THE RIGHTEOUS JEALOUSY OF GOD

February 24, 2020

God is truth without a shred of error. Therefore, any dishonesty, hypocrisy, or untruth is abhorrent to Him, particularly when it is found in the people He created in His own image. We should know better.

EXHIBIT A

God had called Moses up to Mt. Sinai to give Him ten primary commandments that His people were to live by. The first and second commandments (on which all else was built) were these, recorded in Exodus 20:

3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,

6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Almighty God had graciously met with His servant, Moses, and written these commands on tablets of stone with His own hand. As Moses came down from the mountain, tablets in hand, he witnessed the results of an amazing defection that had happened while he was meeting on the mountain with God.

Exodus 32

1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

2 Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”

3 Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.

4 He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

Moses reaction was to shatter the tablets containing the very commandments the people were so grossly shattering.

THIS IS YOUR GOD!

Seen through our lens of history, the very thought of this statement seems ludicrous. It is not only wrong, it is unthinkable that they would so quickly give worship to an image of gold and forget the God would had just delivered them from Egypt.

Not only was it wrong, it was blasphemous. And, it angered God.

God, who hates untruth, was so angered by this craziness that He announced to Moses that He was going to remove the entire congregation. It would have happened had not Moses intervened in prayer on their behalf.

HE IS THE SAME GOD

He has not changed. And Paul tells us in Romans 1 that we commit the same sin. We “worship and serve the creature instead of the Creator” ignoring God altogether. It seems intensely silly that intelligent people would make a god with their own hands, then worship it. But we are guilty of this treason.

We have our golden calves. Power, pleasure, materialism are three big ones. We bow before them, doing anything to get them. They become idols that we worship. Stone gods that we bow before. And God has the same reaction.

When will we learn? There is ONE GOD! There is only one who can deliver us. Only one from whom every good and perfect gift originates. One Creator of all that is, including the very cells of our bodies. One God we should look to and one God we should worship and serve.

If you want to anger God, get these confused. Because the Lord knows the truth and He is intensely interested in His created children living by this distinction.

Almighty God, forgive me for bowing before gods of my own making. For robbing You of the glory that You alone deserve. For ignoring and bending the truth by my worship of false gods. Show me, Lord, where I am foolishly doing the same as these did in Moses’ day. I long to lay every idol down and worship You alone. Let me live my life every moment of each common day to give glory to the One True God!

Also in Graceful Truth

A NEAR SIX-DECADE TESTIMONY OF THE VALUE AND JOY OF SIMPLY READING THE BIBLE EVERY DAY

January 01, 2025

So this morning, January 1, 2025, I rise early once again. I will enter into the throne room before the Father, because the Son has made a way for me to come into this “grace in which I now stand.” I will open the Word God has written and preserved for me so I could have it in my hands. I will ask the precious Holy Spirit to teach me, showing me things which “eye has not seen and ear has not heard” that have been prepared for me. And I will have the glorious privilege, once again, of communing with God.