ESOCS Devotional 24 September 2024 – God is Jealous
MEMORY VERSE: ““God [is] jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and [is] furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth [wrath] for his enemies.” Nahum 1:2 KJV
TEXT: NAHUM 1:1-10
The burden against Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.
2 God is jealous, and the Lord avenges;
The Lord avenges and is furious.
The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserves wrath for His enemies;
3 The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
And will not at all acquit the wicked.
The Lord has His way
In the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry,
And dries up all the rivers.
Bashan and Carmel wither,
And the flower of Lebanon wilts.
5 The mountains quake before Him,
The hills melt,
And the earth heaves at His presence,
Yes, the world and all who dwell in it.
6 Who can stand before His indignation?
And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?
His fury is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are thrown down by Him.
7 The Lord is good,
A stronghold in the day of trouble;
And He knows those who trust in Him.
8 But with an overflowing flood
He will make an utter end of its place,
And darkness will pursue His enemies.
9 What do you conspire against the Lord?
He will make an utter end of it.
Affliction will not rise up a second time.
10 For while tangled like thorns,
And while drunken like drunkards,
They shall be devoured like stubble fully dried.
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God is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did He choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another. Did He buy you with his own blood? He cannot endure that you should think that you are your own, or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that He would not stop in heaven without you; He would sooner die than you should perish, and He cannot endure that anything should stand between your heart’s love and Himself. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in an arm of flesh. He cannot bear that you should hew out broken cisterns, when the overflowing fountain is always free to you. When we lean upon him, He is glad; but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend—worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, He is displeased, and will chasten us that He may bring us back to Himself.
He is also very jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse so much as with Jesus. To abide in Him only, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts, to prefer even the society of our fellow Christians to secret intercourse with Him, this is grievous to our jealous Lord. He would fain have us abide in Him, and enjoy constant fellowship with Himself; and many of the trials which He sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from the creature, and fixing them more closely upon Himself.
Let this jealousy which would keep us near to Christ be also a comfort to us, for if He loves us so much as to care thus about our love, we may be sure that He will suffer nothing to harm us, and will protect us from all our enemies. Oh that we may have grace this day to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our Beloved alone, with sacred jealousy shutting our eyes to all the fascinations of the world.
- Why would God’s prophet tell the people of Judah about His Jealousy? How could those frightening words help anyone in such situation?
- Father, I thank you for using your greatness not to destroy me but to save me, and that you use your goodness not as a reason to reject me but as a way to reach me. Amen.
Further Reading: Proverbs 1:20-33; Luke 13:10-21; 1 Corinthians 9:1-14
ESOCS Devotional 24 September 2024
