of passages that jealousy is a bad thing. For example, you might want to make note on your handout there, Galatians chapter five and verse twenty. We read this beginning at verse nineteen. Galatians five nineteen. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension, factions, and envy, drunkenness, drunkenness, orgies, and the like, I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. We find jealousy listed as one of the acts of the sinful nature, and yet we are told that the Lord our God, one of His names is jealous. How do we reconcile the two? Well, one other verse let me toss into your consideration before I try to solve that particular problem is from the Apostle Paul as well in Second Corinthians chapter eleven and verse two. Second Corinthians chapter eleven verse two, Paul says, I am jealous for you Corinthians with a godly jealousy. Second Corinthians eleven two. There's your answer right there. Just as we saw last time that there is a righteous kind of anger or wrath and an unrighteous kind of anger or wrath. So there is a righteous and godly kind of jealousy as well as an ungodly and unrighteous kind of jealousy. The context determines whether the jealousy being experienced, felt, communicated is righteous or unrighteous. One commentator said this, married persons who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover would surely be lacking in moral perception, for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage. We believe the Bible teaches that marriage is a gift of God, and that it's a lifelong relationship intended by God for one man and one woman to live in what we call holy matrimony. It is a context in which there should be fidelity and loyalty and commitment. In the last couple of days, I've talked to several young couples that are going through marital difficulties. It's a sad thing. One happens to be an unsaved couple. They don't know Jesus Christ as their savior. They got married too young. They have a six-month-old baby, and they're on the verge of divorce. Break your heart. Break your heart. And I was talking to the husband. They're not divorced yet, but I was talking to the husband. And his sister, who is a believer and knows me, introduced him to me and said, if you ever want to talk about this, here's a friend of mine who's kind of like a pastor. I don't mind being called that. Kind of like a pastor. And I can listen and seek to encourage. A few days ago, I talked to one of our seminary students. Lest you think that seminary students, or seminary professors for that matter, are fully glorified with no more sin, you're wrong. We struggle with things, too. And this particular seminary student has been married three months, and he's ready to bail out. It's rare. Rare that that happens. to those who pursue full-time ministry, but it does happen. And as I talked to this young fellow, it became very apparent to me that he entered into that marriage with a whole lot of baggage, a lot of personal problems, maybe severe depression, maybe a number of other things. And I was pleading with him to go and get some professional counseling to rescue his marriage. The nature of marriage is its exclusiveness, its exclusivity. Jealousy at the intrusion of a lover into that exclusive relationship is a reasonable thing. It's not reasonable, of course, if it leads to murder, but it's a reasonable expression. It's a reasonable feeling or sense. Paul could say in Galatians five, that one of the acts of the sinful nature is that ungodly kind of jealousy, but he could also say in Second Corinthians eleven, to you, Corinthians, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. Let's begin this morning by looking at Roman number one, a definition of God's jealousy, a definition of God's jealousy. Here I have found some tremendous help from two particular writers. One is John Stott in a book called Christian Basics, and another is by J.I. Packer in his very memorable book, and highly recommended book, Knowing God. If you've not read Packer's book, Knowing God, You're in company with a lot of other Christians who've not read Packer's book, Knowing God. But it's a fantastic book. If you want to get into the doctrine, the study of who God is, Packer's book, Knowing God, is a bestseller. The interesting thing about his book is there are some places where it's tough going. Because he really gets you into the meat of the word. And he talks about the attributes of God, the characteristics of God, such as God's holiness, God's love, God's grace, God's wrath, God's jealousy. God's uniqueness. I've met a lot of Christians who started knowing God, and they've never finished the book, because you have to really dive into it. It's a heavy study, but well worthwhile. In Scott's book, Christian Basics, he says this. He says, in the second commandment, God goes on to describe himself as a jealous God. It's not, says there's no need to be disturbed by this. Jealousy, jot it down, is a resentment of rivals. And whether it is good or evil depends on whether the rival has any right to be there. Since God is unique and there is no other, he has the right to ask that we worship him alone. We worship Him alone. It is a resentment of rivals. So one definition of godly jealousy is a resentment of rivals. God will not tolerate any competition for His love. He is perfect and He is holy and He deserves our full attention. Briefly, in Sunday school class, we looked at John chapter six this morning, where Jesus sees many departing from him and forsaking him, and he turns to the twelve in John six and says, Are you going to leave me too? And good old Simon Peter, a man who felt that whenever there was a question asked of the disciples, it meant that it was a