"For the LORD (EloHim, Yahweh) your God is a Jealous God..."

Can you ever remember a time when your mother warned you about taking a certain course of action? "Don't go over there to play, there are bad weeds there!" But, so-and-so was playing over there last week and nothing happened to him, you said to yourself. So off you go to play in the weeds. Only a few hours later you are itching and scratching your legs because there was poison ivy mixed in with the weeds. "If only you had obeyed me," your mom later says, "you wouldn't have to suffer like this." And she puts gobs of stuff on your legs to help reduce the itching. Or, "don't go across the street to so-and-so's house - there's something funny going on over there/I haven't met the parents yet." But so-and-so goes to your school and you played with him or her at recess. He/she is o.k. Your mom just doesn't know him/her like you do. So off you go across the street and play with so-and-so. You have had fun. Your mom wasn't right this time! You keep on going over there and playing with so-and-so in the yard and all is great. One day it starts to rain just as you all were getting your game on and so-and-so says come on - dash into my house so that we don't get wet. You hesitate for a second because you hear your mother's words in your head, but then again, you're getting soaked and it is easier to go into his/her house than go way across the street to your house. When you get inside, it is kind of dark, and smells of funny smoke. Some guy is chillin' in a chair looking at TV and when he hears you all running into the house, yells some very pithy foul language at the two of you for making noise. Your friend does say bad words from time to time, but you have never heard anyone say what the guy said, nor the threats he made to you if you made any more noise. He looks like the kind of person who would do what he says. You tell your friend that you've got to go home and, um, do your homework (you just make up anything at that moment), and run out of the house and when the door slams you can hear the guy cussing. 

Scary stuff.

Well, the above may not have exactly been your experience. But I can almost guarantee that you, someone of your acquaintance, or even someone in your group of siblings or extended family have had something kind of close to that. I can think back to some of my childhood and adolescent years when I wanted to be independent of my mother's judgment and rules. I thought that some of them were kind of out there, or that she couldn't understand how things were 'nowadays'. So when I finally began to take the Bible seriously, I couldn't believe how much I could see real life in it and episodes that mirrored some of the things that happened to me! The stories and principles were like right now, instead of old timey stories for bedtime. I saw those little scenes of a wise and experienced person giving sound advice so that people could have victory and success in their lives, and saw it being played out over and over and over again in the lives of the people who lived in the nation of Israel. And over, and over again even when the God who made all the universe, who could see into every nano-molecule, gives warning after warning about the consequences of certain behaviors and activity, the children of Israel dis it, and wind up getting in big trouble. Each and every time - it might vary in the amount of time each time the problems start due to disobedience, but they always come. And each time, the disobedience impacts not just the ones doing the disobeying, but also their children and grandchildren. [Exodus 20:3-7; Deuteronomy 4:1-40; 6:1-19]  

So how did these 'Bible people', these Israelites, get started? We all know the story about the Exodus from Egypt, with Pharoah and the 10 plagues and all of that, but how many of you know the backstory - the story behind the story? Why was a nation of Jews living in, of all places, Egypt? Why did God have such an interest in them? Was He God only of the Jews? Why would God tell the Israelites to move out of Egypt - the only place they've known for all of their lives, and go mostly on foot into a land a few hundred miles away that they have never lived in, and then to war against the folks who were living there so as to make it their home? (some people today will call what happened a kind of genocide and call God a murderer) So, is God guilty of wrongdoing? Why would this God, this Yahweh, have the Israelites traipse through the desert and wilderness for years instead of going directly to the land of Canaan? Who were the Canaanites and where did they come from? Why did God want them destroyed?

These are hard questions - especially for those of us who do not know the true God, His character, and especially his sovereignty. We seldom get a full picture of the LORD God -  EloHim, Yahweh - in every Sunday corporate worship experience, but we get enough sometimes to be curious about who He really is and why He made the statement above? Like your parents - and moms are usually the more vociferous when it comes to household rules - He has a right to direct our lives and provide boundaries and guardrails to help protect us and to enable us to thrive. He wants all of our worship, that is, our obedience (which is the foundation for worshiping God). He is still a Jealous God, i.e., He rightly deserves every creature's worship, obedience, service - He does not want to share with idols or other so-called gods. And yet, like the youths pictured above, we do it - ignore God anyway when it looks like we can't get our 'play on'. And then we have to suffer the consequences.

As the story behind the story unfolds and we get answers to the above questions, we'll get to see why this is so and what was going on those thousands of years ago that still impact our daily lives and serves as warnings still for us today.

Tease for next time... 

The Israelites had now experienced a great time of growth and prosperity and had gained considerable victories in the land to which God had brought them. They were living large. Their 'modern times' were in full swing! Modern housing - they no longer had to live in tents. A marketplace close to their settlements, social activity and times of celebration. The 'latest' in fashionable clothing, meaningful work - this was living! There were still Canaanites living nearby who for some reason did not get removed from the land - some were kind of nice and kept their properties up and sometimes you would come across a marketplace that the Canaanites owned or visited. They looked different from the Israelites in some respects, and dressed and lived differently. They definitely worshiped differently ...