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The Bible says, Thou shalt worship no other god for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. And the title of my sermon tonight is God is Jealous. And now when I think of the word jealous, I think there's a lot of confusion in the world today about that word. And so we're going to really study what does it mean for God to be jealous? It says God is jealous. It says whose name is jealous, and he is a jealous God. Look at verse 15, it says, Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice. One of the biggest aspects of jealousy, according to God, is he doesn't want you to serve other gods. He's the only God. And of course, when it's referring to other gods, it's talking to false gods. It's talking to idols, to graven images, to carved wooden things, to statues, things which the Bible says are no gods, but the people that sacrifice unto them are sacrificing them to devils or to idols. But if I got some dictionary definition for you of the word jealous, because I think in today's world, people are confused about what jealous means. And the Bible is extremely consistent about this word. It says in the Bible, it's used 43 different verses and 54 times. So it's used quite a few times. But in the dictionary, the number one definition is feeling resentment against someone because of that person's rivalry, success, or advantages, you know, and it says, he was jealous of his rich brother, as an example. So a lot of times, people use this word jealous to say, oh, I'm jealous because that guy's better looking than I am, or I'm jealous because that guy's taller than I am, or I'm jealous because that guy's stronger than I am, or I'm jealous because that guy has more money than me, or has a better looking, you know, family, or he drives a nicer car, or has a better job. It's really what they're doing is they're being envious, or they're being c c c c c But they're not being jealous because the definition of jealous is actually, you can't be jealous of something that's not yours, of something that doesn't belong unto you. And if you go through all the definitions, I'm not going to read them all for the sake of time, but the fifth definition I found in the dictionary says, solicitous or diligent and maintaining or guarding something. I think that definition is probably the closest you could find in the dictionary what the Bible actually means to be jealous. Jealous means that you just have a lot of care for, or a lot of concern, that you have a lot of care or concern and you're very diligent in maintaining or guarding something. And I would add to that, of your possessions. It's not something that you don't own, it's something that's yours. Their example of a phrase would be, the American people are jealous of their freedom. I think that's a good thought. We should be jealous of things that we have and things that we should want to have, like our freedom. Even if someone were to take that away, we should still be jealous of it because it was ours to have at one point. But if, you know, we turn to Exodus 20, go back just a few chapters, go to Exodus 20. Now the reason why I kind of want to preach this is, you know, there's a famous person named Oprah Winfrey who, she had her testimony about why she kind of is the way she is and what she believes and it happens to come down to the fact that God is jealous. She was in an interview and they were kind of asking her what she thought about the Bible and about how she was raised, because she was raised in a Baptist church. She was raised to be Baptist and she said that she was going to this church and the pastor was a real, as he called charismatic man, not being Pentecostal, just the fact he was a dynamic preacher, a lot of people liked him, and she was talking about him and she said that he said, the Lord that God is a jealous God. I was caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said, jealous. So this is Oprah speaking, and something struck me. I was 27 or 28 and I was thinking God is all, God is omniscient, God is also jealous. A jealous God is jealous of me and something about that didn't feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love and that God is in all things. So she kind of says, I don't think God can be jealous because she has a negative viewpoint of the word jealous. She thinks that jealous is a negative attribute, is something bad or something wrong and she said, well, I don't like that about God. I don't like the fact that he could be jealous. And so she gives another quote in a few more moments of her interview and she quotes some guy named Eckhart Tolle, a book called New Earth, where he said, man made God in his own image. The eternal, the infinite and unnameable is reduced into a mental idol that you had to believe in and worship as my God or our God. And she says that that was just a really good quote, that she could just, that really helped her, that enlightened her onto who she thought God was. She just thinks that God is just some mental image, just some idol that man made up that you got to worship. Well, it's interesting that she hates the word jealous. She hates the fact that God's jealous and the primary reason why God's jealous is revealed worshipping idols. But then she's like, well, I don't like the fact that God's jealous. I think that God's some idol or God, he, she kind of just flips it on its head. But think about the first commandment of the Bible, thou shalt have no other gods before me. The first commandment is against idolatry, against the fact that you would worship some other god, the fact that you'd have other gods before you. And this all makes perfect sense. Being jealous is always a good thing. It makes perfect sense in today's world. And I think the best context, and we'll see it later, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but being jealous of maybe your wife or being jealous of your children is a great thing. I don't want my wife to not be jealous of me. I don't want my wife to just say, hey, go hang out with any girl that you want, go buy her flowers, go talk sweet unto her. No, I want her to be jealous of my affection. I want her to say, hey, I only want you to give me attention. I'm the only woman in your life and the same's the bad way. I don't want her hanging out with some other guy. I don't want some other guy taking her out on some date. No, I'm jealous for my wife because I love her, because I want to take care of her. And if anybody would come to hurt her or to take advantage of her or to do something mean to her, I would want to protect her. Why? Because I'm jealous for my wife. And just the same way with my kids. I don't want my kids going around and saying some other guy's their father, saying, hey, this