It is good to be with you once
again, even though the roads were a bit
treacherous this morning.
I'm so grateful for assistance from one and
another to make my journey.
Would you kindly turn with me to the
Book of Leviticus, and I want to read
this morning verses 1 to 7.
The first three verses also will be the
basis of our meditation this morning.
Leviticus chapter 10, I'm beginning to read you
the first verse.
Aaron's sons Nabod and Abihu took their censers,
put fire in them, and added incense, and
they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary
to his command.
So fire came out from the presence of
the Lord and consumed them, and they died
before the Lord.
Moses then said to Aaron, this is what
the Lord spoke of when he said, amongst
those who approach me, I will show myself
holy in the sight of all the people.
I will be honored.
Aaron remained silent.
Moses summoned Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Aaron's
uncle Uzziel, and said to them, come here,
carry your cousins out of the camp, away
from the sanctuary.
So they came, and they carried them still
in their eunuchs outside the camp.
Then Moses said to Aaron and to his
sons Eleazar and Ithamar, do not let your
hair become unkempt, and do not tear your
clothes, or you will die, and the Lord
will be angry with the whole community.
But your relatives, all the house of Israel,
may mourn for those the Lord has destroyed
by fire.
Do not leave the entrance of the tent
of meeting, or you will die, because the
Lord's anointing oil is on you.
So they did as Moses said.
The serious side of the worship of Almighty
God, oh there is joy, there is joy
unspeakable and full of glory to be discovered
when we have learned to worship God as
he desires to be worshiped.
And it would be more than folly, it
would be outrageous if we were to forget
that when we come to the somber passage,
and its message that is before us this
morning, let me therefore make mention of that.
Worship, when it has become what God requires
it to be, is one of those extraordinary
means of grace that brings heaven into the
soul long before the soul enters heaven.
But the joy of worship is not our
subject this morning.
Our present subject is not the joy, but
rather the solemnity of it.
And this is something that our generation is
very much in danger of forgetting, or deliberately
neglecting.
This is one aspect of divine truth with
which somehow or other, I don't know why,
but for one reason or another we are
not conversant with, or we take scant notice
of it.
And the consequences may well be significant.
I'm not a prophet, but I should not
be at all surprised that one of the
main things that the Lord has in terms
of controversy with his people today, in consequence
of which we have seen so little evident
presence of God among us in power, lies
right here in the matter of our congregational
and personal worship.
And I must confess to you that I
have been deeply challenged, really challenged, humbled, I
would almost say frightened, by some of the
implications of this passage and relevant passages to
which this takes us, if we follow the
subject through in the Scripture.
Now let's begin at the beginning here.
I want us to begin by looking at
the joyful celebration recorded in Leviticus chapter 9.
You've got to see a text in its
context, and certainly we need to see this
text in its context.
You see chapter 9 ended with the people
of Israel all aglow with joy and glory.
I want you to look at that in
terms of the background and the foreground in
chapter 9.
In the background we need to see the
people that have come together at this time,
the people of Israel.
But remember who they were.
They are the children of Abraham, the children
of promise.
They are the children that God in his
infinite mercy promised Abram when his wife was
incapable of bearing a single child.
And Abram was at that stage very very
old, too old to be a father.
But God made a promise.
And eventually he entered into covenant with Abram.
And there was no child yet.
And in the covenant into which he entered
with Abram, he said I guarantee you, your
son and Sarah will be the mother.
And not only that, when the son is
born there will be such such blessings and
benefits that all the nations of the earth
will share in it.
A very remarkable utterance.
Well now in the process of time God
has kept his promise.
The children of Abram have come.
And now there are a multitude enough in
number as the sand on the seashore, or
the stars in the heavens, just as he
promised.
They've been in Egypt for 400 years.
They are a slave.
But by this time God has summoned them
out.
And with his mighty arm he's delivered them
from the Egyptian terror.
And brought them so far through the wilderness
until they've come just beyond Sinai.
There on Sinai as the redeemed and ransomed
people of God, he told them what they
must do in order that they and he
should walk and live together in what we
call fellowship.
Put in human terms God said to them,
now look I have called you.
I have chosen you.
I have redeemed you.
I brought you out.
You didn't pay anything for it.
You didn't do anything for it.
I brought you out.
Now if you and I are going to
live together in harmony, I'm giving you my
commandment, epitomizing the kind of thing that I
must have of you.
You must live according to these principles and
the statutes that accompany them.
And then there was one thing more.
It was a real problem.
What were they to do?
How were they to express their gratitude, their
praise, their worship?
