Priesthood

Intro:

In the book of Old Testament, Leviticus, we are learning the great truth which time and again in the course of history seems to be lost and then recovered again

 -- this marvelous truth of the priesthood of every believer in Jesus Christ.

In Lev. Chapter 9,  we saw the results of priesthood.

 When everything was done "as the LORD commanded" the result was a manifestation of the presence of God, a remarkable shining forth of the glory of the Lord.

We concluded with a great scene of triumph.

The Shekinah glory, a radiant cloud of light, suddenly appeared in the midst of the people of Israel and consumed the rest of the sacrifice in a flash of flame. The people, awed and amazed, shouted and fell on their faces, crying out in triumph.

But the amazing thing is that we now move immediately from that scene of triumph into a scene of tragedy. On the very day that this tremendous breakthrough occurred in the camp of Israel,
tragedy strikes and a sudden and shocking manifestation of judgment occurs.



Leviticus 10:1–15 (NLT)    

The Sin of Nadab and Abihu

1 Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu put coals of fire in their incense burners and sprinkled incense over them.
In this way, they disobeyed the Lord by burning before him the wrong kind of fire,
different than he had commanded.

2 So fire blazed forth from the Lord’s presence and burned them up,
and they died there before the Lord.

The very same Shekinah which had consumed the sacrifice now flashes out again to destroy these two priests as they minister. You can imagine Aaron, watching with pride as these two boys of his carry out their duties as priests... but then to Aaron's sore amazement a jet of fire reaches out from the cloud of glory and in a flash the boys are gone. What do you think your reaction would have been if you had been part of this scene? The people were stunned, sobered by this manifestation.

Now, what is your reaction to that? You feel that God is unfair.
Why should he take the lives of these two men for such a trivial thing?

3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when he said,
‘I will display my holiness through those who come near me.
I will display my glory before all the people.’ ”
And Aaron was silent.

Many people have come up with the idea that God, especially "the God of the Old Testament," is a God of vengeful judgment, that he is a fierce and harsh tyrant, and that the slightest misstep is treated with severe judgment.

We tend to think of God in that way despite the hundreds of passages in the Old Testament that reveal the tenderness of his heart and the abundance of his love and compassion. But this is because we read our Bibles so superficially.

God is acting here just as much as a God of love as he is in any other part of the Bible. His nature is love. And he never deviates from what he has revealed himself to be. So this action must be in line with his nature and character of love. We need to stop and do some research to find out what is behind these acts which will help us to understand them as being actions of love and not harshness nor of fierceness.

There are several features in this passage which will help us:
The first that ought to be clearly noted is that this sin on the part of these two priests was not a sin of ignorance but one of presumption. They knew better. It wasn't that they were simply doing something at which they had no idea God would be offended. They had been told emphatically that he would be offended. If you look back at Exodus 30, you find in that chapter instructions for the construction of the altar of incense, where the incense was to be burned.

"You shall offer no unholy incense thereon," (Exodus 30:9a RSV)

Strange Fire

Still another sin which Nadab and Abihu committed was that they offered "strange fire." What was so strange about the fire? The Hebrew word for strange is "zoor." It doesn't mean strange as in weird, but strange as in "stranger" or "foreign." They were offering foreign fire. You see, the fire which was to be offered was to come from a specific place:

Lev. 16:12 "And he shall take a firepan full of coals of fire from upon the altar before the LORD, and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense, and bring {it} inside the veil.
Any fire presented to the Lord must be from the altar of sacrifice. But Nadab and Abihu brought fire from elsewhere.

The second thing we need to note is that this sin was dealt with very severely because it distorted God's revelation of himself.

These priests were supposed to be operating as the instruments, the functionaries, of God. And if they performed improperly they were misleading the people about God

"This is what the LORD has said, 'I will show myself holy among those who are near me, and before all the people I will be glorified.'" And Aaron held his peace. (Leviticus 10:3 RSV)

He Had Not Commanded...

Another sin which was committed by the two priests was that the Lord had not commanded He be worshiped in this way. Many people believe that where the Scriptures are silent, we are free to experiment. Not so. The Lord has given us the entire Bible to reveal Himself and His ways to us. We are not free to choose our own way to worship.

I Will Be Treated As Holy

The fifth sin that is obvious in this incident is that those who come near to the Lord must treat Him as holy, and honor Him before all the people. We are fortunate that God is not frying everyone who is not treating Him as holy and honoring Him before all the people. We would have a lot of cooked Christians if He were.



The third thing we need to notice about this episode is that this judgment is exemplary. This is an example and therefore it is a manifestation of God's love and concern. He is trying to stop this kind of thing from happening again, and he is giving fair warning of the eventual consequences to anyone presumptuous enough to sin deliberately in this way.

If you don't tell a person what's right, then he thinks whatever is tacitly condoned is what you want -- and that's what he does.

What is the corresponding way in which you and I violate our ministries? How do we offer strange fire before God in our priesthood? We do it whenever we depart from the word of the Lord as it pertains to the advice we give others as we exercise our priesthood. These two priests did what the LORD commanded them not to do. And that is what we too often do:


CONCLUSION:

I hope you take these words seriously, because God means them seriously. He is not joking when he says to us today that each believer in Jesus Christ is called to a priesthood. Your priesthood is to be exercised right where you are -- in your office, in your shop, at school, at home, with your children, with your neighbors and your friends.

When God looks at you in your busy business office, He wants your work done well. That's part of your ministry. But the main thing that God cares about, and what he is really watching for, is how you react to the people you work with. What are you doing for them? How are you responding to the way they treat you? That is what God is watching for. And that is your opportunity for priesthood, for ministry.

One of these days God will call us all to account for our priesthood, and he'll ask us,
"What did you do in this situation, and that? How did you respond? Here was an opportunity for you to be a priest and what did you do?" What are you going to say? What am I going to say?

