The Consuming Fire of a Jealous God | Sunday, July 12, 2020

Before we venture into our study in the Scriptures in Deuteronomy this morning, I want to take a few minutes to express my perspective on how and why we are doing things as we are at this moment in church history. Even in saying those words, I think it’s worth acknowledging that this is a moment in church history that, should the Lord delay His return, will be remembered and studied for decades and centuries to come.

For the last 18 weeks, we have been disconnected. Cross Connection Church is all about living life in connection with God and one another, but since March 15th, we have not been gathering as a church in what we might call our normative fashion. Can I just say that I am tired of this? I don’t like preaching to a camera. I would much rather see you face to face on Sunday morning.

It occurred to me for the first time about eight weeks ago, after recording my message, that preaching—something I have loved doing for the last 21 years and looked forward to each week—has not been nearly as enjoyable. Why do I do what I do? Why do I preach? Yes, I believe that God has called me to do this, and I surely do it because of His calling. But I also do this because I love to preach God’s Word. It has been one of the great joys of my life to be privileged to preach vocationally. However, what we are doing here—me preaching to a camera week in and week out—I never anticipated that I would be doing anything like this.

The obvious question, then, which some of you have even asked me, is: Why not just begin to meet again? Other churches are doing so. Why not Cross Connection? When will we begin meeting again? Those are good questions, to which I can only say that, to this point, I and our pastoral leadership have not sensed the peace of the Lord in doing so. I am not fearful of the government; we are not overly concerned that we could not fulfill CDC guidelines in gathering. We certainly could do so.

The bottom line is that currently, we sense that this is what the Lord would have us do. First and foremost, we serve Christ. We seek to be pleasing to the Lord.

At this point, we believe that the Lord has led us to continue to lead the church in this way. When it seems good to us and we sense that the Holy Spirit is leading us differently, we will change course. Until then, this is our new normal, even if I don't entirely like it.

Another issue that I wanted to address is in regard to a question I've received from a few members of our church concerning the length of my messages. Yes, you are not imagining it; my messages have been shorter. My online church-at-home messages have been between 18 and 30 minutes. Typically, when we gather here on a Sunday, I preach for about 40 minutes. So, you are not mistaken; I have been preaching a shorter message, and this is intentional.

As a parent of four kids, 11 and under, who watch the services with my wife and me on Sunday mornings, I realized very quickly that the messages needed to be a bit shorter. I hope this is not too great of an offense to you, but I am also grateful that you feel the need for me to preach longer. It does bring a bit of a smile to my heart to know that you want me to go on longer. So, when we gather again and I preach for 45 or 50 minutes, I expect that you will never complain.

All that said, I have been prayerful during this season that God would give me clarity and wisdom as to how I ought to lead during this time and how I ought to preach at this moment. I also pray for you, that the messages would be compelling in such a way that you would be stirred to dig deeper into the Scriptures for yourself. To help you do that, I hope that you will take advantage of the various tools and resources we have built for your growth.

Make sure you sign up for Pastor Mark's Prayer Minder at prayermind.org. Subscribe to the Daily OT and the Daily Listening Plan that we do at the dailyot.com or the listeningplan.com. These resources are available to help you spend more time in the Scriptures. Don't forget to text us your questions for the Questions Podcast at 760-814-1223 and subscribe at thequestionspodcast.com.

One more thing before we open to Deuteronomy: there are a lot of conflicting reports in the news media.

About coronavirus, if you want to find information and research to confirm your views on COVID-19, you can find those things easily online. Some will say that this virus is extremely dangerous and that we need to shut down more and longer than we have, while others will say that we need to open up and go back to life as normal, just accepting that this is like a bad flu. In this situation, confirmation bias abounds, meaning you can find information in the news media and social media to confirm your personally held views on this issue quite easily.