question being asked of him. He spoke up and he said, Lord, where can we go? There are no rivals. There are no competing rabbis. We have nowhere else to go. You are the one with the words of eternal life. God's jealousy means he resents rivals and he has the right, the authority to ask that we worship Him alone. In Packer's book, he says something very interesting. We'll be looking at a lot of verses in just a minute. This is more by way of introduction. But in Packer's book, he says this. He says, by his name jealous, God meant that he demands from those whom he has loved and redeemed utter and absolute loyalty and will vindicate his claim by stern action against them if they betray his love by unfaithfulness. God himself. calls himself jealous. He says that one of his names. We have a lot of ways of praying in our churches, and it's probably good that we have a lot of variety in the way that we pray. Sometimes we get mixed up. I heard one teenager who was asked to pray in a church service stand up and say, Dear Lord, we thank you that we were able to die for your sins on the cross. That's not what he meant. He got the subject and the object mixed up, don't you think? but there are times when Christians will say, Father, we thank you that you died on the cross, and it wasn't the Father who died, it was the Son. We do a lot of strange things. But can you imagine somebody standing up in church, maybe a church like this, and beginning the prayer this way, dear, jealous, wouldn't that be weird? We call God's Father, we call him Lord, we call him Savior, we might call him Abba Father, but one of his names, Exodus thirty-four, verse fourteen says one of his names is jealous we'll see that more specifically in just a moment but Exodus thirty four in verse fourteen do not worship any other God for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God would that be strange to hear that somebody stand up and say dear jealous we're glad we can meet in your name today and then we go through our list of petitions and then Then the prayer is closed by in jealousness' name. Amen. Wouldn't that sound strange to our ears? What is one of his names? He demands an exclusive relationship from us. Packer says God's jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as literally praiseworthy zeal to preserve something. supremely precious. Do you see your relationship to Jesus Christ in that light? That your relationship to Jesus Christ, if you trust in him as Savior, is so important that God will pull out all the stuff to preserve that relationship. He is jealous over you. His name is jealous. As we noticed a few weeks ago, there is godly wrath and there's ungodly wrath. There is godly jealousy and there is ungodly jealousy. God can only experience godly jealousy. He is jealous over us and for us in all that he is as God. So in terms of a definition of God, jealousy involves a number of things, a resentment of rivals, God demanding utter and absolute loyalty. God's praiseworthy zeal to protect something supremely precious. You've got to think with me this morning, okay? Because most of the times when we hear the word jealous or jealousy, we think of people who are envious of others. We think of people who are not happy for the success and the advancement and the progress of others. We think of our petty grievances and differences with other human beings, and we call that jealous. Now there's a godly kind of jealousy, a desire and effort and all-out commitment to preserving a precious exclusive relationship. If God is all that the Bible describes him to be, then friends, he can be nothing other than jealous. That is wanting to protect that relationship that we have with him. That leads to my second issue, how can jealousy be an attribute of God? I've answered a little bit, but you need to fill in a couple of blanks here. First of all, jealousy, as I mentioned earlier, is one of God's names. Jealousy is one of God's names. It is how he describes himself in the book of Exodus, where we have the Lord giving us the Ten Commandments. In Exodus chapter twenty in verse five, we read this. you shall not bow down to any other to any idol you shall not bow down to them or worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God Exodus chapter twenty and verse five Exodus thirty four in verse fourteen I read earlier where God says do not worship any other God this is when he has to make the two new stone tablets Do not worship any other God, for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God. I showed a videotape to my theology class the other day at Columbia Biblical Seminary. It was a program I taped a number of years ago. I may have told you about it. It was an Oprah Winfrey show. You say the theologians watch Oprah Winfrey only when they have to. But it was a show where she had some of the top angel writers on her programs. of people have written books about angels and about near-death experiences. And it was just a whole collection of people talking about out-of-body experiences and discovering their guardian angel, learning how to hug your guardian angel and how everybody is in the light and how we are all just, we're all, everybody's on different paths up to the same mountain peak and we're all going to make it. And after you heard about a half an hour of this, you start getting kind of ill as a Christian and you're wishing that in the audience there would be a born-again believer who would object. And at that moment, a middle-aged lady stands up and says, wait a minute, Oprah, you people are believing this because you want to believe it, but that doesn't make it true. She's seeing Oprah start to turn various shades of red. This lady turned out to be a born-again