Through tears, a young husband said to me, “I don’t know why porn has so much control over me.”
I said, “Let’s talk about that. Growing in sexual purity is more a consequence of changing what your heart loves than changing what your hands do. Real lasting change in battling any sin comes through heart transformation; it is more than just behavior modification.” That is why the Ten Commandments begin by addressing our heart’s first love. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness….You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God (Ex 20:3-5). In case we miss this reference to God’s jealousy, Exodus 34:14, reiterates, Do not worship any other God, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god.
We might be tempted to ask, What is it with God’s jealousy, that he won’t tolerate rivals? Is this a case of divine insecurity? Why is He so concerned about our worship going to Him alone? Why does He have to have a corner on the market? Isn’t jealousy a sin?
We use the English word, “jealous” in two different ways. We say, “I’m jealous that Bill got two Super Bowl tickets on the fifty-yard line.” In this case jealous is used as a synonym for envious, and it is not a virtue, but a vice. However, there is a second kind of jealousy that is a virtue, a jealousy that guards the exclusivity of the marriage relationship. When a man standing at the altar says, “I do,” he is saying “No” to romantic involvement with every woman on planet earth, except the woman standing beside him. Husband and wife give themselves exclusively to each other. They experience a loyalty, passion, commitment, nakedness, vulnerability, intimacy that they share with no other human being. God designed marriage with the principle of exclusiveness at its core. This is the kind of jealousy that we find in the heart of God. J.I. Packer writes:
Married persons who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adulterer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception; for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage. This sort of jealousy is a positive virtue, for it shows a grasp of the true meaning of the husband-wife relationship, together with a proper zeal to keep it intact…Now Scripture consistently views God’s jealousy as being of this kind; that is as an aspect of his covenant love for his own people (Knowing God).
The marriage bond of exclusiveness must be guarded jealously against the intrusion of anything or anyone who might compete with the loyalty of husband and wife to each other. In a parallel way human hearts were created to find their greatest pleasure in an intimate love relationship with God alone, where we feast on his unconditional love for us and where our greatest pleasure is pleasing him. When we set our affections on Christ we are transformed more and more into his likeness (2 Corinth 3:18). The problem is that false gods find their way into our hearts and steal our affections.
An idol is not just a statue that is worshiped; it is anything that claims the power to give you what you WANT. Success has the power to give you the prestige you want. Physical attractiveness has the power to get you the security you want in a mate. Popularity can make you feel good about yourself. An idol is something you have started to depend upon to make you feel good, which usurps the place of God in your life. Sometimes, what reveals our idols is our anger. Anger at all the little things that get in the way of accomplishing my goals show me that my idol is success. Anger towards a child who is not walking with Christ reveals that being respected among Christian friends is an idol. Anger at God when everything in my life goes wrong making my life harder, reveals that comfort is one of my idols.
God’s jealousy for us is a wonderful virtue. He loves us too much to tolerate us whoring after Gods who promise to make us feel good—power, prestige, possessions, position, success, comfort, respect, money, friendship, sexual pleasure. Such gods will enslave us, and ultimately fail us. God has designed only one healthy pathway for us to experience those pleasures, without those pleasures consuming us; it is for us to FIRST satisfy our hearts in him. Then God, a loving heavenly father who loves to give good gifts to his children, can pour out blessings without them becoming idols. Delight yourself in the LORD, wrote David, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Ps 37:4).
WHY DELIGHTING OUR HEARTS IN THE LORD MATTERS
1. Because as believers our affections are not automatically set on enjoying God. Scotty Smith is honest when he writes, How many of us would say that our greatest delight in life comes from a relationship with God? We respect him. We worship him. We read is Word. We try to honor him through obedience. But find our most passionate delight in him? You’ve got to be kidding! How can such merriment be expected or generated—not to mention commanded.
To delight yourself in the Lord is an action verb. It is something we choose to do, i.e. to intentionally draw pleasure from your love relationship with God through Christ. It is to continually soak in refreshment, by standing often under the shower of God’s unconditional love for and delight in YOU. We don’t default to doing this, which puts our hearts at risk.
2. Because no other being or thing can satisfy the thirst of your soul. David wrote: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God-for the living God (Ps 42:1-2). Jesus had a very similar message to both the woman at the well, Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again (John 4:13), and to the crowds in Jerusalem, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7:37-39).
As Jesus explained to his disciples (John 14-15) the Holy Spirit’s job is to indwell our hearts giving us a constant sense of Christ’s presence with us. The more we abide in Christ, the more we connect with Christ and fill our tanks with his unconditional love, which makes us less vulnerable to the pull of false gods on our heat-strings. Idols subtly drive us to over-desire, acceptance, respect, the physical pleasure of satisfied appetites, prestige, comfort, feeling justified by our action, because we think we need them to be happy. This over-desire is the meaning of the word, “lust.” Piper explains the antidote to such over-desire:
One reason lust reigns in so many is that Christ has so little appeal. You were created to treasure Christ with all your heart—more than you treasure sex or sugar. If you have little taste for Jesus, competing pleasures will triumph. Plead with God for the satisfaction you don’t have. Quote Psalm 90:14, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we might rejoice and be glad all our days.” Then, look, look, LOOK at the most magnificent person in the universe until you see him the way he is (Desiring God).