As a result, there are some people that we are all connected to, whether within the church, within your family, your circle of friends, your workplace, or your neighborhood, who are deeply fearful about everything. I get it; I totally understand. There are other people we’re connected to who are frustrated and angry, and they’re ready to throw caution to the wind and live life. We’re being told that we should not gather for church, and if you do gather, you cannot sing. At the same time, we are seeing protests filled with literally thousands of people in close proximity, yelling, chanting, and sometimes even singing. Sometimes, the same outlets that will say we ought not to gather for church will also say that such protests are okay.

Breathe. Count to ten. Breathe again. If you’re fearful, I totally understand. If you’re frustrated and angry, I get it. As your leaders, we have sought to be as compliant as we felt we could within the guidelines and recommendations of our local and national leaders. We have felt that this has been in line with our scriptural convictions and that it has been sensitive to those within our fellowship who are concerned. It has also been a good witness to our community.

At the same time, we recognize that there are some, potentially many, within our church who are deeply missing fellowship and would like to connect with their brothers and sisters within the church. Listen, my view is this: you are sensible people, you are adults. If you want to gather with a small group within the church to watch our services as a watch party at home and you feel that you can do so safely, then I think that you should do that. I can tell you that there are some within our church who are already doing so. We've been sharing for four or five weeks.

For weeks now, we will eventually encourage our connect group hosts to host small group watch parties. What I haven't said is that several groups have already been doing so for weeks. As I mentioned, you're sensible people. If you're immune-compromised or fearful, you don't need to gather with others. However, if you are healthy and you'd like to do so, you're adults, and this is still, the last time I checked, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Okay, that's probably enough of my soapboxing. We should probably get into Deuteronomy this morning. We're in chapter 4. Two weeks ago, we began a new series in Deuteronomy, which I have entitled "Statutes and Judgments." In this section of Scripture, Moses is going to remind Israel of God's law, His statutes, and judgments.

I want to begin this morning by reading the section that we're going to be considering together today as a whole, beginning in Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 15 through 24. There we read:

"Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of an animal that is on the earth, or the likeness of a winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth.

And take heed lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all the hosts of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all peoples under the whole of heaven as a heritage. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be His people and inheritance, as you are this day.

Furthermore, the Lord was angry with me for your sakes and swore that I would not cross over the Jordan and that I would not enter the good land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. But I must die in this land; I must not cross over the Jordan, but you shall cross over and possess that good land.

Take heed to yourselves lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you and make for..."

You shall not make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the Lord God has forbidden you, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

I don't remember exactly how I came upon it, but a number of years ago, I happened upon a video of Oprah Winfrey speaking about the point in her late twenties when she effectively gave up on the Baptist Church and the faith she had been raised in. It isn't the best quality, but with the wonders of Google, I was able to find the exact clip this last week, so I figured that I would just show it to you.

In the video, Oprah shares her experience of sitting in church in her late twenties. She was attending a church where you had to get there by 8 o'clock in the morning, or you couldn't get a seat. There was a very charismatic minister, and everyone was really into the sermon. This great minister was preaching about how great God was, how omniscient and omnipresent God is, and then he said, "And the Lord thy God is a jealous God."

Oprah was caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said "jealous." Something struck her, and she reflected, "I think I was about 27 or 28. I was thinking, God is all; God is omnipresent. God is also jealous. God is jealous of me." Something about that didn't feel right in her spirit.

That was Oprah's perspective on those words: "God is jealous." I couldn't find the longer clip, but she did happen to write down the full quote a number of years ago when she first heard it. In that quote, Winfrey went on to say, "I believe that God is love and that God is in all things." That was when the search for something more than doctrines started to stir within her.

Something about that didn't feel right in her spirit, and I agree with her. If the scripture says that God is...

Jealous of Oprah or you and me would be off, but God is not jealous of us. God is jealous, as we are going to see, for us. There is a difference, and we'll get to that a little bit later. That's at the end of the passage, and that's where we're going. But first, we have to back up a little bit.

In Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 15 through 19, we read: "Take careful heed to yourself, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Take careful heed lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves carved images in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth. And take heed lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, and all the hosts of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them."

