TEXT: Exodus 20:1-6

SUBJECT: The Jealousy of God

My talk today is on The Jealousy of God. If you’re surprised by the word I chose—or don’t like it—you’re not the first person to feel this way. In his great book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer writes,

Along the same lines, the late Richard Straus said in a sermon,

We’ve all known jealous people, and if most deny the feeling, some will admit and defend it, but no one admires it or says the world would be a better place if we had more of it! We all agree that jealousy is a bad thing: a weakness at best, but, more often than not, jealousy is a sin.

You would think, therefore, the Lord would be no more subject to jealousy than He would be to deceit--and, you remember the verse—God cannot lie.

But here it is in black and white—

You would expect this from the devil, for he is a liar from the beginning, and the father of lies. Or even good men might say such a thing, because even the best people have their blind spots. But, if you simply read Exodus 20:6, and glance at the verses around it, you’ll see it not a malicious liar who calls the Lord jealous, or even a well-meaning, if mistaken, friend. It is the Lord Himself who says so!

This creates quite a problem for us. On one hand, we want to affirm the goodness of the Lord, and on the other, we have to be honest with the text of the Bible—and not explain things away. There are two ways of doing this (that I thought of):

In the first place, we can say the Lord is mistaken about Himself. Perhaps wanting to identify with weak sinners, He also identified with their weakness and sin. This view, while it solves one problem, creates a great many more—and far more serious ones at that. If there are holes in God’s knowledge of Himself, there may be holes in His knowledge of other things too, and this undermines our faith in Him. Whatever the Open Theists say to the contrary, the Bible teaches and the Church has always affirmed God’s total knowledge of all things—including Himself. Paul says—

Suppose I’m sitting on the front pew at 10:55 with an anxious look on my face. You take it to mean, ‘He’s thinking about the awesome responsibility of preaching the Word of God’. But, in fact, I’m wondering if anyone noticed I split my pants! You don’t know what’s inside of me, but I do. And, in a much higher sense, the Lord knows what’s inside of Him!

If the Lord says He is a jealous God, that’s what He is.

A second possibility to explain away the verse is to say either our translators got the word wrong—that the Hebrew word, ‘jealous’ really means ‘merciful’ or something; or that the word ‘jealous’ has taken on a different meaning with time. This is a better and more reverent way of looking at it. But it’s not true!

To the best of my knowledge, no scholar has denied the word, ‘jealous’ or found a manuscript that said otherwise. As for words changing with time—of course they do. But not this one: for the same word is used several times in Numbers 5 to describe the man who suspects his wife of infidelity; v.14, for example, says—

In summary: the Lord is a jealous God, and His jealousy is somewhat like the jealousy a man feels for his wife.

If you’re not entirely comfortable ascribing jealousy to God, I’ve got to make things worse before I make them better. Jealousy is not a minor trait in the Lord, but at the heart of who He is.

First of all, God has no minor traits, for all of His qualities are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. He is not big on love, let’s say, and small on holiness; or really merciful and somewhat jealous. He is every bit as holy as He is loving—and, more to the point—as jealous as He is merciful! This is what Christian Theology has always taught.

But, as useful as theology is, it is not infallible. The Church has always seen through a glass darkly, and never known more than in part and prophesied in part.

The Word of God, however, is not the darkness in which we stumble to know Him, but is the light in which we see Him, not perfectly, but truly, see the Lord. The Psalm says—

Where does the Bible place God’s jealousy? Exodus 34:14 leaves no doubt—

The Name of God is a label, but not merely label, in which one will do as well as another. If I named my son, Robert, I could have named him, William, and it would have made little or no difference. But, ‘Robert’ and ‘William’ won’t do for God, for He is not a ‘Robert’ or a ‘William’! But the name Jealous fits Him very well because—as the verse puts it—He is a jealous God!

To support this, remember where our text is--and what this means. Exodus 20:6 is part of the Ten Commandments, which is the centerpiece and the symbol of God’s Covenant with Israel. Two copies were made—one to be kept by the people, read often, and meditated upon. The other copy went to God Himself, and placed in the Ark of the Covenant.

In the center of this central document, the Lord reveals Himself as—

The jealousy of God, therefore, is not tucked away in some obscure place; it’s not in a line regulating discolored skin blotches. It’s at the heart of the Old Covenant.

But what about now? Is the Lord still a jealous God? Or has He changed with time? Or, if He hasn’t changed, have circumstances been altered in such as way as to allow Him to either drop or minimize the quality He once made so much of?

This is a fair question. Of course the Lord hasn’t changed, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8--

But what about us? In Galatians 3, Paul compares and contrasts the People of God under the Old Covenant and today. Both are children of God and dearly loved. But Israel was under age and so put under the rule of a tutor. After the coming of our Lord and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit, however, the Church has come of age, and no longer subject to the details of the Mosaic Law.

Perhaps, therefore, the Lord no longer needs to be jealous, and so He isn’t. The problem with this view is that the New Testament says otherwise. In I Corinthians 10:22, Paul says—

The implied answer is: yes we do. How? In the same way Israel did way back when: by honoring the Lord one day and other gods the next. By coming to the Lord’s Supper on Sunday and pagan parties on Monday, they were cheating on the Lord, like a wife who has another man on the side.

Jealousy, therefore, was not a mask He wore to scare Israel into steering clear of the local gods, but is a permanent attribute of God. As long as the Lord is God, He will be

This is a good thing. For His jealousy—unlike ours—is not mixed up with weakness or sin. What we call ‘jealousy’ is mostly something else: insecurity, selfishness, suspicion, and a ‘power trip’.

The Lord’s jealousy, however, has none of these impurities. Yes, He’s possessive; yes He wants us for Himself; He wants us all and always. But here is where Divine jealousy differs from human:

1. He is worthy of it.
2. We will never be happy until we give it to Him.

The man who demands every second of his wife’s time and every drop of her energy and attention is not worthy of them! Wanting to be her God, he becomes her idol, and the word, ‘idol’ means an empty thing. But the Lord is no idol, and He has every right to demand our whole lives.

When we give our lives to Him, we don’t lose them, we find them.

To say The Lord is a jealous God, therefore, is another way of saying God is love. How can He not want us for Himself when our highest happiness is found in Him?

Yes, the Lord our God is a jealous God—and we don’t blush when we say so! The gods of Canaan, Greece, and Rome didn’t mind sharing their people with other gods. They were like a husband who doesn’t mind sharing his wife with other men! Instead of praising him for his open-mindedness, we ought to horsewhip that man for his indifference!

The Lord is not indifferent! If His heart burns with love for us, then His jealousy burns too when we forsake Him for someone else. We belong to Him--but not as slaves belong to their master. We belong to Him as a wife belongs to her husband. The God who wants your heart, first gave you His own.

If the Lord is a jealous God, we must be loyal to Him. Some men don’t see what their wives are up to. But the Lord does. He sees what we do and also what we think and what we feel. Of course He wants us to love other people and other things, but these other loves—as dear as they are to us—are always below the love we have for Him. The Second Commandment is to

But the top spot does not belong to your neighbor, your spouse, your children, your friend, your church or your country—

The jealousy of God is to be taken seriously. He is a patient and forgiving Lord, but these are not His only attributes. The One who suffers long does not suffer forever, and the God who would rather pardon you than judge you, will do the latter if you remain unfaithful to Him.

Most of all, the jealousy of God is to be savored. Because it means He loves us, He will protect us from other suitors, and He—as incredible as it sounds—it means,