God Is Jealous Who Do You Serve Sermon Series Part 3 of 4

Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries, my name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you for tuning in. Today we are on part three of a four-part sermon series about who do you serve. I hope you serve Jesus. I hope you serve our God, the one true God.

If you have not been keeping up with this sermon series, maybe you missed a week or maybe this is your first time, check it out here. We have got a card on the YouTube video, so navigate to our YouTube channel and check out the playlist on Who Do You Serve. You can also find that on our website as well socialmediaministries.com.

Today we are talking about how God is a jealous God. You say, wait a minute, it is not good to be jealous. Jealousy could be a sin. Well, jealousy is simply an act of saying I want what they have, now if you covet or you envy or you do something on that, you are taking it to a sinful level. Being jealous if it is just, is not a sin in and of itself.

God is jealous. What does that mean? That means if there is something else that is taking up more of your time than God, He is jealous. God is going to be like, no you need to be devoted to me. Now we talked about that last week.

So again last week’s message is kind of a precursor to this week obviously, it is a sermon series, so we are kind of in progression here. But if you are watching this and you have not seen the others, do not worry, keep watching because you can watch this and then go back later and watch the others and you will be just fine, you will be fine.

God is a jealous God. You must be careful how you structure the priorities in your life. Now what does that mean? It means prioritize your life, you need to have a plan for your life. God has plans. God has incredible plans. You have to have a plan too. Now that plan needs to be in alliance with God’s plan.

How do you do that? You got to pray. You got to be talking to God. You got to understand what He is telling you etc. You need to be reading your Bible. You got to be living for Him then when you pray according to Proverbs, the Bible has said that man or humans we make plans, we put the plans in our heart, but the Lord determines our steps.

God tells us where to go. He directs our path down the correct path. We have all these plans and ideas, we need to be with God so we know which ones are the right plans. Now we have other sermons on that. In addition, you got to know if you are doing something, is it bearing fruit. If it is not bearing fruit you got to get rid of it. Things like that

There are all kinds of stuff from the Bible that help you direct your course. You got to structure the priorities in your life through even your day-to-day life as we mentioned last week. That every single day is the same, you have 24 hours in every single day. So for you to say, oh I did not have time to read my Bible today or I did not have time to pray today, you better believe you had time.

We do not want excuses. God does not want excuses. He wants results, so make the time. You have it. God has given you the same amount of time every single day, it is what you choose to do with that time. Are you managing it effectively? It is a gift. Are you a good steward of the time God has given you?

Exactly like our finances. God gives us money, we need to do with it accordingly, according to His will. We need to be a good steward of it. We need to be a fiduciary because it is not our money, it is God’s. He is giving it to us. We need to be a good fiduciary. It is a fiduciary duty, in the same way, God gives us time and we need to manage that time properly. We need to be a good fiduciary of that time.

We could die tomorrow. I could drop dead right now in the middle of this sermon, but guess what, God is giving me more time and I thank Him for that every day. I have got a lot longer to live on this earth. As Paul said it would be better for me if I were to die because I would go to heaven. But it is better for other people if I stay here because I am building the Kingdom.

What are you doing with your time? Now that does not mean you got to be out there like Paul. That guy is an excellent role model, at least after his transformation. But what are you doing with your time? Are you making sure that you fit in God or is God taking a priority in your life and then you are fitting everything else in, you are structuring after that?

God must always be at the top of your list. He has to be the first priority in your life and everything else must be structured around Him. I once saw a demonstration. I should have done it for you guys. There are two glass jars, let’s see, and around them is all this other stuff and there is a big rock and some little rocks and sand and all this.

Let’s say all the stuff goes in. This is your social media, this is your work, pretty soon it is full, and then here is God the big rock on the top. It is kind of wobbling and it is out of the jar. Well if you structure everything else first and practice everything else first, there is no room in the jar for God.

But if you take and put God in the jar first, the big rock, and then put everything else in there, the little rocks, the pebbles, the stones, the gravel, the sand, all of a sudden the jar is full and everything fits because you structured it all around God.

So you got to structure everything around God. How are you structuring your life? How are your priorities aligning each and every day? You cannot have something else come first or there is no room for God. At the end, you might get done with the day and it is 10 o’clock and you are turning in for bed and you are like, oh I did not read my Bible today, I did not do my devotional. Oh well, I will do it tomorrow and then you go to sleep.

You just left God out of the day and you say, it is okay, I was praying all day in my mind, I had the heart that I was working for the Lord all day and in everything I did, I was a good light. All right, yeah, you were a good light but this is important too. How are you prioritizing your life? Everything else must be structured around God. You cannot have something else come first.