For many years, I have made it one of my aims to overlay the Scriptures upon the times in which we are living and to see how the eternal truths of the Bible speak to the issues with which we are faced. I think that this is important. It is important because there are a growing number in our society who neither know the Scripture nor recognize its value and relevance.

The book we are currently studying describes the history and experience of people living thirty-four hundred years ago in the ancient Near East. We are so far removed in time and space from the people we find in this text that we assume its irrelevance. Not only are we removed in time and space, but we tend to think that we are far removed in ideology and philosophy. To some extent, that may be true, although I'm not thoroughly convinced.

If you love and appreciate the freedoms we enjoy in our country, then it is essential that you recognize that passages such as these are the substructure upon which our culture is constructed. Sadly, there are a lot of people in the United States who don't really know what Judeo-Christian actually means. The Enlightenment values we are so fond of didn't arise out of nothing; they didn't rise by chance.

It is disconcerting to see the current destabilizing circumstances in our nation. I think there is a direct relationship between these circumstances and a decreasing awareness of the precepts and principles found in passages such as these. This is why it is so important to teach these truths to our children, as we began last week in the New City Catechism. They are certainly not going to learn these things in government schools, so it is essential that they learn them in our homes.

Moses will emphasize this point in Deuteronomy 6. If you are a dad, a mom, an aunt, an uncle, a grandma, or a grandpa, you should most certainly note Moses' exhortation in Deuteronomy 6:6-7: "These words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up."

So, what are the words that should be in your heart and taught in your homes? Take careful heed to yourselves, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image that you feel driven to worship and serve. This basic principle should be written upon our hearts and taught both in word and by our example within our homes. The worship of idols is a corruption of the glory and majesty of God, and that is most certainly a basic principle.

So basic is it that it is the foundation of what is referred to as the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. We will consider this more deeply in Chapter 5, but as a preview, we read in Deuteronomy 5:6-8: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything."

Though this is foundational and basic, it is necessary that we parse this a bit and think it through. Among its many meanings, the word "worship" means to ascribe value to, to render devotion to, and to bestow reverence upon. Thus, for us to value...

Anything more highly than God or to render greater devotion to anything or anyone other than Him is to tarnish or corrupt His greatness and glory in idolatry. It is not necessarily that we are lifting something up to or above God, but rather that we are bringing Him down and staining His glory with the feeble things that we worship. This, the Scriptures repeatedly announce, is an abomination.

Herein lies the challenge: you and I were created to worship. We were made as instruments of worship. Worship is an aspect of our makeup, our nature, and our purpose, which means we will invariably worship something. It is not possible for us to not worship. A great thinker of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton, was noted for having said that when men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything. If I may, I would slightly alter his words and say that when men choose not to worship God, they do not thereafter worship nothing; they instead worship anything. By doing so, they corrupt and dishonor the glory and majesty of the one true God. Worship is our default, and if we do not worship God, we will inevitably worship something. Any other thing that is worshipped becomes an idol.

Moses here forbids such worship. When you met God at Mount Horeb, Mount Sinai, you didn't see an image; you heard His voice and you saw His consuming fire, but no likeness. So, be careful that you don't seek to represent Him with the likeness of any human male or female, or the likeness of any animal, bird, insect, fish, or even the sun, moon, or stars. God is unlike any likeness we would attribute to Him; He is greater than all things, for He is the maker of all things. The creation He has made is useful in directing our worship toward its proper place—toward Him. However, the creation ought never to be the object of our worship. The creation of God exalts His greatness but is not to be exalted and worshipped by us. When we reject God and refuse to worship Him, we descend toward idolatry.

The Apostle Paul opens his letter to the Christians in Rome within the New Testament book of Romans. In Romans chapter 1, beginning at verse 18, he writes, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."

Paul continues, "Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful. But they became futile in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became as fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things."

Shortly after that, Paul says that such people did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They did not want to know, follow, serve, worship, and revere God. However, when men choose not to worship God, they do not thereafter worship nothing; instead, they worship anything. The challenge is that such idolatry is subtle, and sometimes the idols in our lives can be socially acceptable and even seem to us and to others to be good things.