Christian. And she said, what about Jesus? It's an amazing show. What about Jesus? In that program, at the beginning of it, Oprah talks about her own spiritual journey. She hates the fact she's accused of being new age, but she really is. And she shows it a number of ways, even though she doesn't necessarily have crystals in her home or whatever, but in her thinking, she's new age in her thoughts. And there's a point at which she says this. She says, I was raised Baptist, honey. And being raised Baptist, I was taught the Lord thy God is a jealous God. No percent. Why? Why is God a jealous God? In other words, she was reacting to that, saying that's been such a petty thing. Why would God be jealous? She's missed the point. She's missed the point. Why is God jealous? Because he and he alone deserves our worship. And everything happening on the show around her with attention being given to other gods. Really, you can get right down to this. Part of her thinking was that all of this spiritual stuff is good. Religion is bad. Spirituality is good. So all these people finding themselves and learning to meditate, learning to contact their guardian angels, learning to be close to God and learning to choose the right thing rather than the wrong thing. All of those, she says, are different paths up to the same mountain. No, she's wrong. She's wrong. Biblical Christianity teaches that Jesus and Jesus alone is the way to know the Father. And so when God says, I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, it means something. And she completely missed it. Jealousy is one of God's own names. He describes himself as jealous. Notice letter B. God's jealousy may be aroused. God's jealousy may be aroused. Now, I'm going to have you turn to a passage in a minute. Don't turn right now. Trust me to read these verses to you carefully because we will be looking at Psalm seventy-eight in just a moment. But verse fifty-six of Psalm seventy-eight. God says they angered him with their high places. They aroused his jealousy with their idols. God's jealousy may be aroused. The same idea comes out in Zechariah eight two. Notice thirdly, his jealousy is connected with his. Any guesses? Anger. His jealousy is connected with his anger. Psalm seventy nine, verse five. How long, O Lord, will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire? And I'll leave those other verses for you to look up. Psalm seventy eight, verse fifty seems to equate God's anger and his jealousy. How can jealousy be an attribute of God? The bottom line is, if he is truly God, he deserves our exclusive worship. And it not only hurts him, but it hurts us when we worship other gods. when we turn away from worshiping the only God there is. Let's talk about Roman number three. What provokes God's jealousy? Now I invite you to turn to Psalm seventy eight. What provokes God's jealousy? If you've been tracking with me this morning, what am I saying? I'm saying one of the attributes of God is that He is a jealous God, but He is jealous in the best possible sense. It is not that He resents Our successes, it is that God Himself is a God who demands exclusive worship. What provokes God's jealousy? Notice verses fifty-six through fifty-eight. Psalm seventy-eight verse fifty-six. But they put God to the test and rebelled against the Most High. They did not keep His statutes like their fathers. They were disloyal and faithless. as unreliable as a faulty bow. They angered him with their high places. They aroused his jealousy with their idols. You're saying to yourself, boy, am I glad I came to church today. I feel like I'm getting a lecture. Well, let's listen to God's word. By nature, we're prone to turning away from God, not toward him. And even as Christians, we struggle to give our exclusive love to God. There are seven issues here that provoke God's jealousy. Jotten down, would you? Number one, putting God to the test. Putting God to the test. That's what Israel's fathers did. They put God to the test. What does that mean? It means not believing God's words. It means testing God. It means not taking what God has said as valid, putting God to the test. Notice secondly, what provokes God's jealousy. We're told in verse fifty-six, rebellion. Rebellion. Rebellion puts God to the test. Rebellion provokes God's jealousy. So one of my favorite movies, The Hunt for Red October, some of us who enjoy military movies, That's about a nuclear submarine. Sean Connery is one of the actors in The Hunt for Red October, the primary character. And in that, his character says this. A little revolution now and then is a healthy thing, don't you think? Well, in some context, that's true. But a little revolution, a little rebellion in the Christian against God is not a healthy thing. Rebellion provokes God's jealousy. I understand that there was... a speech being given before a U.S. woman's club by a Latin American diplomat. This diplomat was describing his country, and he said this, he said, our most popular sport is bullfighting. One of the women attending the speech was upset at the thought of so bloody a spectacle, and she asked, but isn't it revolting? No, said the diplomat, smiling. That's our second most popular sport. By nature, we rebel against God. Rebellion. Rebellion. Provokes God's jealousy. A third item that provokes God's jealousy, according to Psalm seventy-eight, is not keeping his statutes. Not keeping his statutes. Not doing what he wants us to do. Not being obedient to God. There is a myth that circulates in Christian circles. that says the law was for the Old Testament, grace is for the New Testament, we are under grace, therefore we've got no obligation to be obedient to God. That's not true. It's the idea that law