When we read about the
establishment of the Jewish religion, it is striking how jealously
God walled Himself off from the approach of man. On Mount Sinai,
Moses was warned “Go down, testify to the people that they break not
through to Jehovah to gaze, and many of them perish” (Exod. 19: 21).
The children of Israel were not to go up onto the mountain, or even
touch it’s border. Later, when the Mosaic ritual had been formulated
in the tabernacle system, this divine barrier was incorporated in
it. The people could approach, but only in the way that God had
prescribed, and a definite distance was still maintained. The
children of Israel were His people, but there was always the
recognition that God was God and that man was man.
Does any of this have a relevance to us as
Christians? The Christian portion is certainly far more blessed than
that of Moses and his people for, unlike them, we can approach God
having “no longer any conscience of sins” and with “boldness for
entering into the [holy of] holies by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:
2, 19). Indeed, perfect love has cast out fear (see 1 John 4:
18)—but this fact, wonderful as it is, carries with it the danger of
admitting into our minds an element of unholy familiarity when
thinking of God. We are always to remember that while we invoke God
“as Father”, we are also to pass our “time of sojourn in fear” (1
Pet. 1: 17). The two thoughts are not contradictory: God is our
Father, but He is also our God (see John 20: 17). We are His
children, but we are also His creatures.
Now it is a fundamental principle that in
proportion as God is exalted and reverenced in our thoughts so will
our walk through life be shaped according to the divine will. In
other words, there is a definite link between our estimate of God
and our moral conduct. If our thoughts of God are low, then the
standard of our Christian walk will also be low. Thus when Israel
made a calf in Horeb to represent Jehovah, and “changed their glory
into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass” (Ps. 106: 20), they
also began to act corruptly (see Exod. 32: 7) and stripped
themselves to their shame (see v25). Their low morality flowed from
their low concept of God. The epistle to the Romans teaches the same
truth. There Paul shows that the reason for the abominations of the
Gentile nations could be found in the fact that despite “knowing
God, they glorified [him] not as God” and so they corrupted
themselves with “vile lusts (Rom. 1: 21, 26). If we attempt to lower
God to our level (or beneath), then we must necessarily lower
ourselves. Those who profess Christianity are in no way immune from
this—there is, for example, a common but false conception of God as
a benevolent figure who winks at sin. What is the effect? Immorality
or unrighteousness is tolerated on the grounds of ‘divine love’.
Thus, the very nearness to God which is such a blessed feature of
Christianity is perverted in such a way as to lower Him down from
“the throne of his holiness” (Ps. 47: 8).
The fact is, there is an inseparable link
between the character of the god of any religion and the character
of its adherents. In the OT God constantly reminded His people that
their conduct was to be the consequence of what He was: “For I am
Jehovah who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God:
ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11: 45). The Holy
Spirit’s word to Christians is similar: “every one that has this
hope in him purifies himself, even as
he is pure” (1 John 3: 3).
This principle carries us far beyond outward conformity to the
truth. It has to do with the deep recesses of the soul, and the
estimate which we, as beneath the piercing, jealous eye of a holy
God, are daily forming of Him. “All things [are] naked and laid bare
to his eyes, with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4: 13). Nor can we
afford to neglect this vital matter, for in it will be found the
secret of our low walk and spiritual deadness. Is God exalted in our
thoughts, and does He have the supreme place in our affections? The
facts speak for themselves. Self, the world, and our earthly
interests, have robbed the One who gave His only Son to die for us
of the homage of our hearts. This being the case, can we expect to
flourish? The farmer who gives his time and thoughts to things other
than his crop during the spring will look in vain for a bountiful
harvest in the autumn. Why are we perplexed when our families drift
off into the world, our marriages collapse, and our churches close
their doors forever? Is not the answer found in our own hearts? God
is not God to us in the real practical sense that He ought to be.
