Jealousy: Monster or Guardian?

Jealousy. We all know the power of never being satisfied with what we have. We know the seductive temptation of seeking to possess something exclusively. Jealousy tears apart families when siblings indulge in it. It is so common that Dr. Deborah Tannen wrote You Were Always Mom's Favorite, where many of the conversations between sisters revolve around jealousy. Worse, yet, jealousy destroys marriages when one partner attempts to control every thought and every action of the other one. As a part of the jealousy, this partner simultaneously withholds true intimacy, creating double jeopardy for the marriage. Jealousy destroys contentment and sabotages peace, because it promotes selfishness and suffocates generosity.

When we read in the Old Testament, "…I the Lord your God am a jealous God…" what are we to think? (Deuteronomy 5:9) From Exodus to Zachariah, the Bible says that God is "jealous" fourteen times. Five of those times, God describes himself that way. Are we to think of God in a jealous rage, zapping everyone and everything in His path? If that is the first thought that comes to mind, maybe we should give the idea more consideration.

What is the object of God's jealousy? Under the New Covenant, Jesus bought us with His blood. We belong to Him. That means that we are the object of His jealousy.

God displays an extreme, holy possessiveness toward us. He longs for us to experience Him to our absolutely highest capability. When we spend time with Him, honor Him by our obedience, and display His glory in our lives, He rejoices at these first steps of our experiencing Him. When we live selfishly, disconnect from His presence and dishonor His Name by our actions, He does not leave us in our sin. Instead, a different expression of His jealousy kicks in. He orchestrates circumstances – sometimes-painful ones – that call us back to the closest relationship we can experience with Him. Both His rejoicing over us and His discipline of us are evidences of His jealousy.

We are the objects of God's jealousy in another way. When Satan or any person through whom he works attempts to destroy us, God's jealousy protects us. Just as with Job in his pain-filled misery and Peter when he denied Jesus, God sets boundaries around His people. He limits the damage to His children to that which will promote growth in their faith. Suffering will come to us all, but we can trust God in His jealousy to protect us from destruction.

This drives us to a new question: since God's jealousy is a reason for us to rejoice and to trust even more in Him, why is human jealousy so destructive in our lives? I believe the answer lies in the facts that we are trying - in our jealousy - to be God and that when we become so obsessed with the object of our desire, it becomes a "god" to us. The capability to possess something or someone exclusively and entirely is an attribute of God that becomes, in the hearts of humanity, a twisted weapon.

So, yes, jealousy is both a monster and a guardian. It all depends on who holds the power.

Revealing Hypocrisy

Not everyone who says one thing but does another is a hypocrite. A woman, who gossips but fights against that sin even when she participates, is not a hypocrite. An honest man, who steals money from his partner to feed his family, is not a hypocrite. The subtle distinction is the reality of the person's belief. If a woman pretends to hate gossip in order to trick someone else into sharing a confidence and then gossips about it, she is a hypocrite. If a man pretends he is honest so that he can gain access to his partner's money in order to steal it, he is a hypocrite.

"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops." (Luke 12:1-3, ESV)

Hypocrisy was the problem with the Pharisees. They pretended to love God when they loved only themselves. They pretended to teach the people about God when they taught their own set of rules and regulations. They were not servants of their people before God, even though they pretended to be. All of this hypocrisy existed for one purpose: in order for the Pharisees to be important, powerful, rich leaders in their culture.

This pharisaical hypocrisy continues, today. Some men become ministers in order to have a cover for their sin, not because they are called by God. We see the results of this proclaimed in the headlines: priests abuse alter boys, ministers betray parishioners' trust, preachers steal the church's money. The shock of revelation can be almost as destructive as the sinful act.

Some ministers perform another type of hypocrisy. They abuse their wives and children. From the outside, the family looks perfect, but that is all part of the lie. This form of hypocrisy is often the most difficult to break open. No church member wants to believe that his or her pastor is capable of hurting his own family.

Mary DeMuth wrote a fictional account of a small Texas town, a child's murder, and a family's secret life of abuse at the hands of their preacher/father. The story is well written in three books that follow from the murder in Daisy Chain to catching the killer in Life in Defiance.

Woven throughout these two books as well as the middle one, A Slow Burn, is a vivid portrait of a family in extreme distress and pain. As the life for this family unfolded, I found myself comparing Mary's descriptions of their actions and emotions to the twenty or so preachers' families that I have known through the years. I could recognize two families that had many similarities. One of the preachers went to prison for abuse. The other one left town with his family to escape facing the truth.

I recommend all three of these books for the well-written stories. More than that, I ask that, after you read the books, you consider whether you know someone who may need your help. Revealing the hypocrisy of an abuser may save someone's life.

We Must Work

A beggar sitting by the side of the road caught the disciples' attention. (John 9:1-7) From his appearance, it must have been obvious that he was blind from birth. Did this cause the disciples to take pity on him? Did they ask Jesus to heal him? Not quite. They took off on a tangent based on their curiosity: "Who sinned so that the beggar was punished with blindness?"

