Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:6-9, Nahum 1:2-3, Matthew 10:37-39, Luke 15:1-7, Romans 8:18, Psalm 85:10-12
Structure:
- Introduction
- Jealousy
- Transcendence
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
Today we continue our ‘Anthems’ series. In this series we are looking at the lyrics of one hymn or Christian worship song each week to see how that song informs our thinking about God and how it connects with Scripture and the heritage of our faith.
The song we are looking at this morning is called How He Loves, written by John Mark McMillan. It was released in 2005.
We don’t sing How He Loves in our Sunday worship services very often, probably because it is difficult for a smaller congregation to sing. It works better with a larger gathering. I quite like the song though. It has some salty, bold lyrics. God’s love is not pedestrian.
As usual we don’t have time to unpack every line of the song but I do want to focus our attention on two themes: jealousy and transcendence. First let us consider jealousy.
Jealousy
Okay, here’s a quiz for you. What was the name of the rock band who wrote the song Mr Brightside?
That’s right, The Killers. You’re on to it. They almost have a cult following. The Killers wrote Mr Brightside around the end of 2001. It’s a song about jealousy. One of the band members had a funny feeling that something wasn’t right in his relationship with his girlfriend and sure enough, when he turned up at the pub, he found her there with another guy. Mr Brightside describes the feeling of jealousy provoked by cheating.
So what has this got to do with John McMillan’s worship song, How He Loves? Well, John McMillan’s song is also about jealousy, but jealousy of a different kind, divine jealousy. The opening lines of How He Loves read…
He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
Jealousy is not a word we usually associate with God. It tends to be a word that carries negative connotations for us. Jealousy often makes us think of envy and people behaving badly, as with The Killers’ song Mr Brightside. So what is jealousy and in what sense can we say God is jealous?
Well, jealousy is a very strong, very intense emotion. We might call jealousy a passion or a zeal or a fury. Jealousy is triggered by an affront to our rights or our honour. If we believe something belongs rightfully to us but is then given to another we will instinctively feel jealous. For example, a husband or wife may feel jealous if their partner in marriage is unfaithful in some way. By its very definition marriage is an exclusive relationship. There are some things in marriage that should not be shared with anyone else. Both husband and wife have every right to expect faithfulness from their partner. So a jealous reaction (a feeling of intense fury or passion) in the context of unfaithfulness in marriage is fair and understandable. In fact, the more you love your husband or wife the greater the potential for jealousy.
But not all jealous reactions are fair or right. Some jealousy is misplaced. For example, if you don’t like your hair (or if you don’t have hair) you might look at someone who has perfect hair and feel jealous. That is, you might believe that the hair on their head should belong to you. Clearly, that kind of jealousy (which we might more accurately call ‘envy’) is not fair or justified. We have no right to the hair on someone else’s head. This is a frivolous example of misplaced jealousy – I’m not meaning to get at anyone who may be bald.
Another example of jealousy is when someone gets the praise or the promotion or the prize that we believe belongs to us. In that situation we may feel quite justified in our jealous indignation (our anger), but really we are seldom in the best position to judge. Sometimes life is unfair. Sometimes things don’t go our way but God, who is jealous for justice, has a way of making things right, if not in this life then in the next.
The point is, jealousy is that strong feeling we get when something we believe rightfully belongs to us goes to someone else. Sometimes our human jealousy is appropriate and other times it is not.
But God’s jealousy is always righteous and justified because God is the creator of all there is, so everything rightfully belongs to him anyway.
Now you might be wondering if this idea that God gets jealous is just a human notion, something we have projected onto God. Let me assure you it’s not.
God describes himself as jealous in the Bible. For example, in Deuteronomy 5:6-9, while giving the ten commandments, God says to his people Israel…
6 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 7 you shall have no other gods before me. 8 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…
The specific context for God calling himself jealous is the command to not worship any other God and to not make an idol. We might not bow down to actual statues, like people in the ancient world did, but we do sometimes place a higher value on things that are created, things that are less worthy than God. For example, we may worship money or our career or our reputation or our family or our own pleasure.
God is saying he has every right to insist upon our absolute loyalty and obedience. If we give our worship to something that is not God, then we are denying God what rightfully belongs to him and we will trigger God’s jealousy.
God does not insist that we worship him exclusively because he needs it. God is not insecure. He doesn’t need to have his ego propped up with praise every five minutes. God doesn’t actually need anything from us.
No. God insists that we worship him exclusively because we need to. Worshipping God is good for us – it gives our lives value and meaning.
When we worship things that are not God we devalue and demean ourselves. We make ourselves less than whatever it is we bow down to and we empty our lives of any sort of lasting meaning.
The Bible often depicts God as a husband whose wife (Israel) has been unfaithful to him by worshipping other gods (with a little ‘g’). If God didn’t experience intense jealousy over infidelity, then that would indicate he didn’t care at all. The fact that God rightly feels jealous when we worship other things proves that he cares a great deal.
