Zeal!

We complete our alphabet journey of ‘names’ for our amazing God with Zealous!  Our Lord is zealous and desires for us to be as well.  Zeal without knowledge is dangerous--but zeal rightly directed changes everything.  The ‘Zeal of the LORD of Hosts’ delivered Judah from Assyria (2 Kings 19:31) but even greater, that zeal provided total victory in Jesus Christ (Isaiah 9:7; 59:17).  During Christ’s earthly life, He demonstrated the same zeal.  Early in His ministry, the disciples recognized Christ fulfilled the prophet Isaiah’s words:  ‘Zeal for thy house consumes me.’  The LORD described zeal as a cloak wrapped about His armor of salvation and justice; Christ is the earthly reality of that depiction.

Zeal for the ‘house’ of God--the building project of the Father--was and is Christ’s power source.  Paul tells us that we are God’s building and fitted together in Christ we become a holy temple for God’s presence!  Zeal for the Father’s purposes propelled Jesus from heaven’s glory to the gloom of Israel’s defeat.  Zeal brought Jesus into Israel‘s reality: a lost kingdom, submission to Rome and centuries of silence from their King.  Zeal for the Father’s purposes powered every miracle Jesus chose to perform, every word He chose to speak and every undeserved punishment He stoically received.  That Zeal did not fall short; that Zeal raised Jesus from the curse of death to reign eternally just as Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years before.

Our lives, hidden in Christ, are to be cloaked in the very same Zeal.  Built up in our Savior, His life surrounding us, zeal is the natural state of the believer.  We are even commanded to be zealous to do what is right.  Mis-directed zeal destroys but God-centered zeal delights the Father.  In the Revelation to John, the Laodecian church was rebuked for its lack of zeal.  Christ pleaded with them---pleads with us--be zealous in seeking God, turn from self-seeking and have a passion for the things of the Lord!

Thank you for joining me on this exploration of names of our Lord.  My prayer is that you have been as blessed as I by focusing on Him.  It is my delight to tell you that the Baptist Voice has agreed to a new series that will direct our eyes to the living on the Promises of God!