The image of jealousy.
Ezekiel in vision imagines himself plucked up by a lock of hair and carried from the land of his exile back to Jerusalem, there to behold the abominations that are being practised in the temple of Solomon. In the sacred enclosure he sees an idol that provokes the jealousy of the true God.
I. GOD IS JUSTLY JEALOUS. The Old Testament idea of the jealousy of God has been grossly misapprehended. It has been taken as meaning that God was regarded as narrow, self-seeking, harsh. Such criticisms reveal a total misapprehension of the Old Testament position, according to which the jealousy of God is a necessity of his nature and righteousness.
1. A necessity of God's nature. There is but one God who fills all things. When he is represented as jealous, thin cannot be because he grudges a certain amount of honour to a rival—as Zeus might be jealous of Apollo—for God has no possible rivals. The supposed rivals are not gods at all. The worship of them is the worship of empty names. God is calling men back from delusion to fact when he is jealous of heathenish worship.
2. A necessity of righteousness. Forsaking Jehovah for false gods is not merely leaving one deity for another, nor even only turning aside to vanity and a delusion. It is turning from holiness to sin. The worship of God involves purity of heart and life; idolatry means a lower moral life. For the sake of holiness God cannot endure the lower worship. It might be said that God could be worshipped under various names as "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." But if the lower forms of worship involve false thoughts of God and evil practices in morals, they are degrading and unendurable.
II. AN IDOL PROVOKES THE JEALOUSY OF GOD. The idol takes the place of God, sits on his throne, defiles his temple, usurps his Name and authority and worship. Anything that works in this way is an idol, and needs to be visited with the just indignation of God. Let us note some of these "images of jealousy."
1. Pleasure. If men set pleasure first, guiding their lives by its gaudy radiance, pleasure presides over the altar of their souls. "Love not pleasure, love God," says Carlyle; for the supreme love of the one excludes the supreme love of the other.
2. Money. This idol of gold is the modern representative of Nebuchadnezzar's statue on the plain of Shinar—a hard, helpless idol, which the man who lives for money enshrines in the temple of his soul.
3. Earthly love. God does not require us to abandon human affection; on the contrary, we cannot love God unless we love man, and we]earn to love God best through the exercise of human affections (1 John 4:20). But when a human affection is supreme and will not yield in submission to the will of God, the object of it becomes an "image of jealousy."
4. Self-will. We may think we serve God and yet we may refuse to obey him, only working according to our own will. This also is idolatry.
5. Fixed opinions. Instead of loving truth, we are tempted to love our own ideas; wishing them to be true, we are led to regard them as such, and so to shut our minds against the correcting voice of Divine revelation. All these images of jealousy are just so many embodiments of self, the monster idol of the soul and rival of God. To cast out these images we need the true Image of the invisible God, Jesus Christ, to come and take possession of our hearts.