2 Kings 10

2 Kings 10:16 Come with me and see my zeal for the Lord.

I’m going a different way with this today. Yes Jehu was passionate about completing God’s tasks. But a bit over passionate about completing the task rather than doing a task for God. This statement could totally be taken to show how excited he was to do God’s work. I see it as pride in Jehu, pride of his own zeal. 

Matthew 6:3 reminds us to keep our deeds to the Lord in secret, and not be boastful of them. Killing hundreds of people is not something that could be kept secret, but to actually call someone to come watch you kill others in the name of God is opposite of what God intended. Yes God’s word of Ahab’s descendants being cleared from earth was carried out. But I wonder if all that power from the killings got to Jehu. We find out that he himself did not step away from the sins of his own family, and was not observing God’s law wholeheartedly. 

It was easier for Jehu to be angry against someone else’s sins and punish them for it than to look at his own sins. Doing away with another family paid him richly in that it put him on the throne. Beyond that, if it didn’t appease him, Jehu didn’t do it.

We mustn’t stop fighting for God just because it won’t glorify ourselves. We aren’t meant to glorify ourselves anyway. We aren’t here to call out others sins and call out how we helped them, while sweeping our own under the rug. God wants us to see inside ourselves, and seek good for ourselves and others. Be just as ambitious to help ourselves as we are to help others see God. God wants us to be zealous for Him, but not to let our passion for glory outdo our work.