Jealous for His Glory

God is jealous for the supremacy of His glory and the affections of His people – 10:22

²²Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?

Paul grounds what he is saying in the character of God. This not a matter of opinion or Christian liberty or simply something good people can disagree on. This has everything to do with the kind of God He is. He is a jealous God. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, (Ex. 20:5). Jealous for the fame of His name. Jealous for the splendor of His holiness. Jealous for the purity of His holiness. He does not look kindly on anyone that sullies His reputation or treats Him like something else is more glorious or desirable than Him.

Zeal for God’s glory means that I will never allow anything to fellowship or be united to Him that isn’t worthy of Him. The more zealous I am for Him, the more zealous I am for His glory.

Put on the Cubs/White Sox shirt.

What do you think of my shirt? These are hard to come by. I was looking online for one and read that it was not advisable to wear one in Chicago because you would be beat up by both Sox and Cubs fans. Why? If you are Cubs fan, this shirt bothers you because there is a Sox symbol with it. If you are a Sox fan you want to burn it because there is a Cubs symbol on it.

The Cubs and the Sox are rivals. Their fans are passionate for their team. If you love the one, you will likely hate the other.

Love and jealousy go together. If you love something or someone, you are jealous for them.

That’s what we do to God when we fellowship with Him in prayer, worship, the Lord’s table and then we get in our cars we love and go to the houses we love and watch the sports we love and talk about anything but God the rest of the day and offer ourselves the rest of the week to the gods of money, sex, power, achievement, or whatever the rest of the week only to come back and fellowship with Christ again. This is a warning from Paul, shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?

God is jealous for His glory and jealous for the affections of His people. When we share His passion for His glory, then we too will hate the idols of this world. We won’t play with them. Flirt with them. See how close we can get to them. We will run from them. Flee. Why? Because God’s glory is at stake.

© 2010 Steve DeWitt. You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author, (2) any modifications are clearly marked, (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, (4) you include Bethel’s web site address (http://www.bethelweb.org/) on the copied resource.