And when things go wrong, how are they
going to put things right between themselves and
God?
It may be an individual matter.
It may be a national matter.
How are they going to worship God?
And how are things to be rectified when
once they go wrong?
By this time in his amazing mercy God
has made that provision.
He calls Moses apart to the mountain.
And he told Moses, Moses you are to
build a tent.
And I'm going to give you every single
detail about the tent.
Every inch of it.
How high, how low, how wide it's going
to be.
I'm going to tell you about everything that's
going into it.
I'm going to give you an exact detail
of it.
And you've got to follow that.
Don't you go your own way.
This is the place where I am going
to be worshipped.
And because of that even the pins that
will hold up the curtain in the tabernacle
will have to be of gold.
And Moses you've got to see to every
detail.
By this time the tabernacle has been erected.
And it has been consecrated.
All the furniture has been consecrated to God.
All the furniture chosen to be as it
were a visible sermon, saying something.
As well as having a utilitarian use.
And then the priest, the high priest and
his four sons, Aaron and his four sons
have been consecrated.
And on this particular occasion a fair service
in the newly erected and consecrated sanctuary has
taken place.
And Aaron and Moses together have been officiating.
And these four priests.
And now at the end of chapter nine.
Let me just read to you two verses.
Moses and Aaron went into the tent of
meeting.
When they came out they blessed the people.
And the glory of the Lord appeared.
Please don't let's take that without giving it
some thought.
And the glory of the Lord appeared to
all the people.
Fire came out from the presence of the
Lord and consumed the burnt offerings and the
fat portions on the altar.
And when the people saw it they shouted
for joy and fell face down.
Have you got the picture?
The glory of the Lord came down and
the sacrifice that was already placed on the
altar with the fat of it and all
that was required according to the divine instruction.
Everything was on the altar and now a
supernatural fire from God blazed down upon the
altar and started the fire.
The fire that burned the sacrifice.
And as the sacrifice burned the smoke descended
indicating that God was not only among them
but had received their sacrifice.
And in receiving the sacrifice received the people
of Thresh into the sweetest fellowship with himself.
That is at the end of chapter nine.
Now suddenly, suddenly moving into chapter 10.
Look what we have.
We have the awful sin of these two
young men Nabod and Abihu.
Two sons of Aaron just recently been consecrated
and paid their vows and accepted the responsibility.
We see them doing something which is quite
out of order and coming under the judgment
of God.
Now the recorded action of these two brothers
needs to be looked upon.
We need to see this very clearly I
think.
Nabod and Abihu two sons of Aaron and
as I said recently recently consecrated for this
high office offered what is said here to
be unauthorized fire before the Lord contrary to
his command.
Now we may not see very much wrong
with this.
What if somebody got up in this service
this morning and said well now I'd like
to do something here.
And we were to allow him or her
as the case may be.
You wouldn't think anything outrageous.
But God you see had arranged his own
worship.
Every detail in the building, every detail about
the priest, every detail about the sacrifices, everything
that was to be done God had arranged
it.
And these men are adding something to what
God requires.
And the first thing that we notice here
notice here therefore it is this that the
action was totally unauthorized by God.
And he was angered by it.
He was not worshipped by it.
He was angered by it.
In other words what we have in the
language we would use today they chose to
do their own thing.
Their own thing rather than that which God
had ordained.
Not only was it unauthorized of course but
it was unconscionable.
Unconscionable when God had already gone to such
trouble to to erect the sanctuary and to
give all the details to which I've referred
and many others indicating that he is concerned
about the way he is worshipped.
It was unconscionable that a creature, a sinner
or two sinners, young just recently ordained we
say, should at this time take it upon
themselves to do their own thing over and
above anything else that was done.
And to go directly against that which had
been chosen by God.
Now the serious implication of this action comes
out quite clear in the passage and there
are other references to it in scripture.
It was an act of pride and of
rebellion.
Of pride and of rebellion.
We read the end of chapter nine that
all the people rejoiced in the presence of
God but notice and fell facedown.
In other words along with their amazing their
incredible sense of joy and satisfaction there was
a sense of awe.
There must always be in the worship of
God.
Unqualified exuberance and joy and enthusiasm is is
is is out of place in the worship
of God.
Oh there must be that but it must
be harnessed and there must be this other
side of the coin where we fall down
on our faces before him.
And brothers and sisters we are living in
a day and age where very few Christian
men have known the glory and the greatness
and the sovereignty of God to such an
extent that they've ever been on their faces.
We know so little of that because we
know so little of God.