Returning to the first line of the song for a moment…
He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
Putting the image of a hurricane alongside the idea of God’s jealous love is perfect. It’s so Biblical. In the book of Nahum chapter 1 we read…
A jealous and avenging God is the Lord, the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and rages against his enemies. 3 The Lord is slow to anger but great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
They are strong words.
The thing about a hurricane or a whirlwind is that we can’t tame it. We can’t domesticate it. A hurricane is a powerful and dangerous force.
Sometimes we forget how dangerous God can be. The jealous love of God is like a hurricane – we need to make sure we are on the right side of it.
Sometimes Israel got on the wrong side of God’s jealousy, but in the reading from the prophet Nahum, it was Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians, who were on the wrong side of God.
To say that ‘God is jealous for me’ is to say that God is on my side and he is going to deal to my enemies with the rage of a hurricane.
Now, as I alluded to in our responsive prayer (earlier in today’s service), our enemies are not flesh & blood (our enemies are not other nations). Our enemies are unseen; things like pride, resentment, fear, loneliness and depression. But even though our enemies are unseen, they are still very real and just as dangerous as bullets and bombs. God’s love is greater than those things.
The other thing I need to make clear about the hurricane image is that it is a metaphor for God’s jealous love. We shouldn’t take it too literally. If an actual hurricane passes over a country and wreaks havoc, that doesn’t mean God is angry with that nation. The survivors of an extreme weather event need compassion, not condemnation.
Now some of you may be thinking, ‘Okay, fair enough, the Old Testament does describe God as jealous. But what about the New Testament. How does God’s jealousy fit with the person of Jesus? After all, isn’t Jesus supposed to show us what God is like on the inside?’
Good question. Thank you for asking it. Yes, Jesus does show us what God is like on the inside. And yes, Jesus does reveal God’s jealousy. Let me give you some examples…
In Matthew 10:37-39 Jesus says, “Whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not fit to be my disciple; whoever loves his son or daughter more than me is not fit to be my disciple. Whoever does not take up his cross and follow in my steps is not fit to be my disciple. Whoever tries to gain his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will gain it. [1]
These verses are difficult for us and yet in them we find an example of divine jealousy. Jesus is not saying we shouldn’t love our family. We need to honour our parents and not turn away from our family when they are in need. But, at the same time, Jesus is saying that he is entitled to a greater loyalty from us than our own family is. So if our family give us an ultimatum and ask us to choose between them or Jesus, then we need to choose Jesus. If Jesus were just a man, then he would have no right to say this. But because Jesus is also God, he has every right to say it.
A.T. Luter observes how the Biblical words that are used for jealousy are closely associated with zeal and zealousness. Zeal represents intense emotional effort and energy focused toward a goal. Jealousy is the relational counterpart to zeal, primarily a focusing of emotion toward a person in the desire for a closer, better relationship. [2]
Thinking of jealousy in this way (as an intense desire to be closer to a person) reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15. Jesus said…
4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them—what do you do? You leave the other ninety-nine sheep in the pasture and go looking for the one that got lost until you find it. 5 When you find it, you are so happy that you put it on your shoulders 6 and carry it back home. Then you call your friends and neighbours together and say to them, ‘I am so happy I found my lost sheep. Let us celebrate!’ 7 In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine respectable people who do not need to repent.
This parable is an example of the jealous love of God. We rightfully belong to God. He is our creator, our heavenly Father. If we are lost or carried off by something else, then God jealousy pursues us with his love to find us and bring us home. God’s jealous love will not abandon us or share us with the evil one. Jesus is the good shepherd who restores the lost sheep.
Perhaps the clearest example of how Jesus reveals God’s jealous love was in going to the cross. God was so jealous for us, he felt so strongly that we belong to him, and not to sin or death, that he redeemed us back for himself through Jesus’ crucifixion and death. Indeed, God’s act of raising Jesus from the dead also demonstrates the power of God’s jealousy. God’s jealous love is stronger than the grave.
Okay, so that’s one of the themes of the song, divine jealousy. The other aspect of the song I want to highlight is transcendence.
Transcendence
By transcendence I mean ‘rising above’ our circumstances, being lifted out of our troubles. (This has nothing to do with transcendental meditation by the way.) A transcendent experience is one which is extraordinary, incomparable, matchless, second to none. The song How He Loves describes the kind of transcendent experience one can have through the love of God.
In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest and Lieutenant Dan are out one night on their boat, fishing for shrimp, when a huge storm hits. It’s the worst storm in that area for decades. Lieutenant Dan is angry with God. He’s up in the rigging yelling insults at God, ‘You call this a storm…’ He’s practically goading God to sink their ship. Forrest is more circumspect, more humble. He’s got his hand on the wheel navigating the boat through the waves.