God takes this very seriously. I've put you there to deepen your impact, to increase your opportunity, to broaden your ministry, and I won't let you off." Out of this discipline will have to come a deeper, richer commitment, and a better understanding of the word of the Lord, and of what we can say to people that will help them, so that we will no longer be content just to pass along some piece of advice off the top of our head which merely reflects the philosophy of the world.

That is the priesthood to which God is calling us.

I hope that you won't carry away from this study any sense that God is a vengeful, strange, fearsome Being. He is to be respected. We can't trifle with him in these spiritual matters, just as we can't ignore the laws of nature and do whatever we feel like doing.
But, on the other hand, his every action, even this kind of action, is an action of love.
It is an attempt to arrest further destruction and to stop it before it begins, and thus to keep us from hurting ourselves and harming others in the process.

The Scriptures do not merely educate us in morality. God didn’t give us the Bible to teach us how to be good little boys and girls.
Instead, Scripture demands that we live respectfully and worship fully in the awesome presence of the holy God. Without God’s holiness, our faith loses its meaning.
Angels in the presence of God call to one another, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!” (Rev. 4:8).

To refrain from sin doesn't make us holy, but holiness makes us refrain from sin.
In a world still swirling in sin long after its catastrophic collision with evil, God commanded His followers to live holy lives (Leviticus 11:45). Distinguishing between clean and unclean is essential to that task.

Prayer:
Our Father, as we wait before you we, too, feel a sense of awe, a twinge of fear perhaps, a touch of apprehension in our hearts when we consider that you are this kind of God .
Lord, we pray that this will help us to understand that we are not playing games in life, that being a Christian is not a game either, and that the priesthood is a very serious matter to which we are called

Other Notes:

Aaron Kept Silent. Seeing the grievous sin that Nadab and Abihu had committed, Aaron could not protest. We would do well to follow his example. The world looks at God's judgments and cries, "Unfair! Unjust! God isn't loving! The Lord doesn't judge righteously!" Although we don't understand the ways of God, the thoughts of God, or the judgments of God, we must accept the fact that He is God. It is we who are corrupt and unrighteous, not Him. Aaron kept silent in the face of what he could have easily seen as too harsh a judgment.

This incident is similar to that found in the New Testament Book of Acts, chapter 5, in which Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead by God for lying to the church (and thus to the Holy Spirit) about their contribution to the church. I think this is a very helpful insight. In both instances, there was the beginning of a new era, some would say a new dispensation. In Leviticus chapter 10, where the death of Nadab and Abihu are recorded, the Mosaic Covenant has just been instituted, along with the tabernacle and the Aaronic priesthood. In Acts chapter 5, where Ananias and Sapphira were judged of God, the church age has just commenced with Pentecost (Acts 2). In both cases, the death of God’s people is designed to set a precedent, so that those who enter into the new dispensation would grasp the significance of the holiness of God in relation to the institutions which He has just created.

As the Israelites of old and the New Testament church learned to take heed to God’s commandments and character, so let us listen well to the words of our text, for these are weighty matters with which we are dealing.

Nadab and Abihu must have agreed among themselves concerning their actions, for they both sinned and both were put to death. There is a kind of conspiracy here. Simply finding others who agree with us and will join us in disobedience is not sufficient reason for disobeying God. Many denominations and cults err here. They think that sheer numbers must prove them right.

This disaster had a very beneficial effect on at least one of the other sons of Aaron, Eleazar. Eleazar was one of the other sons of Aaron, who assumed the role of one of his dead brothers (v. 6). He was also the father of Phinehas, who zealously acted in behalf of God’s holiness:

Then behold, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation, and took a spear in his hand; and he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through the body. So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked (Num. 25:6-8, cf. also vv. 10-13).

I take it therefore that Eleazar learned to regard the holiness of God very highly, and that this same regard was later evidenced in his son, Phinehas.

Principle : The Lord Jesus Christ has instituted a new priestly order, not of a few select individuals, but of all those who are born again, who are united by faith with His priesthood.

Just as Aaron, Israel’s first high priest, was the top ranking priest of a whole order, so Jesus Christ is the head of a New Testament order of priests. The priesthood of the Old Testament was called the Aaronic priesthood because all the priests were the offspring of Aaron, they were members of his family. The priesthood of the New Testament is composed of all who are “in Christ.” This is implied in the Book of Hebrews. In chapter 8 we read of a “better ministry.” In chapter 9 we are told of one of the results of the high priestly ministry of Christ:


OLD TESTAMENT PRINCIPLES OF PRIESTHOOD

(1) Priesthood is bestowed upon all those who are a member of the right family. Just as it was only the sons of Aaron who were priests under the Law of Moses, so it is only those who are in Christ by personal faith who are priests today. Priesthood is not something which men can bestow upon other men, or even which the church can bestow; it is the result of the new birth, which constitutes one to be a child of God and thus to be in Christ. Priests are those whose sins have been atoned for, so that they are free to minister to other sinners. This atonement for the New Testament priest is that which Christ, our Great High Priest, has made through the shedding of His blood on the cross.

(2) God’s priesthood is a holy priesthood. We are to learn from God’s words, quoted by Moses, that disobedience to God dishonors Him and fails to regard Him as holy. A God who is Holy is a God who is to be honored, and we honor God by obeying Him. This same principle of showing honor by our obedience applies to others, including children, who are to honor their parents (Eph. 6:1-2), and citizens, who are to honor those in authority (cf. Rom. 13:1-7).

God takes the sin of His priests very seriously. Being in close proximity to God brings with it correspondingly high standards of conduct.

Resources: Thanks to  Ron Daniel, Bob Deffinbaugh,  Ray Stedman &   Don robinson