As Zealous as the Lord

Scripture:

““Phinehas son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest has turned my anger away from the Israelites by being as zealous among them as I was. So I stopped destroying all Israel as I had intended to do in my zealous anger.”
‭‭Numbers‬ ‭25:11‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Observation:

Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the priest, saw a man take a Midianite woman into his tent in front of the whole camp of Israel.  When he did, he took a spear into the tent and thrust it through the man and into the woman.  About this, God said Phinehas was “as zealous as I am... So I stopped destroying all Israel as I had intended to do.”  God honored the zeal of Phinehas and said it was like His very own.

Application:

God is a zealous God and He likes it when His people get zealous for Him as well.  Zeal can cause people to do wrong things, but truly righteous zeal will honor God.  I want to get angry about what God gets angry about and I want to be sad about what saddens Him.  I want to be happy by what makes God happy and zealous about what He is zealous about.

Prayer:

Father, make me zealous about the right things.  Let me represent You well.  Help me to not be zealous for zeal’s sake, but to be zealous about what You are zealous about.  Teach me when to be zealous for You and when to step back.

Yours Forever,
Jeff