guy's my dad and he's so great and he's so strong and he buys me all kinds of stuff and he loves me. No, I'm their dad. I'm jealous for my kids. I'm the one that takes care of them. I'm the one that's loved them. I want them to give their love back to me because I'm jealous for my children. That's not a bad attribute. It's not a bad attribute to love your goods and your possessions, the things that God's bestowed on you, to take care of your things, to be jealous of the people in your life that God's given, you know, rule over, authority over. We should care for one another. We should love our spouse. We should love our children. We should love our brother. We should be jealous for things. And God's a jealous God. God loves his people. He loves his children and he's jealous for them. So he doesn't like it when they give their attention to some idol, to some devil, to some false thing. He also doesn't like when you bow down and worship other things. I mean, it's the Lord Jesus Christ, God, in the Old Testament, when he was going to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, he performed many wonderful works. I mean, he had all the, he had the ten plagues. He took them away from the Egyptians with the mighty works. He was leading them by a fire at night and by a cloud in the daytime. He parted the Red Sea. He was taking them all the way through the desert. And then guess what? They worship a golden calf. I mean, how mad is that going to make you? I mean, you just do everything for these people, you're just taking constant care of them, you love them, you're doing everything for them and they're like, oh, this stupid golden calf is God. He said, these be your gods. These are the ones that led you out of Egypt. No, that's a false god and God hates idolatry. That's why the first commandment is that's what happened to other gods before him. I'm glad you turned to Exodus 20, look at verse 5, it says, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. So again, we see he's like, what is he getting mad about? Why is he saying he's jealous? They're bowing down, they're bowing down to other gods, they're worshiping other gods. Go to Numbers chapter 25, and we're going to kind of flip through a lot of passages. I want to look at all these verses in jealousy if we have time, because I think it's so important to understand what this word means, to see how consistent the Bible really is. Numbers 25, look at verse 11, it says, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consume not the children of Israel in my jealousy. And if you backed up to verse 1, we'll see why is he so mad? Why does he have so much wrath? Verse 1, it says, and Israel abode and shit them, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods, and the people that eat and bowed down to their gods, and joined himself unto Baal Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. We see that when they married with the other women, they were from other tribes, from the other countries, why was it that God was saying, don't marry these women, don't go with the heathen? They were going to send them after their gods, because then they started going in idolatry, going to worship other gods, bowing down, performing sacrifices unto the false gods. And God's saying, hey, I'm jealous. I don't want that. I don't want you to give any other glory to any other god, it's all for me. Deuteronomy chapter 4, go to another book in your Bible, go to Deuteronomy chapter 4, I'll read for you in Deuteronomy 5, it says, thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. So he's kind of reiterating the same thing that he has said. He's going to visit the iniquity of these people that love idolatry, that's why we see these countries that love idolatry so much, they're just constantly having all kinds of evil upon them, they're all destitute. We see that God's visiting the iniquity of these people that just serve idols and idols and idols. They want to worship Satan. Guess what? They're going to have to suffer the afflictions of Satan most of their life. They have to live in darkness, they have to live in dirty, poor, polluted areas, they're disgusting. Why? Because they've rejected God. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 4, look at verse 23, take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made of you, and make you a graven image, for the likeness of anything which the Lord thy God has forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Now if I were to see my wife with another man, you better be sure I'm going to get fired. I'm going to get mad. I'm going to be like the consuming fire, I'm going to get in the wind and say, what are you doing? That's my wife. She's going to come behind me and he's going to be in trouble. God doesn't like it. He's not going to share his people. He hates idolatry when these people are worshiping statues, when they're worshiping false gods. We see even his people would worship these false gods, not just the heathen. Go to Deuteronomy 6, just two chapters over, says, and look at verse 13, thou shalt fear the Lord thy God and serve him, and shalt swear by his name, ye shall not go after other gods of the gods of the people which are round about you, for the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from us, the face of the earth. Look, it's making it real clear. Why is every time the word jealous being introduced with false gods? Because that's what it means. It means that God loves his people. He doesn't want to share his glory. It's not that God's jealous of these people because they get to worship these false gods. He's not looking down saying, oh man, I wish I got to do that. I wish I was like you. I wish I had your house. I wish I had your goods. No, that's envy. That's covetousness. No, God's jealous of his people when they go and worship a false god. When they're giving glory unto the wrong person. That's what it means to be jealous. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 29. I'll read through you in Deuteronomy 32. It says, they provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked him to anger. Look, when you're worshipping a false god, when you're doing these things, you're revoking him to anger. If I saw my wife, you know, hanging out with some guy and talking sweet things unto him, it's going to start making me angry. It's going to start provoking me to be angry because I'm jealous for her. I don't want her to be, you know, getting affection from some other guy or laughing at some other guy's joke or giving him the time of the day or telling him how handsome he is or, you know, saying, oh, he's so strong and he's so good looking. No, I want all the attention. I'm jealous after my wife. She's not going to give it unto some other man. Look at Deuteronomy 29 verse 16. For you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt and how we came to the nations which he passed by. And you have seen their abominations and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them. Lest there should be any, lest there should be among you man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations. Lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood. And it came to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he blessed himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart and add drunkenness to thirst. