Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
What it means to be initiated into the secret of the mystery. Part 96. The doctrine of jealousy. Part 3.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Point 1. Definition.
a. Jealousy is a mental attitude sin which demands exclusive devotion and is intolerant of competition.
b. Jealousy is discontentment with the blessings, successes, or status symbols of other people.
c. Jealousy is resentment of the attractiveness or approbation that a person receives.
d. Jealousy is total selfishness and is incapable of true love.
e. Jealousy is a possessiveness which suppresses the volition of another person; jealousy is tyranny.
f. Jealousy is also fear.
g. Jealousy is anti-freedom, and does not permit people to love you from their own volition.
The only love that is worthwhile is when someone gives it to you freely.
h. Jealousy is an emotional sin, as well as a part of arrogance.
i. Jealousy is mood arrogance troubled by suspicion that a person’s love has been diverted to a rival.
j. Jealousy is inordinate competition in love, in business, in social life, in athletics, in professional life, and in the spiritual life.
Point 2. For the believer rejection of Bible doctrine produces envy and jealousy, 1TI 6:3-4.
Point 3. Jealousy is a self-destructive mental attitude and a system of thinking from the Cosmic system, JAM 3:14-15.
Point 4. Jealousy like many of the mental attitude sins can produce physical sickness as well as mental disorder,PRO 14:30, JOB 5:2.
Point 5. Jealousy is the worst of all the mental attitude sins because it is the strongest of the mental attitude sins, PRO 27:3-4.
PRO 27:3 A stone is heavy and the sand weighty, But the provocation of a fool is heavier than both of them.
PRO 27:4 Wrath is fierce and anger is a flood, But who can stand before jealousy?
Point 6. So great was the sin of jealousy in Israel that a special offering was made for it, NUM 5:11-31.
This was part of an adultery trial, also known as the ordeal of jealousy.
If a man accused his wife of adultery but had no proof of her guilt, the Law provided a ritual to determine whether she was innocent or guilty, NUM 5:11-31.
If she swore her innocence, the woman was forced to drink a potion made of holy water mixed with dust from the floor of the tabernacle, and the priest burned the offering, made of barley meal, on the altar.
Jealousy actually split the nation Israel, ISA 11:13.
Point 7. Jealousy is the basis for the destruction of category two love (personal love of a member of the opposite sex), SOS 8:6-7.
“Strong as death” indicates that the man’s love for the woman and her response to that love serves as a fortification and protection for the woman’s soul and body.
Flashes = her responses to her right man are hot.
The flame is from the Lord not the flesh.
“Many waters” = pressures, disasters, difficulties, etc.
“Rivers” = the most horrible disasters of life which cannot destroy it.
Keil and Delitzsch - this statement was a direct putdown to Solomon’s many gifts and his riches to this woman.
Pressures, adversities, difficulties, and the most horrible disasters cannot destroy true love but jealousy can.
Point 8. Jealousy is related to the suppression of pride, which is part of a trigger mechanism producing both false motivation and discord, PHI 1:15.
Pettiness is the little sister of jealousy; they are closely related.
Point 9. Jealousy is related to the three categories of love.
a. Jealousy, as an anthropopathism, is legitimate only by God, who demands all your attention and concentration when you reach maturity.
An anthropopathism ascribes to God a human characteristic which God does not actually possess, but is used to reveal and explain God’s policy toward mankind in terms of human frame of reference by the use of language of accommodation.
b. In category two love, toward a member of the opposite sex, the jealous person can be so possessive that they smother the other person’s love and destroy it.
c. In category three love toward friends, the jealous person wants you to be friends only with them.
Point 10. Jealous people rejoice in the misery or fall of others.
A person who is jealous or envious of others feels painful and resentful at their betterment, and feels happy only when some miseries take place in the lives of others.
GAL 6:3 For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
Jealous people look for faults in others and never see their good qualities, and they think themselves faultless.
A sanitary inspector spends his time inspecting filth.
Jealousy is like a cancer, it grows and grows and grows until eventually it turns into outright hatred.
Men are more vulnerable to jealousy than women in certain areas, particularly in their desire for power, position, and title.
We live in a performance oriented world where we are taught to compete.
The curse that you have prepared for another will come upon you, and the blessing that you have prepared for yourself will be given to them.
EZE 35:11 “I will deal with you according to your anger and according to your envy which you showed because of your hatred against them”