Sunday 10 • 07 • 18

Leviticus 10:1-15. 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. 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." So they came near and carried them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said. And Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and to Ithamar, his sons, "Do not let the hair of your heads hang loose. Do not tear your clothes, lest you die, and wrath come upon all the congregation. But let your brothers, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning that the Lord has kindled. And do not go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting, lest you die, for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you." And they did according to the word of Moses. 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." Moses spoke to Aaron and to Eleazar and to Ithamar, his surviving sons. "Take the grain offering that is left of the Lord's food offerings and eat it unleavened beside the altar for it is most holy. You shall eat it in a holy place because it is your due and your sons' due from the Lord's food offerings. For so I am commanded. But the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed, you shall eat in a clean place, you and your sons and your daughters with you, for they are given as your due and your sons' due from the sacrifices of the peace offerings of the people of Israel. The thigh that is contributed and the breast that is waved, they shall bring with the food offerings of the fat pieces to wave for a wave offering before the Lord. And it shall be yours and your sons with you as a due forever as the Lord has commanded." The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Church Planting and Discipleship

Before I preach this morning, I wanted to give an update on two of our daughter churches and one in process and then have a pastoral prayer on that. So, as many of you know, we have two churches that we have helped plant. One called Resurrection Life Church which is in the Holly Springs Apex area and then a second church called Resurrection Life, which is up Capitol Boulevard in Northeast Raleigh.

These are—just so you understand why we're doing this and what's happening—we really believe that to be faithful as a congregation is not to grow our church larger, but to continually be in a process of sending. And the healthiest way that our church can exist is like being a stream rather than being a pond. A pond has water flowing in, and it sits there, and it's warm, and green things grow on the surface of the water, and weird fish grow in ponds. But streams, that's where you go fly fishing because that's where healthy fish are and healthy things are when water is coming in and going out.

And so we believe a key part of our discipleship strategy for a church is sending out our best and doing so on a regular basis. We have a vision to plant 10 churches over the next twenty years. We've started planting these two, and we are just getting going.

Our third church plant, we've already called Russell McCutcheon. He's gonna move here this summer from Memphis and plant somewhere in the East Raleigh, Knightdale area along that corridor. We're really excited about him as well.

One of our key things is continually sending. We want to encourage you: if you drive past locations on a Sunday coming in or if you have any desire of like, "Wow, I'm kind of extra here"—these church plants really need you. They need your encouragement. They need you to show up every once in a while and just encourage them. They need your prayers, and they need you to go.

And if you're sitting in our congregation, it is very likely over the next twenty years you're gonna be asked to go somewhere, and that's a loving thing. It's part of our discipleship plan. So we ask you to be praying for those works.

I'm gonna lead us in prayer now for Mark Knech and his family at Resurrection Life, and Duane Davis and his family at Renewal, and then Russell and Toya McCutcheon.

So would you join me in prayer?

Father, we thank you for the opportunity that we have as a congregation to send our best. And we thank you, Father, that Lord, you are Lord of your church, and your church was never meant to be an institution. It was always meant to be more than that. It was meant to be a living organism.

And Lord, we pray as we believe that church planting is the best way to reach our city and to reach people who right now don't know you or are not part of your people. And we pray, Father, that you would encourage and increase the work of Resurrection Life in Holly Springs and Apex. We pray, Father, for your work through the church renewal and Duane Davis and his leadership and his team there in Northeast Raleigh. We pray, Father, that you would encourage them and increase them.

And we pray, Father, for Russell and Toya as they look to come—as they're in a preparation phase to move from Memphis this summer. We pray, Father, that you would prepare them for that work. And Lord, we thank you for the opportunity we have to be a part of your kingdom building in this way. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Disturbing Passage

So today as we turn to God's word, I know that this may be one of the top ten most disturbing passages in all the Old Testament. And you know, sometimes when I am preparing to preach and I hit a really tough passage like this, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to see what the big dogs do with this passage. So I'll look up what really famous pastors do with Leviticus and particularly Leviticus 10. And here's what I found: the big dogs don't preach Leviticus. And they especially, when they do, they skip over chapter 10. Not helpful to me.

Now to be fair, when I'm done today, you may think I should have skipped over Leviticus 10 and that this was crazy time, but I think skipping this is a big mistake. And as I've spent time in this passage, this is actually one of my favorite passages in Leviticus.