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anchor of the Lord in his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. Now the interesting thing about this is the fact that when the God was giving all the children of Israel his commandments, they had an opportunity to say, do you want to follow these? And they said, yes, we want to follow all of your laws. We want to follow your statutes. We don't want to serve other gods. Just like my wife, she didn't get forced to marry me. I didn't go and grab her and say, you're my wife now. No, she had a choice, but when she made that choice, she was forsaking all others. That's one of the things that people would say when they're getting married. They're standing before they say, I'm going to forsake all others. So now that person is entitled to jealousy. They're entitled to say, hey, you can't be with anybody else. You got to forsake all others. You're mine. You're mine. You're not your own. Your body's mine. That's what I would say in the New Testament. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 32, and it's interesting that when people would commit this kind of a sin or would go and give glory to somebody else or worship somebody else, it provokes them to anger. And if we go to Deuteronomy 32, look in verse 21, the Bible says, they have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have promoted me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. Now this is a quote that actually gets quoted in the New Testament. Keep your finger here and go to Romans chapter 10, Romans chapter 10. So the Bible's saying, look, God, he's a jealous God. He doesn't like it that they were serving other gods, that they were provoking him to anger. So guess what he's going to do? He's going to give them jealousy by the nations that aren't of Israel, by provoking them to jealousy by being a God unto them, by saving them, by saving the heathen. We see in Romans chapter 10 verse 17, so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yes, verily their sound went to all the earth and their words and the ends of the world. But I say, did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people and by a foolish nation I will anger you. But Isaiah is very bold and saith, I was found to them that sought me not. I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me, but to Israeli saith, all day long have I stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsang people. Now in this example, it'd be like you're trying to, you know, give attention to your son. You're saying, son, I love you, please, you know, hang out with me. I'm your dad. And he just gives attention to somebody else and eventually you say, you know what, fine. I'm going to play with my other son. You know what always happens? That kid starts getting really jealous. He's like, see, he sees you playing with your dad and he's like, oh man, that looks like a lot of fun. I wish I hadn't forsaken my dad. I wish I hadn't talked with my dad. I'm going to go there and play now too. The same things with the children of Israel. He said, hey, I'm stretching my hands forth. I want to hang out with you. I want to fellowship with you. They rejected him. They said, no, we don't want it. We want to serve other gods. We're going to serve the false gods and revoke them to anger. So he's like, look, I'll just go to the heathen. At least the heathen will pay attention to me. At least some of the heathen will get saved. At least some of the heathen want to have fellowship with me. Go to, and look, flip one chapter over, Romans chapter 11. So we see that jealousy again, it's this false gods. It's serving other gods. It's not giving glory and honor unto the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse nine. And David saith, let their table be made a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see and bow down their back always. I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid, but rather through their false salvation has come unto the Gentiles for to provoke them to jealousy. So the Bible's saying in Romans chapter 11, the reason why the salvation has come unto the Gentiles is just to revoke Israel to jealousy. It's just to say, hey, look at these Gentiles that are preaching by the, they're speaking with other tongues, by the power of the Holy Ghost. Look at them performing miracles. Look at them believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at them giving glory and honor to the Lord Jesus Christ. That should have given them, you know, jealousy because they're like, well, the oracles of God were committed unto us, but now, you know, the people are coming from the east and the west and they're going to sit with Abraham and Jacob, but we're going to be cast out if we don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. They wanted to always be with God. They thought it was His God, but they were rejecting Him. They didn't want fellowship. And we see God's a jealous God. He wants you to only give worship and attention unto Him, and if you turn away, He'll give it to another. So kind of go back to the Old Testament again. Go to Joshua chapter 24, Joshua 24, and I'll read for you in 1 Kings chapter 14. It says, And Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins, which they had committed above all that their fathers had done. We see all the way from Egypt, all the way into the judges and then into the kings. I mean, the children of Israel just constantly, they're just going after idols, they're going after idols, setting up false gods, they're going committing, hoarding with the, you know, the false gods of the heathen, of the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Philistines and the Assyrians and just everybody in that region. And in Joshua 24, look at verse 19, it says, And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord, for He is an holy God, He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. Now that's pretty strong language. Look up at verse 14, we'll kind of see why he's saying this. It says, Now therefore, fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil and you serve the Lord, choose ye this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Ammonites, and whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now it's interesting, there's some people that think they can have it both ways. They think they can be a Hindu and a Christian. They think they can bow down to Baal, and they can bow down unto God. That's not true. You can't do that. That's why he said in verse 19, Ye cannot serve the Lord, for He is an holy God, He is a jealous God. Now do you think it would make any sense for me to say, Hey, me and my wife and her other lover live together in one house. I mean is that ever going to work? I mean can I be jealous of my wife and she has some other lover in the same room? No. That's never going to work. I'm either going to kill the guy, or I'm going to die. That's the only two options. It's me or him. And the same goes with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't be serving idols and false gods and be serving God. It's one or the other. Choose who you're going to serve. They had Baal and they had God. They were trying to worship both, and he said, Look, you can't worship both. Choose who you're going to serve. God or the false god. God or Baal. God or the Pope. God or whoever. It's got to be one God, the Lord Jesus Christ, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Go to 1 Kings chapter 19, and I'll read for you in Isaiah 42 verse 13, The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man. He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war. He shall cry, yea, roar. He shall prevail against his enemies. Just in that same situation, if there's another guy threatening me, it's war. And guess what? I might not win every battle. I might not be the strongest guy, but guess what? I'm going to come really fierce at you if you're challenging my family, if you're challenging something. But God's always going to win. God's always going to defeat his enemies, so he better just get on his side. He better get on the winning side. Look at 1 Kings chapter 19 verse 10, and he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, but the children of Israel forsaken thy covenant, throw down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword. And I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away. Now this is Elijah, and he's just like, look, I've been jealous for you God. I've been trying to serve you, you know, I even defeated all these prophets of Baal. I mean, he came against them, he came against 400 prophets of Baal, and he defeated them, he even slew them with the sword, but you know, he's feeling really down on himself. He said, I only, I am the ones left. Go to verse 14 though, it says that he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, because the children of Israel forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away. We see that Elijah was very jealous for the Lord, and we ought to be jealous for God, even if we're the only ones, even if we're the only ones left standing, and we know that God told Elijah, guess what, there's still 7,000 men that haven't bowed their knee unto Baal. They're not really alone. You might feel alone. Even if I was the only person in this building, I'm still going to preach the word of God. I still believe there's been a God out there. It doesn't matter. We should be jealous for the Lord God of hosts, just like as Elijah was, because God's a jealous God, and we should be jealous of him. I'm going to read for you, go to Psalms chapter 78, Psalms 78. We're looking at every place that the word jealous is even mentioned, because I think the Bible so far has been really consistent, and I've really just been kind of highlighting all the verses that talk about idolatry, talking about going after false gods, because that's the primary application of why he's jealous. He wants all the attention, he wants all the glory, it's this first commandment he had in Isaiah 43, he says, I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. He hates it. He hates seeing the Pope, you know, all his statues of Mary, and he ain't seeing all the saints, he's seeing all the Hindu gods, and all these idols, the Chinese religion and all their, their warriors and the Greek mythology and all their, you know, statues and everything that everybody has. He doesn't want to see any glory given to that. He hates it. He's not going to give it to anybody. He's not going to let it stand. Look at Psalms 78 verse 58, where they provoked him to anger with their high places and moved him to jealousy with their graven images. Joyce Meyer's book, God's not mad. No, God's mad every day. Just think about how much the, you know, idolatry is out in the world today. If you look at just the world's religions, the, probably the largest religion that practices idolatry is Catholicism. I looked up some statistics, it said that the number of Catholics today is 1.2 billion. 1.2 billion people consider them Catholic today, and guess what, they worship graven images. They have graven images of Mary and all the saints. There's a church right by our church down in Tempe, and it says like, Edward, the saint, the confessor. Saint Edward, the confessor, and they have Saint so-and-so in this and Saint so-and-so in this, and they make statues under these saints, and they bow down and they worship them. I mean, you go to some of these areas in the Phoenix area that are very Catholic, and I mean, they have these huge shrines. They have these like, these ginormous, you know, circle, half circles with the pictures of Mary and pictures of Jesus and all kinds of four-footed beasts and creeping things and whatever. You name it. I mean, they got a statue to everything. And they're bowing down and they're worshiping it. I mean, you think God's just looking down from heaven and pleased with that person. I mean, he sees all these graven images and all these false gods and like, here's the thing that I think is the worst, is the Catholics, they attribute it to Jesus. They try to say that is God. They try to say that is the Lord Jesus Christ. At least the Hindus are acknowledging that some like devil or some demon, but the Catholics are trying to say, this is the Virgin Mary, and this is God, and this is Jesus, this is the perfect lamb. I mean, it's just that much more insulting. God's not going to give his glory and honor to any of that. He hates it. Go to 1st Corinthians chapter 10, but then we have the Hindus. We have those, that's a billion people, almost as many as the Catholics. They're constantly worshiping statues and false gods. I mean, why is God saying, thou shalt have no other gods before me? I think a lot of times when you grow up in America, you maybe are kind of blind to it and you think, why isn't that the first commandment? Is that really affecting very many people? Are there really