SERIES: Joshua: Victory through Faith
The Holiness and Jealousy of God
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Note to David: A version of this sermon is posted already in “Joshua” but without audio. It is a sermon I did at Dallas Theological Seminary. It is also posted under the series, “Our Great and Awesome God.” I would leave it under “Our Great…God,” but remove it from “Joshua.” Use this one instead, which does have audio.
Introduction: According to Genesis 1-3, God created man in His own image and likeness. According to twentieth century theology, however, it seems that man has created God in his own image and likeness. The God of many people today is a God concocted from those characteristics man admires most. Thus, one hears a great deal about God as a God of love, mercy, compassion, benevolence, grace, forgiveness, patience, and so forth. But a God displaying only these pleasant attributes is an idol, not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible also has some hard attributes we tend to minimize.
I want to put two of these “difficult” attributes under the microscope this morning. It is my contention that, rightly understood and accepted, these attributes can produce great dividends in our personal relationship with God, as well as in our corporate witness as a church.
By way of introduction and background, I want us to read Joshua 24:14-28.
“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled.And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”
Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”
But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”
“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.
“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”
On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he reaffirmed for them decrees and laws. And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord.
“See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.”
Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to their own inheritance.
Here in this text Joshua lays a choice before the people of Israel: they must choose to serve the Lord God of Israel, wholeheartedly and faithfully, or they must choose to serve the gods of their forefathers—the idols of the Amorites. Joshua will not and cannot choose for them, only for himself and his family. The choice he calls for is not a leap in the dark, but rather a rational choice based upon God’s faithfulness to them in the past. But it is a choice that must be made. Not to choose is to choose not to serve the Lord God.
The people respond by eagerly choosing to serve the Lord. That’s what you would expect from a group of believers, isn’t it? But Joshua senses that for many of them the commitment may be less than genuine. So, he does something that is very rare for an evangelist or a preacher. He says, “I want you to put your hands down. I want you to rethink this commitment you have just indicated. I don’t think you can do it, because you don’t understand the kind of God you are dealing with. He is a holy God; He is a jealous God.”
The people protest that they will indeed serve the Lord. Still believing them to be overconfident, Joshua says, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.” So, he draws up a covenant and records the event in the Book of the Law of God in the Tabernacle. He also establishes a visible stone monument to their decision.
Obviously, the holiness and jealousy of God are two characteristics very critical to Joshua’s understanding of who God is and how his people relate to Him. Let’s consider them one at a time.
God is a holy God.
A definition of God’s holiness. When using a theological concept, it is generally valuable to begin with a definition. I know of no better one than this for holiness: “It is that characteristic in God which moves Him to maintain His own moral excellence, to abhor sin, and to demand purity in His moral creatures.” While this definition does not come directly from the Scriptures, it is based upon Bible passages like 1 John 1:5 (“God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.”) .
Now using this definition let’s try to explain this concept of God’s holiness.
The explanation of God’s holiness.
1. It is both a negative and a positive attribute. Holiness is one of those words which is generally defined negatively. There are a number of them in our vocabulary—terms like “bald” or “orphan.” Try defining those words without using a negative. It’s difficult. When you think of holiness you think automatically of a negative, “no sin.” But there is more to holiness than just an absence of evil. This microphone has no moral evil in it, but it is not therefore a “holy” microphone. Holiness implies not only an absence of evil, but also positive, moral excellence. The analogy of health may help to explain holiness, for health is more than the absence of sickness or pain; it is the presence of a spirit of vitality and vigor.
2. It is a pervasive attribute. By that I mean it applies to every other aspect of God’s character. In a sense it is not so much an attribute in itself as it is a characteristic of all the other attributes of God. In other words, God’s love is a holy love, His justice is a holy justice, His compassion is a holy compassion, and His wrath is a holy wrath. In fact, a good case might be made for the viewpoint that God’s holiness is His most fundamental characteristic.
Religious liberals have always camped on God’s love as being His central characteristic, but the Scriptures would argue more for His holiness, though, of course, He is infinitely perfect in both.
3. It is the source of all moral standards. Someone once asked me a deep and profound question: “Is something right because God says so, or does God say it’s right because it is right?” And I answered that I believe the former is clearly the case. Something is right because God says it or because God does it. There is no moral standard outside of His own character to which He must conform. What would it be? Where would it come from?
