Leviticus 10:1-5 (ESV)
1 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.
2 And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.
3 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.
4 And Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, “Come near; carry your brothers away from the front of the sanctuary and out of the camp.”
5 So they came near and carried them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said.
We’ve all heard of Nadab and Abihu’s story of the strange fire.
What does strange fire even mean? The Hebrew word translated “strange” means “unauthorized, foreign, or profane.”
Although they were both priests, like their father Aaron, he was the only one the Lord authorised to conduct sacrifices.
Nadab and Abihu, the eldest of Aaron’s four sons, took censers of their own, put incense in them, and offered unauthorized fire to the Lord.
That is, they conducted the sacrificial offering in their way instead of the way the Lord authorized.
God not only rejected their sacrifice; He found it so offensive that He consumed the two men with His righteous and holy fire.
Like King Saul in 1 Samuel 13:8-14, who got tired of waiting for Samuel the priest, the one authorised to offer the sacrifice, so he stepped into the priestly office offered an unauthorized fire-strange fire to God which cost him the throne.
We are in a generation now, where all sorts of things that shouldn’t be, happen in church. The priesthood has become very distorted in the Christian life and the church. We have begun to offer our version of strange fire on the altar of entertainment for worship, oratory talent for preaching and poetry for prayer. Strange fire! Unauthorised fire!
God has a standard for godly service, but we have set aside people ordained and anointed as priests or ministers of God’s ordinance as super saints/stars who have a special “in” with God.
I Peter 2:9 calls us royal priest, meaning that in one form or another, we stand in that office and must respect and obey the ordinances of the office of a priest in offering to the Lord only what is holy and required with the right attitude and heart.
God knows our hearts. He knows what we truly believe and our attitude toward Him. We cannot offer to Him proud “sacrifices” that are unworthy of Him and expect Him to accept them, have we not learnt any lesson from Caine and Abel’s story in Genesis 4?
Psalms 51:16-17 tells us the kind of sacrifice and fire that is acceptable to the Lord emphasizing the proper attitude when offering sacrifices, a broken and contrite heart, not arrogance, pride, and willful acts.
Verse 2 says a fire went out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them and they were destroyed.
In judging Nadab and Abihu for their strange fire, God was making a point to the other priests who would serve in His tabernacle and to us, especially as He had laid down the pattern and order of worship and service to Him, as 1 Peter 1:16 put it, we must be holy to serve a holy God.
According to Exodus 19:10, we must consecrate ourselves before we approach the Lord, but Nadab and Abihu’s sin also involved entering or trying to enter the Most Holy Place after drinking alcohol, thereby desecrating the altar of God.
Believers no longer have a healthy fear of God. We seem to assume that the fear of the Lord is something that belonged to the Old Testament and shouldn’t be part of the Christian life. The fear of God simply is the reverence and awe of His glorious holiness. We must come to God as prescribed by John 4:24, in spirit and truth not offering strange fire.
Shalom