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Jeff Fry
  - Joined on 07-31-2006
- Lichfield, UK
- Posts 237
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12 - Exploring Faith: What is God Like: God is a Jealous God
Exploring Faith: What is God like: Our God is a Jealous God?
by Jeff Fry NIV Isaiah 44:15 It is man's fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. 16 Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire." 17 From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god." 18 They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. 19 No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, "Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?" 20 He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, "Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?"
Thesis: God, the Lord, is a jealous God - do not have any idols before Him.
I. Intro
A. Review
1. God values us greatly (Luke 12:22-32)
2. God prunes us to make us holy (John 15:1-8)
3. God delivers us from the oppression of our enemy because He is our covenant God (Exodus 6:1-8)
a) God waited until the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to tell the Israelites his proper name, "Yahweh"
b) Yahweh was linked with God's covenant - "I will be their God, and they will be my people"
c) There is an intimate closeness in the name Yahweh = "I am" or "I will be" or "I am here for you" (depicts the faithfulness of God to His special covenant people)
4. God, the Lord, is in control (Isaiah 48:9-15)
5. God, the Lord, is in authority (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
6. God, the Lord, is present with us (Leviticus 26:9-13)
7. This week: God, the Lord, is a jealous God - do not have any idols before Him.
II. God, the Lord, is a jealous God
A. State
1. Read Isaiah 44:15-20
2. Getting our head around the passage:
a) Background
(1) Isaiah, the author, in this part of the book is talking about the deliverance of Israel and specifically that the Lord is the only God.
b) Questions
(1) Who is speaking?
(2) What is the carpenter (v. 13) making?
(3) In what different ways does the carpenter use the wood?
(4) In vv. 18 and 19 it starts off by saying "they know nothing, they understand nothing …" Who is "they"?
c) Exodus 20:4-5 says, "You shall not bow down to them (idols) or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God …"
d) Our society today is moving away from a God-centered society to a secular society
e) our world is no longer centred around the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob like it once was.
f) compare our culture with the cultures of the past :
(1) culture is what really expresses the worldview of a people
(2) it is culture which represents the value system of a people
(3) we need to be students of our culture just as much as students of our Bible in order to understand how our Bible relates to our world
g) Consider our art, literature and media with the same of the past
(1) Art, literature, media
(a) In medieval times almost all art was religious because the worldview was that of a world dominated by God(i) Christ Mosaic on the wall of the church of the Holy Wisdom, Constantinople (new window)
(ii) Triptych of the virgin and child with saints (c. 1500 by Master of Delft) (new window)
(iii) Wall painting of "Christ in Judgment and the Heavely City", at St Thomas church, Salisbury, Wiltshire (new window)
(iv) Stephan Lochner's depiction of the judgment, in Cologne, Germany in 1400 (new window)
(b) but in the renaissance the supernatural was lost. (i) landscapes were painted just because they were there
(ii) people's interest was just in nature alone (devoid of the spiritual)
(iii) art such as surrealism and abstractionism came to be popular
(c) it was similar with literature too.
(2) After the medieval period God seemed to gradually disappear from the world.
(a) He featured less and less in paintings and literature
(b) today we see an onslaught of postmodernist literature and film which denies God or belittles Him and replaces the Christian worldview with a postmodernist worldview which says there are no "big stories" (metanarratives) which can explain the world(i) Douglas Coupland, "Life After God"
(a) Introduced such terms into the English language:(i) Mcjob(ii) Generation X
(ii) "Pleasantville" film
(a) everybody and everything is in black and white until a few people start to throw off traditional, "oppressive", Christian moral values and then become " truly free".
(iii) Dostoyevsky : "If there is no God, everything is permitted".
(iv) modern literature: shows the relation of a people to the absence of God. (contra Bible, contra medieval literature - e.g. Dante's Comedy known as Dante's Inferno where the main character Dante travels through three realms of the dead - hell, purgatory, and paradise, written 1308 - 1321 by Giovanni Boccaccio)
(v) The main texts of our day are no longer Christian. (3) Media
(a) Television and film are immensly powerful in our day as far as shaping our worldview
(b) TV produces the dominant and vivid images that shape our world view
(c) TV and film are usurping the role that the church used to have in shaping our worldview
(d) In USA average viewer watches 4.5 hours of TV a day!
(e) Through TV we absorb a whole world view, not just some shows. It projects its own world on us telling us what the world is like, how it works and what it means. (i) TV projects (shows) what will work and what sells, not what is valuable and virtuous.
(ii) I doubt whether BBC debates long if at all whether they should remove the nuclear family from prime-time TV!
(f) TV tells us who we are. And this is maybe the most key issue of all. We don't know who we are. (i) This issue of TV defining our worldview and who we are is probably more dangerous than the surface dangers of the sex and violence that are shown on TV.
(ii) That's why our "Freedom in Christ Discipleship Course" is so important. Who I am in Christ
(iii) The agenda of TV advertising
“In the 1970s there was a change of emphasis in advertising techniques, with viewers being invited to share in the lifestyles and values of the characters using the product on screen…. In 1990s companies spent £4.1 billion in 2001 on the purchase of TV advertising …” (UK 2003 - The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, p237)
(iv) Arts and Religion programmes - less than 2 % of primetime broadcasting time.
(4) A call for more Christians in art, literature, and media (TV, music, film, video)!
(a) Grisham (literature)
3. The absence of God in our culture and void that it leaves are quickly filled.
a) idolatry = the worship of that which is not God
b) Idolatry in the OT mainly involved the worship of images as referred to in our text
(1) God exalts Himself as the one, true God (Isaiah 44:8)
(a) "You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides Me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." (Isaiah 44:8)
(2) The idols and images were meaningless and worthless and impotent
(a) Isaiah 44:9 "All who make idols are nothing and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit him nothing?"
(b) Israel, God's people, were forbidden to make an image of God
(c) No archaeologist has ever found an image of Yahweh, yet many other man-made religions of the day used images.
c) Idolatry in the NT
(1) The idea is extended to include obsession with anything or anyone other than God
(2) Ephesians 5:5 "For this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person - such a man is an idolater - has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."
(a) idolize money
(b) idolize fame
(c) idolize sex
(d) idolize pleasure
(e) idolize even family
4. Idolatry's deception is quickly believed
a) Isaiah 44:18 "They know nothng, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds are closed so they cannot understand."
(1) 2Corinthians 4:4 says that Satan blinds minds to the truth of the gospel which we could say is : Jesus is Lord or Yahweh is Lord.
b) Isaiah 44:20 says, "He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, 'Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?'"
(1) sinful man can't see that the idols are false
(2) the idols deceive man into thinking that they are real and powerful and able to help him.
(3) Ephesians 2:4-5 says that only God can wake us up to the truth by renewing our heart and mind (making us a new creation - 2Cor 5:17).
(a) then and only then are we spiritually alive with spiritual discernment enabled
5. Idol of Consumerism (selfism, hedonism)
6. Idol of Freedom (over morality)
7. Idol of Materialism
8. Idol of Feminism
9. Idol of Evangelicalism
B. Illustrate
1. Idols are like false road signs on our journey through life.
a) they attempt to lead us astray - offering us substitutes for the real path to God
b) we have to be able to identify the lies of our culture, the idols
c) we have to be ready not to take the easy road of the culture but to be ready to swim against the current when the current wants to sweep us away to idolatry
C. Apply
1. Are there idols in your life - i.e. areas or things that you are putting before God in priority?
2. According to what we have learned how do you think God feels about the idols in your life?
3. What would you like to change in your life to come more in line with God's will for you?
III. Conclusion
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