4/9/17 CCP SERIES STUDY WEEK 11 – GOD IS...JEALOUS

COMMUNITY GROUP/FAMILY AND DAILY STUDIES BASED UPON OUR PREACHING SERIES AT COMMUNITY CHURCH PUTNEY

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COMMUNITY GROUP/FAMILY STUDY

The idea of God being jealous could sound alarming. Who, some might say, would want to follow a God who gets jealous! Jealousy brings to mind images of couples shouting in the street, crying down telephones, throwing belongings out of the window; can jealousy ever be good? It seems more fitting for EastEnders (a bad soap opera) than a church!

But, without jealousy there can be no love. A man who says to his wife, "I love you but I'm happy to lose you or share you with another" is hateful.  Jealousy is an attribute that we share with God. But the jealousy we often encounter is a mixture of human goodness with a good dose of human sin! Let’s look at the good news that God is a jealous God.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR GOD TO BE JEALOUS?

‘God's jealousy means that God continually seeks to protect his own honor.’ (Wayne Grudem)

The Ten Commandments are built on God’s jealousy. God’s people are to be loyal to Him exclusively. 

Read Exodus 20:3-5 and 34:14 and discuss:

Ø What does God say about other gods and what ‘gods’ are we tempted to worship?

Ø What does this say about worshipping images?

Ø What does God say about His character?

LET’S RESPOND TO WHO GOD IS

Ø He is still jealous for us. What are we to be careful to do? (Heb.12:28-29)

God is to be our first love, the one for whom we live for in everything. A good way to check our hearts is to look at God’s outline of the New Covenant (what He is jealous for).

Read Hebrews 8:7-13 and discuss:

Ø What does the Holy Spirit do to our minds and hearts?

Ø Are we zealous of knowledge and obedience? How can we develop in this?

Ø What has Jesus’ death enabled God to do in regard to our sin? (8:12)

Finally, Let Joshua 24:14-15 be an inspiration to pray for yourself and one another to be jealous for God.

GOING DEEPER PERSONAL DAILY STUDIES

This is going to be a challenging week! This week’s message is one that the modern church often neglects. Let God, the ‘consuming fire’, purify our hearts.

Monday: God is right to be jealous

Exodus 34:14 "Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

For God not to love or demand love for Himself would be sin and God cannot sin! His jealousy is a holy jealousy. His demand that our hearts and lives be given to Him (the most worthy, beautiful and satisfying object) is right!

‘Just as men spontaneously praise what ever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.’ (C. S. Lewis)

Likewise, God’s demand for worship is simply His wanting us to give worth to what is truly most worthy and beautiful - Himself. 

Tuesday: God is jealous for you

Deuteronomy 4:23-24 'Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.’

The devil is working hard to make you reject Jesus. Take a moment to rededicate yourself to faithfulness. God is jealous for your worship! So Jealous that He paid for you with the death of His only Son!

Wednesday: Spiritual adultery

Ezekiel 16:47-48 You not only followed their ways and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done. (The whole chapter is a challenge to faithfulness)

Marriage pictures how we are to relate to God in faithfulness. Our disobedience and unbelief are spiritual adultery! God is forgiving, so let’s turn to God and turn from sin.

Thursday: Only drink from one stream

1 Corinthians 10:21-22 'You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.  Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?’

God challenges us: Are we worshipping God whilst also indulging in worldliness – loving the things that He hates? As it says in Hebrews 12:1

Let’s throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…

Friday: Jealousy is whole-hearted devotion

Matt. 22:37 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

John Piper put it like this,

'I was reading again part of Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man.  He made this penetrating comment: “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love” (p. 62). That struck me as very true. And the thought came that if it is true for man, as Scougal intended to say, surely it is true for God also: “The worth and excellency of God’s soul is to be measured by the object of his love.”

Is God your greatest passion? Do you find time for your friends, marriage, children, television, games, hobbies, other things, but God is of little real interest to you? Let’s turn to God in repentance and ask for grace to love Him above all things.

Saturday: Take hope in God’s jealousy

Song of Songs 8:6-7 ‘Love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.’

Take hope because God’s jealousy is our hope of victory. If our love and jealousy will drive us to great heroism, so too, God’s jealousy and love for His name is working for us and with us.

As we desire to love Him more, His jealousy is working with us for this. As we desire, pray and act to make Jesus known, we can be confident that our zeal is nothing compared to God’s infinite holy zeal for His name.

God is not passive about making better and more worshippers. God revealed Himself to Moses in a burning bush; He revealed Himself to John, ' His eyes were like blazing fire’ (Revelation 1:14), so to, He is revealed to us. He calls us to fresh, pure devotion and to trust that He will back us up as we seek to know and make Him known. 

The whole mission of Jesus to restore all things will certainly come to pass because God is a jealous God, 

Isaiah 9:6-7 'For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal (Jealousy) of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.’