that many people that are worshiping statues and have statues and have graven images? Yes! And you go to a lot of Christians' homes and they have all these graven images in their house. Whether or not they're bowing down to it, God doesn't like it. God doesn't like to see, you know, this nativity scene where they have the Lord Jesus Christ in a graven image and they're worshiping it. Yes, Christians worship idols in that way. They're looking at all these things. I've seen people, I saw a present to a pastor and it was this like owl, like bookshelf thing. It was this graven image owl given unto a pastor and he thought, this is cool. No, that's wicked. We shouldn't have any graven image because God said, thou shalt not make any molten image of anything on this earth, of man or four footed beast or creeping things. I mean, the Bible makes it very clear that idolatry is not just worshiping it but even making it, even having it, even having anything to do with it. We see Rachel, you know, it never gives an account of Rachel actually worshiping any false gods or idols, but she kept them. She took her dad's graven images and she hid them. She had to just keep them. They were too precious to her. Maybe her dad, you know, carved them real special or maybe someone in her family carved them real nice and so precious under. So she was going to forsake God's law and guess what happened? She was barren for years and years and years because she kept idols probably because she wasn't given glory and honor of the Lord Jesus Christ because she had sin in her heart. I wonder how many women in this world today are struggling, going through affliction, but they got a bunch of idols in their house. Maybe they get rid of their idols, maybe they stop worshiping some false god, God could bless them. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 19. What say I then? That the idol is anything or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything? But I say that the Gentiles, which I say that the things of the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. And I would not that you should have fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. You cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils. Do we revoke the Lord to jealousy? Oh, he's stronger than he? Look, when you've got a grave and image in your house, you're revoking God to jealousy. He hates it. He doesn't like it. What if I kept a bunch of pictures of some woman in my wallet that wasn't my wife? Would my wife like that? No, God hates it whether or not I'm spending any time with this woman. It could be a made up woman, it could be just some picture that I drew, but it's wicked. And if you have a grave and image in your house, oh, I'm not worshipping it, I'm not bowing down. No, it's wicked. It's evil. Burn it. Get rid of it. Throw it away. Why? I don't want the anger of the Lord on me. I don't want the anger of the Lord on my house. I don't want the anger of the Lord on anybody. We should get rid of adultery because it's fellowshiping with devils. How many devils do you want in your life? I mean, do you want the devil of Hinduism and the devil of Buddhism and the devil of Catholicism to be in your house? I don't want it. I don't want to have any fellowship with devils. I'm just going to get rid of all the idols in my house. Go back to the Old Testament. Go to Ezekiel chapter 8. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10, Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee idolatry. We need to flee it. We need to get away from it. We need to have nothing to do with it. We shouldn't. Oh, that's real cute. Look at that cute little lamb. Look at that cute owl. Look at that cute dog. No! Flee idolatry. Have nothing to do with it. Some woman asked me tonight when I was sewing, she was like, Hey, I've got this picture of Jesus. Do you think that's what he looked like? And I was like, No! That's not what he looked like at all. He has long hair. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 11, It's a shame for a man to have long hair. We know that Jesus Christ did all things that pleased the Father. He didn't have long hair. There was no sin in him. It's just some picture, some faggot in the 1500s drew of some hippie. I mean, you know the picture. It's Jesus. He's all, you know, he's kind of looking off and he's got the long hair. That's not Jesus Christ. That's some bum, probably some sodomite that another sodomite drew of him. He's just drawing a picture of his buddy and he's like, Hey, maybe this is Jesus. No, he wasn't white. He wasn't like white as snow with some blonde hair. That's not what the Hebrews and the Israelites look like. I mean, they were looking like Egyptians. They probably had dark, you know, dark hair. They probably had light brown skin. They weren't looking like some area. And if you go, I told this lady, I said, you know, if you go to some part of the world where everybody's black, their Jesus looks black. If you go to some part of the world where they're Asian, their Jesus looks Asian. Have you ever seen an Asian Jesus? It's really weird looking. I mean, it doesn't matter what part of the world you're in, they have their own picture of Jesus. And it's not the Jesus of the Bible, it's another Jesus. You know, Islam has their form of Jesus. I don't know if they have a picture of what he looks like, but it's a false picture. Look at Ezekiel chapter eight. And he put forth the form of a hand and it took me by the lock of my head and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven and brought me in the visions of God, Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north, where it was the seat of the image of jealousy, which revoke it to jealousy. Look at verse five. Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now unto the way toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold, northward at the gate of the altar, this image of jealousy in the entry. And look at verse six. It says, just in the middle of it, even the great abominations of the house of Israel comitteth here, that I should go far from off my sanctuary, but turn thee yet again and now shall see greater abominations. Look, God's saying a bunch of abominations and he says, you know, Ezekiel saw an image of jealousy. Go to Ezekiel 36. Go to Ezekiel 36, verse five, and I'll start reading. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds that cast it out for a prey. Ezekiel 36, Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and saying of the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and the valleys, thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I have spoken to my jealousy and my fury, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen. And then skip all the way down to verse 18, it says, Wherefore I poured my fury upon them, for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and for their idols, wherewith they had polluted it. Idolatry is polluting the land, idolatry is dirty, idolatry is filthy, and it's not just the grave and images, it's not just these statues, it can be manifested in different ways. Look at Ezekiel 23, go to Ezekiel 23, and I'll read for you Ezekiel 16, it says, Behold therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated. I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness. And I will judge thee as women that break wedlock, and shed blood, are judged. And I will give thee blood, and fury, and jealousy. God makes the connection between idolatry to adultery, to going after some other person, as in, instead of talking about women that break wedlock, that's why jealousy is so important to God, it should be important to married man, to a married woman, verse 42. So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, will be angry, will be no more angry. Look, if you get right with God, if you stop playing your whoredoms, if you stop being a harlot, God will restore you, because he's a jealous God, he loves you, but when you're being a whore, when you're being a harlot, God's gonna get really angry. He can't stand that, and you know, it says in Ezekiel 23, verse 25, look there, and I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee, they shall take away thy nose and thy ears, and thy remnant shall fall by the sword. They shall take thy sons and thy daughters, and thy rat residue shall be devoured by fire. Look at verse 29, and they shall deal with thee hatefully, and shall take away all thy labor, and shall leave thee naked and bare, and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy lewdness and thy whoredoms, and I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted with their idols. Idolatry is dirty, idolatry is pollution, and the Bible is saying the same thing about being a whore. Idolatry is being dirty, and being a whore is dirty. Why is it that we have in America, I looked in this article, a hundred and ten million Americans have an STD. A hundred and ten million Americans have STDs in this country, because being a whore is dirty, because being a whore harlot, going out to bed with people that you shouldn't go to bed with, is being a whore, is being a harlot, committing fornication, going to bed with somebody that's not, you're married to, it's a dirty thing. And guess what? You get dirty diseases when you go and play a whore, when you're a harlot, when you commit fornication, when you go after other things, and it's the same thing with idolatry. God sees you going after these other gods as being a whore, and even being a physical whore is a form of idolatry. I looked at this article, it said based on data from 2008, that there's a hundred and ten million Americans that have STDs in this country. Diseases like chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis, genital herpes, HIV, HPV, syphilis, trichomoniasis. I mean, we're talking about all kinds of dirty, filthy, disgusting diseases that'll give you the itch, that'll give you the burning, the diseases that God said that he'd give to the children of Israel and the Old Testament law, he still gives today to all those that would use themselves. To all those that go whoring, whether they go whoring after idols, or whether they go whoring after the flesh, if you commit whoredom, God's gonna judge you. Go to Numbers chapter 5, it says that 50 million affections are in men, while 59 million are in women. We see in the reality, there's actually more women that are committing the sin of whoredom than there are whoremongers. Now, there's plenty of whoremongers out there, but there's even more whores, according to the statistics. It says that 50% of new infections occur in young people from the ages of 15 to 24. So we're talking about the young men and the young women, it says that these people most commonly get gonorrhea. Why? Because when you go and commit that sin, when you go in line with all these people, you're gonna get dirty things. God's not gonna just sit there and just, oh, that's fine. Go just be a whore, go just give yourself unto somebody else. No, God's a jealous guy. He doesn't like you giving your body, he doesn't like giving your affections to others, God's gonna judge you. And God can judge you with a dirty disease. That's why we shouldn't commit fornication, we should flee from fornication. And you know, I think that the statistic, it says about 110 million, that's about a third, probably in America. But I would say most of the people that don't have an STD are probably people that aren't ever gonna lie with you either. They're probably not whores and whoremongers. So if you just take all the people that are married and the really old people out of the equation, it's probably over half of the people that are the whores and the whoremongers that have a disease. That means you probably have more than a 50% chance if you just go to bed with somebody outside of marriage that's not a maiden or that's no, not pure, not a virgin, you probably get a disease. That's not a statistic I want to deal with. I mean, that's disgusting. And we see even Oprah Winfrey, you know, she hated God, she hated that he was jealous. Well, when she was 14, she became pregnant. And then she went through a slew of men and men and men. She's never been married, but she just goes from man to man to man. And she's a whore. She's a harlot. Why? Because she's going after other men. She's going to bed with men that aren't her husband. And she doesn't have any respect for the word jealousy. I see why she hated the fact that God was jealous, because she didn't want to be jealous for any man. She just wants to go to bed with anything that moves, any guy that'll give her any kind of attention. She just wants to be a whore and a harlot and God's going to judge her. And she probably has an STD because she's just lying with so many men. She even had a love affair with a married man. And she admitted it. She told some guy and some guy was giving him, wrote a book about it and said, look, she even had an affair with this one guy that was married. And the guy told her, I don't even want to leave my wife. She just was committing adultery with some man. And guess what? You don't have to be married to commit adultery. You can commit adultery being single if you lie with a married woman, if you lie with a married man. And that's a wicked sin. God punished it with a death penalty and whether or not America, you know, with their laws want to execute judgment, God will still execute his judgment. And guess what his punishment was? Death. And guess what HIV will do to you? It'll kill you. Look