These two men decide that they can do
what they want.
You see the principle behind it is this.
They thought that to worship God was was
really to do something that they liked doing.
They weren't so keen about the other aspects
of the work perhaps and they thought they
would introduce things that they themselves would be
interested in and they would have joy in
doing it.
Brother and sister that is not the worship
of God that is the worship of self.
I ask you to think of that.
I wouldn't like to tell you how many
people have come to me during my ministry
in various places who have wanted to change
the worship of the sanctuary.
And I've had questions that I've asked each
time.
And in 99 cases out of 100 they
have wanted more pleasure for themselves or someone
else.
But that's not the point in worship.
Worship will bring us joy.
It will bring us grace.
It will bring us blessedness.
But that's not the point of it.
The goal of it is to give God
something.
It's to give him glory.
It's to give him pleasure.
It's to give him honor.
The movement is from us to him not
first and foremost from him to us.
Oh in our prayers we ask for our
needs according to his promises.
But the fundamental thing in worship is the
offering and the movement is from us to
him.
And you see when it moves in the
opposite way it tends to become something other
than worship.
Something like a concert in a secular place.
We express our gifts.
We do this that and the other for
our benefit.
I remember a mother coming to me whom
I had asked to come to church.
It didn't happen here.
And I don't want to go into the
detail of it.
And she says I will only come to
your church she says apart from Christmas and
Easter.
I will only come when my daughter is
singing in the choir.
That's my only interest.
You see that's self-worship.
Worship of myself and my family.
Brothers and sisters God is to be worshipped.
This is what it is.
The movement of the soul.
The heart yielding its devotion.
The head yielding its truth that it has
embraced.
And the will yielding to the sovereignty of
God and with all our hearts and with
all our minds and with all our souls
a giving of ourselves to God.
And the high watermark in worship is this.
It's to find my pleasure in God's pleasure.
Not pleasure for myself but the pleasure of
knowing that my God is pleased.
Pray that the churches of Toronto and of
Canada will capture the Old Testament and the
New Testament vision because this is what it
is of true worship.
The glory of it and the wonder of
it and the real benefit and prize that
is to be found beyond it is to
know and to be pleased that God is
good.
Well now the act this was an act
of rebellion all right and of overwhelming presumption.
And it was an act of profanation of
the Holy One and of the holy sacrifices
and of everything holy as God had sanctified
the building, the priests, the furniture and everything
else.
Let me illustrate that as far as this
particular part of it is concerned.
The burning of incense.
Now by the way incense was to be
burned in the sanctuary and the in the
tabernacle morning and evening.
It was to be done by the high
priest according to the will of God.
There was no incense burning on the schedule
at this particular time on this occasion.
Now we can't dogmatize about certain things here.
If what took place with Medjugorje was part
of the celebration of the consecration of the
tabernacle and of the priest then Moses should
have been at the lead not them.
If it was part of the first service
following the consecration the first main act of
the priesthood per se then it was the
high priest who should have been involved in
suggesting anything in the nature of burning of
incense and he wouldn't do it of course.
But these two young men they took it
upon themselves to do what was unasked to
do what was not commanded or not required
and to do it when they certainly should
not be doing it.
It was an act of rebellion it was
an act of proclamation but now look at
this what were they doing.
Well they took their censers and they put
fire in it and then they put incense
in it and of course the whole meaning
of the incense and the burning of incense
was it symbolized the ascent of the people's
worship and the people's prayers and praises to
God.
It was purely symbolic of perhaps I shouldn't
say purely symbolically it was something very real
to them.
They saw they saw this going on going
up they realized that they were offering all
this to God it was a reminder for
them and the Lord was pleased with it.
But now the censer had to get its
fire from one place.
Where from?
From the altar on which the sacrifice had
been slain and the blood of atonement was
shed.
Now please get that.
There was only one place where the censers
could have their fire they must have their
fire from the one altar.
The altar where the sacrifices were slain and
where atonement was made for sin.
Then you see the censers were kindled and
then came the order then came the incense
and the order and it all sprang you
see from the atoning sacrifice and prayer was
offered and worship was offered on the basis
of the sacrifice that has already been rendered.
And that of course has application today as
it did then symbolically here but actually today.
You see our prayers have only meaning and
they are only accepted by God when that
which kindled them is the finished work of
Christ in atonement upon his cross.
Our worship is not kindled by anything in
us but by him ultimately.
Well now these two didn't get their fire
from the altar.
They put strange fire in as the King
James puts it.
Unauthorized fire.
