If you'll take your Bibles, please, open them to the book of Hebrews. Returning to the ninth chapter, we'll start again at the first verse, and we will read through the fifth, focusing our attention once more on the fourth verse. If you would join me in standing out of reverence for the reading of God's word. Hebrews chapter nine, beginning at verse one. Then, indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service in the earthly sanctuary. For a tabernacle was prepared, the first part in which was the lampstand, the table, and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary. And behind the second veil, the part of the tabernacle, which is called the holiest of all, which had the golden censer and the Ark of the Covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron's rod that budded, the tablets of the covenant, and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail." Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would help us to see your glory as we consider the incense once more. Father, we pray that you would bring us to a place where we understand that it is through Christ and through Christ alone that we come into your presence. Give us absolute clarity on that, Father, for we are living in a time when every other alternative is offered. Help us understand what strange fire is and teach us, God, to proclaim the truth. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. So the offering of the incense was a specifically prescribed act of worship. God gave very clear instructions. It was to be done daily, both morning and evening, and it was to be done heavily enough that there was to be a cloud of incense always in the holy place and always drifting into the holiest. Entering the holiest with incense was a specific annual obedience. So there was the regular daily offering of incense, but then on the day of atonement, the high priest would enter into the holiest place with incense and presenting a cloud of incense, we spoke about this last week, to cover the glory of God. To attempt to enter the presence of God outside of his commanded time, method, and place was to offer strange fire. and it was to court death. So I wanna just review a couple of things as we go on from here. First of all, I wanna remind you that incense throughout scripture is equated with prayer, and specifically with the prayers of the saints. Revelation chapter five, verse eight says, now when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. I also want to remind you that the censer itself is representative of the work of the mediator, carrying the prayers into the presence of God. And I want to remind you, as always, that there is only one mediator between man and God, the man Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 2, verses 5 and 6 says, There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. I want to remind you that offering falsely could get you killed. There are two basic ways that you could offer incense falsely. The first would be absence of offering incense at all. If the high priest were to go into the holiest place without the offering of the incense, he would die in the presence of the glory of God. But secondly, you could offer incense wrongly by abusing the offering. And this is what we're going to focus our attention on today. We're going to talk a little bit more about this offering of strange fire. And there are four basic ways that this would occur. The first is to do it in a way that is not commanded in season. The second would be to do it in a way not commanded in method. Thirdly, not commanded in its object. And fourthly, not commanded in the person who is offering it. And as we go on, I'm going to point out to you that each of these things violates the first table of the law. So the first thing I want to think with you about is this idea of offering incense in the wrong when and how. So the wrong season and the wrong method. God was very clear about how this was to be done. And the first two offenses are all about presumption. We tend to live in a mindset that says God should be pretty darn happy that we're here. Right? I mean, it's Sunday. There's a lot of other things I could be doing right now. The golf course is open. The lakes are nice. It's a beautiful day. I could be doing anything else and God should be awfully happy that I chose to be here. Now, nobody would be so bold as to say that out loud. But I've talked to too many people to not understand that it's often in the presence of our mind. It's often back there scratching, going, you know, there's a lot of other things I could be doing. He just better be glad I showed up at all. That's a presumption, right? That's a statement to God that says that we are more important than He is. We can make up our own ways of doing things, and God should just take them as we give them. We can approach Him in any way that we want, at any time that we want, with any attitude that we want, and God should be pleased that we have noticed Him. And that is an absolute offense to the God of heaven and earth. It's something that we ought never to even allow to enter into our minds. And I want to consider with you two commandments. So turn with me to Exodus chapter 20. We'll come back to Hebrews here in a minute. But Exodus chapter 20. And we're gonna look at both the second and the fourth commandment. So Exodus chapter 20. Now we're gonna start reading at verse six. Moses is being given the commandments and this is what God has to say. Exodus chapter 20 starting at verse four, it says, you shall not make for yourself a carved image. any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down and serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. Then skip down to verse eight. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath day of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Now it's worth noting right out of the gates that God spent the longest time explaining the why of these two commandments. The rest of the commandments are fairly short, concise, and to the point. have no other gods before me, honor my name, don't commit adultery, honor your parents, don't steal, don't kill, don't lie, don't covet. There's a few extra words thrown in there. But on these two commandments, which are the two that we try to jettison all the time, right out of the door, God spends the most time explaining to us why they matter. He spends the most time talking to us about what is his intent. And his intent is that we understand that worship is an active arrangement between us and the God of the universe. And he is the one who gets to set the rules about how we engage in worship, not us. It's his prerogative. It's his right. It's his worship. He's the one that's established the relationship in the first place. He's the one that's told us, by the way, I've called you to life. I've given you the opportunity to know me. Here's how you go about it. Apart from God's intervention, there's nothing in us that seeks him. So we're gonna think about both the when and the how of this as we think about this first abuse of offering strange fire, but I'm gonna start with the how. So the sons of Aaron, we've already spoken of several times in the last few weeks, Nadab and Abihu, they're the representatives of this habit of God ought to be pleased with whatever I bring him. They decided when and how they would offer. They decided when and how they would worship. They did it blatantly in the face of God's own stated preference. And in Leviticus chapter 10, the first verse tells us that they offered strange fire before the Lord and fire came out from the altar and consumed them. And then God spoke to Moses to give Moses an instruction to give to Aaron, their father. And this is what the Lord said. And it's what I want to point out to us because this really speaks to the point I want to make today. Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord spoke saying, by those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. And before all the people, I must be glorified." And Aaron held his peace. So God reminds us that not only is he holy, but that we who are his must never forget that fact. And ultimately, the second and fourth commandments teach us how to worship. We are commanded to take our cues for worship directly from God alone. We don't get to make this up. Everything that we do as a church, everything that we do as a body of Christ, everything that we practice in our worship, every single thing that we engage in as a church grows organically out of our reading of Scripture. We do nothing that is not rooted and grounded in the Word of God, or we try not to. And as we are a living body filled with living people who are perfectly capable of making mistakes, I'm not going to pretend like we always get this right. But it is at least always the target. We want to do what we do with an eye to what God says worship is supposed to be, and we want to engage in worship corporately in a way that fits what God has prescribed. Now there's two ways to think about how we see worship out of scripture. Two basic principles. One's called the normative principle and the other is called the regulative principle. The normative principle basically says if God doesn't forbid it directly, you can do it. Out of the normative principle you get things like wrestling matches for Jesus and basketball tournaments for the gospel in the middle of a Sunday morning worship service. You get Harley Davidsons riding down the aisle and camels dancing ballet. You get all kinds of weird stuff. And puppets. Don't get me started on puppets. You get all kinds of stuff if you practice the normative principle. I don't think that the normative principle is a faithful exposition of Scripture. I think that the regulative principle is a much safer place to stand. And in short, the regulative principle says that unless we see it in Scripture, we don't do it. That's either by express command or by implied action. We're going to talk about some things that we see in practice here which guides our thinking. What we wanna pay attention to is that this is consistent with how Moses instructed Israel that they were to engage in taking the promised land. So it turns me to Deuteronomy chapter 12, and I wanna show you something interesting out of Deuteronomy. So Deuteronomy 12, and we're gonna read from verses 29 to 32. So Moses is giving his final instructions to the people of God before they enter into the promised land. Remember, Moses doesn't get to go in because Moses had a temper tantrum and it cost him his ticket into paradise or into the promised land. Verse 29 says, when the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess and you displace them and dwell in their land, Take heed that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed, excuse me, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, how did these nations serve their gods? That's the thing. Do not go to a pagan land and say, how do you worship your god? I will also do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abomination to the Lord, which he hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it. So this is the word of the Lord through Moses to the people before they go in. And I wanna point out to you that it is still an instruction to us today. The church growth movement is built around a violation of this basic principle. Rick Warren built Saddleback Church by saying, go into the pagan people and ask them, what would it take us to do as a church to provoke you to come in? In other words, what makes you happy? We'll do that, and then we'll call it church. He built the largest church in America doing that, if you want to call it a church, which I personally don't. If we start off with a principle of violating what God commands, we cannot expect God's blessing. Does that make sense? God tells us, don't go ask a pagan how to worship. Why? Well, first of all, because they're going to get it wrong. They're worshiping the wrong thing anyway. But secondly, because God has given us very clear instructions how we are to worship. He's told us what worship is supposed to