STUDY GUIDES CONTINUED..
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Sometimes in life it’s not about who we are, but ‘whose’ we are! (Who we belong to!)
In fact we cannot truly work out who we are until we’ve decided whose we are!
Sometimes also in life it’s not about what we own but what owns us! (Not about what we have, but what has us!)
Did you know for example that every person born into this world, whether they realise it or not is automatically pitted in an epic, age old and real life ‘ Game of Thrones ‘ between God and Satan, who both want to be seated on the throne of our hearts!
Read on for an explanation……
God is not Jealous OF us, but FOR us.
He is jealous for our love… Exodus 34v14
He wants to be the one we love first and that His Love for us is what we value above anyone else’s or anything else .
He has a right to be jealous FOR us, because we all came from Him in the first place!
God’s jealousy is not like self-centred human jealousy, that feels bruised or aggrieved if it is not the centre of attention!
God’s jealousy acts for OUR benefit, not HIS!
God’s jealousy exists and acts in OUR interests not His !
GOD can and does live without our love.
Can WE really ‘live’ without His love?
God knows it is ‘WE’ who stand to suffer, not He Himself, if anything less than HIS love is first place in our hearts.
This is what God’s jealousy is like!
But…..
Jealousy is not the same as envy !
These two words are often confused with each other or misused and it will help to know the biblical difference between these two words for a full picture of the ‘Battle for worship‘ which we are all born into here on earth.
Jealousy is about wanting to fiercely guard and keep for ourselves what already rightfully belongs to us.
Jealousy will drive us into wanting to get back or reclaim what has been lost from under our original, rightful and legal ownership and possesion.
We cannot by definition become jealous towards or for something or someone that was never rightfully ours in the first place.
So any desires for something that or someone who was never originally or rightfully and legally ours in the first place is in fact not jealousy at all.
Those desires are better described as feelings of ENVY.
So envy is about lusting after and wishing to have whatever does not legally or originally belong to us and wishing to have something that is already under someone else’s rightful ownership.
God’s word has another word to describe this called ‘covet’.
To covet, listed in the ten commandments, is to envy.
There is nothing wrong with natural desire to possess or want things.
But…
Desire becomes envy however when the object of that desire is already within someone else’s rightful, legal and original ownership.
Theft for instance is acting upon envy, when the envy in our hearts is expressed in our hands!
In a shop for example when we pay the price we get a legal document proving rightful ownership of an item. That document is called a receipt. When we see an item that already legally belongs to the shop but we desire to own it, we actually for a brief while are experiencing and have envy towards the shop. Shop-envy ! The only way to stop that envy becoming theft is if we pay a price! The price we pay is recorded on our receipt which is then proof we have then become the rightful and legal owner and the sin of envy has been commuted or cancelled out!
Jealousy in itself is not corrupt and need not lead us to sin but envy however is like a corrupted version of jealousy and will always lead us to sin. Acting on the envious desires of our hearts becomes theft or stealing unless we pay a price! That is why ‘thou shalt not steal’ is another one of the ten commandments.
Read Ecclesiastes 4v4 to check and pinpoint envy right now!
All sin is deadly, but no wonder envy has been coined by people(not the bible) as one of the 7 deadly sins.
Matthew 27v18 tells us that the ENVY of the religious leaders was behind their drive to get our Lord crucified!
Jealousy His word tells us is ok, as God himself says He is a jealous God. Exod 34v14
Envy His word tells us is not ok, it is described as unrighteousness in Rom 1v29, Titus 3v3 and 1 Tim 6v4
The tenth commandment is Thou shalt not covet or envy. In other words we should respect when something is not ours to desire or want. To understand and respect when something is not ours to grasp or own.
So back now to our explanation of the Battle for Worship…
As people we are all drawn in this ‘battle’ between the ‘good’ Jealousy of God and the ‘bad’ envy of Satan.
What ‘bad’ envy of Satan I hear you ask?
From his high place of splendourous service to God, Lucifer as he was called before he became Satan, made the choice to look upon Almighty God with envy! Isaiah 14v13-14
Satan lusted to have what rightfully belonged to God, namely worship and adoration! He saw the adoration and worship that rightfully and legally belonged to God but unlike Jesus who paid a price with his life to get worship and adoration legally, Satan paid no such price and therefore to this day has not had his sin of envy commuted or cancelled out. He has no receipt from God. Jesus has a receipt from God which is the lambs book of life, recording in its pages all the lives purchased with His blood!
Satan has no such receipt! He acted upon his envy which in turn became theft and is therefore one of the primary reasons why the bible describes him as a thief .
Equality with God was not, is not and never will be something to be grasped or desired! Even Christ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
Phil 2v6
In one corner of the ‘ring’ is the righteous jealousy of God and in the other corner the unrighteous envy of Satan.
We are born unwittingly into the middle of this spiritual struggle often played out physically through our various relationships with people in life!
Take courage saints the battle belongs to the Lord…. And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD’s.
1 Samuel:17:47In His corner God uses His Love revealed in Christ, causing His jealousy to prevail towards us against Satan
In his corner Satan uses COUNTERFEIT Love and worldly riches as tools of His envy to prey upon our worship and turn us against God.
Jesus can centre us in the midst of this battle when He comes into our hearts and causes God to win us over in much the same way we see He himself win over in the wilderness where He was tempted three times by Satan. Luke 4v1-13/Matt 4v1-11
If we read the account of this temptation (And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Matthew:4:9) we see the same envious lust Satan has for worship and adoration attempting to be satisfied three times towards Jesus Christ of all people! So how can we expect to be spared his deluded advances?Planet Earth became the battle arena the moment Satan fell here like lightning from Heaven! Luke 10v18
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