Why Mention the Family Tree?

Enough with the family trees. We have Pinhas, one of the most unbelievable stories in the Torah. [music] So powerful, he gets up and he sees one of the heads of K'lal Yisrael doing an aveirah, and he literally spears them. They're dead. No more climactic thing could we find than the story of Pinhas in the Torah. Torah has to come tell us Pinhas ben Elazar and Aharon HaKohen. What is going on? What do I care that Pinhas ben Elazar and Aharon HaKohen that we all go all the way back that he's Aharon's grandson? Leave it. Say Pinhas got up and did something awesome. He was a kinai. He was a zealous person. Wow, unbelievable. What's the Torah trying to teach me? There's an unbelievable lesson. That people in life, they could be a [music] fiery, passionate person, have anger, ferociousness. Then we'd see what Pinhas did. He was a ferocious guy. It's not such a big deal. Who was his grandfather? Who Where did he come from? From Aharon, who was the Ish Shalom. This was not an easy act for him. It wasn't some action movie and he was doing something awesome. It was painful. It was difficult. But he did it for the sake of Hakadosh Baruchu and for the sake of K'lal [music] Yisrael. That is true greatness. When something isn't easy for us, it's not our natural way, it's not the way we're going to go, and we do it anyway. Let's all push past our natural instincts to be great [music] for Hashem.