Nahum: The Jealousy of God

"The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful..." Nahum 1:2

A few days ago, we looked at God's wrath, an attribute that we often like to skip over and not talk about. Yet, when thinking of God's wrath, we must consider the following question: what necessitates God's wrath? Or in other words, why is God wrathful? Well, in part, as we discussed a couple days ago, it is because God is just. And because God is just, he must punish evil with his wrath. Yet, this is only half of the reason why God pours out his wrath on individuals. The other half of the reason is because our God is a jealous God.

Jealousy, as you well know, is usually used in a negative sense in our day and age. To be jealous, in the most common sense, is to commit a great and grievous evil against our Lord. To have jealousy, as most men speak of it, is to covet something that you do not have, to the extent that it makes you miserable that you do not have it. This type of jealousy, as clearly taught in scripture, is worthy of condemnation. This is not the type of jealousy we're talking about here, and surely not the type of jealousy we find in the character of our holy God.

Yet, when speaking of jealousy (or any other term for that matter), we must determine how the Bible uses the term. Scripture does use the term jealousy in the way in which we spoke of it in the above paragraph, yet there is another sense in which the Bible speaks of the term jealousy, which we see clearly in the book of Nahum. In Nahum 1:2 (quoted above), we find that God is a jealous and avenging God, who "takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies." Thus, we find a second sense of the term jealousy, which refers not to man's sinful covetousness, but to God's zeal in desiring his own glory.

In the book of Nahum, we find that Nineveh was a sinful and rebellious people. Although God had been gracious to them (read Jonah), Ninevah had once again rebelled against the Lord. Thus, the Lord set out to destroy them. Yet, what was the motive for God's punishment? Ultimately, the book of Nahum tells us, it was because of God's jealousy. God was fully desirous of Nineveh's full worship and attention, yet they had given it away freely to other idols. Thus, God set out to destroy them, for his jealousy could not let an idolatrous people stand.

Yet, what does the doctrine of God's jealousy have to do with us today? In J.I. Packer's book, Knowing God, he says the following concerning God's jealousy:

"The jealousy of God requires us to be zealous for God. As our right response to God’s love is love for Him, so our right response to His jealousy over us is zeal for Him. His concern for us is great; our for Him must be great too. . . .God’s people should be positively and passionately devoted to His person, His cause, and His honor."

In laymen's terms, what Packer is saying here is this: if God is fully jealous for his glory and his people, and if we are his children, we ought to be jealous for his glory and fame as well. And yet, so often, we fail to give God the glory and worship that he is due. So often, we turn our eyes to other idols and do not praise the Lord for all of who he is.

If we turn our eyes back to the book of Nahum, we find that God could have destroyed us four our lack of zealousy, as he did to the Ninevites. Yet for those of us who are truly saved, Christ has taken the punishment for our lack of focus on God's glory. Yet, now that we have been saved from the wrath of God, how much more ought we to be fully devoted to bring glory to the Lord in everything we do? For our God is a jealous God!