Unauthorized Fire

Leviticus 10

Leviticus 10:1–3 ESV

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’ ” And Aaron held his peace.

Through looking at the ten commandments last week we saw that they can be summarized with the simple command of love. We also saw through them how holy God is and how unholy we are. The story of Nadab and Abihu can seem very striking, these are the two oldest sons of Aaron the priest. In the section before we even saw Aaron’s offering being accepted. So why this reaction with this offering?

This reaction from God is because he had not commanded the offering. God says that he will be regarded as holy and will be glorified before all people. By offering God this form of worship they were not regarding God as holy and they were not bringing him glory.

Through the law we see that God cares how he is worshiped. Moving to the New Testament we see that God of course hasn’t changed and still cares how he is worshiped. We see how Jesus calls out the worship of the Pharisees and Sadducees calling what they do lip service and not genuine in the book of Matthew. In Paul’s letters we see some of the components to true worship of God, some of which are; preaching, praying, reading scripture, baptism, Lord’s supper, and singing.

Overall in the New Testament we see that in worship we need to focus on the content of our worship, the object of our worship, our motivation in worship, and above all regard Christ as holy. This is not a fully comprehensive guide to worship but in today’s churches there are so many that do not worship the way that God intended. The easiest example of this is just to listen to quote “worship songs” and see how so many of the ones used today are focused more on self than on the holy God. Some of them just plain contradict the Bible and it’s teachings. If you want to offer God right worship then you need to think about what your worship contains.

Let me encourage you to put some thought into the content of your worship this next week to be sure that you are regarding God as holy and bringing him the glory in it.

In the end we see that Aaron held his peace, not because he was not distraught at what happened, but because he knew that they had not done as the Lord commanded them to do.

Next week we will continue to follow the journey of the nation of Israel towards the promised land and we get to look into a spy mission that scopes out all that God has given them. We will see some conflict arise from this though as the people still struggle to trust in God and all that he can do, even after all that he has already done.