The Character of God:  Intolerance

Jealousy, Hebrew qanna
Exodus 20:1-6; Exodus 34:10-16
Deuteronomy 4:15-24
Deuteronomy 6:12-19
Joshua 24:1-25
Psalms 78:55-72

Intolerance of Sin, Old Testament
Genesis 6:1-7; Proverbs 6:16-19; 15:8-9, 21:27
Amos 2:1-16
Jeremiah 7:1-34
Amos 5:1-27
Jeremiah 44:1-30

Intolerance of Sin, New Testament
Luke 3:7-17
Matthew 13:1-23
Matthew 23:1-33
Matthew 25:14-46
Hebrews 10:26-31

Other Aspects of God's Character

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Jealousy, Hebrew qanna

 Exodus 20:1-6; Exodus 34:10-16 (4/11/2011)

We don’t normally think of jealously as an admirable characteristic, but then, we don’t normally think of idolatry as an admirable characteristic, either.

In the early history of the Jews, they didn’t believe that there was only one God.  They looked around and saw that there were lots of gods – Egyptian gods, Canaanite gods, Moabite gods, Amorite gods, whatever.  The Jews weren’t even necessarily convinced that they should only worship one God, and this got them into a lot of trouble over a long period of time.

So in their early history, God didn’t say, “I am the only God,” probably because he knew they wouldn’t believe that.  Instead, he said, “I am a jealous God, and you are mine.  You are not to worship any other gods.  Worship me and I will bless you; worship other gods to whom you do not belong, and I will punish you.  Your call.”

Pay particular attention to the image of harlotry that is connected with the worship of other gods. Deuteronomy 4:15-24 (4/12/2011)

Moses solemnly warns the children of Israel, who are about to enter the promised land, against any form of idolatry.  They are to worship neither images they have made nor objects in the natural world.  Moses repeatedly refers to “the LORD your God.”  The refrain is an important one:  if you didn’t already have a God, you could worship whomever you wanted to.  Joshua actually gives them this choice some time later.  But you have a God, a jealous God, and therefore you must watch yourselves very carefully. Deuteronomy 6:12-19 (4/13/2011)

We wring our hands and warn our children against peer pressure.  We worry that they might hang out with the wrong crowd and fall into evil ways.  We fear that they will learn bad habits from their companions and that they won’t do what we tell them to do.  We threaten to ground them for the rest of their lives.

God has the same concerns for his own children.  At the time of Moses, “everybody knew” that there were lots of gods.  Everybody knew that gods were most powerful in their own territories, and that it was safer to hedge your bets by worshipping several gods.  And God knew that his children were just gullible enough to succumb to peer pressure and believe all these untruths!  Be wary of whom you serve and whose name you invoke, because your God is a jealous God. Joshua 24:1-25 (4/14/2011)

Today I want to talk a little bit about Internet Bible-study websites.  Fellow-reader Gene S. asked for my opinion of one of these sites a week or two ago, and in the process of developing an opinion I looked at another Christian website that took a very un-Christian approach to its criticism of the first site.  Later I was looking for some information on Pentecost, and I stumbled on another site that was a little … off-beat.  There are thousands – maybe millions – of Christian and Jewish websites, and some of them have some weird teachings.  I guess you have to call them teachings, if they are out there for anyone to read.  Some are unorthodox; some say outright that the orthodox position is wrong; some deny the right of the Church to define orthodoxy; and some engage in flaming other Christian websites, which in my opinion is a sure sign of bad theology.  And you wouldn’t believe some of the “Bible-related” emails I’ve received – mostly because you are too smart to believe them, and you read the scripture for yourself. 

So, dear reader, be very wary of believing any so-called Bible teaching you receive by email or see on an Internet site (including this one).  Check the credentials of the authors.  No author?  Warning!  Proud of having no credentials at all?  Warning!  Author says that a couple billion Christians for the past 2000 years have been wrong, and he or she is right?  Warning!  Author engages in ridicule or condemnation of other Christians?  Warning!  Finally, read the Bible for yourself.  Does the website contradict the Bible?  Warning!

