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;
the LORD is slow to
anger and great in power,
and will not 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.
Nahum 1:2–3
God’s
jealousy is not the jealousness of our world, our culture. The Hebrew word for
jealous is: אונק: qannow, an adjective, used two times: Joshua 24:19; Nahum
1:2: which means: angry or jealous. God is Holy and is not affected in His
emotions, so as, to be controlled by outside influences. Jealousness can mean
to be resentful or envious of something or someone; but God has no relationship
to anything causing Him to desire that which He is not already: Holy, merciful.
God is jealous, so as, to be intolerant of rivalry, or unfaithfulness. And the
LORD clearly gives through Nahum how He is going to handles such rivalry, or
unfaithfulness: He is going to avenge such and He reserves wrath for His
enemies. Did not God through Moses and the Ten Commandments tell us that God is
jealous? Yes! “you shall not bow down to them nor 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 generations of those who hate Me,” (Exodus
29:5). If you desire to be an enemy of God: you do not have to be an
Atheist, or an agnostic. All you have to do is, put something or someone ahead
of God. All belongs to God and we are only stewards of that which God created.
We are the stewards of lower animals, plant life, this earth, but also, and
more importantly, we are stewards of God’s Gospel, that His Son is the Savior,
and propitiation for sin. God controls all things in the whirlwind that wind
that circles and uplifts things, and in the storm, those storms of life, and
the invisible reasons found in the cloudiness and are only dust, but God uses
all things to destroy the wicked, and to chastise His children. Again, ask
yourself these questions: Why do you humiliate yourselves and bow down to false
images? Why do you bend you body like a captive before foolish likenesses and
earthy structures? Why do you hurl yourself into the pit of death along with
the insensate image that you worship? Why do you fall into the devil’s ruin
through it and with it? Can you not preserve the eminence that is yours by
faith? Can you not continue to be what you were made to be by God?
Oh! I hear
it now! I hear the objections and the caviling by means of excuses for such
images to be used: They say: “It is to recall our Saviour that we worship,
venerate, and adore a cross around your neck, or painted in His honor, saying
it is a way to bear His likeness.” Even the unrighteous think it good to have
such images and excuses for their images, all seems good in their sight, in
your sight if you are using images. Images are a mockery to the cross, that is
a mockery of death. Even to those who believe as impious men believe, those
doubtful men who doubt that Jesus Christ rose again. They have learned to think
nothing less than Him as dead, tortured, and always twisted in agony: this they
hold in their heart and all else of Jesus is left in the proverbial dust. Paul
states: “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him
thus no longer” (2Corithians 5:16). Yes, the cross is the pivot point in
history, and yes the cross is most important: yet we do not dwell on the cross
per se, we dwell on what the meaning of cross means to all the world and
especially to those elected by God. That meaning of the cross is that God came
to earth and took on a body, and became both Man and God, in one body, and by
His death, the debt owed to God. This was and is a debt no man can pay, yet God
paid His own debt and destroyed sin, and gives to His children eternal life and
now in the present His Holy Spirit to live within.
Now, if you
adore that image you wear or that picture of Jesus on your wall or that statue
in your church, or some wood fashioned as a cross, because Christ hung on a
cross; then it is fitting, for you, to adore many other things that Christ id
in the flesh. Jesus was on the cross
for some six hours, but was in the Virgin’s womb nine months: therefore let all
virgins have adoration. Jesus lay in a manager, therefore let all mangers have
veneration. Jesus was in boats; therefore let boats have some worship. Let
lambs be worshipped for Jesus was called the Lamb of the world: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward
him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”
(John1:29)!“But one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep, behold, the Lion
of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open th scroll and
to loose its seven seals” (Revelation 5:5): so on the basis of your
argument or excuse why you use an object for your worship or adoration towards
God we should include lions. See how silly is your belief in images? Why should
we heap coals of iniquity upon our God and Savior? Clean yourself from such
things: live as a Christian, that is, by the Ten Commandments.
Your are worthy, O Lord,
To receive
glory and honor
And power, for You created all things,
And by Your will they exist
And were created.
Revelation 4:11
Trust and Obey: For there is no other way
Richard L. Crumb
No comments:
Post a Comment