NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

Whether you are talking about fashion or trends, if you wait long enough, things will come back around.  Proof of that hypothesis is shag carpet...even if they do call it "frieze".  I guess it's true that there is nothing new under the sun.  So we shouldn't be surprised to see the return of 3D, either.  Kids love putting on cardboard glasses and seeing things in depth.

Back in the early 70's, I taught second grade at Robinson Elementary and had a good friend named Ellen who taught first grade.  Ellen had great patience with first graders, but I was also drawn to her wisdom.  She often had such great insight and I wondered how she did that.  It was solid, common sense counsel like the Beaver's parents might offer.  Ellen was a Christian and I wasn't, but I was jealous of her ability to see things in depth just as if she'd put on 3D glasses.

Later when I studied the Bible, I realized that Ellen was just living as God intended His people to live.  The Lord had told His chosen people to live so as to attract the nations and bring glory to Him.  In a sense, they were to live and create a jealousy in the same way I was jealous of Ellen.

The Old Testament is the story of God "giving the ball" (the gospel) to the Jews.  The New Testament follows after the Jews fumbled the ball and God handed the ball off to the church.  Did you ever wonder why God chose the Jews?  When the Lord told Abram He would build a nation from his descendants, He said He was blessing Abram to be able to bless the world.  So Abram was blessed to be a blessing.  When the Jews did not obey Him or keep their promises and killed the prophets He sent, the Lord took the ball from them and assigned the privilege to the church.  Now the church was to be the light of the world in order to draw the nations to God.

A while back I remember Oprah saying some disparaging things about Christianity because she said it taught that God was a jealous God and she didn't want anything to do with such a God.  She knows man's jealousy is not pretty, but she misses the point.  Why DOES God get to be jealous...but we can't?  God's jealousy is different.  When the Jews intermingled with foreigners and adopted their gods, the Lord refused to share His numero uno spot.  That's because the Old Testament pictures His love relationship with the nation of Israel as a husband who loves his wife.  If a man becomes jealous because another man is pursuing his wife, few people would say the husband is sinning.  God's emotion is a pure jealousy and it is without sin.  The Hebrew word for jealous God ("Ganna") is better translated "impassioned".  To say that God is jealous over us is to say that He greatly loves/wants us.

What about the New Testament?  It never describes God as a jealous God, while "Ganna" is used six times in the Old Testament.  Those references exclusively refer to God.  The first time it is seen is in a familiar passage about the Ten Commandments in  Exodus 20:5.  "You shall not bow down yourself to the graven images or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing mercy and steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep my commandments." A synonym of jealous would be "zealous". A zealous person shows ardor (fervor, eagerness, enthusiasm, passion, fire, devotion) in the pursuit of something.  God is looking for reciprocal ardor.  He certainly has already shown His passion for us at the cross.

My wise friend Ellen and I still keep up with one another even though she moved to Hot Springs 35 years ago.  With some people, you can just pick up and it's like no time has passed.  I have told her over and over how grateful I am because she was the one who initially attracted me to knowing more about Christ.  Several years after accepting Him, I taught third grade at a Christian school.  We learned that wisdom was "seeing things as God sees them".  If you want real wisdom, pray the Lord would show you things the way He sees them.  It's like putting on 3D glasses.