So here's the fascinating thing about this chapter. This is the only narrative in a book which is pretty much a priestly manual. To give you an analogy, it would be like you picked up the US Constitution, and after the Bill of Rights, the writers of this document put in a story about John Adams and his kids, and then you go back to the regular constitution. And if that were the case, we would want to pay a lot of attention to that story. We would say, man, if this is the only story and this is in the middle of such an important document, this must be really important. This must really matter. You'd probably pay attention. So this odd story, I think it's extremely important for us to understand.

Setting the Stage

So let me kind of set the stage. If you were not here last week or this is your first time with us through Leviticus, let me explain where we've been. There's a ton of buildup to this moment.

As I said last week, chapter eight, which we just finished, is all about the ordination of the priests. Chapter eight outlines the ordination of priests, and there's seven steps—seven parts of the ordination process for these priests. And we've said, hey, seven, that's the number in the Old Testament of completion. Because in how many days did God create the world? Seven. Good. You guys are with me.

Seven days, God completes his work of creation. So the eighth day is the beginning of the new world working and doing what it's supposed to do, and that is paralleled here in Leviticus. There's seven days of preparation and ordination for the priests, and then chapter nine begins. And on the eighth day, they begin to do the priestly things.

This is what we said last week. God's intention all along was not for there to be a few guys in robes with beards who are priests, but Exodus tells us all of God's people were to be priests. But in order for there to be all of God's people to be priests, there had to be some priests who show the people how you live as a priest. What it means to live as God's people in this new world order that He's creating.

Remember, these people had been slaves for four hundred years, and God is drawing them out and saying, you're gonna be a special people for me. You're gonna be a kingdom of priests, and I'm gonna show you a new way of being in the world. I'm gonna show you a new ordering of how humanity is gonna function. And these priests are demonstrating—it's a performance, high level performance art showing them this is how it's gonna be. This is the new way.

And they start doing the sacrifices. So chapter nine ends with this incredible moment of optimism and excitement and joy. The people are finally seeing. The priests, they're doing the things, and this is what it says.

And Moses and Aaron, this is the end of chapter nine, went to the tent of meeting, and when they came out, they blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people, and the fire came out from the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar. And when the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. Everybody's like, whoo. This is it—it's finally happening.

And the next verse is tragedy. I mean, the very next verse, chapter 10 verses one through two. These two brand new newly minted priests, Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu. They go and they offer what is simply called here strange fire. In Hebrew, that's Zor Zewar. I love that. Zor Zewar. Strange fire—unauthorized fire. They offer this. Clearly, something is not right and instead of the fire like it did in chapter nine, coming out from the lord and consuming the sacrifice, this time the fire from the word comes out and consumes the young men. They're instantly killed.

Do you know what it's like to go from a moment of just lofty expectations about the future, and in a moment of tragedy, everything is gone? Do you know what that feels like? Have you experienced that before?

When I was a teenager, my one driving ambition in my life for my future was to become an astronaut. My mom's best friend from high school is a woman named Ray Seddon, who was a mission specialist in the space shuttle, and she married a guy named Hoot Gibson, who is a pilot for the space shuttle. Between them, they had six shuttle launches. We drove down to Cape Canaveral and watched them lift off. Ray Seddon came to my high school when I was a freshman and gave a talk, and man, I was all about this. I went to space camp twice. This was not a "hey, fun idea for me." And then 01/28/1986 happened. Do you all remember what happened 01/28/1986? I remember really well. That was the day that the Challenger, seventy three seconds after liftoff, exploded and killed all seven astronauts on board and my dreams. Do you know what it's like to go from lofty expectations to in a moment of tragedy, we're done?

That's what we're in in chapter 10. The rest of this chapter is pretty much post trauma recovery. Aaron makes his nephews, and Moses makes these—he makes his nephews go carry the bodies out of the tabernacle because you can't have a dead body in the tabernacle, it defiles it. And Moses says, you guys have the oil on you. You can't leave. You can't grieve. You got to finish the job. And he drafts a couple more of Aaron's sons and gives him the instructions over again. Later on, Moses and Aaron get into an argument about this. And if you're like, what? You're in good company. It's totally understandable.

What Happened Here?

