Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Jealous Much?


I once heard Oprah Winfrey on a clip from her show stating "how can I believe in a Jealous God?"  To those who do not believe or understand who God is, or what he has done for the human race, it may seem a little strange.  After all, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The word "jealous" seems to be a negative word, a sinful word, and even alludes to the 10th commandment: "you shall not covet." (Ex 20:17)  So how can a perfect God, without sin, be a jealous God?  It does seem to be a conundrum.  Except, that someone can not covet something that is their own possession.  At the very beginning of the world, the Bible details each day of creation as God creates everything from nothing.  In everything he created, he "spoke" it into existence.  Then he created something different...

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

The next chapter goes into more detail about how he created him: "then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)  Man was his prize possession, his prized creation; different from any other creature or living thing that He created.  So in short, he has the right to be jealous of his own possession, his own creation, and it is not what we would understand in our finite, simplistic, human understanding as something bad.  

For one, I am glad he is jealous for me.  I am glad he looked at me and said, "I love you so much that I will send my Son to die for you (John 3:16).  Today, know that there is a God that did the same for you.  He longs for communion with you.  He longs for you to seek him and his Son Jesus Christ.  If you have not done that, I would like to share with you how you can, just drop me an e-mail or message me on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.