3/15/09 - Lent 3 - Exodus 20:1-17

THE LORD IS A JEALOUS GOD
- Jealous of his glory
- Jealous of his children

Jealousy is never flattering, is it? In fact, jealousy brings out the worst in people. A person might be jealous of his neighbor who just bought a boat he had always had his own eyes on. Now he is jealous and even resentful because his neighbor has what he always wanted. A small child may be jealous of his mother’s love when she hugs or holds or even talks to another child. He wants her affection and he is very jealous when it is shared with someone else. A teenage girl may be jealous of her boyfriend when he has a conversation with another girl. She is immediately filled with hate for that other person and is overwhelmed with insecurities and doubts about herself. Jealousy is not pretty. Jealousy is rarely considered a desirable trait because it is usually associated with those who are selfish or immature or greedy.
But the Lord is a jealous God. God himself is jealous! Over 20 times in Scripture the Lord is referred to as being a jealous God, as showing his jealous anger, and even as having jealous love. Our God is jealous. And that is certainly not a bad thing. It can’t be. God’s jealousy has to be a positive and virtuous characteristic if it is a part of our Lord’s personality. And as we study the first half of Exodus 20 today, we can rightly praise him for that jealousy. We can rightly thank him for that jealousy. Because we can see in these verses that God is jealous for all the right reasons: he is jealous of his glory and he is jealous of his children.
The first seventeen verses of Exodus 20 contain the Ten Commandments. Those famous “You Shalls” and “You Shall Nots” that we read earlier this morning. You’ve heard them before. Many of you still have them memorized as a result of your catechism instruction years ago. People know the Ten Commandments as the ultimate summary of God’s law, the dos and don’ts of the Old Testament, and the rules written down on two stone tablets. But the Ten Commandments also contain a biblical truth that is often overlooked: they are a vivid display of God’s jealousy. Listen to what the Lord says to us in verse 5-6, “I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments.” The Lord calls himself jealous. And he’s not ashamed of that. He wants us to know that he is a jealous God. He wants us to know that he is jealous of the glory that he alone wants to receive.
God created the entire universe with only the power of his word. He planned everything out. He set everything up. And now he guides, guards, protects, steers, helps, controls, motivates, moves along, tempers, hems in, lets loose, holds up, and shuts down all things in his own way so that his will is done and that you, his children, are ultimately saved. He does it. He has done it all. And he wants the glory. He wants the glory! “I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8), our God says in the book of Isaiah. He alone deserves the glory. He alone has earned the glory. And he wants it. He wants it from you, he wants it from unbelievers, and he wants to be honored and respected and praised at all times in every way. And he wants to be glorified first of all by the keeping of his Ten Commandments.
“You shall have no other gods.” “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.” “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” “Honor your father and mother.” “You shall not murder.” “You shall not commit adultery.” “You shall not steal.” “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or his maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Those are the famous Ten Commandment. And the Lord demands that glory be given to him always and alone by keeping every one of them in every way.
That’s not good situation for us to be in! If God wants to be glorified by the keeping of his commands in the exact way he wants them kept, that’s not good. For those of you who went through Luther’s Large Catechism with me during Wednesday night Bible study, you know that’s not good. For my catechism students and their parents who have recently been learning the ins and outs of each Commandment, you know that’s not good. For any of you who has seriously pondered what each of these commandments demands and has honestly monitored your own ability to carry them out, you know that’s not good! It does not bode well for us if our Lord, who is a jealous God, wants his commandments kept perfectly so that he can receive all of the glory. Because we know that we don’t do it. If you fear, love and trust in God sometimes or usually or most of the time or 99.9% of the time, that is not keeping the 1st Commandment as well as our jealous God demands. Going to the Lord’s name in prayer only when we remember to, keeping our thoughts focused on his name during a worship service if we aren’t too tired, thanking and praising the name of the Lord every so often is not keeping the 2nd Commandment as well our jealous God demands. Going to church not because we necessarily want to but because it’s just a habit, reading our Bibles only when we think of it and we don’t have anything better to do is not keeping the 3rd Commandment as well as our jealous Lord demands. Do we need to continue with the next seven commandments? Do we need to point out every aspect of every commandment that we have failed to keep? Do we need to be reminded of how far we come from carrying out God’s law? And every time we do not keep one of his commandments, we are no longer giving God the full glory he deserves. We are giving it to others, we are giving it to earthly things, or we are giving it to ourselves.
