He says, "The Lord was angry with me because of you, and He solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance." (Deuteronomy 4:21) Moses certainly never engaged in idolatry, but he failed to obey and honor the Lord at Meribah, and because of that he will not have the honor of delivering the people to their destination. If a man like Moses was disciplined by the Lord, how much more will the Lord discipline those who turn away from Him to serve useless idols? Moses goes on, "I will die in this land; I will not cross the Jordan; but you are about to cross over and take possession of that good land. Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." (Deuteronomy 4:22-24)
The Apostle Paul, who is believed to be the author of the book of Hebrews, quoted the words of Moses in his letter to the community of Jewish Christians, urging them to always "worship God acceptably and with reverence, for our God is a consuming fire". (Hebrews 12:28b-29) The Lord is jealous in the sense that He will not share His glory with anyone or anything else. He is the Creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them. He is the God who chose Israel and brought her out of Egypt and planted her in a land of goodness and prosperity. He is the God who protects and provides for Israel. To call upon the name of any other deity or to bow down before an image is like spitting in the face of the Lord. He will not tolerate it because He is the only deity to make Himself known to Israel and to do anything for her---because He is the only deity there is---and He will say when He testifies on His own behalf someday to the nation into which idolatry has stealthily but steadily crept, "You are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." (Isaiah 44:8b) There is no one else Israel can point to and say, "He has delivered me. He has saved me. He has planted me in a good place. He has defended me against my enemies. He has offered me mercy and salvation." God alone has done all these things and He will not allow the credit for these great deeds to go to anyone else.
He is jealous in another sense: He is jealous for Israel. He wants the best for Israel. No one can enjoy the Lord's best if they are living at a distance from Him in their hearts. No one can enjoy the Lord's best if they reject Him in favor of someone or something else. If you are a parent, aren't you jealous for your children in the sense that you want them to have the very best this life can offer? You want them to have the best opportunities and advantages. You want them to have all their needs met and all their wants too, when those wants are things that are reasonable and safe. You want them to be able to have a good education and a successful career and a loving marriage and healthy children. You want them to be able to afford a nice home and a dependable car to drive. You want them to live long and happy lives. You want them to know and serve the Lord so they can have the peace of the Lord in this life and eternity with Him after this life on earth is over. The Lord feels the same way about Israel as you do about your children; He wants good things for her. He wants her to have every advantage and opportunity. But if she rejects Him she will not be able to have all the wonderful things He longs to give her. Rejecting the Lord leads a person (and a nation) down the wrong path and into much sorrow. As the Apostle Paul warned, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Galatian 6:7-8) The last thing the Lord wants for any person is that they would reap sorrow and loss and destruction, but a person who sows sin will reap a sad harvest, and there is no greater sin than the sin of idolatry. There is no greater sin than to reject the One who created us.
If Israel falls into idolatry the Lord will discipline her as a father disciplines a wayward child. The purpose of the discipline is to correct wrong behavior. The Lord will allow misfortune to fall upon the nation if idolatry is allowed to enter in and flourish, but this misfortune is intended to cause the people to repent and turn back to Him. He can remove Israel from the promised land as easily as He removed the heathen tribes before her, and He will do so if that's what it takes to turn Israel back to her God. The Lord always has eternity in mind in His dealings with man. He sometimes has to cause us temporary discomfort in order to do us long term good. It's better for a person to endure discipline than to continue ruining their life and endangering the fate of their eternal soul. Sometimes the Lord even takes a person out of this life if they are having too wicked of an influence on those around them, as He did when He allowed a plague to fall on the men who entered into immorality and idolatry with the pagan Midianite women in the book of Numbers. If He had not taken swift and severe action, the entire nation might have gone astray.
Moses continues, "After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time---if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing His anger, I call the heavens and the earth to witness against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell." (Deuteronomy 4:25-28) If the people fall into idolatry and persist in it, the Lord is able to remove them from the land and scatter them among other nations where there is nothing but idolatry---so much idolatry it would make a person sick of it. The Lord will say something like, "So you prefer senseless, useless blocks of wood or stone to Me---the living God? I will send you to a land where you'll see nothing but senseless, useless idols. There you will see that they are powerless. There you will get your fill of them and will not be able to stand the sight of them." This is intended to turn hearts back to the one and only God.
"But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey Him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which He confirmed to them by oath." (Deuteronomy 4:29-31) The Lord will accept the repentant prayer of the one who has committed idolatry. He won't say to any of the Israelites at that time, "Sorry, but I don't want you back. I'll never get over the way you scorned Me and ran after other gods. I can't forgive it." To use another parent/child example, if you put your child in time out or temporarily removed a privilege as correction for disobedience, you won't refuse their apology and say, "You're no child of mine now. I'm disowning you." The Lord doesn't say that either. When we realize we've done wrong and we repent and confess our wrongdoing to Him, "He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
The Lord is raising us up like children. Like a loving Father, for our own good He must correct our behavior at times, but like a loving Father He accepts our penitent apologies. You and I may never have literally bowed on our knees before a carved idol but there are ways to commit idolatry in our hearts. When we value someone or something more than our relationship with the Lord, we are making a "god" out of that person or thing. The Apostle Paul pointed out to the Christian church that things like immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed are idolatry. (Colossians 3:5) Letting these things have control over us is a form of idolatry because we are violating the Lord's principles. We are forsaking His laws and commandments in favor of getting dishonest gain or fulfilling sexual desires outside of marriage or making a name for ourselves or getting ahead of someone else at work or in society. If attaining a particular thing causes us to violate God's word, that thing is a sin. That thing is not God's will for our life. We are committing idolatry if we choose to forsake godly principles in favor of taking hold of the thing which our heart wrongly desires.
The Lord will have to take steps to correct such behavior if we don't quickly realize the error of our ways and repent. But if that happens we must keep in mind that the correction is for our good, not for the purpose of disowning us. No one enjoys being disciplined, but we will close with some words that help us to put it into a perspective that will help us to see that the Lord only administers as much discipline as we need when we need it and that this discipline comes from the loving hand of a Father who wants only the best for us. "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as His children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined---and everyone undergoes discipline---then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:7-11)
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