“‘You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God…’”
Highland, below is a recap of Sunday’s sermon. This sermon-series is centered on understanding generational sin, our personal relationship with the Lord and the character of God. Here is the framework of our series:
Our Overall Emphasis: An In-House, In-Heart look at Highland. Through Ezekiel 18, our purpose throughout this stint is for us to take an in-house look at our hearts, Highland; our personal relationship with the Lord, as it relates to the outworking of HIS righteousness in our lives.
Our Hope: Lord, give Highland a spirit of repentance so that we can experience a season of refreshing.
SUNDAY’S SERMON
Often, we will confuse jealousy and envy. To envy is to crave what someone else possesses, which leads to coveting. To covet is to become envious of another or another’s possessions, resulting in our personal bitterness or hatred. I was at a kid’s birthday party a few years ago; at this party, it was time for the birthday boy to open gifts. We all sat at the table watching this child open one great gift after another and the children were all in awe! Eventually, one child became so envious over all of the great gifts that the birthday boy was opening that he began to get upset and sob. To envy to the point of coveting always sours joyous moments, leaving us bitter over someone else’s possessions. The 10th Commandment, ‘Do not Covet’ is in place to reveal this form of sin lurks within our hearts and the Lord directs us to turn from a life of coveting.
But, let’s examine jealousy in the proper context, Highland; let someone speak ill of one of you, or mistreat you, you will quickly see me act jealously. Additionally, Carrie and I have a solid marriage but if someone were to handle her in an inappropriate fashion, my jealousy will fiercely defend her and our marriage - there is a proper form of jealousy that comes from being a defender for just causes. This is the form of jealousy that the Lord is using to describe Himself in this command.
The Lord describes Himself as “jealous” because He is committing Himself to these people and He maintains a proper sense of belonging. Typically, we see jealousy as a negative outworking, mostly, because people who are jealous are dealing in sinful situations while, probably, wrestling with sin and insecurity themselves throughout that situation, too.
Scripture shows that us that the Lord is jealous over His name, His glory and His righteousness. At Sinai, He offers each of these to the Israelites, by entering into a covenant with them. In so doing, they become His people and He becomes their God. In being a covenant-keeping people, they take on His name (His covenant), they display His glory and they share in His righteousness.
To those who repent, declaring Jesus to be Lord, Romans 8 tells us that they receive a ‘spirit of adoption’ - meaning that the Holy Spirit, indwells those who repent, making us sons and daughters of God which also brings us into covenant with Him. Like the Israelites, we then declare that we belong to the one, true God and that He belongs to us. Again, through repentance and Christ-crucified, we become heirs sharing in God’s name, glory and righteousness.
As a shepherd properly oversees His sheep, or, as a father properly cares for his family, so our Heavenly Father is a jealous God; He maintains a proper sense of belonging toward His children. He jealously desires for us to find our salvation, our rest, and purpose in Him and in Him alone!
The Lord’s jealousy of us is His pursuit of us! He pursues us because He loves us and He knows our every need and desires to satisfy our every need in His presence. He designed us; He knows our inner-workings even better than we understand ourselves. Even when we leave Him for lesser things, He chooses to come after us! Why? So that He may offer us Himself because He is and will always be our greatest good. When we submit to Him as Lord, His life-giving spirit produces in us “life-abundant!” His jealousy of us, or, His pursuit of us, results in us finding our life’s most meaningful purpose - to know Him and to glorify Him, our Defender, our Redeemer.
We must understand that God’s jealous pursuit of us is meant to be for the purpose of offering us our greatest good. Our greatest good is found when we are in covenant with God. When our heart’s declare, “I am my beloved’s and He is mine!” This results in the cultivation of faithfulness within our hearts. That faithfulness then has the opportunity to be cultivated in our children, our grandchildren, and to a thousand generations.
Highland, let us always rejoice over our “spirit of adoption” that is offered through the redeeming work of Jesus, then sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Highland, I love you. I rejoice in serving you, in honor of our Lord. May we continue to glorify our Lord together and may the Lord respond by continuing to offer us His goodness - the only form of true “good” we could ever know.
Grateful for you,
Rob