We talked about last week, are you trying to sneak out of church early to get to the football game? How is it working in your life? Deuteronomy 4:24 says, ‘For the LORD is a consuming fire, a jealous God.’ A consuming fire. Well, this is an incredible reference. Wait a minute, consuming fire? Yes, He is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Why? Well we know this from stories in the Old Testament when people would do things against God, they would serve other people, the LORD would send fire down and consume them, gone, poof. Not even like a little spot of ashes left, they were just gone. God did all kinds of stuff. He could swallow the earth up and they went in. I mean this is incredible.

God is a jealous God. You cannot put other things before God. If you do not put God first, He will be jealous. Deuteronomy 32:16 says we read this last week, so if you were here last week maybe you remember, ‘They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.’ Now a foreign god does not necessarily mean Hindu or Buddhist or anything like that. A foreign god could be anything else you place that is above God, foreign to God. You have one true God.

So if all of a sudden you become a health freak or a fitness buff or something like that and you say, I do not believe in harming any living thing. Well, then you are not going to eat anything I guess because those people say that, oh so I am a vegan, I do not want to harm any living thing, well the plants that you eat were living and you are harming them by eating them. So that mentality does not work. But if that is going to become your movement and you are doing that, then that is also all of a sudden more important to you, that could become your foreign god. That could be like your religion.

Or just say I am going to the gym every day, every single day, I am not going to miss a day. Going for two hours and you are just doing that religiously. Oh wait a minute, now all of a sudden that is kind of becoming your priority and pretty soon this is collecting dust because you are more focused on the gym or you are more focused on whatever.

The point is that anything else could be a foreign god. If you are replacing God, that is foreign. You have one true God. Do not put anything else before Him. The reason is because if you have something before God, then that thing has become your god, and all of a sudden it is idolatry and you are worshiping a false god.

Now you say I am not worshiping it. What is worship? Worship is like praising something, talking about it, being devoted to it in your life, dedicating time to it, thinking about it a lot when you are not doing it, you are thinking about doing it. That is worship.

If you are thinking about something all the time when you are not doing it, then you want to do it and when you are away from it you want to be there, you are planning your life around that activity. That is taking the place of God. That is becoming an idol. That is a false god. You are kind of worshiping that thing now.

You might not be bowing down to it, you might not be talking it up, you might not be living for it, asking it to give you things. It is a base form of worship. Now of course that could become twisted and detestable and then it could evolve into more. You could start thinking that that is your god and you are getting everything from that. I mean that is really far out, but it could happen.

Think of the calf. ‘As for this fellow Moses, we do not know what happened to him.’ So they would make up a calf and say this is this thing we made yesterday which brought you out of Egypt. Hey strange things man, strange things. People are sheep. We have talked about that before and sheep are stupid, easily influenced. Something could happen.

The point is, do not let it happen. Do not let it get that far. Stop it before it gets there. That is the point. The second thing is that something starts taking more priority, you got to get rid of it. Flee from it. You are not to have any Gods before God or worship any other God at all. Exodus 34:14, ‘Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is jealous.’ Whoa. A jealous God, His name is jealous. He is a jealous God. Do not have anything before Him.

Leviticus 26:1, ‘Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it, I am the LORD your God.’ Do not make anything. Do not have anything more important than God, image, stones, carvings, anything.

Nothing can be more important than God. If you are a Christian, the holy spirit is in you. All right, the holy spirit is in you. Now you say, well wait a minute, I do not heal people, I do not speak in tongues, I do not have prophetic gifts. You might not have that, but the holy spirit is still in you.

The second you become a Christian you get the holy spirit, then you can choose every single day to pray and ask for that holy spirit to grow within you and you can receive a full baptism of the holy spirit and be completely filled with the Spirit like the disciples were, like the apostle Paul, like the prophets, these kind of things are filled with the spirit. The spirit can come upon you.

All right, the spirit of God is in you, that means that you have God within you. This is very significant. The holy spirit is inside of you already. Now what that means is that when you start directing your attention somewhere else, somewhere other than for God, you are taking the part of something that God gave you, that holy spirit and you are focusing it somewhere else. God wants His spirit back. He is jealous. You have something of His and you are refusing to give it to Him. That is where this just jealousy comes in. That is why it is not a sin.

If I gave you this Bible and you have it and I say, all right I am to give this to you and every day you got to read it to me or not even a condition, but you need to take care of it and all of a sudden I see that you are ripping out a page every single day, I am going to be upset about that. Because you are taking something I gave you and you are focusing it somewhere else. You are getting rid of it, something that is not approved by me. I have not given you that approval. You are mistreating it. You are taking it in a direction that it is not supposed to go in.