So let's talk. What happened here? Why did this one implode? Why did this one blow up seventy three seconds after takeoff? Let's look at this. We need to ask some harder questions. What's the strange fire? What did they do so bad? Why did God have to kill them? Is there anything good in this passage for us this morning?

So why the strange fire? These two men take their sensors. I want you to picture a long stick with a kind of fire bucket at the end. This was the tool that they used to bring the fire to a sacrifice, and it would be full of coals. And they do something with this and how they handle the fire. It's not explicit in the text, and they do something here that is not right and unauthorized in some way.

So here's some ideas because the text isn't explicit. A lot of people smarter than me have offered different options.

One theory about this is that the language here is they went and pulled the bodies out of the front of the sanctuary. That is in Hebrew, it's the holy place. So one idea is that this is sort of a power move by these young men. They're like, they're not high priest but they're like, you know, they heard the high priest gets to go in there once a year and offer fire. "I can do that." And so they go into the holy place, the most holy place, and they offer fire there, and they're not supposed to be in there. So that's theory number one.

Number two, some scholars think that this has to do with the way that they offered fire. It has to do with the traditions and the practices of the neighboring countries around them, that they were somehow offering fire in a way mixed in with their coals, something they added that was just like their neighbors next door, the pagans, and they did it the wrong way.

Some point to verses eight through 11 where it talks about wine, and the admonition about not drinking on the job. You don't drink on the job when you're a priest. Moses lays that out for them. And so something like neighboring countries in pagan practices, drinking was part of drinking some alcoholic beverage was some part of the sacrifice. And so they do that, and that's why they're wiped out. But what's clear is there's a covenant that God has established, and they've broken it.

A covenant in the Mosaic term, it's kind of like a wedding ketuva, like a wedding practice standard of statement of, well, this is what I'm gonna do. This is what you're gonna do, and somehow they've broken it. So we don't know what's so strange about the strange fire. We don't know, but there are just a few options. But the big idea is this is a mess before this whole thing even really gets going. Do you see that? Like, before the ship can really even get out of the dock and make its first maiden voyage, it's sinking. Before the film debuts at the box office in the prescreening, people like, that's not gonna work. That story line falls apart. In the family, the first moments of the family, it's already a mess.

And you need to know this. Like, this is one of the main things I want to highlight is like reading through this priestly manual in Leviticus, and it doesn't work. The first day, it doesn't work. The very first day.

I know that this passage is hard for us. This sounds extreme. Like, wait, they died? Like, not of accidental, like, somebody dropped the bucket of fire on the gasoline. No. Like, the fire comes out from God and destroys them. What is the big deal? I mean, so they messed up the fire. It was their first day at work. Everybody messes something on the first day of work.

So you have to realize let's just take a step back from this. You have to realize how much is at stake in what is being described here. How very much is at stake. This isn't like observing some kind of empty rituals that have no significance. This isn't just like, hey, we have some theoretical ideas about ways we can do this god thing. This is about the distinctions, making distinctions in the very small things in the way that God has prescribed.

So if you've ever been in the military, if you've ever been in the military, you know that the military doesn't just teach you how to be a soldier. It teaches you how to make a bed and how to iron a shirt. Because what is the military doing? It's saying, we need to reform you as a person, and you from the very moment you wake up in the day, everything matters. All the details matter. Every bit of it.

So strange fire, these sacrifices, these rituals are not some empty intellectual exercise of, hey, let's see how this one works. No. This is about life and death. This is about slavery and freedom. This is about perishing and survival. And this is about these people never becoming slaves again, and then learning to do life in a completely new way.

Now I want you to, those of you who are in recovery or know someone who is in recovery from alcohol, from another substance, understand this. Somebody's in recovery, you say to them, hey, what's the big deal? It's just a drink. No. It is not just a drink. Right? My life is one drink away from being in complete ruin again. Right. It is never just about one drink.

Or think about a single mom working really hard to get out of the poverty line with her kids and her company's payroll service messes up her paycheck by a few hundred dollars and they say to her, hey, don't worry. We'll make it up in your next paycheck and she's upset and they're like, what's the big deal? It's just a hundred dollars? No, it's not. I am trying to make it. This is the difference for me between making it and not making it, right?