In my imagination, I can see the astonished look on Jesus' face. The "Lynnda Ell translation" of Jesus' response: "Get real, guys. The issue is not about the sin that caused the blind man's condition. You asked the wrong question. Instead, ask how we can display God's works, here."

Then Jesus made another one of those statements that surges down the river of time: "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4 ESV)

"We must work…" This is an unexpected beginning. For the remainder of the incident, Jesus says "I," not "we." He is the one who works to bring sight to the blind man, so who is "we?"

That becomes a little clearer when Jesus states, "the works of him who sent me." God the Father sent Jesus to do "rescue and relief" work – to rescue humanity from the power of sin and to relieve humanity from the effects of sin. Later in the book of John (20:21), Jesus tells His disciples that He sends them out just as His Father sent Him out. The "we" in Jesus' statement is all of us whom Jesus rescues from the power of sin by His death and resurrection. Jesus sends us out to rescue others by leading them to Him and to relieve others from the effects of sin through prayer, love, and giving of our time, skills and money.

Next Jesus sets out the deadline for the work's completion. As a part-time procrastinator, I recognize that a deadline is critical to getting the work done. Jesus knew that many of his followers would be lazy, slothful, or distracted in completing the work without it. Jesus gives us the sense of urgency because He experienced that same sense of urgency while He was on earth.

Jesus had a limited time to work the works of the Father. For Him, the "day" was the period between this statement and His crucifixion. In the 40 days following His resurrection that He remained on earth before He ascended to Heaven, the Bible records no new disciples recruited by Jesus and no miracles performed by Him.

Instead, Jesus assigned to us the rescue and relief work which previously occupied Him. What is "the day" for us? How urgent is our deadline? The Bible tells us in Job 14:5 that God limits our life span. We have a finite number of days. Like Jesus, we are in the rescue and relief business only as long as we live in a place where people need rescuing.

The "day" also means the time of God's favor. (Check out Isaiah 49:8 and 2 Corinthians 6:2.) You may have experienced, as I have, one of those extraordinary days when an opportunity opened up to be the answer to a person's prayer that you didn't know they prayed. That is an example of the "day" of God's favor.

Finally, sometimes the "day" is most urgent – TODAY is the "day." The Bible emphasizes the urgency in Psalms 95:7 and in Hebrews 3:7-13. Death is usually an unexpected event. We have no promise of another breath, much less another day. This statement is literal for me because I can breathe while I sleep at night only with the aid of a machine. Any time God indicates to us that something should be done TODAY, then that knowledge should fuel us to action.

Like a fire fighter or a police officer, we may not always be on duty, but we are always on call. We must be ready to do the work of God.

Bearing the Image

It was such a simple sentence: "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Luke 20:25, ESV)

The Jewish religious leaders set a trap for Jesus and that was His answer. They asked Him if it were lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. On one hand, if He said yes, then He might lose some of His popularity with the average Isralite, for they held Him in high esteem. However, Rome taxed Israel heavily and unceasingly, so most Israelites might find a positive answer reason enough to reject Jesus.

 If Jesus said no, then the Jewish religious leaders could charge Him with treason against the Roman Empire before Pilate. That answer would suit these leaders even better. Crucifixion was the penalty for treason. Death would absolutely resolve the possibility that Jesus would take their power and wealth away from them.

 Jesus, however, was smarter then these crafty men. He asked them to bring Him a Roman coin, a denarius. In my imagination, I can see Him taking the coin and turning it over in His hand as He looked down at it. Then holding it up for His questioners to see He said, "Whose image is on it?" Caesar's, they replied. "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

For these Jewish religious leaders, who were also knowledgeable about the Jewish Torah – their version of the Old Testament – they recognized what Jesus was saying. The Romans stamped their denarius with the image of Caesar. The religious rulers knew that Genesis 1:27 (ESV) says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him..." While Jesus acknowledged Caesar's right to levy taxes, He also threw down God's claim for the hearts and souls for humanity; God made us in His image. The religious leaders did not want to hear that answer. They were more interested in political power and gathering wealth than in responding to God's constraints.

Do we respond to God's declaration of this fact as the Jewish religious leaders did? We also, must recognize that we, who were created in His image, belong to Him. When Jesus told the Jews "to render," He was saying to return or to yield the taxes to Caesar and likewise to return or to yield ourselves to God.

The apostle Paul expanded on this idea when he said (in Romans 12:1, ESV), "…present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" and (in Ephesians 4:24, ESV) "…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." What was true for these Jewish religious leaders is even truer for us.

The next time you see me trying to get my own way, would you remind me of this? And the next time you don't want to obey God, pull out a quarter and look at it. Remember that God has a much higher, prior claim to our lives than anything else in this world, because He made us in His image.

A Promise He Kept and Will Keep

Jesus was talking to His disciples when He said (in Matthew 16:28, ESV), "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom

That literally took place on several occasions following His statement: (1) when Jesus stood in His glory on the mountain - before Peter, James and John, (2) after His resurrection - to numerous disciples, (3) when Jesus was taken up into Heaven, and finally, (4) to the Apostle John when Jesus appeared to him on the island of Patmos.