was in the Old Testament, grace was... Hey, there's a lot of grace in the Old Testament. Have you noticed? And there's a lot of law in the New Testament. Jesus says, if you love me, you'll go to church every... No, he doesn't say that. He says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. We are an obedient people. When we don't keep His statutes, we provoke His jealousy. Still with me? Yes? Number four, we provoke God's jealousy by putting Him to the test, by rebelling, by not keeping His statutes. Fourthly, by being disloyal. By being disloyal. It's right there in the verse. Notice, verse fifty-seven, like their fathers, they were disloyal. Carl Henry, who's a wonderful theologian, wrote a book called Twilight of a Great Civilization. And he said this, he said, there is a tension between those who are prisoners of modern times and those who have freed themselves from these times and will emerge and be seen by future generations of men and women of character and virtue. Henry writes, the real heroes of our time are those who in a faithless age, hold, live, and share their faith in God. Genuine revolutionary courage belongs to those who remain true to God, even if atheistic rulers force them underground or punished citizens simply for being Christians. The true immortality rights will be those who seek to apply the principles of the Bible concretely to the complicated realities of modern life who preserve a devout and virtuous family life who are faithful to the abiding values of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In our country, we're very fortunate to have leaders, some of whom claim to be born again believers. That's great. What a privilege. Friends, it may not always be that way. And we need to pray for the leaders that are over us. But what if we lived in a circumstance in which our leaders were not committed to Jesus Christ? Would we still be loyal to the truth of God? Would we be faithful? By the way, that's a fifth way in which we provoke God's jealousy. Notice, please, in verse fifty seven, they were disloyal and faithless, disloyal and faithless, not keeping the faith, not being true to the truth of God, being faithless. Number six, being unreliable. Can God count on you? Say what? Can God count on you? Can God depend on you? Can he put you in a circumstance where as a believer you need to speak up for Christ or as a believer you need to choose to do the right thing instead of choosing to do the wrong thing? Can he count on you? Do you prove yourself faithful or faceless? Are you reliable? I got to tell you a quick story because I know it's probably true of you as well. In our home each week we get about, oh, maybe five to ten. phone calls from telemarketers. Anybody else get telemarketer phone calls? Aren't those wonderful people? If we had the time, I'd ask you how you deal with those folks. Chances are you've usually dealt with them the same way the Dixon's have. You either hang up on them or you say, you're a telemarketer, aren't you? And basically you try to make them feel guilty about their very existence, that they breathe the same air you do and hang up on them. Or maybe you're nice or maybe you're a real patsy and everybody who calls you get the donation and you buy whatever they're selling. In which case you're not going to have money very long. We got about our umpteenth telemarketer phone call the other day, and I recall not being particularly nice to this person and basically said, whatever you're telling, I'm not interested. And I hung up. God spoke to me. Don't you hate it when God spoke to me? He didn't speak to me in an audible voice, but he impressed me. He impressed her in my spirit, something very straightforward. It's this. They're calling me. they're calling me. Why don't I tell them something about Christ? Now, I don't have this perfected yet, so I'm not holding myself up as a model except to say, you might want to consider making the same following promise that I made to God. I'm going to tell you what that promise is. And I expect you as a congregation to hold me to it. How's that? Okay? Whenever you see me, you ask me if I've been keeping my promise. Because one of the ways that we provoke God's jealousy is by not keeping our promise. And most of us, the way we get around that is, can you guess? We don't make promises. So we don't break them, okay? But I believe part of the Christian life is making promises to God. To say, God, I'm not going to do that the same way next time. I'm going to do it differently. So I promised the Lord. I said, Lord, from this day forth and forevermore, if you give me the strength, anytime a telemarketer calls me, I'm going to tell them I've made a promise to you, and I'm going to tell them that that promise is. So when you know it, about an hour later, This lady calls up. My name is Heather. Heather was going to offer me a stupendous way to save money on anything I ever buy for the rest of my life. I said this. Now, you can't say this exactly unless two of you. I said, Heather, I've been a telemarketer. You've got a tough job. Try to simplify it. I said, you've got a tough job. I said, I'm not interested in your product. But I said, Heather, I made a promise to God the other day. Can I tell you what it is? How many hear that, right? She said, Heather, yeah, exactly. I mean, what is? I said, Heather, I promise the Lord that anybody who calls me and trying to tell me something, I'm going to tell them about the Lord Jesus Christ. I said, you know, you can know the Lord yourself and know that you're going to go to heaven. She quickly responded. She said, oh, I belong to Alcoholics Anonymous. I wouldn't survive if it were not for God. And I said, great. I'm glad. I'm glad