Why is God a jealous God?

But, thank God, there is a bright side of the picture. There is mercy as well as judgement; and our God, blessed for ever be His holy Name, is something more than "a consuming fire and a jealous God." True, He is a consuming fire, because He is holy. He is intolerant of evil, and must consume our dross. Moreover, He is jealous because He cannot suffer any rival to have a place in the hearts of those He loves. He must have the whole heart, because He alone is worthy of it, as He alone can fill and satisfy it for ever. And if His people turn away from Him, and go after idols of their own making, they must be left to reap the bitter fruit of their own doings, and to prove, by sad and terrible experience, the truth of these words, "their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another."

Do not you desire this? Is it worthwhile that He should detach our affections from even the best things down here, from what sight and sense would build upon, and just draw us up to Himself alone in the glory? Yes, the Lord has such an affection for us that it is akin to jealousy. I have been reading in Exodus a little bit lately, and I thought the nearest revelation to the christian revelation comes out where it says, "The Lord thy God is a jealous God". Do you not see, love takes the form of jealousy if there is the smallest rival to it? The nearest revelation to the christian one of love that could be given in Old Testament times is that God is a jealous God. You remember Solomon's Song says that love is as strong as death. Do you know what follows? It is that jealousy is as cruel as the grave. Jealousy is the form love takes the moment there is a rival, and if the Lord sees we are going to set our hearts on anything down here, building up some little system for ourselves, clear of this error and the other error, He will smash it all up, because it would very soon be an object to us and draw us away from Himself. What He claims and what He wants is that we should be wholly and entirely for Himself. He draws us up by one method or another. Yes, there is death, there is the pressure, there is the breakup, but what is it all for? Well, I think that He is knocking at the door in the breakup. In the third chapter of Revelation He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock"; and that is what He is doing by the bereavement, by the pressure, by the breakup. He is knocking. "And if any man hear My voice, and open the door. I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." I will take My last meal with the man who has got a heart for Me.

I also read Heb. 12:29. It seems very different to say, "Our God is a consuming fire" in contrast to "God is love," but really these statements go together. Our God is a consuming fire because He is love, because there must be an intense action both preservative of the good and hostile to the evil. Can God be indifferent to that which would hinder His love being known? Impossible. How does the mother feel towards the snake, which would bite her child? Love is a fire which many waters cannot quench, and he who understands the jealousy of love will be thankful that God is a consuming fire. He will understand it. Our jealousy is the result of selfishness, but God's jealousy is the result of absolute unselfishness. If we know the love of God, we are thankful for every attribute of His. If not, even His kindness fills us with dread.

In verse 22, jealousy is brought in; it is because it is intimately connected with idolatry (verse 14). This is shown by the first two commandments (Ex. 20:4-5). Jealousy is cruel as the grave. It is because He loves us so much, that the Lord is jealous; He cannot bear to see our hearts divided. It has been asked whether "flee from idolatry" applies to us now. It certainly does; the last warning in 1 John 5:21, is "Keep yourselves from idols." An idol is anything that usurps the place of God in the heart. We are partakers of the Lord's table all through the week, the "supper" on the Lord's day being the outward expression of it. And it means that we are identified with all the value of the sacrifice of Christ before God, and we should refuse everything that is not according to Him. May God lead us on and help us to enter into it more fully.

(3) After such a manner, then, as the day permitted, these two things appear in Israel's history. They were a people separated to God as His possession. He was toward them a jealous God, because of His love to them. They were to be His alone; and He was to be for them separate from all else, not confounded with any imagination of man's, or likeness of any thing in heaven or earth, who can be represented by nothing but Himself. For us, Christ as the "image of the invisible God" has only emphasized, not lessened, this unapproachable glory. God is indeed brought near; but if He draw near, the more we realize our nothingness in His presence.

