Thursday, December 9, 2010

Our God is a Jealous God


Today i wanted to look at God's Jealousy, and why its important to us as Christians, and in our worship of a Holy God.

"They made Him jealous with strange gods;
With abominations they provoked Him to anger.
They sacrificed to demons who were not God,
To gods whom they have not known,
New gods who came lately,
Whom your fathers did not dread.
You neglected the Rock who begot you,
And forgot the God who gave you birth."
-Deuteronomy 32:16-18

I think the first impression we have is,
"how can God be jealous, he has emotions like this?"
It can be hard to understand God having negative emotions, after all He is perfect. Yet He gets angry, jealous, and wrathful.
Imagine this with me, you are a parent of a teenager (big imagination i know.) One day your kid comes home from school and doesn't talk to you, which could be normal. Then over time still no contact with you, no words shared no eye contact, nothing. One day they bring home someone claiming to be their parent, which you know is false. Your kid has taken this other person as a parent, neglecting who gave them birth, cared and provided for them and loves them unconditionally. The worst part is this "new parent" is someone they just met, and no matter how "nice" they are, its false, you are the parent. Doesn't something boil inside of us?
I wonder if this is how God feels when he is jealous?

What does this mean for our Worship?
When we look to idols God is jealous, and we all know our own idols well. But i would go one step further, even when we aren't focused on our idols, are we avoiding God?
Funny thing about jealousy is, it doesn't matter where someone is spending their time, if its not with you. Just like young lovers calling and texting constantly, God wants our attention, affection, and obsession. Can you imagine if the only thing people said about you was,
"he/she is obsessed with God, always talking about Him, Praying, Worshiping Him with his/her attitude."
I think God wouldn't be jealous if we were obsessed with Him.

I think our Worship has a lot to do with Obsession

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