at Numbers chapter 5, it says in verse 14, and the spirit of jealousy come upon him and he'd be jealous of his wife and she'd be defiled or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him and he'd be jealous of his wife and she'd be not defiled. So the Bible is giving us kind of a, a situation where if a man just kind of suspects that maybe his wife hasn't been faithful and the spirit of jealousy come upon him, that he was going to go to the priest. So look at verse 15. We're going to look a lot here in Numbers 5. Then shall the man bring his wife into the priest and he shall bring her offering for her. In the second part of an ephod barley meal, he shall pour no oil upon it, nor frankincense thereon, for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance. Look at verse 18. And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord and uncover the woman's head and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering, and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse. Look at verse 25. Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering out of the woman's hand and shall wave the offering before the Lord and offer it upon the altar. Look at verse 29. This is the law of jealousies when a wife goes aside to another instead of her husband and is defiled. Defiled is what? Dirty, disgusting, polluted, corrupted. Why? Because committing fordication is dirty. Look at verse 30. Or when the spirit of jealousy cometh upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall set the woman before the Lord, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. Now this is a really interesting passage in the Old Testament law, but it says that there was a woman that were to commit adultery, but her husband couldn't really prove it, but he just had the suspicion that he would take his wife to the priest and he would make her swear, like, you know, have you done this, and she's saying she's pure, then he would make this water, and he'd make it better, and he'd give it under her and say, look, if you drink this water and you're pure, you're not lying, and you drink it, after you drink it, you'll become pregnant, which is a blessing, it's a blessing to be pregnant, it's a blessing to have, you know, a child from your husband, but he said, look, if you're lying, and you're not testifying the truth, and you drink this water, your belly is gonna rot all the way down to your thigh, and you're gonna just have this evil and wicked disease, and if you go out of bed with your, from your spouse, God's gonna give you some wicked disease, and it's gonna be the burning and the itching, we ought never commit whoredom. Why is God jealous? Well, he's jealous when we commit idolatry with idols. He's also jealous, you know, jealousy can be interpreted when we go out and commit adultery, we commit fornication, that's the second way we see jealousy, we see the jealousy of a man is the same, a lot of times, as it would be for God, says in, go to Proverbs chapter 6, Proverbs chapter 6, says in Song of Songs, in chapter 8, 70 is a seal upon thine heart and is a seal upon thine arm, for love as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave, the coals thereof are coals of fire, which have the most vehement flame. Now, it might seem kind of on the surface, if you're not really paying attention, that jealousy is maybe negative, that jealousy is kind of a bad thing, no, jealousy is always a good thing, but we see when jealousy, you know, is upon a man, is upon God, it's, you know, because someone's taking something, it's because somebody's threatening something that's yours, and if you're jealous, that's a good thing, it means you love it, it means you care for it, it wouldn't be a good thing if I didn't care for my wife, if I didn't care for my kids. Do you really think that you would like it if God didn't care about you? He didn't care if you just went and worshipped some devil, and worshipped some statue, worshipped some false god, went out and committed some boredom, got some kind of disease, no, God loves you, he doesn't want you to get diseases in your life, he doesn't want you to suffer afflictions of the whoredoms of being a fornicator or being an adulterer, all the wickedness stuff that comes with that, and look at Proverbs chapter 6, verse 34, for jealousy is the rage of a man, therefore, he will not spare in the day of vengeance. The thing is true for the man, and the same is the truth for God, when if I were to come home and I were to see my wife with another man, there's no ransom he can give me, there's no gift he's going to give me, my rage is going to be upon him until one of us is dead, I mean, it's just going to be a bite to the death, I mean, it's just going to come up upon the man, it's just going to be rage, there's going to be nothing that's going to, you know, want to stop him from just destroying or taking away that person that he defiled was his. From hurting what he had, maybe it wasn't even they lied together, he's just hurting them. If some person came into my house and was attacking my wife or attacking my children, you better know I'm jealous for them, I'm going to take care of them, I'm going to protect them, I'm going to put my life on the line. And God's the same way. When God sees that they're doing this, his rage is going to be there, he's not going to spare in the day of vengeance. So my third point, first point was the fact that God's jealous because he doesn't want us to worship idols. God's jealousy we can see beyond man and a woman, beyond man, beyond anybody, the jealousy of our adultery. The jealousy that we don't want to commit hoarder, we don't want to be some harlot. We see a third point of jealousy is that there's wrath. When you go ahead and you cross that line, when you go past the point, there's a lot of wrath. Go to Revelation chapter 6 for me. It says in Psalm 79, Those that hate God, those that, you know, just pollute themselves, the heathen, the wicked, God's going to pour out his anger, he's going to pour out his wrath upon them. But in Nahum chapter 1, it said, God is jealous. That's why I got the title of the sermon. God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth, the Lord revengeth, and is furious, the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he will reserveth wrath for his enemies. Look there in Revelation 6 verse 9, or look at verse 10, We see when all the saints that have been martyred are in heaven, they're like, God, what are you going to judge? Guess what happens right after this? It's the judgment. God comes in his wrath. There's a day of wrath. God's going to pour out his wrath. Why? Because he's a jealous God. Because he doesn't like to see, you know, the Bible says that the Lord, the heaven, or I'm sorry, the