"Zeal that brings peace to the world"-Numb 25

The zeal that restores the beauty of peace

10 And the Lord said to Moses,11 “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy.12 Therefore say,‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, 13 and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant ofa perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.’” (Numb 25:11-13)…Read all of Numb 25 to understand the whole story

My Boss has this quote on his email signature that says, "Don't ask what the world needs but discover what makes you come alive. For what the world needs is people who have come alive". In our story today we see how Phinehas comes alive for the things that matter to God, which is really what the world needs. He shows great zeal to accomplish God's will and purpose and in so doing, the Lord declares many powerful things for him and for the rest of his generation.

What God declares concerning Phinehas

God called Him by name and:

1.Gave to him and his generations after him "a covenant of peace"...declaring an inheritance of God's peace, His Shalom…(vs 12)

2.Maked him and his generations after him to be a priesthood forever (vs 13)

3.Phinehas made atonement (paying the price for forgiveness) for Israel so God did not destroy them all (vs 14)

…This declaration sounds familiar

This sounds a lot like someone I know so well...Yes Jesus Christ

1. Christ burned with zeal to do the will of His father ....all the Gospels tell us this (Jhn 2:17)

2. God gave Him to be the everlasting priest . (Heb 3:1)

3. God made Him to be an atonement for all the sins of the world so that those who believe will not die for their sin . (Jhn 3:16, Rom 5:11)

…But how does this affect my life today?

It affects you who is a believer in Christ:
Be encouraged, you who know the Lord and have a zeal for the things that concern Him, you who have a Godly jealousy for the heart of God moved by the power of His Spirit, be encouraged.  The Lord is using you and your zeal as an instrument of peace  to break the bondage and curse of sin in the lives of all who encounter you.  

He is using your zeal as you Re-Present Christ to your family and your world, offering them the service of reconciliation so that they may be at peace with God once again and receive the full inheritance of Him. (2 Cor 5:19-21).  

Be encouraged, knowing that your zeal might be confusing to you (Jer 33:3), your zeal might be disruptive in your family (Mat 10:34), your zeal might cause many of your friends to leave you (Jhn 6:60-66), but the Lord knows you by name. Your zeal for the heart of God may cause wars and rumors of wars (Mat 24:14), your zeal may cause you to be locked up or even burnt....however you are still the one the Lord calls by name and makes a peace covenant with you and you are the one He will use to an object of deliverance for your community.

So do not wax cold, do not shrink back, continue with the passion you received the first day you believed, the Lord is faithful till the end (Heb 10:23-24) and He is coming back again to reward the saints.... Maranatha...Come Lord Jesus (1 Thes 4:13-18).

There is still peace to be found within the bushes

It affects you who does not believe in Christ:
For you who still has doubts about Christianity,  here is your comfort. Just like the Lord declared to Phinehas that a whole nation was spared because of his zeal to do the Lord's will, another One has already done God's perfect will (Heb 10:7-9) so that you will be saved when you put your faith in Him (Rom 10:9-10). You might say, why do I need saving? The answer is, we all need saving (Rom 3:9-18) because we have all lived lives outside of God's perfect will or standard. With this disobedient lifestyle comes death (Rom 6:23a), just like in our story all of Israel was going to die if Phinehas did not intervene. 

The good news is, if we put our faith in the complete work of Jesus Christ who died in our place, we will not face eternal death or the judgement that will come to all the world when God judges the sins of the world (Acts 17:30-32, Rom 5:8-9) .  The good news continues, Christ did not only die for us but He resurrected, as our assurance that we too, although we die in this world will live again forever (Rom 6:5). Now this is truly comfort for the soul. 

…But how does this affect the future?
There is another event slotted in the book of the Bible, destined for the time of History, when Jesus will come back to earth, not as a lamb but as a lion…a king...the Lord's zeal will fulfill this (Isa 9:7, Jer 33:14-26). It is His zeal that will set up His Millennium kingdom on earth, in Israel, Jerusalem to be exact (Ps 2:6). Where Jesus will rule the whole world for a 1,000 years as a monarchy (Isa 32:1, Zech 14:9). 