Enoch “walked with God” (Gen. 5: 22); by contrast, many of us hardly
know Him in that living, practical way. This explains a good deal of
the lack of interest in the gospel from the men and women around us,
for while they may not read our tracts, they are certainly reading
our lives (see 2 Cor. 3: 2). Would they be so apathetic if they saw
in us, as Zebah and Zalmunna saw in Gideon’s brethren, that “each
one resembled the sons of a king” (Judges 8: 18)? It is vain calling
Jesus our Lord and calling God our Father while all the time living
life as if it were our own. This low concept of God inevitably finds
expression in the way worship is conducted—namely, man becomes the
arbiter of what God shall receive.
The place of the Christian is one of
unspeakable privilege. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have
“access by faith into this favour in which we stand” (Rom. 5: 2) and
are blessed “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in
Christ” (Eph. 1: 3). However, we must never forget that
divine privilege does not
alter divine majesty. Nadab and Abihu, the two older sons of
Aaron, provide a sobering illustration of this fact, and the account
of their fall is surely “written for our instruction” (Rom. 15: 4).
Like you and I, they knew a great deal of divine favour: “Go up to
Jehovah, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders
of Israel; and worship afar off … And Moses and Aaron, Nadab and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up; and they saw the
God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were work of
transparent sapphire, and as it were the form of heaven for
clearness. And on the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not
his hand: they saw God, and ate and drank” (Exod. 24: 1, 9–11).
Shortly afterwards we find this privilege further magnified when
they are taken out from among the children of Israel and hallowed
and clothed in priestly costumes in order that they might serve God
in a place of special nearness (see Exod. 28: 1–4, 40–43). And yet
we need turn over only a few pages of Scripture to find the scene
dramatically changed. The opening verses of Leviticus 10 provide a
terrifying illustration of the holy jealousy of God for His own
glory. Nadab and Abihu forgot who God was, and came before Him in a
careless way, and so “there went out fire from before Jehovah, and
devoured them, and they died before Jehovah” (Lev. 10: 2). What an
object lesson are their charred corpses of the principle that the
greater the privilege the greater the responsibility—and the greater
the judgment if that responsibility is not fully met! Oh, you say,
but that is the OT! Certainly, but has God changed? It is very
curious that some Christians appear to believe that the God of the
OT is not the same as the God of the NT!
God Himself says “I
Jehovah change not” (Mal. 3: 6)—and hence divine favour has not in
any way diminished divine holiness. Who put to death these two sons
of Aaron? The very One whom we call our God and Father!
So, what was the sin of Nahab and Abihu?
Was it murder? Did they stain the curtains of the tabernacle with
human blood? Or was it some other abominable sin, from which the
moral sense shrinks? Let us see what the Scripture says: “And the
sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, took each of them his censer, and
put fire in it, and put incense on it, and presented
strange fire before Jehovah, which He had not commanded them”
(Lev. 10: 1, my emphasis). We see men apparently engaged in
preparation for the worship of God: there is the fire, the incense,
and the censer. Furthermore, they were true sons of Aaron, separated
to God and clothed in the divinely appointed priestly robes. Yet
despite all this, they are struck down dead. Why? Because they
offered “strange fire”. This was what a holy God took exception to.
There was such a thing as
strange incense (see
Exod. 30: 9)—typifying the offering of something other than the
fragrance of Christ to God—but there is no indication that that was
the case here. Nor were Nadab and Abihu
strange priests come before God with their censers as Korah and
his company would later do (see Num. 16: 17, 18)—which would speak
to us of unregenerate persons presuming to worship God. No, the sin
of Aaron’s older sons lay in the fact that they “presented
strange fire before
Jehovah, which he had not commanded them” (Lev. 10: 1, my emphasis).
Despite their privileges, their concept of God was so low that they
thought that what they had decided was more important than what God
had commanded.
So, what was this “strange fire” which brought
down such terrifying judgment upon those priests? Many have the
misconception that
strange fire was fire
that was weird or
unusual.
This is not at all the sense. The Hebrew
word translated strange in
Lev. 10: 1 is frequently used elsewhere to refer to persons who were
strangers or
foreigners—that is, they did not belong to the group of persons in
question (for example, Num. 16: 40: “that no stranger who is not of
the seed of Aaron come near to burn incense before Jehovah”). The
true sense of “strange fire” therefore is the wrong sort of fire. It
was wrong because it was foreign—foreign to God—it originated with
man and not God. So, where did they get it? Some have thought that
because the instruction of Lev. 8: 33, 35 prohibited Aaron and his
sons from leaving the tent of meeting for seven days, it follows
that Nadab and Abihu must have broken this command and gone outside,
bringing coals of strange fire with them on their return. However,
this idea seems disproved by v36 which says that “Aaron and his sons
did
all things that
Jehovah had commanded by the hand of Moses” (my emphasis). There is
certainly a danger in bringing things in from outside when we know
that the only fire which is acceptable to God
must come “from off the
altar before Jehovah” (Lev. 16: 12). However, if Nadab and Abihu
were obedient and stayed at the entrance of the tent of meeting day
and night for seven days, then it would appear that they kindled
fire for themselves in the holy place. If they did kindle their own
fire, then that serves to remind us that evil can arise within
ourselves and cannot always be blamed on outside influences.
Now to understand “strange fire” we need to
consider the genuine thing—the
right sort of fire. Thus,
Aaron was to “take the censer full of burning coals of fire from off
the altar before Jehovah, and both his hands full of fragrant
incense beaten small, and bring it inside the veil. And he shall put
the incense upon the fire before Jehovah, that the cloud of the
incense may cover the mercy–seat which is upon the testimony, that
he die not” (Lev. 16: 12, 13). The context of this instruction is
“after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they came near
before Jehovah and died” (v1). We see then that the fire
must be obtained “from
off the altar before Jehovah” (v12, my emphasis) and it
follows that fire obtained from any another source must therefore be
classed as
strange fire. It did
not matter that Nadab and Abihu complied with the divine
instructions for the most part; what mattered was that they did what
God “had not commanded them” (Lev. 10: 1). They introduced their own
thoughts and wills into the realm where only God’s thoughts and will
should have sway. The sin is not said to have been in doing what God
had forbidden, but (and it
bears repeating) in doing what He had
not commanded. There
has been much speculation as to the typical meaning of the strange
fire, but this much is clear, it was
innovation in the worship of God. This ought to be a serious
consideration for any who who come before God using forms of address
which He has not commanded or offering praise and worship in a
framework that He has not ordained.
It may appear holy, but it is fundamentally and intrinsically unholy!
Nor was there any excuse for the two sons of
Aaron offering strange fire before Jehovah because the fire on the
brazen altar was to be always available: “A continual fire shall be
kept burning on the altar: it shall never go out” (Lev. 6: 13).
Indeed, to reach the altar of incense, Nadab and Abihu would have
had to pass right by the altar of burnt offering! On this account,
some have even wondered if they were intoxicated with alcohol, so
blatant was their disobedience—hence the prohibition on strong drink
that immediately follows the record of the incident in the text (see
Lev. 10: 8–11). However, this is a detail of relative unimportance.
The fundamental point is that Nadab and Abihu presumed to approach
God in their own way. In so doing they rejected God’s way. To bring
this sharply into focus, the first few verses of chapter 10 must be
read in conjunction with the end of chapter nine. There we find that
Aaron offered the burnt offering before Jehovah and as consequence
“there went out fire from before Jehovah, and consumed on the altar
the burnt–offering, and the pieces of fat; and all the people saw
it, and they shouted, and fell on their face” (Lev. 9: 24). Thus,
when Nadab and Abihu offered their strange fire it was a case of
deliberately ignoring
the divinely–lit coals that they had so recently seen enveloped with
Jehovah’s fire. It is the natural outflowing of man’s heart to
prefer his way to God’s way, even in matters as high and holy as how
the creature is to approach his Creator.
Now some have taught that the application of
the “strange fire” in our day is to be found in the incense, music,
oratory, ceremony and candles of Christendom, but this is simply a
case of picking a ‘convenient target’. Of course there is no denying
that ritualism in the era of worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:
24) may include both strange fire and strange incense, and even be
offered by strange priests, but that is hardly the message conveyed
from Leviticus 10. That passage speaks of a religion that was deeply
ritualistic but
divinely ordained to
be so—hence, in itself, a gorgeous ritual was not the issue here.
The real problem lay in fire that was indistinguishable from the
real thing—fire that pretended to be a substitute for the coals from
off the brazen altar. How many that fateful day were aware that the
fire brought by Nadab and Abihu had an origin other than that which
God had commanded? Very few, if any, at all! Fire is fire, and there
is no indication that there was anything that would strike anyone as
odd about the fire used, but it was disqualified all the same. And
so the ritual
appeared to be
perfectly observed—as do many human arrangements that are mostly
Scriptural. Anyone can see that Christendom is not lacking in
obvious examples of false or erroneous systems of worship but what
is typified here is clearly far more subtle. To the superficial
observer, all may seem to be “worship by [the] Spirit of God” (Phil.
3: 3)—and yet there is a fatal flaw, for the coals are not from the
altar! But if man is easily misled, the same is not true of God: He
is not deceived. The fire from off the brazen altar had come out
from Himself; the fire brought by the two sons of Aaron had been
kindled by themselves. They offered what could not ever be
acceptable, and therefore God did not accept them. Solemn lesson! A
thing may well be dressed up as spiritual ‘intelligence’ (see Col.
2: 23) and have the appearance of what is pious and right, but the
critical question is one of
origin.
If the origin is in the pages of God’s
own Word then the course will be right; if the origin is in the
reasoning of man’s mind (however gifted or pious), then the course
will not only be wrong, but positively disastrous.
What we see on God’s altar, day and night, is a
fire blazing, expressing to faith the inflexible holiness of the
divine nature feeding upon the perfect sacrifice of Christ. By
contrast, strange fire speaks of that which man’s mind feeds
upon—what provides satisfaction to mere human reasoning. It is the
antithesis of true worship, even though it may be offered
as worship. God,
however, will not be mocked for He “will be hallowed in them that
come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev.
10: 3). Thus the same fire that demonstrated God’s acceptance of the
sacrifice of the burnt offering (see Lev. 9: 24), came out in
judgment upon those who would presume to come before Him in their
own way: “there went out fire from before Jehovah, and devoured
them, and they died before Jehovah” (Lev. 10: 2). The
only way to serve God
acceptably is “with
reverence and fear”. Why? Because “also our God [is] a consuming
fire” (Heb. 12: 28, 29).
How imperative it is then that we be kept sober
and watchful, for we know but little of our fearful capabilities for
evil until we are brought into circumstances to develop them. It is
possible to be so blinded as to even think that our own thoughts are
really God’s thoughts, and in time reduce ourselves to such a
spiritual condition that there will remain nothing but the mere
outward form. Hence though the bodies of Nadab and Abihu were burned
by the fire, their clothes were seemingly untouched, for they were
carried “in their vests out of the camp” (Lev. 10: 5). The
substance, the reality, was gone—nothing remained but the external
covering. Such is “a form of piety” (2 Tim. 3: 5) without the power,
and “a name that thou livest, and art dead” (Rev. 3: 1). We may well
retain the outward appearance of priests and the phraseology of
worship, and yet be utterly devoid of godly reality and power in our
souls. What a solemn lesson! Writer and reader alike, let our
worship be pure, our hearts simple as to their object, and may we
never forget that “God is greatly to be feared in the council of the
saints, and terrible for all that are round about Him” (Ps. 89: 7).