However, I believe Jesus' prophetic statement applies to more than the people who were physically standing with Him before His death. (See Escher and Prophecy Fulfillment to read the basic premise.) The statement seems likely to be appropriate for other generations.

Jesus' words reverberate down the strand of time as His kingdom becomes more visible.

» The apostle Paul identifies one generation in 1Corinthians 15:23 when he talks about Jesus returning to raise the dead in Christ and to change His followers who still live.

» Jesus speaks of an occasion when everyone alive will see Him in Matthew chapter 24. There, He and His disciples discuss the signs of the end of the age. Jesus tells them that His coming will be not in secret, but similar to a lightning strike where all can see it.

» Philippians 2:9-11 (ESV) tells us of a powerful event fulfilling His statement: "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." In a future age, even the mention of His Name provides evidence that He has come into His kingdom.

As Christians living in a fallen world, we long to see Jesus honored in every way. Now, we see His kingdom come one lost sinner at a time as they find new life in Him. Nevertheless, a day is coming when "some standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Jesus says in Revelations 22:20, "Surely I am coming soon."

So be it. Come, Lord Jesus.

Choosing the Way of Life

The opportunity to make choices fills our culture and society. Some decisions – like whether to choose strawberry or chocolate ice cream – have few consequences. However, others will change the whole future for you. Psalm 1:1 & 2 says, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." (ESV)

 This prayer, from my new book, Changing Me, Change the World, freely admits the temptation and chooses God instead. Can you make it your prayer?


Lord, I greatly desire this blessing; the blessing You give for not listening to the counsel of the ungodly.

 "Follow us!" shout the commercials. "Buy this! Watch that! We know how you should live. Listen to us!" Everywhere I turn, advertisements demand my attention.

 God, I am tempted. Many times the life they show sounds easy and fun. Sometimes I would like to "go there" and "buy that" and live a "carefree" life, especially when I am tired and my life seems more than I can handle.

 Truly Lord, I want to follow only Your plans and purposes. Your Word shows me the eternal end of the ones who follow the counsel of the ungodly. I see the twisted lives of those who walk with sinners. I know the dark and empty thoughts of those who live as scornful mockers. No matter how beguiling the temptations of those who give ungodly counsel, You have shown me the truth behind the lies. I reject the counsel of the ungodly, the path of sinners and the seat of the scornful.

Lord, my delight is in You and my desire is in following Your law. I want to think about You and meditate on Your law night and day. Plant me firmly by Your streams of living water, so that I will bring forth fruit in Your seasons. Let me not wither, but prosper according to Your Word.Father, let those who are wicked see that their lives are worthless without You. Show them that the end of their lives will be judgment and ruin. Let them seek a righteous life in You that lasts for eternity.


What are you choosing, today?

Escher and Prophecy Fulfillment

Artist M.C. Escher created the drawing on the left. He titled this woodcut Regular Division of the Plane III. A close study reveals that Escher simultaneously shows (1) white horses and riders moving from left to right, (2) black horses and riders moving from right to left, (3) white background at the top, (4) black background at the bottom, and (5) horses and riders interlocking like jigsaw puzzle pieces. His drawings leave me amazed at his creative ability.

The Bible contains passages that amaze me in the same way. They reveal more than one truth at the same time. Malachi 4:5-6 is one of those passages. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers…" (ESV) Through the years, the Jewish rabbis debated the meaning of this prophecy without reaching consensus.


The first fulfillment shows up in Luke 1:13-17: “The angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children…" (ESV)


The angel announced the birth of John the Baptist as fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy. However, that fulfillment did not look the way the Jewish rabbis expected it to look. When they asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah, he told them that he was not. (John 1:19-21, ESV)


Jesus clarified the way John the Baptist fulfilled the prophecy and pointed to an additional, more complete fulfillment in Matthew 17:10-13. “And the disciples asked him, "Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?" He answered, "Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands." Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.” (ESV)


John the Baptist fulfilled Malachi’s prophecy in a way that the most highly trained religious scholars could not recognize. It appears that even John the Baptist did not see his own part in fulfilling it. It took Jesus to reveal that the prophecy had more than one fulfillment and that the first one included John the Baptist.


What did you see when you first looked at the Escher drawing: white horses on a black background or black horses on a white background? Did it take you some time to see for yourself that it was both?


People who can only see black horses sometimes argue with those who see only white horses about what they see. The Jewish scholars argued over the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy. We sometimes fall into that same mind set when we read a passage in the Bible. Before we find ourselves convinced that a passage in the Bible can have only one interpretation, we might think about this drawing.

If a man is intelligent and creative enough to produce a picture that shows so many things at the same time, then we can well believe that God can do the same thing. By exploring just two verses in Malachi we see that God may surprise us in the way He chooses to fulfill His words, similar to the way Escher surprises us by his art. After all, the Bible is God’s Living Word.