And our God is a jealous God. He doesn’t want his glory given to anyone but to him. Remember that he said: “[I punish] children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” God doesn’t mess around! God doesn’t play games when it comes to his glory! He’s a jealous God. He wants all of the glory because he alone deserves it. And he makes no exception. Adam and Eve - the crown of his creation - were kicked out of the wonderful Garden of Eden and into a sin-filled world because they did not give him the glory. In the New Testament, King Herod was instantly struck dead when he did not give the glory to God alone after people were shouting his own praises. Even Moses and Aaron, the chosen leaders of God’s chosen people, were not allowed to enter the Promised Land. Why? Because Moses struck a rock with his staff to get water for the people instead of speaking to it as the Lord had commanded him. And the Lord himself told these two men, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them” (Numbers 20:12). God does not take his glory lightly. He wants it all. And any glory given to anything or anyone else is an affront to the Lord and loathsome to his very being. Our God is jealous of his glory - and that is a scary thing. But our God is also jealous of his children - and that is our ultimate comfort.
The Lord is not just jealous when his glory is given to another, he is jealous of anyone else who lays a hand on his children. For a wonderful example of that, we can look back into Old Testament times. After the Israelites had been taken into exile by the Babylonian armies, the word of God came to the prophet Zechariah. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: I am very jealous for Zion; I am burning with jealousy for her” (Zech. 8:2). The Lord did not like to see his people in pain. Even though it was a just punishment and the Lord himself was the one who sent the Israelites to Babylon, he did not enjoy his children being oppressed in a foreign country. He was jealous for them. He wanted them back. And so that’s what he did. He brought them back to the land he had given them and he punished the nations who had tormented them for so long.
A few hundred years later the Lord saved his people from their enemies again, but this time in an even more meaningful and universal way. This time the Lord’s jealousy for his people took on a very visible form: the form of a baby in a barn of Bethlehem. Jesus wrapped himself in human flesh and bones and blood and skin because he was jealous. His people had been taken prisoner by sin and death and by Satan himself, and he was not happy about it. Something needed to be done so that he could get his people back, and so he did it himself. His jealousy forced him to leave his home in perfection and come to an earth that had been cursed by sin. His jealousy moved him to tirelessly seek out the lost as he lived in this world - both Jews and Gentiles. His jealousy motivated him to preach and teach the Word of God with passion, to heal and cast out, to serve all others and love even his enemies. His jealousy led him to the Garden of Gethsemane; he jealously urged him to bend his back to receive the blows of the whip, to bow his head to hold the crown of thorns, to stretch his arms for the nails on the cross, to strain his voice in agony to his Father. The Lord’s jealousy led him to his death. It led him to a tomb. It led him to come back to life and rise again. Because the Lord was so jealous for his people, he went through all of that suffering and sacrifice just to win them back. The Lord was not going to let Satan harass them any longer and so he crushed Satan’s head. The Lord was not going to let death have the final say and so he broke open the tomb. The Lord was not going to let sin rule over their lives anymore and so he paid for every sin and forgave every sin of his people and the sins of the whole world. Christ was going to be victorious. Because his people were his people. He had created them. He had cared for them. He had loved them. And now he had saved them. And no one, no one was going to take his people away from him again.
The Lord is still jealous for his people. He is jealous for you. You are a child for whom he has gone to hell and back to save. You are a treasured possession that he never wants to let go of. You are in the hands of a jealous God - jealous with love and completely dedicated to your well-being and eternal life. He has done everything and he will continue to do everything for your good. No enemy will harm you. No evil will get the best of you. Nothing will be able to even touch you because your God is a jealous God and nothing is more important to him than you.
“I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments.” Our jealous God not only punishes, he also loves. And he shows love to thousands who love him and keep his commandments. And so we can still praise and thank our Lord by keeping these Ten Commandments in our lives. Not that we will keep them perfectly. Not that we will ever carry out these commands out to the Lord’s complete satisfaction. But through faith in our Savior, our thoughts and words and actions that attempt to keep these commands are accepted by our Father as pleasing to him. Because he no longer sees the sins connected with our actions, he sees faith in our Savior. And he is delighted with the motivation of our hearts: a motivation that strives to thank him for everything he has done for us. An impulse from the Holy Spirit to give glory to our jealous God, the glory he rightly deserves. Use the Ten Commandments for just that: to honor and respect, to thank and praise and love your God because of his love for you. Be jealous of your jealous God. Let nothing come in the way of your love for him. Just as nothing will ever come in the way of his love for us.
Amen.

“May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.” - Heb. 13:20-21