Israel our Future home

Not like those monarchies you know in this world, but one with righteousness and justice and peace (Isa 11:4-5, 33:17-24) that this world has never known. He will punish the rebellious hearts (Ps 2:7-9, 12) and serve with gentleness the weak (Isa 40:11). Because of his reign and His zeal as Prophet, Priest and King the deceiver will be locked up for that period until the end of his reign when satan will be let out to start deceiving the nations again for a time (Rev 20:1-3). The Millennium period will be a marvelous time. Where do I get all this….in the Bible…reading it literally and taking God to mean what he says and to say what He means…reading prophecy not as allegory but literally, because Jesus literally came as a man, born of a virgin, and walked our earth…which was foretold in many places in the Old Testament.

So rejoice, you who know this future King of Israel, that comes from the seed of Eve (Gen 3:15), of David (2 Sam 7:16), who is Jesus Christ. Rejoice because we have a hope that will surely come to pass, which says that we will reign with Jesus Christ in this kingdom (1 Cor 6:2), and Israel will have all the land they were promised and will have peace at last (Isa 41:8-16, Rev 20:6). This is our hope, this is the hope of the Church, a kingdom in Jerusalem for 1,000 years and for eternity, a new Heaven and Earth which will come down from the sky where no evil will reign, because Christ will defeat Satan once and for all at the battle of Armageddon. All those who follow Satan (Rev 20:7-10) and those who reject Christ would be cast out into the lake of fire, tormented forever and evil will be banished forever (Rev 21:10-27). God Himself accomplishes this through his own zeal which allows for peace to finally comes on earth forever.

Comfort for your soul

…Now this is true comfort for the soul for all those who believe…and for those who do not believe this is your chance to believe because God did not create us to be destroyed by His wrath (1 Thes 5:9)….but do not take my word for it..read the Book for yourself and hope in this too, by His grace (1 Cor 15:19-20, 1 Thes 4:13-18).

Until next time, I pray for you who know Him, that you would burn with zeal for Him and not grow weary in doing good (Gal 6:9) and gain a renewed hope for the future. And I pray for you  who is not in the family of faith, that your heart would be open to His Truth which sets you free and brings you peace (Jhn 12:47), Amen. 

Recommendation: The End Times, by Herman A. Hoyt (Kingdom of God: pages 167-192)

"Leadership Matters-following a Just & Holy God" (Numb 20)

"Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water…So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, just as He had commanded him; 10 and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank…But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” (Num 20:8-12).

The Book of Numbers records the period when the children of Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years. The book displays how God had to groom his newly chosen people, teaching them how they are to behave as his children. So He provided the Law as a tutor for them (Gal 3:24) before He sends the ultimate One who will show them in the flesh what it means to be a child of God (Gal 3:25). 

This is the same way God deals with us today. In our case He sent Jesus to die to reconcile us back to God (Rom 5:10) AND to show us who God is (Heb 1:1-3), so that we may place our faith in Him, experience His love and willingly obey Him, living lives that show we are His chosen children indeed. 

This same thing God wanted for His first chosen people Israel. So during this time in the desert like a Father raising up a child to be a good citizen of society, God was raising up Israel to be good citizens of His kingdom, one not of this world (John 18:37). When He chose Israel, He set them apart for His use. However before they could be useful to be the light in their world, they had a lot that God had to teach them, his children needed to grow to know the voice of their Father. So the book of Exodus and Numbers records the beginnings of this growth journey.

