Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part Four

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part Four.  As is fitting, most of the biblical references of righteous jealousy involve God. He takes for himself the name, Jealous (Exo. 34:14). God is not only jealous, but he is always potentially jealous, infinitely passionate about what is important to him: his name, his glory, and his people. Because he is love, just, gracious, and true, then he is legitimately and properly jealous when his love, justice, grace, and truth are scorned by his covenant people. Jealousy is not a weakness; it is his virtue! Only God uses all the emotions perfectly, decently, and fully. He is never out of control (1 Cor. 14:33). 

The Lord’s jealousy is a mighty force. To those who are in fellowship with God, his jealousy is intimate. To those who are out of fellowship with God, his jealousy is chastening. To those who apostatize the faith by worshiping other gods, his jealousy is wrath. Whichever direction it takes, his jealousy is his love’s pursuit. God will never stop fighting for his own. “The Lord is … a dread warrior” (Jer. 20:11). God’s jealousy perhaps never burns hotter than in Hosea.

The jealousy of God involves each person of the Godhead. Clearly, God the Father is jealous, most particularly ignited by “the image of jealousy which provokes to jealousy” (Ezek. 8:3) (probably Baal) brought by his covenant people into the Lord’s temple. Of the many reasons listed for the Exile, it was their unrepented idolatry that warranted God’s jealousy (2 Kings 17:7-8). “And they shall know that I am the Lord—that I have spoken in my jealousy—when I spend my fury upon them” (Ezek. 5:13). Yet, the same zeal that punished them will show compassion upon them. “Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me … But now, O Lord, you are our Father” (Isa 63:15; 64:8).

God the Son also has the divine attribute of jealousy/zeal. The arrival of Messiah’s government is marked by his zeal (Isa. 9:6), his deliverance is accomplished by his zeal (Isa. 26:11), his zeal returns a remnant (Isa. 37:32), he judges by his zeal (Isa. 42:13), he wraps himself in zeal as a cloak (Isa. 59:17). Zeal identifies Jesus: “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:15-17).

God the Spirit also displays divine jealousy. The Spirit departs the temple as Judah allows idolatry into the temple. “Do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary?” (Ezek. 8:6). Alluding to Isaiah 26:9 and Jeremiah 31:20, James warns the church: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the Spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?” (James 4:4-5). God’s jealousy shows his great desire for loyal relationship with his people.

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part Three

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part Three.  A lot about jealousy can and does go wrong in the human realm. Very rarely did it go well. Of the thousands of characters in the Bible, only three, and if stretched, four examples of righteous jealousy among the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve appear: Phineas, David, Elijah, and perhaps Paul (although he could be sarcastic in most references to his zeal). It is highly significant that each time a human properly and legitimately expresses righteous jealousy, some form of idolatry is nearby. But never is a human more like God than when he or she is jealous for the things, concepts, and people that God considers dear to him. “Be angry, and do not sin” (Eph. 4:26).

Phineas, the priest, was zealous/jealous as God is zealous/jealous. God said of him, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy” (Num. 25:11). Given Israel’s short history, what was unthinkable 40 years before (worshiping the Golden Calf in God’s name), was happening again (worshiping Baal in God’s tabernacle). It was already egregious that some in Israel were joining the Moabites at their shrines for Baal worship (Num. 25:2), but Phineas’ righteous jealousy erupted when some brought Baal worship to the tent of meeting (Num. 25:6). He speared the idolaters in the sanctuary and averted a plague from the Lord which had just started and already claimed 24,000 lives (Num. 25:7-8). Pluralism elicits righteous jealousy.

In the psalms, David wrote: “Zeal for your house has consumed me” (Psa. 69:9). David’s zeal for the Lord was mocked by men, but not by God. “For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face” (Psa. 69:7). It might seem disingenuous to claim one’s own zeal for the Lord, but David’s zeal was endorsed, quoted, and applied by the disciples to Jesus when he drove out from the temple the money changers (John 2:17).

Elijah, too, demonstrated righteous jealousy. According to the word of the Lord, Elijah defeated the priests of Baal and Asherah, slaughtering them at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:1, 40). “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts” (1 Kings 19:10, 14). Yet, because he thought he was the only prophet left, Elijah wanted to die (1 Kings 19:4). Jealousy is an intense emotion requiring great strength to use and great restraint to cease from using.

Paul spoke self-effacingly of his former zeal as one of the Pharisees. After his redemption, Paul learned that his religious passion was self-righteousness. “A zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). ”So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers” (Gal. 1:14). “As to zeal, a persecutor of the church” (Phil. 3:6). But as an apostle, thick with sarcasm, Paul spoke positively of his zeal at least once, though misunderstood by the Jews he addressed, when he said, “I am a Jew … zealous for God as all of you are this day” (Act 22:3).

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part Two

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part Two.  Jealousy, as discussed, can be legitimate or illegitimate (envy) depending upon the nature of the relationship between the subject who desires and the object desired. Even within relationships where legitimate jealousy might be proper when disloyalty occurs, abuse and deception are still possible in the human sphere. However, examples of wrongly applied jealousy do not make all forms of jealousy wrong. 