So you can hear this in verse three, this insistence right here where Moses speaks to him and he says:

This is what the word says, among those who are near me, I will be sanctified before all the people I will be glorified — Leviticus 10:3

Aaron's like, doesn't say anything because what is Moses saying? Like, God is holy. God is a holy god and the young priests, these knuckleheads, they failed to treat God as God and they treated God like us, like another one of us.

Remember, chapters eight and nine before this are about like Moses hears what God says, Moses does what God says. I mean, it's like said seven times, that little phrase. It's a setup for this because they did not listen to the details. Beginning at chapter 10, when they mess with the fire, they approach their job here with a lax casual indifference. On they handle the plutonium with bare hands. And big surprise, they die because of this.

These rituals are about new creation, about making distinctions.

The important word you're going to hear over and over is in verse 10 about distinctions: distinguished between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean. This is going to be repeated in the next couple chapters. We're going to talk all about making distinctions in the small things. This is critical because God is saying, like, this is what I do.

You go back to the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis, and what do you have? You have a God who makes distinctions. You have a God who distinguishes between light and dark, between land and sea, between sea and sky, and he creates them according to its kinds. So here's a God who says, you know, trees are different from rocks, are different from clouds, are different from dogs. You're called to make distinctions. And so when these priests make the fire but they don't make the distinctions, they put this whole thing in jeopardy. This whole new thing that God is starting to do, creating a whole new world. And so from the very beginning, opening day of the season, the whole thing falls apart.

A Unique Story

This is so unique. I know that this may sound really weird to us, but you read this story—this is a unique story in all of ancient Near Eastern literature. Nobody tells stories like this. Did any of you ever have to read the Aeneid, the Iliad, the Odyssey, any of these? So if you ever read any of these things, you read about Hector and Achilles and Ulysses and all these heroes—they're never failure stories. They're always hero stories. But not this. This is from the very first day failure. They muck up from the very beginning.

And this points to us something. This tells us that you have to look at this: this priesthood was never going to work. This is not the priest we need. This whole system—I mean, from the very first verse, it doesn't work. These men, Nadab, Abihu, even Aaron, they needed a priest. That's what we see from this passage. They needed someone to represent them.

The Need for a Priest

Remember what I said last week about what the job of a priest is. The job of the priest is to stand with a foot in two worlds: the world that is the reality of who you are and what you're like and what I'm like, and then another foot in the world of what could be, and like, this is what God's making. God can remake you. He can remake this whole thing into a new thing.

What we see in this passage is this passage calls out: man, these people needed a priest. They needed someone to represent them. Now that sounds odd in our society. We are such a "everybody gets a vote, everybody is the same, everybody should be able to speak on their own behalf" society. But that's not actually how our society works. We live in a society where you constantly hire people to represent you. You buy a house, you hire a realtor. You want to execute a contract, you get an agent. We use attorneys and go betweens and representatives all the time. That's why we have agents for all kinds of things. We need representation. Someone who stands for us, someone who represents us, someone who has their foot in our life and in another world for us.

And human beings like us—we are people who are in a fallen world, and we are fallen people, and we need someone who can represent us. Someone who can stand in the presence of the holy, stand in the sanctified place, and yet can stand in the commonplace too, can stand with us.

This whole passage raises a question that the Old Testament can't answer: how can there be one who is human who stands in God's presence on my behalf? And it doesn't really answer it.

The Surprising Lack of Surprise

But notice what's funny about this: the narrator and also God in this passage don't seem particularly surprised. The way that the story reads, it is told in a very straightforward, unemotional way. I mean, when you read verse seven about where they go get the remaining son, get Aaron and his remaining sons—his surviving sons. Can you hear that? I mean, there's just something about it, and you go like, "Oh." And yet there's nothing in here that makes it sound like this was a surprise, that it wasn't going to work. They're killed, their bodies are hauled away, and yet, this is the surprise—the surprise ending where God's like, keep calm and carry on. Keep calm and carry on. What? Look at verse eight. Moses here gives some further instructions, but he doesn't fire Aaron. He doesn't fire a sense.

In fact, he's talking about the future. He's like, "This is gonna be a lasting ordinance. Here's what you're gonna do in the future." And it's like, cue needle scratch sound. You can almost hear them go like Aaron: "Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. My boys are dead. We messed up. I'm not put on desk job duty for a while, or I'm not digging ditches, or I'm not put on leave without pay. I'm not fired. We're just gonna keep going?"

