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Today I read Leviticus chapters 21-23, why not read them today with me?
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Leviticus 23:2-4 NLT

“Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. These are the Lord’s appointed festivals, which you are to proclaim as official days for holy assembly. “You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of complete rest, an official day for holy assembly. It is the Lord’s Sabbath day, and it must be observed wherever you live. “In addition to the Sabbath, these are the Lord’s appointed festivals, the official days for holy assembly that are to be celebrated at their proper times each year.

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I'm a big one for putting it on the calendar. I like a plan. Oh to be sure I like spontaneity but I think being flexible works best in a framework or a structure. Alongside the details of plans, diaries and expectations I love to see the big picture. I like a good overview.

Life benefits from both a healthy analysis as well as a synthesis. Look at the parts and how each part works individually and from very limited perspectives. Then look at the whole, the trends the big picture and see the parts with in the whole.

Leviticus contains instructions about the details of seven national annual festivals or holidays (Holy Days). These days were in addition to the weekly Sabbath days.

So a Jewish community calendar would have a lot to look forward to. But also there was the expectation that like western Christmas lots of money went into these festivals. Nearly each one required specific sacrifices. Since the real daily commodity of life is food and nearly all the required festival sacrifices were food a family would have to plan.

No holiday is complete without a big meal so it was more than a double consideration that a portion of the best food would be taken to the tabernacle /temple as a sacrifice and then there were the hungry families to feed.

These regular frequent privileges and equally obligations required planning.

But ultimately God was teaching his people to be careful and regular about recognising him as thier provider,  protector, defender and rescuer.

I can see how the whole system might become rather expensive and difficult to keep up with. But God said he'd provide.

By giving up a portion of the best regularly and then celebrating lavishly God's people had inbuilt systems to keep them dependant on God.

Do you see God's provision? Are you completely dependant on him? Do you have in your life specific times to celebrate? Are you preparing to honour God with your first fruits and remembering his rescues?

How about putting it on a calendar?

Life or death in God's presence!

Leviticus 16:1-2 NLT

1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron’s two sons, who died after they entered the Lord’s presence and burned the wrong kind of fire before him. 2 The Lord said to Moses, “Warn your brother, Aaron, not to enter the Most Holy Place behind the inner curtain whenever he chooses; if he does, he will die. For the Ark’s cover—the place of atonement—is there, and I myself am present in the cloud above the atonement cover.

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See why I worry about my children?
Emily Bode, Amy Westlake,
 Gwendolyn Bode, and Bethany Bode

I can't imagine How Aaron must have felt at the death of his two sons. We read in chapter 10 of Leviticus that Aaron remained silent when Moses explained God's reason for his two sons being consumed with fire from God's presence. I'm not sure you caught it but although the rest of the Israelites were allowed to mourn officially for the death of Nadab and Abihu, Aaron and the rest of his family and the Levites were not allowed to mourn.

The death of a child must be devastating. I worry nearly every day for the last 24 years about my children! And I've seen the grief parents have at the loss of their child up close and personal. Grief is important. Aaron was denied the normal outward signs involved in this process.

Now his brother, Moses is asked by God to speak to Aaron and warn him about his own vulnerability in the presence of God.

Leviticus is all about being able to have God's presence in the midst of his people! The presence of God is special. It is not ordinary. And for sinful people to be allowed to be in God's presence they have to be reminded they are sinful! They have to know all the ways in which they offend God. The people have to see that being close to God is a matter of life and death.

Ever since the garden of Eden, all men have been under a death sentence. And every sin confirms that they can not live in the presence of God. Something has to be done to turn around the reign of death over each and every person.

In the next chapter, God says that the only way that anyone can be made clean enough to be with him is to have someone or something give it's life in their place.

Leviticus 17:11 NLT ...for the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the Lord. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible. 

Blood given in exchange for a life, All the dead animals in the sacrificial system, and  all the barbecues for God alone, were meant to demonstrate the serious life or death situation between God and man!