It was wise and good that Moses appointed seventy elders to help him lead Israel. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel’ … ‘I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it alone’” (Num. 11:16, 17). When two of those seventy, Eldad and Medad, began to prophesy in the camp—something which only Moses had done up to that point—Joshua assumed that Moses could, would, and should “stop them” (Num. 11:28). Joshua was indirectly jealous for Moses’ sake. But jealousy doesn’t work indirectly. “But Moses said to him, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them” (Num. 11:29). God uses whomever he wills to use.

It was recorded but not explained how Saul “sought to strike [the Gibeonites] down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah” (2 Sam. 21:2). The Gibeonites were Canaanites who tricked Joshua into making a covenant with them at the time of the Conquest (Josh. 9:3, 17), even though God repeatedly told Israel not to make any covenants with the Canaanites (Exo. 23:32; 34:12, 15). Although they operated through deceit, God still honored centuries later the covenant that the Gibeonites secured with Joshua. Saul, however, postured himself as zealous for purity in Israel (jealous and zealous are the same word in both Hebrew and Greek) and interrupted their covenant-relationship with God when he butchered the covenant-protected Gibeonites. But Saul was merely bloodthirsty. God was not fooled by Saul’s pretended zeal. Jehu also pretended zeal for the Lord to cover his bloodlust (2 Kings 10:16).

Another potential misuse of legitimate jealousy, highly prone to misapplication, was the mysterious ordeal of the “water of bitterness” (Num. 5:11-31). Although the New Testament made it clear that confession and forgiveness form the better way forward, in the Law if a wife’s adultery was suspected but not proved, then the husband could initiate a ritual which called upon God as the witness to guilt or innocence. (Humanly, it is troubling that the wife had no avenue to accuse the husband of suspected infidelity.) The priest would concoct a potion of water and dust that the wife must drink. If guilty, then she would visibly swell, and all would know in public what happened in secret. But if innocent, then she would maintain her current state of health, thus forcing the husband as well as the entire community to accept the Lord’s declaration of the wife’s innocence, case closed. Curiously, in other ancient Ordeals by Trial, the accused was assumed guilty unless she survived a highly lethal ordeal, but in the Law of Moses, the accused was assumed innocent unless God demonstrated otherwise through a normally harmless ordeal. In the Law, unproved jealousy was insufficient to break a covenant relationship. Proved jealousy (two or three witnesses) was grounds for severance.

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part One

Building a Case for Righteous Jealousy: Part One.  Jealousy, a term of very strong emotion, “as fierce as the grave” (Song of Sol. 8:6), can be legitimate or illegitimate depending upon the nature of the relationship between the subject who desires and the object of desire. For instance, the word jealous appears three times in Genesis. The Philistines were jealous of Isaac’s prosperity from the Lord (Gen. 26:14). Theirs was illegitimate jealousy (envy) because they wanted that to which someone else had a legitimate claim. They desired the fruit of the covenant without joining the covenant. Because they could not obtain that which they desired, “they stopped and filled with earth all the wells” that Isaac was using (Gen. 26:15).

The jealousy of Rachel over her sister Leah’s fertility (Gen. 30:1) was also illegitimate (envy), but the lines get blurry. Because of their father’s (Laban) treachery on the wedding night (Gen. 29:23), both sisters had married the same husband, Jacob. But Jacob—who was guilty of polygamy—was not guilty of unfairness to Rachel in the arena of conception. “Am I in the place of God?” (Gen. 30:2). Rachel’s issue was with God. Because Rachel could not obtain that which she desired (baby), she gave Jacob her servant, Bilhah, “so that she may give birth on my behalf” (vs. 3). Rachel was envious of God’s relationship with Leah, like Esau was to Jacob.

The jealousy of Joseph’s brothers over his dream of elevation was illegitimate (envy) because it was God’s decision to honor Joseph. They took out on Joseph and indirectly punished their father over something that belonged solely to God. Because they could not obtain that which they desired (honor), they sold their brother into slavery (Gen. 37:28) and conspired to lie to their father about a “fierce animal” attack by dipping Joseph’s coat in goat’s blood (vs. 33).

Outside Genesis, jealousy finds its first legitimate expression in Exodus because it operated within the context of a formalized relationship. “I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (Exo. 20:5a; repeated with amplification “the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God” [34:14]). God has an exclusive relationship with Israel, to which the people consented and ratified at the base of Mount Sinai (Exo. 19:8). “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exo. 19:5-6). From within that covenant, God’s jealousy was awakened when Israel made for themselves “a carved image, or any likeness that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exo. 20:4). Inside a covenant relationship, because the subject who desires (God) lost the agreed-upon exclusivity of the object desired (Israel), then jealousy was righteous and proper. God is jealous because he is love. Jealousy can be wrathful because love has been spurned. A covenant without loyalty stirs up legitimate jealousy in the offended party. Because God was wronged, his wrath was right. “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exo. 20:5-6).

