"For the LORD (EloHim, Yahweh) is a Jealous God" part 2

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 ... 

A people of promise. God in His grace and providence had anointed/ordained a man named Abraham, who could trace his origins to the family of Shem, son of Noah. Because of his demonstrated faith and the grace of God, God promised Abraham that his descendants would become as numerous as the stars and the grains of sand. The people who would first be identified with this promise was the nation of Israel, descending from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As the Genesis record continues to show, the people of Jacob moved from Canaan during the famine to Egypt when one of Jacob's (aka Israel's) youngest sons had been elevated to the governor and second in command of the region and who administered the plenty that God had provided for that purpose in His providence. After 400 years in Egypt, according to God's divine timing, He redeemed the people from the bondage of slavery for the purpose of bringing them to a place where they could worship Him according to His determination outlined in the 10 commandments and laws that He would give the people to guide them to true blessings as He restored them to the land of their forefather Israel. 

The people of Israel did eventually occupy the land - God assigned areas for each tribe according to His will for them. (It is interesting who was given the northern region and who was given the southern region.) God did give them victory over those interlopers who had claimed the land for themselves and warred against God's purpose. However - and this is important to know - not all of the Canaanites were driven out, due in part to the unfaithfulness and disobedience of the Israelites to carry out God's command to drive the wicked from their midst.

Additionally, the Israelites, after re-inhabiting the land - were straightforwardly instructed not to intermingle with the people of the land - primarily because they were pagans who did not worship the true God, the Savior of Israel. The peoples of Canaan were not ignorant of who this God was, which is why God allowed for the proselyte (a converted Canaanite; also called stranger in some Bible translations) to become part of the blessing and not be annihilated with those rejecting God. (compare Romans 1:18-23; Exodus 12:9; 1 Chronicles 22:1-3; 2 Chronicles 2:16-18; 2 Chronicles 30:24-26; Ezekiel 14:6-8) 

Years would pass, and the initial generations of Israelites returning to the land would pass away. Judges 2 indicates that eventually generations were born who did not know the God of Israel, i.e., folks had turned to the pagan gods of their neighbors. Why would they do that - after all these were the people, or at least their grandparents and great grandparents were the people whom God had brought from captivity in Egypt after miraculous signs were performed to demonstrate God's glory and sovereignty. They and their parents and grandparents had witnessed God's saving hand against their enemies. They had witnessed and enjoyed the blessings of abundance in a land God had given to them. (compare Psalm 77-80) Why, then, would they turn their backs on God?

For the same reasons essentially that Adam and Eve, and us today, do so. To satisfy our own desires for dominance, self-rule and worship. To feel good and enjoy the fleeting pleasures disobedience gives. 

But our God is a Jealous God who will not tolerate forever the wandering away of His chosen people. (compare Exodus 20:4-6; 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:23-25; 5:9; 6:15; Joshua 24:18-20) His perfect Jealousy, born of a sovereign right to command obedience and worship, is not to be toyed with. As in the example of the wayward child in Part 1 of this blog, God knows what is best for His created beings, despite what the lust of our hearts tell us. He has the right to chastise His people and set up the necessary guardrails to protect them and command their exclusive worship. He has provided the means and instrument to restore His people - which He provides at great cost. He has redeemed or purchased His people at great cost, in His grace and providence. HE HAS THE SOVEREIGN RIGHT and is worthy above all things to be praised and worshiped. 

We, too, are the people of the promise through the seed of Abraham - in the person of Jesus Christ. We thus need to recall that the reason that God had faithful men record the accounts of His chosen people, of His salvation plan and process, is for us, for those who would follow those generations. (compare 1 Corinthians 10:1-11) We, too, are chosen people in a 'promised land' - a place of relationship with God where we are to worship Him exclusively. God's holy Word, His record of the actions and consequences of His people in past days, are for our benefit so that we can discern and make choices in line with God's will for our lives through a careful review and consultation of those accounts. (compare 1 Corinthians 10:12-15; Psalm 119:66; Proverbs 1:1-2; 2:3-9; Philippians 1:9; Hebrews 5:13-14) Will we be enticed by or lured to the practices and culture of the world? Yes. Will we be tempted to think like the world? Yes. Jesus tells us that in His Gospels and we are warned about it in the letter of Revelation. We are still flesh, therefore, our divine 'war' is with those fleshly desires to subdue them by following the Holy Spirit's direction in our lives. Is it easy? No, nor was it easy to live in the culture and sensual environments in which God's people in the past lived. They, too, were tempted with sexual immorality, greed, and idolatry and many succumbed, just as many of God's people fall to those desires today, and become subjected to God's correction. We must take care to seek God's will in all things, or suffer the same consequences suffered by those in the past who chose to go their own way. 

For our God is still a Jealous God, who is jealous for the people whom He chooses! Let us 'work out our salvation', i.e., follow the course God has set for us with all determination, with fear and with trembling, as before a Great and Loving God, who has our best in mind at all times. (Philippians 2:12-13)

"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 ...