Joshua had a similar warning for the children of Israel after they had conquered the promised land.  Be careful about whom you believe, because you belong to a God who does not tolerate rivals.  Our God is a jealous God. Psalms 78:55-72 (4/15/2011)

So far in our study of the character of God, we’ve spent one week in the Old Testament and one week in the New Testament for each characteristic.  We have seen that the characteristics we’ve looked at are the same in both the OT and NT – that is, whatever word the Greek OT uses to translate the Hebrew OT, we see the same Greek word used in the same way in the New Testament.  The only partial exception has been that the Hebrew “steadfast love” or “kindness” comes into Greek as eleos, which the New Testament is translated as “mercy” or “pity.”

So it’s interesting to me that the Greek word zelotes used for our Hebrew word qanna jealous is apparently never used to refer to God in the New Testament!  I didn’t count, but it looks like maybe half the uses of zelotes in the NT are positive and half are negative.  [By the way, the Greek word zelos has given rise to both zealous (usually positive) and jealous (usually negative) in English.  Don’t say you never learn anything useful in this Bible study.]

We can only speculate why God is no longer seen as jealous by the time of the New Testament.  But here’s a thought:  After the Exile, the Jews no longer worshipped other gods, so maybe it just didn’t come up.  I suspect it would come up quickly enough if we took to worshipping other gods today, so don’t do it.




Intolerance of Sin, Old Testament

 Are we walking around without even knowing that we're stupid? Genesis 6:1-7; Proverbs 6:16-19; 15:8-9, 21:27 (4/18/2011)

God hates sin. 

Amos 2:1-16 (4/19/2011)

I’m always happy to listen to a sermon about sins that someone else is committing.  I say, “Right on!  Preach it!  People should not rob banks!”  That’s because I’ve never been tempted to rob a bank.  I’m less happy with sermons about arrogance, unkindness, and inattention to the work of God’s kingdom.

The prophet Amos preached primarily to the northern kingdom of Israel.  In Ch. 1, he preached against Damascus and several Philistine cities.  And the people of the northern kingdom were no doubt saying, “Preach it, Amos!”  Then he preached against Moab, and they no doubt said, “Amen, brother!”  Then he preached against their fellow-Jews in Judah, and probably they thought, “That’s kind of sad, really, that Judah is so sinful.”  And then he started preaching against the kingdom of Israel!  And they said, “Go away, and don’t preach here any more” (Amos 7:10-13).

Unfortunately for me, God hates my sins just as much as he hates your sins.

Jeremiah 7:1-34 (4/20/2011)

There are some scary scriptures in the Bible, and we’re reading one of them today.  And the reason it’s scary is that God is not talking to Damascus.  He’s not talking to the Philistines.  He’s not talking to the various idolatrous religions of the past or present, or to our enemies.  He’s not even talking to the Christmas-and-Easter Christians or the kosher-for-Passover Jews. This scripture is aimed directly at you and me – the Christians and Jews who are convinced that because they read or write a Bible study every single day and attend worship every week, they are free to commit whatever sins they want to on their own time.

God hates the sins of his own people considerably more than he hates the sins of people who don’t know him.

Amos 5:1-27 (4/21/2011)

Amos continues to preach against the sins of Israel, reporting what God has said he’s going to do about them.  Jacob saw the ladder to heaven at Bethel, you’ve probably seen a “Bethel Church” once or twice, and for 30 years or so I taught the “Bethel Series.”  So why is God upset about Bethel?  The first king of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam, set up shrines at Dan and Bethel shortly after the separation of the north from the south.  These shrines continued to be places of worship of idols throughout the history of the northern kingdom, and apparently that was also true at Gilgal and Beersheeba in the time of Amos and Hosea.  God hates idolatry.

In vs. 14, what does your translation say that the LORD is God of? God’s Word and Bible in Basic English calls the LORD the “God of Armies.”  I know you’ve heard of the “Lord of Hosts”; a host is an army.  Have you heard of LORD Sabaoth (as in, A mighty fortress is our God ... from age to age the same, LORD Sabaoth his name)?  “Sabaoth” means “of armies.”  I once read a commentary that said that the meaning of “Sabaoth” is unknown, so you can imagine my surprise when I took Hebrew and found out that it’s a perfectly ordinary word that’s used almost 500 times in the Old Testament.  I read commentaries on scripture, and I know you do, too, because you’re reading this one.  But think for yourself while you read. 

