A Zeal For God
“As for you my son Solomon, Know the God of your father, and serve Him with loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts and understands the intent of the thoughts. IF you seek Him He will be found by you. But, if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever. Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; Be strong and do it.”
(1 Chronicles 28.9-10)
Once again we have come to the Southeast’s favorite time of year - Football Season! Roll Tide!!! Already the sound of battle resonates from gridirons across the state. There is probably no state in this union that can boast of having fans who are more passionate about football than the great state of Alabama. The football fans of Alabama eat, breath, and sleep football 365 days a year. We are passionate about and committed to our team. We have a ZEAL fo the game of football. We will travel hundreds of miles to camp out in the parking lot of a football stadium just to do what we could have done from the comfort of our home – cook out and listen to the game via TV or the radio. We can not help ourselves. We just have to be there. We live for the experience.
During the season football will be the topic of conversation in every office and around every water cooler. We will critic last weeks game and develop strategies for this weeks game. We will buy banners, books, hats, and shirts to show our support for our team. We will spend years indoctrinating our children to root for the proper team. We will fully debate our friends over the great benefits of supporting our team over theirs. We will be Zealous for the game of football.
Oh, for that kind of zeal for the things of God. How it must break the heart of God when on Sunday He sees the cold hearts of Christians towards His call on there lives when just a few hours earlier those same cold hearts were burning with zeal about a stadium early on Friday or Saturday so they would be sure to get a good seat.
Oh, how it must grieve the heart of God when He hears his children so willing and able to spout of the latest football stats, yet so unwilling and so unable to share their faith. How He must long for a people who are more zealous for the things of God than they are for the things of the gridiron.
I ask you today what I must ask myself, “what is it going to take to get our hearts to burn with zeal for the gospel call of God like it does for the game of football?” One would think that as we watch God’s prophetic Word unfold before our eyes in the middle east, that we would sense the urgency of the day and we would be compelled to burn with the fire of God to win the world to Christ. Yet, the reality is that we are losing ground. Instead of more of us being on fire for the gospel call less of us are. What is it going to take to make us burn white hot with the zeal of the Lord?
God has given us help for this cause in our text today. Here we find King David instructing his son Solomon concerning the task to which he had been called by God. His calling was to build a dwelling for God – The Temple. In our text we find in these instructions from and aged father four principles which will help us develop and maintain a zeal for God and His call upon our lives.
First, if we want to burn with zeal for the Lord we must know Him. David told Solomon to “know the God of your father (verse 9b).” This knowledge is more that a mental accent to the fact that there is a God. It is more that and accumulation of information about that God. After all if that is the only way we know God then we are no better off than the demons, because, “even the demons believe – and tremble (James 2.19).”
This knowledge is to be a personal knowledge of God as Savior. We must “confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead (Romans 10.9).” If we will know God in this personal kind of way the Bible says we will be saved. That is we will be saved from the power, penalty, and ultimately the presence of sin. We will be “born again (John 3.3).” That’s the kind of knowing God that has to happen in our lives in order for us to begin to have a zeal for the things of God.
Once we know Him personally then we can then begin to know Him practically as Lord of our lives as we flesh out our faith in our daily walk with Him. After all when we come to know Christ as our Savior we become a new creation in Him. The old man is in essence buried with Christ and we are raised to walk in the newness of our Christian life. Thus we begin our walk and the spark of zeal is kindled in our spirit as we live daily for Him.
Secondly, if we want to burn with zeal for the Lord we must Serve Him. David told Solomon to “serve Him [i.e., God] with a loyal heart and a willing mind (verse 9c).” The sad reality is that our generation knows little about service. We know little about serving because we are living in an era that expects to be served rather than to serve. This flies in the face of Christianity, because Jesus said that He came to serve not to be served. In fact the Bible tells us that “He took upon Him the form of a servant (Philippians 2.7).” If we want to be great in the kingdom we must learn to serve as Jesus did. If we want to fuel the flames of zeal in our lives we must learn to serve God and others.
Thirdly, if we want to burn with zeal for the Lord we must seek Him. David promised as he gave instruction to Solomon that “if you seek Him He will be found (verse 9e).” In fact God says that we should seek Him “as the deer pants for the water brooks (Psalm 42.1).” Yet, we spend much of our lives seeking the things of this world as our zeal grows cold for the things of God. If only we would here the Lord and understand that if we would “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these things would be added unto us (Matthew 6.33).” The concept here is that we should seek Him until we have completed the task of finding Him. We should passionately seek Him willingly and whole heartedly if we want have a zeal for Him.
Fourthly, if we want to burn with zeal for the Lord we must stay in it. That is to say that we must finish the course. As David expressed it to Solomon, we must “be strong and do it (verse 10).” We must run the race with endurance. We can never quit. We must stay strong in our commitment to the Lord. We can never give out. We must continually feast on the manna of His word and exercise our faith so that we be spiritually fit for the race that is set before us. In order for us to accomplish this we must never give in to the distractions of the world around us. We must keep our eye on the prize that is set before us in eternity and run the race to win. We do this by only when we understand that we must forget “those things which are behind and [reach] ... to those things which are ahead ... press[ing] toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2.13-14).” Then and only then will we have run the Christian race with the zeal of the Lord. Then we can say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race; I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4.7).”
Our families; our friends; our neighbors; our work associates; and countless people around the world are dying without Jesus Christ. The Church has fallen asleep. We have given our passion or zeal for God away to numerous worldly passions. Will you be the one to rekindle the fire of the zeal of the Lord in the hearts of this generation of believers?
