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Num. 25
God’s gift to Phinehas for his actions against Zimri caught my attention. God said, “Behold, I give him My covenant of peace; and it shall be for him and his descendants after him, a covenant of perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the sons of Israel.” (Num. 25:12). It caught my attention because when I think of God’s covenant of peace, I think of our reconciliation to Him by faith through Christ. Also, I thought Phinehas was already a priest, given he was a descendant of Aaron. So what exactly did God grant him here?
I honestly don’t have an answer to that question. I do, though, have a thought regarding the basis of priesthood. The Bible says that Aaron and his sons, which I read to mean all of his male descendants, “shall have the priesthood by a perpetual statute” (from Ex. 29:9). It also says, “Their anointing will qualify them for a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations” (from Ex. 40:15). In other words, their priesthood was based on the Mosaic Law. God said of Phinehas, however, that his priesthood was based on God’s covenant of peace. Applying this thought to the truth of believers as God’s kingdom of priests, it tells me that our priesthood is not based on either ancestry or Law. Rather, we receive perpetual priesthood through Jesus when we commit ourselves to Him in faith.
Ps. 68
The Psalmist says of those who hate God, “As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish before God.” (PS. 68:2). Both smoke and wax dissipate to essentially nothing, which is exactly what the wicked are before God.
Is. 15
“Therefore the abundance which they have acquired and stored up they carry off over the brook of Arabim.” (Is. 15:7). This is just one of many statements in the Bible telling us that abundance on this earth does not equate to security.