Verses 2-6. It is a sublime description. God is a jealous God. The jealousy of God has for its source the love of His elect people. (See Zech. 1.) "For thou shalt worship no other god; for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God" (exodus 34:14). He is jealous over His people lest they serve other gods. And because He is a jealous God, a holy, a sin-hating God, He must be an avenger of what is against His character. He will take vengeance on His adversaries and reserveth wrath for His enemies. Destructive criticism has invented an infidel theory as if the God of wrath and vengeance were the product of the mind of man, and that Jehovah is some tribal deity, corresponding to the tribal gods of the surrounding heathen nations. Thus criticism rejects the Jehovah of the Bible and invents its own god, rejecting the threatenings of coming wrath and judgment as taught in the Old Testament and in the New in connection with the coming of the Lord, branding these revelations the result of the false apocalyptic teachings of the Jews. God is the God of Love, as much as He is the God of Wrath. He must be that or He would not be the God of Light and Holiness. He cannot afford to let evil go on forever. He is the Lord slow to anger. His patience is great, but He will not acquit the guilty, who continue to sin and do evil. Verses 2 and 3 describe His righteous government. Then follows a beautiful poetic description of His majesty, a description suited to the finite mind of man.

Earnestly Moses repeats his warning to Israel not to forget the covenant the Lord had made with them (v.23), and degrade themselves by making any carved image, whatever form it might take. "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (v.24). Fire is the most evident single element in the universe. Every star, our own sun included, is a ball of intense hot fire. The earth is stored with fire, covered by a crust only 30 miles thick, broken through periodically by volanic action, often with startling suddenness, spreading grim death and desolation in their wake. Our very atmosphere, scientists tell us, if changed a little in the measure of its components, would provide fuel for an earth-encircling holocaust. So fire is a striking witness to the awesome holiness of God in judgment. Let Israel, and all people, beware of insulting a God of such burning power and majesty!

Yet the fire of the sun is wonderful in the warmth it provides for mankind. This tells us also that God is a God of love, and all who submit to His authority will find the warmth of His love a marvelous blessing, a pleasant fire rather than a consuming fire. Jealousy in God's case is perfectly right, just as it is right for a man or woman to be jealous of the affections of his or her spouse. The measure of God's love to Israel in the same measure of His hatred against all that causes people harm to Israel. Since God loves people. He must hate sin which causes people harm and damage. If people take sides with their sin against God, then they must suffer the same judgment that their sin incurs.

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" (Ex. 20:4-5). God is jealous of giving His glory to another, but that only emphasizes the fact that the Son is one with the Father. All images that man might make can but provoke to jealousy but here is "the image of the invisible God." He is jealous for His Son, "that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father." "Worthy, O Lamb of God, art Thou That every knee to Thee should bow."

There is great care and minuteness discernible in the genealogy of the Levites. And this is what we might expect; for they had sole charge of the temple service. It was theirs to keep constantly before the eye of Israel the outward means of worship, to guard them from idols, for what is there of which God is more jealous than the purity of His worship? Before the Son was manifested, what was it that moved Jehovah to jealousy? What but Israel's forsaking Him and transferring their homage to idols? At the beginning of their course Jehovah declared Himself, "For thou shalt worship no other god; for Jehovah Whose name is jealous, is a jealous God" (Ex. 34:14). The word is emphatic: not only is God a jealous God, but His name is Jealous. He takes this name in view of idols. If that was His name under law when commanding men to worship Him, can He be less jealous now? Connected inseparably with the worship of God, is the worship of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Worship centres in Him; any other centre makes false worship and is abomination to God. God the Father is now seeking worshippers, who are to worship Him in Spirit (? in the Spirit) and in truth. The praises of the past day were surrounded by types and shadows, God dwelling in the thick darkness, where all the value of these shadows was that they were only shadows having no light of their own. They pointed to a better thing.

All prophecy owns thus and honors Jesus as its subject. All that own Him, the highest only the most earnestly, refuse other honor than that of being servants together of His will and grace. How our hearts need to be enlarged to take in His supreme glory! and how ready are we in some way, if not in this, to share the glory which is His alone with some creature merely! Rome's coarse forms of worship to saints and angels is only a grosser form of what we are often doing, and for which rebuke will in some way come; for God is jealous of any impairment of His rights, and we of necessity put ourselves in opposition to the whole course of nature as we derogate from these. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."