\u201c[God] said: \u2018Among those who approach me I will be proved holy; . . . I will be honored.\u2019\u201d
\n \u2014 Leviticus 10:3<\/p>\n
On my first day of work at a McDonald\u2019s restaurant, my cash drawer was short 10 dollars, and my manager wrote me up, leaving me worried about keeping my job. But I was not afraid of being struck dead. We\u2019ve all made mistakes and had some rough days at work, so we might wonder why Nadab and Abihu were struck dead when they began to work as priests. What went wrong?Nadab and Abihu\u2019s sin was not just a minor oversight or a misstep. After God had given detailed instructions about the priests\u2019 responsibilities, Aaron\u2019s sons ignored God\u2019s rules in favor of their own. This is a pattern as old as the human race; sin begins when we decide we know better than God does. But God is holy, and we are not free to improvise our own ways of approaching or relating to God. Tragically, just as \u201cfire came out\u201d and consumed the offering brought by Aaron (Leviticus 9), fire came out against Nadab and Abihu and consumed them. Even Aaron was silent in response, likely indicating that he accepted God\u2019s judgment\u2014though he must have felt deep sorrow.Must we fear the same today? In all of history only one priest, Jesus, was flawless and worthy to enter God\u2019s presence. And when he did that for our sake, he took the wrath of God upon himself as it broke out against him\u2014in our place. But this is good news for us! Jesus\u2019 sacrifice covered all our sin so that we never need to fear God\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n
Holy God, it\u2019s difficult for us to understand your holiness. Thank you for giving us Jesus so that we can be forgiven. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201c[God] said: \u2018Among those who approach me I will be proved holy; . . . I will be honored.\u2019\u201d \u2014 Leviticus 10:3 On my first day of work at a McDonald\u2019s restaurant, my cash drawer was short 10 dollars, and my manager wrote me up, leaving me worried about keeping my job. But I was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1000,182],"class_list":["post-10138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-anger","tag-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}