Lieutenant Dan’s fury is a jealous sort of rage. He believes he was destined to die a hero’s death in battle (in Vietnam) but God spared his life through Forrest Gump and now Lieutenant Dan feels cheated. Dan thinks God has taken something from him that wasn’t his to take. But God’s jealous love for Lieutenant Dan is greater than Lieutenant Dan’s jealous rage at God. In fact, God’s love lifts Lieutenant Dan out of his hurt and resentment.
They survive the ordeal at sea and when they come into port the next morning they see all the other boats in the harbour have been smashed to pieces. Prior to the storm they couldn’t catch a cold. Now, after the storm, all their competition has been taken out and they catch tons of shrimp.
Eventually Lieutenant Dan makes his peace with God. He breaks off his romance with death and transcends his troubles, he rises above his self-pity and rage, to embrace a new life.
John Mark McMillan, the author of How He Loves describes how his song came about (and I paraphrase here)…
Some of my friends were in a car crash. One of them (Steven) died later in hospital that night. I was angry and confused and hurt. Steven was a youth group leader and had been in a prayer meeting earlier that day. I process things through music. The song ‘How He Loves’ is not about a pretty, clean, Hollywood, ‘hot pink’ type love. It’s the kind of love that is willing to love things that are messy and difficult. Gross things. God could still love me in my anger and frustration and resentment. He could love me through that. God wasn’t offended that I was angry at him. ‘How He Loves’ is a song that celebrates a God who wants to hang with us through the mess.
John McMillan’s song describes something of the extraordinary, incomparable, matchless, transcendent experience of God’s love. Sometimes in worship we become so absorbed in God that we transcend our troubles. Whatever mess we are in fades away and we lose ourselves in awe and wonder and delight at the goodness of God. It’s like our soul is granted a Sabbath rest from its pain and struggle and we are actually able to heal.
We notice transcendence in verse 1 of the song when we sing…
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, And I realize just how beautiful You are, and how great Your affections are for me.
Afflictions eclipsed by glory reminds us of Paul’s words in Romans 8:18…
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
As I’ve said on other occasions, suffering and glory go hand in hand in the Bible. If we share in Christ’s suffering, we will also share in his glory.
What strikes me about Paul’s words in Romans 8 is that the glory will be revealed in us. It’s like we are vessels or containers for God’s glory. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 4:7, we have this treasure in jars of clay to show this all-surpassing power is from God.
Verse 2 of the song continues the theme of transcendence where it says…
And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss, And my heart turns violently inside of my chest, I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, When I think about, the way that He loves us,
We are reminded here of Psalm 85:10-12…
Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. 11 Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. 12 The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. 13 Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.
Jesus is heaven’s kiss on the earth. In and through Christ heaven meets earth.
Back to the song, …my heart turns violently inside of my chest suggests a deep internal heart change, repentance in other words.
Or perhaps it’s more like the way our heart races or skips a beat when we come near to the one we love.
We may regret some of the things we have done in our life. We may keep going back in our mind rehearsing our past mistakes, feeling bad and playing the ‘what if’ game with ourselves.
But when we think about the way God loves us we don’t have time to maintain these regrets – we transcend our past. We rise above ourselves. We realise it’s not about us. It’s about Jesus.
Conclusion
God loves us jealously. His love is transcendent, extraordinary, incomparable, second to none. In God we find our rest.
Let’s sing in our bubbles now, How He loves us…
How He Loves
He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.
And oh, how He loves us oh
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
And oh, how He loves us oh,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way that He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us…
Questions for discussion or reflection:
Listen to the song ‘How He Loves’. What are you in touch with as you listen to this song? (What connections, memories or feelings does the song evoke for you?)
What is jealousy?
How might we handle (process) our jealous feelings in a healthy way?
Why is God’s jealousy always right and good? In what sense is God’s jealousy an expression of his love?
Why does God insist that we worship Him exclusively?
In what ways does Jesus reveal divine jealousy? Can you give examples from the Bible?
What is transcendence?
What is your experience of God’s transcendent love? What is your response to His love? (If you are not aware of God’s love for you personally, you might like to ask Him to show you.)
Outtakes
One another occasion in the gospels we read how Jesus fell asleep in a boat during a hurricane. Imagine that, Jesus is so at home in the middle of a storm that he is able to sleep like a log. Why is Jesus so relaxed? Because he is God and his way is in the whirlwind and storm.
God’s jealous love isn’t just contained in the first line of the song. Verse 2 also implies God’s jealousy for us where it says,
…we are His portion and He is our prize…
Deuteronomy 32:9 tells us the Lord’s portion is his people.
The apostle Paul talks about ‘thinking of others as better than ourselves’ (Philippians 2:3). When we do that we prevent feelings of jealousy in the first place. For example, if someone else gets the praise, the promotion or the prize, then we are happy for them because we believe they (and not us) are rightly entitled to it.
John McMillan also wrote the song King of my heart, which we sang earlier today during our on-line service.
[1] Refer M. Erickson, ‘Jealousy’, The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, page 410.
[2] Refer A.B. Luter, Jr. ‘Jealousy, Zeal’, DPL, page 461.
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