Those of us from the early Boomers remember the “Howdy Doody Show” on black-and-white TV. My sister and I loved to watch Buffalo Bob Smith and his puppet friends: Howdy, Flub-a-Dub, Dilly Dally—and the live characters: Chief Thunderthud, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, and of course, Clarabell the Clown.
I was always intrigued by the name of the mayor of Doodyville, Mr. Phineas T. Bluster. He had eyebrows that shot straight up when he was surprised and his grumpy nature never changed.
Imagine my surprise when I read about another Phinehas in Scripture (spelled differently). His story can be found in Numbers 25. His anger over the practices of the Israelites, called by God’s name, caused him to act against their sin. We read in Numbers 25:10:
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Phinehas son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites; for he was zealous as I am for my honor among them, so that in my zeal I did not put an end to them. Therefore, tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.’”
“Zeal,” a word Scripture extols, is a word that we don’t use very often. It means “passion” and Paul told us in Romans 12:11 to:
“…never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”
When Jesus got angry over the money changers in the temple, his disciples referred back to Psalm 69:9 and said:
“Zeal for your house consumes me.”
Now before we go wrecking furniture or polishing our spears, we do read this warning in Proverbs 19:2:
“It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the mark.”
We see a live example of zeal without knowledge in the life of Peter. He made a bizarre suggestion to build shelters on the Mount of Transfiguration for Jesus, Moses and Elijah as recorded in Luke 9:33. I have to think, though, that Jesus especially loved Peter for this characteristic of zeal in his Christian life.
Paul showed zealous action too, without knowledge, and arrested Christians before he himself met Jesus on the way to Damascus as described in Acts 9:1-31. Yet his zeal as a Christian helped establish the church and gave him the perseverance necessary for the task.
These negative examples should not frighten us from our own zeal, as we go about passionately doing God’s work. God loves those who guard the honor of His name and courageously fight to hold His banner high. And that’s no bluster!
