Thought from today’s Bible reading from Leviticus 8-10.
“Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord” (Leviticus 10:1-2).
The account of Nadab and Abihu is an excellent example of the need to do those things which God has authorized and refrain from those things which He has not. But this event is not without a context. This happened during the time when Aaron and his sons – which included Nadab and Abihu – were consecrated and sacrifices were offered to God. Notice some of the phrases that describe what was done during these events:
“So Moses did just as the Lord commanded him.” (Leviticus 8:4).
“…just as the Lord had commanded Moses” (Leviticus 8:9,13,17,21,29).
“Thus Aaron and his sons did all the things which the Lord had commanded through Moses” (Leviticus 8:36).
“…just as Moses had commanded” (Leviticus 9:21).
Then along came Nadab and Abihu offering “strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them” (Leviticus 10:1). Did God overlook this one transgression on account of all the meticulous attention to detail up to this point? No, He did not. He expected complete obedience.
God expects the same careful and complete obedience from us today. Just as Moses was to “make all things according to the pattern” (Hebrews 8:5), we must “retain the standard [pattern, NKJV] of sound words” (2 Timothy 1:13).
We do not have the liberty to decide what we would like to do to please God. We must simply follow His will that He has revealed to us.
Tomorrow’s reading: Leviticus 11-13
[I’m using the Chronological reading plan on the Bible Gateway website if you’d like to follow along, too.]
Daily Notes & Observations contains all 365 articles from this series and is available in paperback from Gospel Armory.