Your sin offends God. It stinks to him. It amounts to treason. Your rebellion is an affront to him. Your willful cocky disobedience deserves death! But God wants to be close to you. He wants you in his family. He made you to know him. He is worthy of being known. There is nothing other than you being in his presence and worshiping him that matters. And for God sake, get over yourself. He is holy. He is pure. He is righteous in everything he does. He is the all knowing one. He is the all seeing one. He is the all powerful one. He created you. How for a millisecond can you even think you know better? What makes you imagine for a moment that you are more righteous? How can you judge God? What makes you think you have all the information? Really you know very little. You are weak. You are not very clever. You are easily deceived and you need help.

So God has a plan to bring you into his presence eternally. And his plan involved Jesus blood, given in exchange for your life. 

So he warns you as Moses warned Aaron; Don't come into God's presence without an invitation, don't come at the wrong time and don't come without being made pure by the sacrifice of someone's blood or you will loose your life.

But you can come, safely and boldly because of Jesus.

Look at what Jude says more than a thousand years later:

Jude 1:24-25

New Living Translation (NLT)

A Prayer of Praise

24 Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. 25 All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.

And we can further see that although Aaron, the high priest had to be very careful and Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu lost their lives for their carelessness, We can come into god's presence boldly because of Jesus.

Hebrews 4:14-16 NLT Christ Is Our High Priest

14 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

Two Sons Lost in Silence

 Leviticus 10:1-3 ESV

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. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. 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.

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Are you ready for yours? (Picture taken at University of Sheffield Student Union)

Nadab and Abihu were consumed by fire that came out from the presence of the Lord. Two men died in the brand new tabernacle. Aaron's two oldest sons were chosen by God to work in a privileged position near to the very presence of God. But along with the highly exalted position came a life and death seriousness.

We all far too readily dismiss death. Nadab and his brother had witnessed God's rescue of his people from the Egyptians. They escaped the death angel in Egypt because of their obedience. They walked through the Red Sea on dry land. Nadab and Abihu drank the water of gold dust from the ground golden calf. Nadab and his brother were among the Levites who killed 3,000 Israelites at the Lord's command because of wrath at the golden calf incident. These two men had participated in the preparations of the tabernacle all according to God's plan, and they had been purified for seven days previous. We need to see that these two men would have been considered good men up until this event. In fact they were really leaders numbers three and four, right under Moses and Aaron. Also considering the age of Moses and Aaron and the number of children they had and the fact these guys were Aaron's oldest, we can guess they were mature adult men well along in life.

Are you seeing the picture? Nadab and Abihu are two respected important older men with a track record of doing serious good and seeing God's amazing acts and exacting holiness. Furthermore they were very near the presence of God. And on the surface it appears as though they are at least trying to do something to honour God.

But the passage had some clues as to why they were struck down dead.

Firstly, Leviticus outlines for us the sacrificial system that God had laid out for the people to be holy. Animals died in great numbers to remind the people that death is the result of sin.

And every time another step in the new system was revealed to Moses and carried out by Moses, Aaron, the priests and the people, it is punctuated by the phrase, 'as the Lord commanded.' God had a plan, and it was important, deathly imperative, that things were done God's way. Any other way was sin.

Nadab and Abihu did something that was not according to God's instructions. They were in the presence of God and they were presuming to somehow add to God's plan. Or they possibly had too much to drink and their judgment had been impaired.

That's possibly implied by the following verses a little later,

Leviticus 10:8-11 ESV

And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, "Drink no wine or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses."

All too often I'm afraid we are guilty of making it up!  We've not been very careful about keeping our desires and opinion clear from God's command.

Interestingly there is a pattern of God's severity when setting things up. Later when the spies return from Canaan and ten of them give a bad report, all ten die. During David's kingship when they are setting up the temple again by moving the ark of God's covenant, Uzzah reaches out to steady the ark while being transported on a cart, and he is struck dead. Much later as the church is just getting started and we become a living temple, Ananias and Sapphira lie about their gift and God strikes them down dead.

Every day God wants to do a new thing in you. Your Father in heaven chooses to dwell in you, and together with other Christians, you are the temple of God.

But unlike the first tabernacle, we have the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But this is the only way to be safe in the presence of God. Oh friends, do not be lax in trusting Jesus alone.
Don't invent your own way. 

Don't come under the under the influence of any spirit but God's Holy Spirit.

We must see God as holy. He is wholly other. He is pure. Only His ways are acceptable. This is a life or death issue.