Date: Tuesday, 20th February, 2024
Text: Numbers 25:1-18
Author: Pastor Adedeji Fadehan
Exhortation:
Peace is what the whole world desperately seeks all over. Its absence is what is responsible for wars and rumours of wars. When peace is missing, there comes suspicion, animosity, rancour, bitterness, hatred, fighting, murder, genocide etc. Between God and Man, peace was lost from the very beginning when Man fell.
According to today’s text, while Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to an idol called the Baal of Peor. And the Lord’s anger burned against them.
God’s anger had immediately led to an epidemic breakout which consumed 24,000 Israelites. While this was going on God instructed Moses, their leader to command the Isrealite judges to destroy all those involved in this immorality so that peace can be restored. Many Israelites mourned and wept at this evil development but not all of them.
Worthy of note was a priest called Phinehas whose zeal for God put a stop to the plague. He loved what God loved and hated what God hated. God made a Covenant of Peace with him, he and his descendants are permanently established as priests, because he did not tolerate any rivals with God and brought about forgiveness for the people’s sin.
You too can actually enjoy God’s peace like a river throughout your lifetime and even pass that peace to your generations yet unborn. All you need to do is to love what God loves and hate what God hates. Live, eat, breathe and thrive in obedience to His will and word.
The word of God says, “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” Isaiah 57:20-21
Prayer Nugget: Father, please, help me to always love what you love and hate what you hate in Jesus name.