Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 10-12.

The description of what happened to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, seems harsh.  However, as I read about it today I had an idea that explained why what they did was so serious.  They may not have done all of these, but these are all things which make things go disastrously wrong.  First, it probably never occurred to them that the source of fire in their incense burners mattered.  Second, they likely thought that they were important people now that they were priests and they wanted everyone to know it.  They put their own judgement and desires ahead of God’s instructions.  Doing either of these things always ends poorly, but in this case they presented themselves as God’s representatives.  Making matters even worse, God had called them to be His representatives.  So, to put this fully in perspective.  Bad things happen when we use our own judgement in place of God’s direction.  It gets worse when we do so while claiming to speak on God’s behalf.  But it gets truly tragic when we do so after God has called us to speak on His behalf.  My take away is that we should seek God’s direction even for things which seem minor.  This is especially important when we are speaking on God’s behalf, something we should never do unless we are sure that God has called us to do so and that we are speaking words which God has given us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.