The Presence of the Lord
Leviticus 10
(incomplete)
The first time I read through the Bible I skipped the book of Leviticus. I said: This is boring. Yet it deals with the most important, most basic question of life: How can I, or anyone, be right with God? Yet when we read it, it doesn’t look familiar to us. What does that question have to do with bulls and goats, burnt offerings and peace offerings, the blood of animals and the blood of a woman in her menstrual cycle?
A person may well ask if all these things are necessary: one dove instead of two, the fat of the kidney or the fat on the belly, a one year old heifer or an old sow. Nadab and Abihu, two sons of Aaron, the high priest, found out real quick. “Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them.” (v.2) Was God just being petty, or was there something about the presence of the Lord that made this inevitable, something like an astronaut going into space without a pressure suit. He would explode from the imbalance of atmospheric pressure. And a sinful human being cannot stand in the presence of God without being consumed. I don’t think it is so much that God decides to destroy them but, like staring at the sun with your bare eyes, it will burn a hole in your eyes. The same sun that gives us warmth and sunshine will destroy you if you get too close.
Leviticus says over and over that the Lord is holy; He is a holy God. We don’t know all that that means, but it does mean that if we are not protected from His Presence in some way, it will consume us like a fire in a drought. We read later of a man who thought he was going good by keeping the ark of the covenant from falling, and his act of touching the ark caused his immediate death. (II Samuel 6:6-10 )
When God first created human beings, He walked with them and talked with them. When they became conscious of right and wrong and of their own shortcomings, they became afraid of God and hid from Him. (Genesis 3 ). The rest of the Old Testament, even the entire Bible, speaks of God’s attempt to bring us back to Him. In Exodus, God brought a nation out of bondage to enter into a covenant with Him, whereby He would be their God and they would be His people. (Exodus 19:1-6 )
The early books of the Bible describe in detail the necessary steps in achieving peace with God. We don’t understand why things had to be this way, but we know they did, as evidenced by the fate of these two priests.
But we see later in the Book of Hebrews how that Jesus Christ came into the world to become our high priest, to inaugurate a new covenant, to offer a new sacrifice, to enact a new law, and to bring us into this very presence of God with boldness, and not fear.
(Find the references and note them in a footnote.)
different priest
different sacrifice
different covenant
different law
different approach
different position
different speech
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