Everyone Who Acknowledges Me

Everyone Who Acknowledges Me.  That belief in the gospel is personal, as opposed to collective, is central to the Scriptures. Even the few times a collective response to the gospel is recorded, such as the conversion of the entire household of the Philippian jailer, the primary thrust is always personal and singular. “Then he brought them out and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ And they said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household’” (Acts 16:30-31). The once-and-done verb in verse 31, “believe” is a second-person singular command, not plural. Also, the always-and-forever promise, “you will be saved,” is second-person singular, not plural. Furthermore, the extension of the salvation promise, “you and your household,” maintains its emphasis upon the singular and personal, which is to say: in the same way that the jailer believed and was saved, so also can his entire household be saved through their individual belief in Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners! The gospel is public; the faith-response to the gospel is personal.

However, personal faith that “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18), is not private. It is not secret. It certainly begins in the hidden recesses of the heart, but it quickly and necessarily pours forth from the hidden heart into the public sector, usually beginning with water baptism, verbal testimony, and good works likened to “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22). “So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased three bears bad fruit … every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 7:17, 19). The scenario of a healthy tree keeping its fruit private (i.e., hidden, secret) simply doesn’t exist. Personal faith becomes public witness.

Nearly constantly, the top fear listed by modern people is public speaking. It seems that ancient people, too, feared their ability to communicate in public what was dear to their heart. Jesus spoke comforting words to his disciples who were about to enter the public arena of two-by-two ministry: “Do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt. 10:19-20). “It was not humiliation which early Christians dreaded, not even the cruel pain and the agony. But many of them feared that their own unskillfulness in words and defense might injure rather than commend the truth. It is the promise of God that when a man is on trial for his faith, the words will come to him” (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew). Do not court martyrdom, since Jesus allowed, “When they persecute you in one town flee to the next” (Matt. 10:23) yet “have no fear of them” (Matt. 10:26). “So, everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32-33). When the heart is healed, then the mouth will open.

A Very Present Help in Trouble

A Very Present Help in Trouble.  The psalmist implies a question to his audience: where do you take refuge in times of trouble? He answers his own implied question in the opening verse of Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Drawing upon the long history of Israel, the psalmist alludes to the earthquake at Sinai when Moses walked into the storm, at the edge of Egypt when the Hebrews walked into the Red Sea, and at the flood when Noah walked into the ark. “Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling” (Psa. 46:2-3). Fright cannot be controlled since it is a physiological reflex, but fear can be displaced as the primary motivator for action in time of trouble. Trembling knees do not prevent us from bowing our knees before God in the storm. In a sense, it is precisely when our knees are trembling that we can show the most faith.

Trust does not require that the storm breaks before our worship starts. Peace exists independently from the storm. “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psa. 46:4-7). The Lord is central, not the storm or even our relationship to the storm, but the Lord’s relationship with us. Because he has done everything necessary in the past, we can trust him to do everything that will become necessary in the future. “Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire” (Psa. 46:8-9).

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psa. 46:10-11). Stillness is spoken, not to the storm but to the people in the storm. Cease from panic-fueled attempts to save self, like Moses spoke at the Red Sea: “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exo. 14:13-14).

He Has Done All Things Well

He Has Done All Things Well.  G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), the English humorist, journalist, and apologist, wrote several famous books in his prestigious career including, What’s Wrong with the World (1910). The inception for that book, apparently, was a short letter that Chesterton received at The Times when he was editor: “What’s wrong with the world today?” His short reply to the question was classy and classically Chestertonian: “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” His book was the product of answering that question more fully. As Chesterton was known to do, simultaneously tying knots in some while untying knots in others, he wrote in this book: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

All the perfectionists in the audience probably suffered a visceral reaction to Chesterton’s line, but his reasoning holds true. Chesterton, at the end of Part Four, Chapter 14, Education: Or the Mistake about the Child, defended the informal education of children by non-professional teachers precisely because those teachers, usually mothers, are non-professionals. Professionals, he argued, tend to become specialists and grow loveless in their expertise. Mothers, however, are first and foremost loving, making their attempt at the education of their children better, even if their style might be worse than a professional’s. Chesterton’s principle obliterates perfectionism. Performance does not establish worth.

Here we find a bridge to the Bible. When Jesus was constantly evaluated by the religious leaders, their conclusion was that, since he was different than they were, then he must be evil. “He is possessed by Beelzebul … by the prince of demons he casts out the demons” (Mark 3:22). But when Jesus was constantly evaluated by the common people, their conclusion was that, since he was different than they were, then he must be good. “He has done all things well” (Mark 7:37). Goodness is a moral category; it is an internal virtue akin to righteousness. The opposite of goodness is evil. Excellence is a practical category; it is an external quality akin to appropriateness. The opposite of excellence is badness. Thus, someone could perform his duties excellently but be evil. Equally, someone could perform his duties badly but be good.

Humans, whether ancient or modern, dangerously conflate goodness and excellence. We celebrate excellence but neglect goodness. Pop songs inaccurately sing that if it feels this good then it might be right. Moralists wrongly connect a favorable turn of events to a good deed done in the past. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day falsely assumed that they were morally good because they acted appropriately.

Jesus gave playful commentary on the true nature of goodness, indirectly asserting his own divine status. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). Jesus is both. He is good and he did all things excellently, the only one able safely to conflate goodness and excellence in his own person!