3. Delighting in the Lord matters is because no other idol is worthy of your worship. The first commandment is saying, “Don’t waste your worship on beings, entities, things, that don’t deserve your worship.”
a. God alone has intrinsic “worth.” Our English word, worship, is derived from the word, worthiness. God alone is fit to sit on the universe’s throne. Human beings do have worth—but it is derived worth: We bear the image of God. Like a Rembrandt painting, which is valuable because of who painted it, we are valuable because of who created us and because we are, in a sense, his “self-portraits,” as his image bearers.
b. Not only is God worthy of our worship because of who he is intrinsically, he is also worthy of our worship because he is our Redeemer. The Ten Commandments passage we looked at doesn’t actually begin with the first commandment but with an important preamble: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. God is saying, “Before I show you how you are designed to live, I want to remind you who I am. Just a short time ago you were being abused by your slave-masters in Egypt, and you cried our TO ME. Who sent you Moses? Who convinced Pharaoh to let you go? Who parted the Red Sea? Who drowned the Egyptian army? Who fed you everyday in the desert? I did that. I set you free from your life of slavery to the tyrant, Pharaoh. Baal didn’t free you from slavery. Molech didn’t save you from the Egyptians. I did.”
God’s message to us as believers is the same: “I am Yahweh, your God who brought you out of hell, out of slavery to sin. When you were enslaved to sin, you cried out to me in faith and I sent Christ to redeem you, and the Holy Spirit to empower you to overcome sin. Why wouldn’t you want to worship me? How could you ever stop being grateful to me?
c. The third reason why other Gods aren’t worthy of your worship is that they can’t produce for you and will destroy you. God alone is to be worshiped and those who worship idols become like them. In Psalm 115:3-9 we read: Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. O Israel, trust in the LORD! He is their help and their shield.
You and I need a god who can speak—words of encouragement, guidance, wisdom. We need a god who can see—who sees things as they really are. Do you want a blind god? We need a god who can hear our cry for help when we face trouble, crisis, or tragedy. And if you call out to the wrong God you won’t get any answer. If you make money your God, it can be lost overnight, and you will be consumed by the drive to make more. If you make success your god, 2 years after you’ve left your position half the staff won’t remember your name and you will live a destructive driven life of wrong priorities. If you make being respected or liked your God, you will get so busy trying to please others that you will neglect and wound those you love the most whose respect you most want—your family and closest friends.
HOW TO DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD (Ps 37:4)
The imperative, delight yourself means to intentionally derive pleasure from your relationship with that person. It is to deliberately choose to find joy from being near to him or her. Here are 4 ideas taken from the world of relationships—2 with our guys friends, 2 from the world of romance.
1. Guys most naturally enjoy hanging out when they do things together. Men bond when they work together to achieve the same goal or defeat a common foe. That is one reason men need to stay focused on our mission. The more I am focused on accomplishing Christ’s agenda for my character and each area of my life, the more I will be in his presence, leaning on him for help. Pursuit of these common goals for my life binds our hearts to Christ’s heart.
2. The more I see who Jesus is, the more I want to follow him as my Commander In Chief. The word in the command to love Jesus with all my heart is AGAPE. This word is more about supreme loyalty, allegiance, than it is about feelings. I believe men have an enormous capacity for loyalty; but they want to follow a leader who is WORTHY of their full devotion. We want
- a leader whose character we respect
- one who never asks us to do something he hasn’t already done
- one who leads us on a mission that matters
- one who wins our allegiance by his unwavering loyalty to us
- one who calls us to sacrifice because the cause is greater than our life
This is a portrait of Jesus. The more it comes into focus, the stronger my allegiance to him will be.
3. From the world of romance, (since Christ is our bridegroom), lovers find pleasure by knowing and enjoying each other. To delight in the Lord is to intentionally praise him for his perfections—the spiritual beauty of who he is, and for the way he has benefitted you because of who he is—giving thanks to him.
4. Lovers find pleasure in being known yet fully loved. The prophet, Zephaniah, foresaw the day when Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sin would turned God the Judge into God, the Bridegroom. It is our day.
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies…. The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing (Zeph 3:14-17).
Scotty Smith zooms in on verse 17, saying, Astonishing isn’t it? Zephaniah states that God is not only with us through his mighty salvation, but that he, quintessentially, is the Great Delighter and that his great delight is found in us. And, as if that were not enough, Zephaniah goes on to say that God is tender towards us and will quiet our fears and worries with his love, and that in his great delight, he rejoices over us with singing (Ibid).
I don’t know about you, but my life gets consumed with fulfilling my responsibilities and the expectations of others whom I don’t want to let down; I think I need to hang out more in the presence of one who enjoys me so much he sings about me despite all my warts and ugliness.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
1. What is most inspiring about God being a jealous God?
2. What attributes of Jesus make you most want to be totally loyal to him as your Commander-In-Chief?