Jeremiah 44:1-30 (4/22/2011)

We have established that 1) God is a jealous god who will not tolerate rivals, 2) idolatry is a sin, and 3) God hates sin.  So how dumb did the people of Judah have to be to worship idols in the first place, keep on worshipping idols even when the prophet reminded them of all of the above, and then tell the prophet that they were going to continue to do that?  Did they think God wouldn’t notice?  Did they think that the prophet wouldn’t report back to God about what they did and said?  Fellow-reader Daryl L. has a saying:  “They’re walking around, and they don’t even know they’re stupid.” 

I think the problem is worse than that, because I’m not sure that we are much brighter or more faithful than the people of Judah.  We have more sophisticated idols, that’s all.  You know that I’m a long-time, fervent genealogist.  There’s now a TV program called “Who Do You Think You Are?” that picks some random celebrity each week and spends about a zillion dollars on professional genealogists to trace the celebrity’s ancestry.  I’ve never watched the program, because I think it ought to be called, “Why Do You Think I Care Who You Are?”  But my point is that many people watch the program solely because they idolize the celebrity.  (I have idols; celebrities don’t happen to be among them.)

When it comes to sin, the Bible suggests that we’re walking around, and we don’t even know we’re stupid.




Intolerance of Sin, New Testament

 Luke 3:7-17 (4/25/2011)

We saw last week that God hates sin.  This week we’ll see that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament had the same attitude.  Now, I probably should say that the Old and New Testaments give practical advice for avoiding sin to the extent possible and a path forward to deal with sins we’ve already committed.  But if God didn’t care one way or the other about sin, he wouldn’t send prophets and a savior to deal with it. 

Very little of the Bible is actually concerned with theology.  Mostly it’s about behavior.  When the crowds of people came out to see John, he threatens them with judgment for their sins, and they ask (reasonably enough), “AAAaahh!  What are we supposed to do??”  Does he use this teachable moment to talk about important theological concepts like the Trinity?  Not at all.  He talks about behavior.  Behavior can be sinful or righteous.  Your call.

By the way, when today’s passage is read, I usually stop listening at “with the Holy Spirit and with fire,” and I always figured that he was talking about the fire we see at Pentecost.  Note well that John doesn’t quit speaking at that point.  When I read the next two sentences, it appears that the fire he’s talking about is a little hotter.

Matthew 13:1-23 (4/26/2011)

One of the problems about sin is that we live in a world where sin abounds.  It isn’t just our own sin that gets us into trouble:  other people’s sins damage us as well.  The Parable of the Sower is to some extent a warning against falling prey to the evils of the world – either caused by or aggravated by other people’s sins.

Matthew 23:1-33 (4/27/2011)

The Pharisees and scribes spent much of their time studying and trying to obey the Law of Moses.  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, they spent the rest of their time making up new rules and criticizing other people for not living up to their standards.

Jesus says that obeying the Law is fine – even necessary – but it’s not enough to compensate for the sins of arrogance, hypocrisy, leading other people astray, greed, putting God in a box, or neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness.  God is particularly intolerant of the sins of people who should know better.

Matthew 25:14-46 (4/28/2011)

Sin isn’t just about what you do.  Sin is also about what you don’t do, if you are supposed to be doing it.  Note in vs. 15, however, that God takes your capabilities into account (which is kind of scary for talented people, I suppose).

Note that salvation is related to whom you know; rewards are related to what you do.  Lots of people get confused about this, and these two parables don’t help, because it would be easy to interpret them as supporting the idea of works righteousness,  i.e., earning your salvation.  However, they are really about (1) God’s expectation that you will do what is required of you, and not doing it is a sin, and (2) there will be judgment for everybody – the doers and the not-doers.  My little children, be ye doers of the word, and not readers only.

Hebrews 10:26-31 (4/29/2011)

This concludes our study on the Character of God. We’ve read passages about God’s glory (brilliance and awesomeness), holiness (separateness), longsuffering (patience and slow temper), lovingkindness, graciousness (willingness to grant favors), jealously, and intolerance of sin.  With any luck, we’ve gained some new insights into what these words mean, in addition to reviewing what we already knew about God.  Even so, it's important to remember two things: Fortunately, even though God hates sin, he loves us.  Let’s keep on having faith until we are saved.
Other Aspects of God's Character
Glory, Old and New Testament
Holiness, Old and New Testament
Longsuffering, Old and New Testament
Steadfast Love, Old and New Testament
Graciousness and Grace, Old and New Testament
Jealousy and Intolerance of Sin, read this topic
Giver of Good Gifts, read this topic

Copyright 2011 by Regina L. Hunter. All rights reserved.

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