be. And it's an offense to God when we ignore His instruction and go to people who don't know anything about Him to think what He wants. God gives us plain instruction, and he told Aaron and his sons when they were to offer incense, how they were to offer incense, and why they were to offer incense. Nadab and Abihu went, eh, it doesn't really matter, we'll do what we want. We don't really understand anything that they did. We don't have the why, the what, the where, the wherefore of what they did. All we're told is they offered strange fire that the Lord had not commanded. Did it mean that they were taking money on the side to do something for somebody? Maybe. But honestly, you know what I think? I think they just went, ah, God said this is good. I think we'll make it better. We'll just add to it a little bit. We'll do something that we think is better because obviously God didn't get it right. And that's the underlying issue. When we ignore God's instruction, we're telling God he's wrong. Make sense? All right. So there's also the issue of violation of the season of our worship. So there are very specific commands in Scripture about when we worship. So, the elephant in the middle of the room is the question of Sabbath. Right? Let's just get it out of the way. According to the Old Testament, the Sabbath is what day of the week? Saturday, it's the seventh day of the week. And it's established from creation principle that Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. God told them, you're gonna honor the Sabbath because on the Sabbath, I rested from my work, not that I was tired, but to give you an example. Okay? What we see in scripture though, is that in the New Testament church, there was a transition from the seventh day worship on the Sabbath to the first day worship to honor the resurrection of the Lord. And what we see throughout the book of Acts and in some of the letters is this change in progress. So, let's just look at a couple of brief scriptures here. Just show you a couple of things that might be helpful. So Acts chapter 20 verse seven, it says, on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread. Now what's this breaking of the bread? It's not a dinner, it's a communion service. There's four or five other places in scripture when we're told that the church met daily, going from house to house, breaking bread, offering prayer, receiving the instruction of the apostles. And so this was an ongoing, continual process. This is how they did church. So by Acts chapter 20, it had slowed down and they were meeting together on the first day of the week to have their church service. So they got together to break bread. Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. There's some good stuff in the rest of that story. I commend it to you. I'm gonna try not to chase the rabbit. Revelation chapter one, verse 10. John is in exile on the island of Patmos, but he himself, though he is alone on the island, is keeping the Lord's day as his primary day of worship. He says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet. That's a pretty remarkable statement that John the Apostle is so committed to this transition that he's keeping it when he's all alone. That's a hard thing to do. If you have ever read the Oh, nevermind, it's gone. Okay, I'm sorry, the title left me and there's no point. So 1 Corinthians 16 verse two, on the first day of the week, let each one of you lay aside something, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come. So Paul's talking about worship, orderly worship, he's talking about a giving, he's talking about a specific offering that's being collected for the other churches, specifically the churches in Jerusalem and Judea that were being persecuted. And he says, when you guys get together for your church service, make sure that you're taking that offering and that you're holding onto it collectively so that when I come, it's not disrupting your services. So this is already established practice. Further, Paul's instructions in Romans 14 give us some indication that there was an ongoing active transformation in the practice of the church. So you had, remember in the early church, you had a church that was divided early on pretty evenly between Jew and Gentile. And so the Jews leaned a little more heavily towards remaining on the Sabbath day worship, whereas the Gentiles didn't have that historical ethnic baggage. And so they were all in on the whole Lord's Day thing. And so there was a little bit of tension, a little bit of conflict. And Paul's speaking to this in Romans chapter 14. And he says, one person esteems one day above another, another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it to the Lord, and he who does not observe the day to the Lord, he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God. And he who does not eat to the Lord, he does not eat and gives God thanks. So he's talking about how we live with the transition gracefully, right? So again, there's this idea underneath this that we're seeing the Christian church move from its Jewish roots to a honoring of the Lord's Day, but bringing with it the Sabbath practices of communal worship. And this is really the key to the whole question. The worship that matters for us in this conversation is a corporate reality within the body. Worship is something that we do collectively as a body. It's not an individual preference. It's not about individual satisfaction. It comes with the responsibility to the body. Each individual comes into the act of corporate worship to give. So let's return to Hebrews, but we're going to move a little forward of where we are and look at Hebrews chapter 10. So Hebrews chapter 10, and we'll start reading at verse 19. Hebrews chapter 10, starting at verse 19. Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as you see the day approaching." So the first thing I want to point out to you is that we come into the holiest place boldly. As a follower of Christ, you have free, unlimited access to the presence of God. You can come into the place where God is. You can step into the throne room of heaven. We did it just a little bit ago. And you can step into the throne room of heaven with full confidence that you will be accepted into the presence of God. Because Christ has paid the penalty. Christ has made the way open. There are no limits set for how often you can come in. How often could anybody go into the presence of God in the Old Testament? once a year, and then only with the blood of the sacrifice, and then only with the big flash of incense that we talked about last week, right? Those limitations do not exist for us as followers of Christ. For Christ has entered into the true holy place of God, and at his death, the temple veil was rent in two from the top to the bottom to grant us access to the presence of God. You say, okay, so what are you ranting about, preacher? Your individual worship does not constitute worship enough. Okay, let me give a little clarity here. If you are able to be in the gathering of the brethren, you are commanded to be in the gathering of the brethren. This is not optional. This is not Christianity 102, this is Christianity 101. Obedience to God to participate in the corporate worship of the gathered body of Christ. We gather not to get, but we gather to give. We gather to give encouragement to one another, we gather to give comfort to one another, we gather to bring the giftedness with which God has given to us, we gather for our mutual love, and we gather to bolster our confession. Because if you're paying attention to the world in which we live, there is never any shortage of people who want to undermine and erode your confession of Christ. They're attacking it at every single quarter. And they are doing it both openly and they are doing it subversively. They're doing it through the music that they play, through the little snide comments that they make. They're doing it through the way that we lean on our ability to be interconnected without belonging. They're doing it in every possible way for us to have little to no contact with one another because, as every pack of wolves know, you can't take a deer out of the middle of the herd. You have to cut one out. You understand? Beloved, together, we are untouchable. We are the body of Christ. We are collectively the bride of Christ. But when you isolate yourself from the corporate body, you leave yourself prey. God calls us to be intentional and earnest and committed to this. And we also need to recognize the underlying truth of all of this, that true worship is always exocentric. Right? Now, this is not something that we hear a lot of these days, because people change from church to church to church because I didn't like what I heard, or I didn't like that person, and I didn't like that group, and I didn't like that people. But ultimately, those are not the right reasons to go. The right reason to go is, I want to go serve God where God is calling me to go serve Him. Right? And when you make that decision, you come to that with an awareness that I am coming to give. I'm coming for the sake of what I'm bringing to them, not only or not even specifically primarily for what I'm receiving. Now I don't want to say this wrong, and it's hard to get this out sometimes, because we all do receive from worship. Amen? We all receive. If we're not receiving, we're getting something wrong. But that can't be your primary reason. Your primary reason is what you bring to the table. Your primary reason is what you give, because worship is always focused on others. It's focused on those who we worship with, and then collectively we focus our attention on God, and it's focused on the other. It's focused on the Holy One. Amen? All right, so a second way, or a third way now, because I've covered the first two, that you can offer wrong or strange fire, is to offer worship to the wrong object. So it means worshiping a false god. So remember the first two commandments that we looked at were the second and the fourth, and they're really big and a lot of expansiveness to them and a lot of explanation for why they matter. This is really talking about the first commandment. And the first commandment is really stark. It says, you will have no other gods before me. That's it. It's really plain. Now this does not mean that you can have other gods that you worship less than God. It doesn't mean before me as in first in line and there's a line behind. It means before me as in in front of me. The Hebrew literal here is before my face. You will set no other gods before my face. In other words, what God is saying is, do not ask me to recognize that there is any God but me, for there is no other God but me. Right? At the heart of the first commandment is the absolute singularity of God. There is no other. There is no other being who is worthy of our worship. There is no other being who is worthy of our praise. There is no other being to whom we can pray. There is no other being to whom we are obligated to give worship. God is God and there is no other. And the use of God's things to worship false things is particularly offensive to him. Turn to Jeremiah chapter seven. Jeremiah chapter seven, God is speaking to the prophet about the people. And we'll start reading at verse 16. This is the word of the Lord to his prophet. He's talked about their offenses and he says, therefore, do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry, nor make intercession to me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger, says the Lord? Do they not provoke themselves to the shame of their own faces? The worship of false gods, and particularly the queen of heaven, provoked God so much that he told Jeremiah not even to pray for them. He stated simply, I will not hear you. And in chapter 44, God takes up the string again with these terrifying words. Verse 27 says, Behold, I will watch over them for adversity and not for good. And all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by famine until there is no end to them. And again, that's specifically in the context of this worship of the queen of heaven. