Daily Verse | Leviticus 13:40
When a man has lost his hair and is bald, he is clean.
Monday and Tom Brady is once again a Super Bowl champion. I gave up watching most sports a couple of years ago as each went woke, but I was intrigued enough with the Brady / Mahomes match-up that I watched the whole game yesterday. It was a disaster for the Chiefs as the Buccaneers played a masterful defensive game and Brady showed why he’s still in the saddle. At 43, he’s the oldest player to start and win a Super Bowl. And he says he’ll be back next year. Good for him.
Exit question: Was it Belichick or Brady who was the key to all those years (and wins) in New England?
Over the weekend as I recovered from a nasty head cold, I caught up with my Bible reading, now in the book of Leviticus. One of the first sermons I preached more than 30 years ago was from Leviticus, the reading of which I remember describing as “slogging through wet cement.”
It’s a tough book to get through as it lays out, in excruciating detail, how to deal with sin and disobedience; childbirth, “discharges,” mildew and skin infections; what were clean and unclean foods, how to honor the Sabbath and many other regulations. It boggles the mind how these instructions could be carried out among a community of more than a million people.
There is one passage in the book that has always fascinated me and that is the narrative of Nadab and Abihu, two of the four sons of Aaron, as recounted in Leviticus 10:1-3.
Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Moses then said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord spoke of when he said:
“‘Among those who approach me
I will show myself holy;
in the sight of all the people
I will be honored.’”
Aaron remained silent.
The thing that has fascinated me is that the punishment for “unauthorized fire” seems a bit harsh, doesn’t it? I mean, these guys were sort of new to the job. Couldn’t they have been put on an IP and given a little time to catch up?
Apparently there was no room for error, and there was good reason for that. God was setting up a sacrificial system that the Israelites were to use to worship Him. All of the details given in Exodus and Leviticus about the form and order of offerings were prescribed to set apart the holy from the unholy. In fact, a hint about what may have led to their unauthorized offering is in verses 8-10.
Then the Lord said to Aaron, “You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean, and you must teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses” (my emphasis).
So perhaps Nadab and Abihu were ministering under the influence (MUI) and not thinking clearly, making an offering that did not follow the set regulations, thereby not distinguishing the holy from the unholy.
God immediately leveled the two apostate priests for profaning their roles with their own concoction of worship, earning a post-mortem rebuke: “Among those who approach me, I will show myself holy” and “in the sight of all the people, I will be honored.”
What happened to the two priests reminds me of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira, members of the early church, as recorded in Acts 5.
Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.
Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to men but to God.”
When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
His wife, Sapphira, comes in about three hours later and lies about the money, too. “Peter said to her, ‘How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord?'” and she immediately dies at his feet.
Like with Nadab and Abihu, the punishment seems very harsh to us. In modern parlance, Ananias and Sapphira “tried to pull a fast one” on God and the leaders of the early church. As John Stott puts it, “They wanted the credit and the prestige for sacrificial generosity without the inconvenience of it.”*
Their deceitful act was completely self-serving. They did not take seriously the holiness of the Lord, and he responded quickly and harshly to make an indelible impression on those earliest members of the church. It is an impression that we have lost over the centuries.
God’s divine judgment is harsh in both accounts: the offenders lose their lives without so much as an opportunity for repentance.
Perhaps the most important thing we can take from these two encounters is that God is full of mercy and grace, yes, but He is also holy—set apart—and we trivialize his power, authority and holiness at our own risk—even today.
*“The Spirit, The Church and the World: The Message of Acts” by John Stott, InterVarsity Press, 1990, pp. 109-110.