The implications of this are, of course, tremendous. Whenever we use the terms “right and wrong,” “good and evil,” “ethical and unethical,” we are really saying that the object of discussion either conforms or does not conform to the character of God. Or to put it another way, whenever we are faced with a question of moral standards, we could just as well ask ourselves, “What would God do if He were in my shoes? What would He say? How would He act?” His own attribute of holiness is the sole source of transcendent moral standards.
But if that is so, then how are those who don’t know God or don’t believe in Him supposed to know the difference between right and wrong? The answer is found in the fourth part of our explanation of God’s holiness:
4. It is revealed to man’s conscience and in Scripture. I believe the Scriptures teach that there is some innate knowledge in every man. That is, man is not a “tabula rasa,” a blank slate at birth, as the philosopher John Locke suggested. Rather on man’s slate is written the basic moral law of God, perhaps no more than the essential elements of the Ten Commandments, but at least that. We get this notion from Rom. 2:14-15: “When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” This passage indicates that every man knows from birth that it is wrong to lie, to steal, to commit adultery and to worship idols. If people do these things anyway, they violate their consciences, and if their consciences don’t bother them, that’s simply evidence that their consciences have been tampered with or seared.
Following this relatively brief description of God’s holiness, it is not difficult to see why Joshua was suspicious of the Israelites’ emotional commitment to serve the Lord. Sure, they are happy to serve Him, but do they understand that His moral standards are absolute? Do they realize that no deviation will be excused? I do not believe Joshua is really trying to discourage the people from making commitments; rather he is discouraging them from making foolish, half-hearted, ill-informed commitments. We, too, should be wary of such commitments.
Moving, then, to a second “hard” attribute of God found in the same verse, let’s put His jealousy under the microscope.
God is a jealous God.
It would probably be a rare individual who wouldn’t admit to a bit of surprise when he learns that God is called a jealous God at least 40 times in the Bible. How can this be? All our lives we have been taught that jealousy is an evil characteristic. Shakespeare, for example, called jealousy “the green-ey’d monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” Dryden called it “the jaundice of the soul.” Colton added, “Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages.”
And even the Scriptures add their voice to the chorus of warnings against jealousy. The Song of Solomon declares, “Jealousy is as severe as Sheol,” (8:6) and Proverbs adds, “Wrath is fierce and anger is a flood, but who can stand before jealousy?” (27:4)
Now if jealousy is such an abominable characteristic in man, how can it be a praiseworthy attribute in God? How can it be a vice in man and a virtue in God? In response, I think it is important to note that this is not an attribute which we are ascribing to God, but one which He uses of Himself more than 20 times. Consider, for example, Ex. 34:14, where God Himself says to the people of Israel: “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
Well, what is Jealousy? How would we define it when used as an attribute of God?
A definition of God’s jealousy. I think the initial definition in Webster’s dictionary is quite useful for our purpose. It says that jealousy is “intolerance of rivalry or unfaithfulness.” That’s exactly the point—God is intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness. He will not play second fiddle to anyone. Two observations may help us explain the attribute of jealousy.
The explanation of God’s jealousy
1. Jealousy, when used of God, is an illuminating anthropopathism (i.e., a description of God in terms of human-like feelings). The Bible is full of anthropomorphisms—the eyes of God, the arm of God, the face of God—and anthropopathisms—His anger, His laughter, His repentance. Now God doesn’t have eyes and He doesn’t have arms; He doesn’t even have a body. Nor does He change His mind. But He uses such terms to reveal Himself to us because human characteristics are the only ones we fully understand. Since we are created in the image of God and are more like Him than any other creature, it is only to be expected that God would picture Himself to us in human-like terms.
Anthropomorphisms do present problems, however, if we’re not careful, and I appreciate J. I. Packer’s advice, “When faced with God’s anthropomorphisms, it is easy to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.” What he means is that we must not be guilty of ascribing to God any of the limitations or the negative aspects of the human characteristics ascribed to Him. In other words, just because the Scripture says that God repented, we should not assume that He was caught off guard and had to adjust His game plan to fit an unexpected set of circumstances.
So also with God’s jealousy. In Him jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but is rather a praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious. You see, even in the human realm jealousy is of two kinds, and one is a vice while the other is a virtue. The first kind of jealousy is an infantile resentment which expresses itself in envy, malice and meanness of action.
