Boundless Ambition and the Jealous God

And there was silence....

Sorry for the break in posting.  It has been a long few weeks, and a difficult but wonderful weekend.  Much grace.  Feel free to ask me about it, but I will spare the blog.  Let me share some truths from God's Word that have been extremely close to me heart lately.

Exodus 34 -
¹¹"Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ¹²Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. ¹³You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim ¹⁴(for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), ¹⁵ lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, ¹⁶and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. (bolding mine)


Strong stuff.  Encouraged yet?  Haha, but let's look at what this passage says about our God, and then I will share what this has looked like in my life lately.


I gave the paragraph to set the scene a bit.  It's God talking to Moses near Sinai.  He is preparing the Israelites for their journey into the promised land, and God is warning them.  He gives them precautions such as making covenants with the inhabitants or intermarrying with them (see how badly Solomon blew it here).  But for what I am getting at, let's look at verse 14.


the LORD - all upper case means Yahweh, the name God gave for himself.  Jews wouldn't say it, they gave God many other names because they didn't want to take the Lord's name in vain.  God's covenant name.  This is a big deal, but after giving this most holy of names, he tells the Israelites something else.


My name is Jealous is a jealous God.  Wow, God is jealous.  A sin?  Definitely not, in the same way that I am jealous for all of my wife.  I love her too much to share her.  I am my wife's and she is mine.  Our love is exclusive.  God is the same.  He has entered into a covenant with us who are saved, and he is jealous that we remain faithful to him, and not turn to any of the pagan gods, or "whore" ourselves out.  Strong language, and it is strong on purpose.


So you see, here is where God impacts me.  Our God loves us too much to share us; he desires to destroy our idols.  Through my wife and care group leaders work with us on marital issues, God showed me a huge area of sin in my life.  I was pursuing holiness hard.  Good, right?  Yeah, but God really revealed the heart behind all of my efforts.  I wanted to work my butt off to learn godliness that I might be able to write a book that could be considered a "classic" and that my name would be remembered.  See the irony of my sin here?  I wanted to learn about the God whose name is Jealous so that I could teach about him so that my name would be remembered.  


What idols do you have?  What is the ultimate cause of your work?  What do you strive for?  God graciously showed me my error here and the huge pride at work in my heart to maintain such an effort, and He is helping me to grow.  I am learning about Godly ambition for God's sake and not for my name's sake.


I will leave you with a quote that struck me from one of my pastors as he was crying, "wouldn't it be great that generations from now people would be impacted from our faithfulness now, and that they wouldn't even know our names."  We want to lead people to learn of Jealous, the God who is the fullness of joy and our only hope.  May our lives be means to that end.