God provided and protected His children Israel, day and night (Num 9:15-17) but disciplined them when they rebelled as we see in this story (Num 11, 14:13-19). He was raising Israel to worship Him as their on true God and also to trust Him as the one who provides for them and the one who loves them with an undying love*. This is not an easy task as we are going to see through the whole Old Testament, and one we understand first hand as we look at our own rebellious heart. This task of conforming God's children to His image is actually an impossible task without one very essential element-God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. We will see how this plays out more fully later when we get to the New Testament.

But for now we are stuck with a rebellious people, in this case even Moses rebels against God. He is frustrated, angry, impatient, tired of dealing with God's people…I am sure some Pastors can relate...if Moses feels this way, you can only imagine how God feels…he is Holy and perfect, yet patient and long suffering. God in His justice punishes Moses rather severely, declaring he will not enter the promise land with Israel. On first glance it seems rather unfair, but because I know God is perfect and Holy, I have to let this understanding be my point of view in order to understand the lessons I need to learn here. So lets take a look at some of them.

Lessons from God

There is a lesson even in the haystacks

• Leadership Matters-(Luke 12:48) "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more". God expects more from leaders. We see this through several places in the Bible, when a leader fails, the whole nation suffers but when he follows God wholeheartedly many generations after that are blessed. One example is in 2 Samuel; when David rebels, 70,000 people die (2 Sam 24), when David follows God wholeheartedly, God preserves his line up till Jesus Christ, the One who will save the whole world (2 Sam 7, Mat 1:1-17). We also see this to be true in our lesson today.

• God is not only loving but Just-(Exo 34:6-7) "Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7 who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” So here in this story we see that God cannot overlook sin, that is why He provided the sacrificial system for Israel, to pay for the penalty of sin which is death. This system was to be used until the ultimate sacrifice Christ comes to pay for sin once and for all. So until then the Lord being Holy and just had to discipline Moses for not obeying Him and not showing God to be Holy to Israel.

I still need to learn some things

• I need to fear the Lord-( Prov 9:10) "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding"(Prov 15:33) The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom, And before honor is humility".  Fearing God does not mean we are afraid of Him, but rather we understand who He is and with this understanding comes a respect, honor and appreciation for God. Fearing God is what helps us, flee the temptations that our sin nature longs for and those the delights of our world throws at us. This reverent fear of God causes us to make wise choices and lead others on this same path. The Moment Moses let his anger overrule his fear and respect for God, he disobeyed a direct instruction. So I pray we all grow in our fear for God as we realize that although He is our Father and friend, He is also the God who made the universe, and so demands our respect and reverence. How this is applied will look different from person to person, but God's Spirit would help us understand daily.

• Anger can lead to great sin-(Ps 4:4) "Be angry, and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah". (Eph 4:26) "Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath". In our story today, we see it was Moses anger that lead him to sin. The scriptures above suggest a cooling off period. it is not a sin to be angry, it is a normal and even protective human emotion. However anger has the tendency to go out of control and lead us to make poor choices. We all have to look at the best way to cool off when we are angry, before we act. For me I have to walk it off, drown myself in worship music, clean the bath tub…it seems to work for me sometimes. So no matter how mature we are as Christians, Moses as our example, we have to ask our God to help us manage our anger each time so that it will not lead to actions we regret.

I am sure you can come up with more lesson, and I encourage you to do that. I love the Bible because through its pages I learn more about the nature of the God who created the universe, helping me not to make Him in my own image, but to realize that I was made in His. The Bible forces me to live out the kind of life God prescribes and not that of my culture, even though my culture screams louder. The Bible corrects me when I am wrong and provides comfort to my soul. Most of all through God's word, God Himself helps me grow into someone that can reflect day by day who he is (His glory). I can reflect His love, joy and Truth in my world, helping others to experience His beauty because nothing else satisfies. 

I pray you will continue to journey with us at Comfortnotes as we learn from our God, through the 66 Love letters He has written to us, because from these letters comes real comfort for the soul.

*Earl D. Radmacher, The NKJV Nelson Study Bible, Nashville:Thomas Nelson, 1997, 225.