But there is another kind of human jealousy. It is a zeal to protect a love relationship or to avenge it when it is broken. Married persons who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of an adulterer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception, for the very essence of marriage is its exclusiveness. In other words, there are times when human jealousy is not only permissible but mandatory. And when we use the term “jealousy” of God we are referring to this latter kind of jealousy.
Now a second observation we would like to make is this:
2. Jealousy is a powerful term to communicate God’s love and faithfulness. We have already stated that jealousy is to be expected in a marriage that is threatened. That’s important because the Scriptures continually, in both Old Testament and New Testament, refer to the relationship between God and His people as a marriage. For example, in 2 Cor. 11:2, Paul says, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.”
Just as it would be true in the human realm that the purer a husband was and the more he loved his wife, the greater would be his jealousy should his wife incline toward a rival, so also God demonstrates His own great love and faithfulness to us by the jealousy He exhibits when we give allegiance to someone or something other than Him.
3. Jealousy is God’s response to all kinds of false worship. Virtually every time the jealousy of God is mentioned in the Bible it is connected with false worship. In other words, God’s jealousy is stirred up primarily when His people get involved in worshiping other gods. This all harkens back, I believe, to the first two of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.” (Exodus 20:3-5)
We have no problem understanding that these Commandments forbid the idols and images of pagan and heathen worship, so we understand why God’s jealousy is stirred up by such behavior. But we evangelicals don’t get off scot free. Last Sunday we looked at various kinds of idolatry that run rampant even in our circles, but one I didn’t mention is our tendency to put certain Christian leaders on pedestals (or perhaps we should say “thrones”?), particularly if they have a notorious background or are celebrities in sports or in politics.
A Washington, D. C. pastor whose church was attended frequently by President Carter received a phone call one Sunday in 1978, asking, “Can you tell me if the President is expected to attend church today?” “That,” the pastor patiently replied, “I cannot promise, but we do expect God to be present, and we fancy that will be sufficient incentive for a reasonably large attendance.” It should be, but often it is not. And the result is that God becomes jealous, and when God gets jealous, somebody better watch out.
We have established, I trust, that God is a jealous God in the best sense of that term. His jealousy causes Him to react to false worship and to chastise His unfaithful children. But so far, we have only seen the negative side of God’s jealousy. What are the positive objects of His jealousy? Just as a woman may be jealous of her husband’s secretary, so she is also jealous for her husband. What is God jealous for? The Scriptures name at least three objects of His jealousy.
The objects of His jealousy
1. God is jealous for His name. In Ezek. 39:25, God is discussing His severe judgment upon Israel for their iniquity. “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will now bring Jacob back from captivity and will have compassion on all the people of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name.” What does God mean when He says He is jealous or zealous (same word in the original) for His holy name? I believe our understanding of this hinges upon a recognition that God totally identified Himself with Israel. He staked His reputation upon them by delivering Israel from Egypt and giving them a land of their own, and He was jealous for His good name.
God has done the same thing with the Church. When we claim to be His children, when we call ourselves “Christians,” we are identifying our behavior with His name. That’s a very serious matter.
2. God is jealous for His land and His people. (Joel 2:18) Listen to Joel 2:18: “Then the Lord will be jealous for his land and take pity on his people.” We will not take the time to pursue this idea now, but this passage is speaking of the Day of the Lord, that future time of Great Tribulation, and God is affirming that even at the height of that terrible day, He will not forsake His land or His people.
God is, of course, the owner and proprietor of the entire universe, but there is a special sense in which He holds title to the land of Palestine. No Bible-believing Christian should have been surprised when 48 years ago Israel once again became a state, nor should it have been a surprise when Israel seized the Old City of Jerusalem or the West bank of the Jordan in 1967. God is jealous for the land which He promised to Abraham and to His seed forever.
But much more is He jealous for His people. God has two peoples—Israel and the Church—and He demonstrates His love and affection for both by refusing to cast them away when they are indifferent or unfaithful. Instead, His jealousy motivates Him to pursue His people and to be merciful to them despite their sins. Chastise them, yes. Cast them away permanently, no.