So if you are a Christian you have the holy spirit within you. You are starting to focus somewhere else. Guess what, God is going to be jealous because hey, wait a minute, He gave you that spirit, and that spirit is supposed to be directed toward Him and you are pulling it in a different direction. You are not to have any gods before God. Do not direct that spirit towards something other than Him.

He longs to be with His Spirit because that spirit is a part of God that dwells in you. James 4:5 says, ‘Do you think the scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?’ God caused the spirit to dwell in us. What does that mean? It means it is inside of us. He longs for that spirit. He wants it to be united with Him.

How do you be united? How do you unite your spirit with God’s? Read your Bible. Pray, spend time with Him, meditate on the scriptures day and night, be a light, help other people, all of that. Do what the Bible says. Unite that spirit with God and put Him first. When you do not do that, you are putting the things of this world first. The things of this world are not of God. This world is here, God is here, we live in a heavenly realm, a heavenly Kingdom, the spiritual realm.

It is like we are living in two different spots, we are living in this reality, the physical reality but everything real goes on in this other reality, the spiritual realm. However, when you put the things of this world first, you are forgetting that really it is this realm that controls everything.

The things of this world are not of God, they are of satan, everything in this world is of the devil. Why? Because the devil rules this world. He has control over it. He has dominion over this world. It used to be human’s. Humans gave it up when they sinned in the Garden of Eden. The devil took it.

God is not of this world. He is of the other world. We live in this world. We are in foreign territory, behind enemy lines, trying to do as much good as we can but ultimately this world is not ours. We belong to a heavenly Kingdom. God longs for us to go back there. While we are here He has given us a part of Him and we are here on assignment. We need to use that and every day be connected home.

It is like, ah that is our mothership and we are here and we have a lifeline and if that gets disconnected we are floating out somewhere else, we do not want that. God does not want that. It is like that gets disconnected and there goes a worldly perspective, there goes a million-dollar suit. Wait a minute, we want that suit back, pull it back in, we want it back.

They long to be together. God longs to be with His spirit not because it is a monetary value, that is just an earthly example, a worldly example. Do not direct that spirit somewhere, it should not be what is the purpose of this. If you are directing it somewhere else, what is the goal?

Well if the things of this world are taking priority over God and the things of this world are not of God, there the devil is, of this world. That means that you are putting something of the devil before God and that is exactly what the devil wants. He wants worship, demons, satan, the devil, they want worship. That is their main goal.

Matthew chapter 4 verses 8 and 9 says, ‘Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor. All of this I will give to you, he said, if you bow down and worship me.’

That means, wait a minute this is two things, this is proof the devil has everything on this earth. He says I will give it to you if you bow down and worship me. Jesus, yes is in control of this world, God controls this world because they have control over the devil. But the devil owns it all so to speak.

Now the devil said I will give it all back to you, I will give it all to you, I own it, I will give it all to you, all you have to do is bow down and worship me. Jesus said no, He took that fight to a spiritual level, resisted the devil. The devil ended up leaving Him and angels came and attended Him. But he said no. What does satan want? Satan wants worship.

If you are not hot, you are cold. Remember we talked about that, be hot, you got to be hot. Check out that sermon if you have not. With or against, that was the first one here. If you are not with God you are against God. Again if you have not seen this series, check it out. That came from Luke 11:23. We are going to read that. Luke 11:23 says, ‘He who is not with me is against me. He who does not gather with me scatters.’ You got to be with or against. Check out that sermon, With or Against.

Where are you? Are you with God or are you against God? Worship God or be led astray and inadvertently be worshiping or following satan and be a child of the devil. The choice is yours. I would rather be God’s child. I hope you will too.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus thank you so much for this message. I ask that each and every person out there would be driven and motivated to follow you each and every day. That they would be your child. That they would follow you. That they would live for you and that they would put you first and prioritize you every moment of every single day.

Lord Jesus that they would realize when things of this world are taking priority, that they would see that as an attempt by the devil to demand and take their time, to take your spirit and direct it somewhere else. That they would see that and make that change. That they would shift it back over and say, no this spirit longs to be with God and follow God only. That they would not take this lightly Lord Jesus, that they would realize that this is super super important.

That even though it is worldly, there is another realm fighting tooth and nail, fighting hard for their attention, for their worship. That they would recognize that and see that and make that choice, that conscious choice to worship you. So that on the hidden level, the spiritual realm, that their spirit would follow and long for you as well. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you have not made that decision to follow Christ and get that spirit within you. We can help you do that. It is a simple prayer. It is asking Jesus to forgive you of your sins and telling Him that you want to live for Him every moment of every day. If you need help with that, we can help you. Comment below, talk to someone, contact us, we would love to have you join the Kingdom of God and live for Him every moment of every single day. God bless.