Every presidential candidate since around 1976 has promised peace in the Middle East. Very few have ever achieved it. Reagan had some success. Both Bush father and son couldn’t get there. Clinton favored the Muslims. And Obama destabilized the Middle East with his Arab Spring movement that replaced somewhat stable governments with radical Islamic despots. Trump achieved Middle East peace with the Abraham Accords, but still relied on the failed proposition of a two-state solution, but in reality, he defunded the Palestinian Authority terrorist apparatus and the Iranian government’s terrorist funding. Biden-Harris oversaw the current Hamas attack on Israel. So what is true shalom, or peace?
In Numbers 25-30, the LORD made a “covenant of peace” with Israel when Pinchas stepped up and put a spear through Zimri, an Israelite tribal leader, and a Midianite princess who were in the act of fornication. The LORD made a covenant of shalom with Pinchas and his descendants and rewarded them an eternal priesthood because of Pinchas’ zealousness for God. This informs us about true peace. A covenant is a mutual relationship with reciprocal benefits, and the Hebrew word “shalom” conveys a sense of wholeness, completeness. The covenant of peace then, is a relationship that is complete and everlasting.
The LORD said to Moses in Numbers 25:10-12, “Pinchas the son of El”azar, son of Aaron the priest, has deflected my anger from the people of Israel by being zealous as I am, so that I didn’t destroy them in my own zeal. Therefore say, I am giving him my covenant of shalom, making a covenant with him and his descendants after him that the office of priests will be theirs forever.” Because Pinchas’ righteous act made things right before God, his is a foreshadow of the greater peace of the New Covenant found in Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people,” and in Ezekiel 37:36, “a covenant of peace.” John 14:27 tells us that Jesus fulfilled all of the covenants through His blood, who left us, not with the world’s peace, but with his very own gift of “shalom.”
God has made peace with mankind through the sacrifice of Jesus. As Colossians 1:19-20 says, “For it pleased God to have his full being live in his Son and through his Son to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace through him, through having his Son shed his blood by being executed on a stake.” To all who believe by faith in the sacrifice of God’s son for our sins, the Prince of Peace offers a new covenant of peace, forever healing the rift between God and man. As believers, we all are partakers of the Covenant of Peace as God’s people. His peace dwells in each one of us making our lives full and complete (even through the difficulties)—embrace it!