3. God is jealous for His house. (Ps. 69:9) Listen to Psalm 69:8,9:
I am a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother’s sons;
for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
This is a Psalm of David, a lament regarding his sin and also the reproach which he had to bear for God’s sake. The important thing about this Psalm for our purposes is the way it is used in the New Testament. In John 2:17, Jesus has just come to the temple and discovered stockmen and moneychangers there. So he made a whip and drove all of the animals from the temple area and scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He said to those who had thus desecrated the temple, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
Then His disciples remembered what was written back in Psalm 69: “Zeal for your House will consume me.” Jesus was overwhelmed by jealousy for the House of God. He could not stand for it to be misused; He could not stand for false teaching to be perpetrated within its walls; He could not stand for it to be neglected.
His name, His people and land, and His house are all objects of God’s jealousy. The final point I would like to make is undoubtedly the most important. It answers the question, “So what?” Let’s consider …
The lessons we need to learn from the holiness and jealousy of God.
God’s holiness is the motivation for our own holiness (1 Peter 1:16; John 17:17). 1 Peter 1:16 reads, “Be holy, because I am holy.” I long struggled with this verse because I learned it as “Be ye holy as I am holy,” which I understood to mean, “Be as holy as I am.” Now I knew it was impossible for me to be as holy as God, yet this verse seemed to be demanding just that, and I ended up confused.
But God is giving us here a motivation for living holy lives rather than an unreachable target. He’s saying, “Be holy because I am holy.” I think it permissible to paraphrase it this way: “Since I have set a standard, a pattern of absolute holiness, I expect you to practice a corresponding creaturely holiness which conforms to the instructions for godly living found in the Scriptures.”
We Christians must constantly be on our guard against the tendency to treat unholiness as normal and expected. Some of us have gotten to the point that we are no longer shocked by sin. We could learn a lot from Lot, whom Peter calls a righteous man, whose righteous soul was vexed day after day by the sinful conduct of his compatriots in Sodom. (2 Peter 2:7) The holiness of God should be a constant reminder to us that God hates sin and never views it with indifference. A second lesson we need to learn is this:
The jealousy of God requires us to be zealous for God. Now, just as there is a good and a bad jealousy, so there is a good and bad zealousness. Paul said of His compatriots, the Jews, “They have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.” (Romans 10:2) He said of himself that before his Damascus Road experience he was “full of zeal” and at the same time a persecutor of the Church. In Gal. 1:14 he claimed that at one time he was “extremely zealous” for his ancestral traditions. But he wasn’t proud of it. And all of us have seen Christians who were an embarrassment because they had zeal without knowledge.
But there is a positive zeal, too, that is expected of us as believers, and it should focus on the same objects for which God has expressed His zeal.
1. We should be zealous for God’s name and reputation. Our lives are the only Bibles some people read. They may form their entire opinion of Christ by observing our behavior. That should motivate us to godly behavior and a verbal witness to match.
2. We should be zealous for God’s people.
Do you have a passion for souls?
Do you have a passion for making disciples?
Do you have a zeal for serving God’s people?
3. We should be zealous for God’s house, which in the New Testament is His Church. How many of us could say honestly, “Zeal for Thy house has consumed me?” I’m reminded ere of Haggai’s prophecy during the Babylonian captivity, when the Lord came and asked, “Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Give careful thought to your ways.” (Haggai 1:4-5) Frankly, there are many evangelical churches which are meeting in crowded, deteriorating, inadequate facilities while scores of families in those same churches are living in selfish luxury. Enjoying such homes is not wrong unless we are robbing God in the process.
A third and final lesson we need to learn from the holiness and jealousy of God is that …
The Church must model these attributes of holiness and jealousy in its corporate life. (Rev.2:12-17; 3:14-22). Jesus Christ wrote letters to seven churches, letters to which we would do well to pay heed. In many of these He addresses the issues of holiness and zeal. I have time to refer to only one, the letter to the Church at Laodicea, to whom Christ said their lack of zeal was a supreme offense. Listen to Rev. 3:15-16, 19:
“I know your deeds, that you are either cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth …. (Verse 19) Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest (that’s the word zealous or jealous) and repent.”
Gratefully, the very next verse reads, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
The holiness and jealousy of God may seem very threatening to us, but these are attributes of a God who cares, who’s knocking at our door, desiring either to initiate a relationship or restore the fellowship that once was there. Let’s bow before this great and glorious God and confess any violations of His holiness. Let’s also ask Him to restore the zeal that once motivated us.
DATE: August 25, 1996
Tags:
Holiness
Jealousy
Idolatry
Zeal