This is what I love about this passage. Look, they start the reordering with the creation. They completely mess it up, and yet God isn't done with them. God is not even done with them. It's almost like here's the subject. Here's the Jeff Bradford paraphrase of this: "Hey, we got a whole tribe full of guys with beards. Put a robe on one of them and bring them in because we're gonna keep going. Put a robe on Daryl and Daryl. Come on. Bring those guys in. We're just gonna keep going."

I mean, Nadab and Abihu, yeah, young men and fire. What did you expect? Those guys were idiots, but young men and explosives. What do you think was gonna happen? Keep calm and carry on.

Do you get how strange this is? Why is that? It's not like God's holiness was working there for a while, and now it's on vacation. It's not part-time status. It's not that none of this matters. They handle the plutonium with bare hands. Yes, Daryl and Daryl messed this up. And even though it's a failure, how can God say, "Keep calm and carry on"?

This is a head scratcher passage for the Jews. It's like, "Wait. We have this priestly manual. It doesn't work, but we keep going." But if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you understand why this keeps going because this passage tells us about the need for another priest. It tells us there's another one. The priesthood was never meant to be anything more than a shadow. Remember, we've been talking about typology. We've been talking about how the Bible works in these patterns.

There was an original priest, and his name was Adam. He fails. And then there's this priesthood, which is also a failure. And then there's us—priesthood of all believers. We talked about last week. Also a failure. But all of these are just types and shadows of the one high priest that all of us need.

The Need for Perfect Representation

You know, if you study our criminal justice system in this country, it's an interesting study. We live in a country that has a better than most criminal justice system that tries to make things kind of a level playing field. You are as good as your attorney. If you can afford to hire the top notch attorney, there are people who can get you off for all kinds of things if you can pay enough. And if you try to represent yourself or you get a pretty lousy, court-appointed defense attorney, you're sunk. It all depends on the quality of representation that you have.

The people of God—here's the thing. God provides the best representation for us. I'm just gonna read some verses out of Hebrews, and I don't normally do this, but I want you to hear about the priest that God provides.

Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood, on the basis of it, the people received the law, what further need was there for another priest to arise and not be designated according to the order of Aaron? But we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. So therefore, let's hold fast our confession for it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens. For we don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. For since he himself was tempted and all that he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become the merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. He doesn't need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people because he did this once and for all when he offered up himself. Not through the blood of goats and calves but through his own blood he entered the holy place once and for all having obtained eternal redemption. And having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. — Hebrews 5:11-10:4

Therefore, he is always able to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for us. The priest that we need is more than provided for in Jesus, our great high priest.

We have nothing that we can offer. We can't pay for this kind of representation, and yet God has provided this for us. I want to say this to you. I want you to hear this. If you hear nothing else this morning: if you walk into this place and feel like a failure, a fraud, a phony—if you look around this room and think, "I'm not like these people. I can't be the good Christian like these people"—you know what? God has provided for you such a covering. God has provided for you such a priest who stands forever in the presence of God and says, "This one, this one is mine."

I want to encourage you. If you are not a believer, this is what makes you a Christian—not your performance. You can look at your week, and I can look at mine. Neither of us looks good. We both look like Nadab and Abihu. And yet God's mercy is for people like us. It was a failed venture from the beginning.

And if you are a Christian and you look at this week and think, "I am such a failed priest. How much did I pray this week? How much did I read the Bible? How much did I even think about God? Did I share the gospel with anybody? Did I show compassion to someone at work? Do I care enough to ask someone to forgive me?"—look, you have a faithful high priest who pleads on your behalf for failed priests like us.

This is why—this is part B from last week. You can't do it. We cannot succeed where they failed. And yet the grace of God is forever an overwhelming waterfall of grace and mercy to people like us, inviting us to come in and to be part of God's family.

There's a band called Over the Rhine that has a song that captures this, and I'll close with this. The lyrics go like this:

All my favorite people are broken. Believe me, my heart should know. Some prayers are better left unspoken. I just want to hold you and let the rest go.

All my friends are part saint and part sinner. We lean on each other, try to rise above. We're not afraid to admit we're all still beginners. We're all late bloomers when it comes to love.

All my favorite people are broken. Believe me, my heart should know. Awful believers, skeptical dreamers—step forward. You can stay right here. You don't have to go. You can stay right here. You don't have to go.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.