earth is all the wars. I mean, God is the God of the whole heavens, the whole earth. He doesn't like seeing anybody committing all this fornication, committing all this idolatry, and he's going to pour out his wrath on all the people that have committed all these wicked sins that have not called upon his name. Now of course if you committed some wicked sin, even adultery, you can call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. But those that have not called upon his name, he's going to pour out his wrath on them. He's going to pour out his fury on them. Go to, go back to Ezekiel chapter 38. I'll read for you in Zephaniah. Now I've been trying to go through every single place where the Bible uses the word jealousy. It's been so consistent, and jealousy is always a good thing. If you were to, you know, I think the Bible says how forceful are the right words? You know, we should use the right words, and whenever I'm talking with somebody, I try to never use jealousy in the wrong way. According to the Bible. If I'm going to say, hey, that person's envious of something, that's the right term if you can say they're envious of a house or some good or some clothing, I'm going to use jealousy the right way. Say I'm jealous for my wife because I love her. I'm jealous for my kids because I love her, but I'm not going to say that somebody's jealous of my house or my job or my goods. That's just the wrong use of the word according to the Bible, and I don't want to use that word like that. I think there's words in the dictionary that kind of pervert the meaning to where then you look in the Bible and you get confused and God's not the author of confusion. God's not going to say, I'm jealous. My name is jealous. If it's any kind of possible negative, if it's any kind of possible evil, no, it's a wonderful word. It's a great word and we ought to use it the right way. Zephaniah 1 says, so the angel that communed with me said unto me, cry thou saying, thus saith the Lord of hosts, I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. As in Zephaniah 3, Therefore, wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the grave. For my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms and pour upon them my indignation, even all my fierce anger. For all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy. We see the whole heavens and the earth are going to burn with fire. Why? Because God's jealous. Because the Lord, the earth is the Lord's, the heaven and the sea and the earth and all the number is God created and he's jealous for it. He's jealous for mankind. He's jealous for everybody. God so loved the world. God died for everybody's sins. Not so they could pollute themselves with idols. Not so they could be a fornicator. Not so they could be an adulterer. But they could worship the Lord Jesus Christ, that they give honor and glory unto him. That's why God's going to burn the earth, because he's jealous. Ezekiel chapter 38, look at verse 19, for in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel. Look at verse 25, therefore thus saith the Lord God, now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel and will be jealous for my holy name. God's always still willing to bring mercy. He's jealous and he's going to pour out his wrath, but if you come back to him to confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and it cleanses them all, aren't all unrighteousness. God wants us to come back to him. Even in Joel 2 it said, then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people. That's why we see people in the Bible, you know, having spouses that committed adultery and God was telling them to stick with them. Because marriage is forever. God doesn't want you to get divorced just because your spouse is unfaithful. That's a wicked and evil sin, I'm not justifying it, but we should be like God, we should say, hey, I'm still willing to love you. Doesn't mean I'm not going to kill or love her. I'm just saying, I'm not going to, you know, if we're going to have God's heart, we're still going to just, you know, receive him back if they're repentant. So we see that God's jealous. He hates idolatry, he hates adultery, and he's going to punish you with his wrath. Go to Colossians 3, we'll finish there. I'll read for you from 1 Corinthians chapter 13, charity sufferth long and is kind, charityeth envyeth not, charity bondeth not itself, is not puffed up. Idolatry is a good thing. God is jealous. That's a good thing. So it's not envy. Jealousy and envy are not synonyms according to the Bible. And look at Colossians 3 verse 4, when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall he also appear with him in glory, mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concubicence, and covetousness, which is idolatry, for which things, sake the wrath of God, cometh on the children of disobedience. God's going to pour out his wrath on the fornicators, on all those that are unclean, on the inordinate affection, on the evil. Look, he's just saying the same thing. It's dirty. Fornication is dirty. Uncleanness is dirty. Inordinate affection is dirty. The concubicence is dirty. Covetousness, dirty. People, there's a lot of forms of idolatry and you can't be loving money and loving God. You cannot serve God and mammon. Choose your day because you're going to serve. And guess what? Just like in the Bible, it's talking about whom will you serve when you get the choice. You're going to serve Baal or you're going to serve God. You can't serve both. You can't just serve God. God's not going to let any affection go to anything else. If you're lifting up money in your life, that's a spiritual idolatry. That's a spiritual idolatry. That's forsaking the Lord. If you're going a whoring after filthy mammon, after filthy lucre, you can't be pleasing unto God. God doesn't like that. God's not going to share his affection and glory with you and his wrath is going to come upon you, even if it comes on the children of disobedience. But we see that jealousy is a good thing. We should always have the right mentality of jealousy. We shouldn't be like Oprah Winfrey and decide to just be a whore and a harlot because we hate jealousy. Let's close in prayer. Thank you God for your Word. Thank you God that you are jealous, that you're jealous for us and that you love us. I pray that every single one of us would also be jealous for you, that we'd want to give all our attention and affection unto you, that we'd give our attention and affection unto the things that we have and that we'd not be envious of others. And how forceful are the right words? I pray that we would just use the right words and that we'd have a good understanding of what your Bible says. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.