you're getting help at AA. Now, what would you have done next to the Christmas? I hope you would have brought the discussion to Jesus. That's the key thing. A person gave me a member of AA and never, ever drink again, and she'll be lost. So I brought her around to Jesus, and I did this very quickly, I said, you know, but Heather, in order to get to heaven, in order to be right with God, there's only one way, and His name is Jesus Christ. She said, oh, I thank Jesus every day for just keeping me alive. I could see the conversation wasn't going to go the direction I wanted, and within a couple of minutes, we parted coming. But, You know what? I felt kind of good. Because I kept my promise. I kept my promise. I had another telemarketer call me the day. I had to do the same thing. This was a fellow asking for money for some muscular dystrophy society, and I'd given before until I said I would. He was overwhelmed, not only that I agreed to donate, but that I was kind to him. I said, I said, you probably get a lot of rough people talking to you. I said, oh, you just wouldn't believe it. I didn't tell him that I used to work at a telemarketer. And I said, you know, now that I've, you know, you've accomplished what you want to. Can I tell you about a promise I made to God? And I went through the whole thing with Him too. Now, some of you are pretty smart. You might have a better way to do this. And before the Lord, my motive is not to put them down. It's not even necessary to get them to hang up. Before the Lord, I want my motive to do. Lord, help me to be faithful. Help me to be faithful. Help me to say something about you. that will not push them further away from you, but will assist him in thinking about spiritual things. And I challenge you to think about making that same kind of promise or change your phone number or something different. What provokes God's jealousy, putting God to the test, rebelling, not keeping a statute, being disloyal, being faithless, being unreliable? That's why I told you that story. Because I'm going to do my very best that God can count on me when that phone rings. So I'm going to keep my promise. Laugh, angering him by idolatry. Number seven, angering him by idolatry. And a number of verses talk about not falling into idolatry. Charles Swindahl says this. He says it's easy to get attached to idols, good things inappropriately adored. But when you have Jesus in the center of a room, everything else only junks up the decor. That's the way idolatry is. They're exceptionally poor substitutes. for the living and true God. Well, what have we been saying this morning? We've been saying that God describes himself as a jealous God. We've been saying that we should be concerned about not provoking God's jealousy. Notice lastly, what should our response be? Two quick points. Number one, we are to be jealous for God himself. We are to be jealous for God himself. We ought to be marked by a godly zeal. And secondly, we are to be jealous for God's people. We are to be jealous for God's people. Remember Paul said to the Corinthians, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. That's how I ought to be. That's how you ought to be. By the way, there's a real connection between the word jealous and the word zealous, and not just as they sound alike, but jealousy and zeal are very close. as ideas. And I want to conclude my message with sharing the following from a particular writer who said this. He said, a zealous man in religion is preeminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thoroughgoing, wholehearted, fervent, and spirit. He only sees one thing. He cares for one thing. He lives for one thing. He is swallowed up by one thing, and that one thing is to please God. Whether he lives or whether he dies, whether he has health or whether he has sickness, whether he is rich or whether he is poor, whether he pleases man or whether he gives offense, whether he has thought wise or whether he has thought foolish, whether he gets blame or whether he gets praise, whether he gets honor or whether he gets shame. For all this the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing, and that one thing is to please God and to advance his glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it. He is content. He feels that like a lamp he has made to burn. And if he is consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. such a one will always find a fear for his deal. If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry and sigh and pray. If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and her on the hill. If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter and the work is done. This is what I mean. when I speak of zeal in religion. Let's sing one verse, shall we, of a closing hymn that has been selected for us, and we want to sing hymn number five-oh-one. Just one verse of number five-oh-one. Would you stand, please? Yield not the temptation for yielding his sin. His victory will help you, some other to win. Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdued. Look ever to Jesus. He'll carry you through. Ask the Savior to help you. Come for strength and keep you. He is willing to aid you. He will carry you through. Father, we thank you for the promises of the Word of God that you will carry us through. Lord, may we be found faithful. May we become men and women of zeal who are jealous for you and jealous for the people of God. May we be reminded of the exclusivity of our relationship with you. May we have no other gods before you. Lord, help us today and help us this week to demonstrate to a lost and dying world that the Lord our God is a jealous Lord. Dismiss us now with your blessing. We pray in Jesus' name.