How did they do it nobody knows but
they did their own thing.
My friend I want to say to you
be careful of what is called today and
almost worshipped in some circles be careful of
your creativity in the matters of worship.
This is something that is glorified in the
world of art and entertainment.
Creativity and when once you got into it
it's very difficult to get out of it
unless you can do a new thing unless
you can bring something different and arrange things
different you're not wanted but if you have
this gift of creativity or this is it
you'll get be careful when God has revealed
what he requires there is no place there
for creativity it's obedience that is required there
and there's a world of difference sometimes between
obedience and creativity there are spheres for creativity
legitimate spheres gloriously free and open but not
here and so God in his infinite judgment
comes down and the next stage what we
see here is the painful woeful symptom and
the sequel without any words without any explanation
the almighty broke in in fire you notice
a similarity with what happened at the end
of chapter nine God revealed his glory there
in the manifestation of fire lapping up the
sacrifice and the fact here God manifested his
glory in fire at this time he doesn't
burn the sacrifice on the altar he burns
two of the worshippers allegedly worshippers and these
two sons of Aaron only recently consecrated their
cups lie on the ground and everybody spun
no moment for repentance no time for that
why well brothers and sisters i could talk
about this on for a long time but
the thing that it comes to is this
God thought this to be so serious it
had to be dealt with there and then
the cancer that was entering the system had
to be excised in all its parts there
and then and he withdrew the gift of
life and the gift of their calling he
withdrew it all and in a moment in
the twinkling of an eye they went away
from this life now you say i don't
understand that i don't understand that was it
necessary brothers and sisters that is what the
scriptures will assure us of and the scriptures
demand that the leaders of the people today
as yesterday are of the same mind as
their God we'll come to that in a
moment it was essential put it like this
had the congregation been given the opportunity of
expressing themselves either in favor or against and
had been in favor of what these two
boys have tried to do just think what
would have happened just think what would have
happened if God had allowed the democratic process
to rule here that which displeased him at
the hands of two young men would have
displeased him at the hands of the whole
congregation and they would have been dead for
the act displeased him the spirit displeased him
it was an act of total displeasure had
the action of neighbor and the buyer gone
unchallenged it would have it would have uh
conveyed also an altogether false view of God
as if he were exactly like the gods
of the nation you see in the old
testament scriptures God is revealed as a God
who is altogether different he was the creator
God the mythical deities of the nations were
not creators God is the creator who said
let there be and there was and as
the creator he was sovereign but our sovereign
he was also merciful and gracious but in
all else he was holy he would never
do anything wrong he acted according to principle
of justice he weighed everything in the balance
of his justice and his holiness and not
to have confronted this iniquitous rebellion and not
to have dealt with it summarily at this
point in the history of the of the
israeli people would have been a tragedy that
would have affected the whole future generation israel
would have been made incapable of conveying the
knowledge of the true God to successive generations
they would have had a different concept of
God and so it would have gone a
swift terrible punishment right somebody does indeed bear
the marks of severity but it was not
disproportionate to the offense it was better that
two men should die and the whole nation
perish not as it would have done if
their example had been followed it is mercy
to tread out the first spark that appears
beside the barrel of dynamite it was a
summary judgment and then the other thing that
i just want you to notice very briefly
is this Aaron was summoned to silence when
one of our loved ones in the family
leaves us and is taken away from us
in whatever circumstances there is natural grief and
pain here is Aaron in the very center
of the picture seeing two of his boys
die like that under the judgment of God
he remained silent how did this happen how
could he how could it be so composed
well he became composed because a word of
God came to Moses memory oh the sovereignty
of God Moses remembered the word that God
had said he didn't know what it meant
at the time but it meant this among
those who approach me I will show myself
holy in the sight of all the people
I will be honored in other words there
is a more awesome responsibility upon those who
draw near to me and who lead the
people they have a responsibility that is considerable
and I will show myself in my utter
holiness in relation to them without any further
to the record we read Aaron immediately sorry
Aaron remained silent Moses went on to tell
them and Aaron agreed that they mustn't unruffle
their hair they mustn't tear their dresses they
mustn't do anything that was normally done when
they lost a loved one because on this
occasion they must show the people that they
are in line with God they agree with
his judgment they take the same view of
sin you see this is necessary in true
worship that we take the same view of
God does of right and wrong and we
are in fellowship with him otherwise our worship
is just singing into the air or talking
or preaching into the air now I must
leave it there in order to say just
one or two things in applying all some