Moms, you can be so devoted to your children and your identity as a mom that both your children and your identity become an idol. Men, you can become so devoted to your job and your identity within your vocation that your job and identity become an idol. Millennials, you can be so dedicated to CrossFit, your education, your appearance, or your side hustle that it becomes your idol. All those things may seem to us and to others to be good, but they can become gods (lowercase g) in our lives, and we unwittingly become idolaters.

We tarnish the glory and majesty of God. Here is the larger problem: when the people of God, Israel, 3,400 years ago, or you and me today, begin to be subtly seduced by idolatry, we end up corrupting the glory and majesty of God.

God, but we also misrepresent God to others. This is exactly what Moses addresses in the next section. Look at what Moses goes on to say; it seems out of place in the context, but it's really not.

In Deuteronomy chapter 4, beginning at verse 21, it states, "Furthermore, the Lord was angry with me for your sakes and swore that I would not cross over the Jordan and that I would not enter the good land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. But I must die in this land; I must not cross over the Jordan, but you shall cross over and possess that good land."

That doesn't seem to fit with what Moses has just been talking about. It's like he had one of those squirrel moments. He's talking about the danger of idolatry, and then he digresses and talks about being kept out of the Promised Land. What is this?

Well, it actually isn't a strange digression. Why was Moses kept from entering the Promised Land? Largely because he misrepresented God to God's people by striking the rock when God told him to speak to the rock. We talked about this a few weeks ago, and you can go and get a refresher on the story by reading Numbers chapter 20.

So, Moses misrepresented God to the people, and as a result, he says, "The Lord was angry with me and swore that I would not cross over the Jordan and that I would not enter the Promised Land." God will judge misrepresentations of His glory.

Therefore, take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the Covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the Lord God has forbidden you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Take heed to yourselves. Remember that you are a child of God. Remember that God is greater than all things. Do not forget that God, as the creator of all things, the one who is greater than all things, is He who deserves glory over all things which He has made. He is jealous for us and for His glory.

God is not jealous of us; He is jealous for us and for His glory. His glory is so great that it will consume, like a consuming fire, everything that exalts itself in His presence. He will judge all misrepresentations of His glory.

Course leads to a logical follow-up question: What can we possibly do if we happen to misrepresent God's glory through idolatry? If we do what our very nature compels us to do—worship something other than God—well, to get the answer to that question, you have to wait until next time.

Would you pray with me? Father God, I pray that you would cause your word to sink down deep into our hearts and that these things from this passage here in Deuteronomy chapter 4 would bring conviction, if that's what's needed. Or, Lord, that it would compel us to seek after you and worship you more fully.

I pray, God, that during this period of time, where a lot of the other superfluous things of this culture have been stripped away—we don't have sports on TV, we don't have the ability, as much as we would like, to go out to restaurants or go to the beach, or all these different things that could be distractions—I pray, God, that you would help us during this time to refine our worship of you. That we would grow in our devotion to you and our reverence of you. God, do a work in us to make us more worshipful of you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Yes, I would be desperate without your love, a slave to the darkness if it wasn't for the crown. Chased me.

The crowd hollered, "Yeah! Thank you, Jesus!" Our Savior, a prisoner, but now with Your blood, I am free. Thank you, Jesus! I was a prisoner, but now I'm not.

Whoa! With Your blood, You bought my freedom. Thank You, Jesus! I was a prisoner, but now I'm not. Hallelujah for the crime!

Father God, we thank You for the work that You are doing in our hearts and in our lives during this time. I pray, God, that You would only increase that work and extend the reach and the ministry of Cross-Connection Church, not just here in North County, but to the uttermost parts. Lord, use Your people at Cross-Connection Church to be a bright, shining light to those they interact with in their neighborhoods, workplaces, family members, friends, and even those they are interacting with online. God, cause the light of Your church to shine brightly in the dark time in which we live.

We praise You, Jesus! And now may the Lord bless and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

So we ask You to bless this time, Jesus.

Mighty name, we pray. Amen. Seriously, you.