Jehu’s Zeal Without Reward

Jehu wiped out the house of Ahab just as the word had said, and he even gathered those who served Baal into the house of Baal and killed them, leaving not one alive. He had run with everything he had, to the point of breaking down Baal’s pillar and Baal’s house and making it a latrine, and he boasted on his own account that others should see how zealous he was for God’s work.

Yet that zeal ended at the worship of the golden calves that Jeroboam had made. This was because, from the very beginning, he had not been heading toward God. The moment he looked at his own zeal and was satisfied with it, he had already received his reward in full, so there was no heavenly reward left for God to give him. By contrast, Jehonadab the son of Rechab, who was a Gentile, chose God without hesitation when Jehu questioned him. He charged his children not to set their hearts on the world, and his descendants kept those words for more than two hundred years.

What matters is not speed but direction. Being in the church and serving a great deal does not take the place of direction. We are not to work for our own boasting and our own righteousness; it is only when we seek out God’s will and obey it that God becomes our boast and our righteousness.