of these principles the first thing I want
to say very briefly is this God has
not changed oh I remember when I began
my training before I came to theological college
I spent some years in a university and
in certain studies that were biblical or not
theological and I remember how every single tutor
and professor in that area went out of
their way to say that the God of
the New Testament was different from the God
of the Old Testament in the Old Testament
you have a cruel God when Jesus comes
he puts a different face on God and
God seems to have been metamorphosed overnight so
that in Jesus you have a different God
altogether brothers and sisters that is not true
to fact God says himself he said to
the prophet Malachi I am the Lord I
do not change because if that were not
enough you go through the New Testament and
you see that in Jesus the element of
judgment is not only stressed but the author
of the epistle to the Hebrews at the
end of chapter 12 concludes his great his
great dissertation with these words our God is
an unquenchable fire and he takes the very
picture that is before us today in order
to stress upon the Hebrew Christians God has
not changed take him seriously I must leave
that there let me add this if God
has not and does not change then we
too need to attend to the nature and
the quality of our worship before anything else
I suggest to you my friends that when
half a dozen people in the church of
Jesus Christ rarely see what worship means and
pay the price to operate with it something
big will begin to happen I'm quite sure
of it Jesus in his day was so
envenomed by what the Jews were doing to
the house of God then the temple in
Jerusalem you remember it looked stupid twice at
once at the beginning of his ministry once
at the end he went into the temple
and he turned the tables upside down and
he got rid of those that were trading
there not because trading in and of itself
was wrong but you see he was convinced
that they had turned what was meant to
be a house of prayer for all nations
they had turned that into a den of
thieves who were they robbing well they may
have been robbing people I don't know but
I think that the emphasis of Jesus was
they were robbing God the temple is made
to worship God and if we do not
worship God as God requires to be worshipped
brothers and sisters we are robbing him can
I say a word about this worship is
not for the sake of the worshipper in
the first place as I have already indicated
it let me repeat it because I think
it is so important worship is primarily a
Godward movement in which God is the object
I was interested in reading I believe in
the creator by James Houston a few days
ago and I came across this it's not
on this subject apparently but this comes into
the midst of his dissertation there any satisfaction
any solution or joyful spirit we experience in
worship is an indirect blessing rather than the
reason for our worship and then he adds
too often he says our church services are
for the sake of the congregation for whose
benefit the minister and the choir perform you
know how many people looked upon the service
like that the minister performs to the congregation
and the quality of worship is dependent on
what the minister does or the choir does
or the organist and we are performers no
my friend that's the wrong thing God is
the one to whom we minister and I
end with this I say to you with
all reverence but it is exceedingly important the
only adequate pattern for our worship of God
on earth is the worship of God in
heaven there is no earthly community that perfectly
worships God and in a day such as
ours when every man does that which is
right in his own sight politically economically philosophically
spiritually theologically a mind thing I must have
my thing I must do my thing I
believe as I believe never mind whether it's
right or wrong it's right for me that
philosophy brothers and sisters it is necessary for
us to see I think that there is
only one place to look at we've got
to look at heaven Jesus said in the
Lord's prayer having put the total emphasis on
God in the first part of the prayer
he ends up with saying ends up that
section by saying your will be done on
earth as it is in heaven and the
only worship that you and I can copy
is the worship of heaven how do you
see it well you see it you may
have a snippet of it in Isaiah chapter
6 through the eyes of the prophet better
still if you turn to the book of
revelation start reading with chapter 5 go on
into chapter 6 and go on to the
end of chapter 7 and look at the
worship of heaven and there you will see
how God is worshiping heaven and that is
the pattern for earth and you and I
are here in the service of worship to
rehearse for what for that I'm rehearsing for
glory I want to be ready I want
to be prepared to join with a ransom
and I want to get rid of all
the influences that keep me down and keep
me under and hold me back I want
to be one with the saints in glory
I want to be one with the spirits
of just men made perfect I want to
be at liberty with the angels and the
archangels and the spirits of just men made
perfect and that's the only place you can
find pardon my being so wrong but all
brothers and sisters I plead with you in
the midst of this day of decadence that
is penetrating the church of it is penetrating
every other place in society seek to worship
God as he asks you or everything else
will be in vain let us pray Father
hear our prayers hear our heartbeat we know
how far we have fallen short of you
short of your glory in so many respects
and perhaps very especially in this matter forgive
us we pray we thank you that you've
not done with us as you did with
Ananias and Sapphira at the beginning of the
new testament church you've given us life and
we pray that we may by your grace
search the scriptures and see for ourselves what
the pure worship of a holy God really
means