Jealous
“When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD.” I Samuel 5:2-3
Imagine the cheering. The Philistines had just defeated Israel, and now they were carrying the Ark of the Covenant into their temple. They placed the ark in front of their god, Dagon. The people must have been elated! Their armies had just won a battle, and they foolishly thought that their god had beaten the Jehovah of the Israelites. The party didn’t last long.
In the morning, the people of Ashdod learned a lesson about the one true God. They went into the temple to find their idol face down in the dirt before the ark. They propped Dagon up again, but the next morning, not only was Dagon on his face before the ark, his head and hands were cut off. The people begged for the ark to be removed — they knew they had offended a powerful God that was punishing the population with illness. Every place the ark was sent to was painfully afflicted.
Our God is a jealous God. He did not allow an idol to stand before Him. He will not allow anyone or anything to be more important in our hearts and minds than He is. Consider that: the Creator of all things is jealous over you! God still loves you enough to be jealous, even though he knows every little thing about you. He wants you to trust Him and follow His guidelines. Isn’t that amazing?
Here’s the catch: He loves you, wants to spend time with you, wants to give you every good gift, but he cannot do that until you let Him! You probably aren’t worshipping an idol like Dagon, but is God truly the most important thing in your life? It’s very easy to let good things distract us from the best thing, to let urgent things overwhelm that which is most important. What is really the focus of your thoughts? It could be anything, but if it isn’t God, it’s an idol — and that means it needs to be reprioritized. If we don’t put God at the very forefront of our existence, we miss the best adventure we could ever hope for — loving and serving Almighty God.
I love your final sentence – that says it all. That’s the problem with putting God and true religion in the same category as all the other gods and religions. God won’t stand for it. Rather, the other gods can’t stand up to it.
The saying goes that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Every time the nation of Israel (or Judah) started treating God as equal with the pagan gods of the nations around them, they lost the protection and relationship that made them special.
In that sense, maybe it makes sense that God is jealous for our attention: He wants us to have the benefits of relationship unspoiled by attitudes and selfishness.
Jealous for our attention is seeing it through spiritual eyes if you consider John 15 27….because ye have been with me from the beginning. God has known us always and has waited on us to know Him….so as time goes on in our lives and we do not give Him what is so deserving of Him, the main focus of our being, He has every right to be jealous. He has made every provision available as long as we have breath, what more could we want from God?I have realised as time time goes on that I may catch myself not spending enough time with Him in a day and repenting over it before I go to sleep at night. I find this is His way of correcting me and keeping me close to Him and for that I am happy He is concerned about my attention toward Him.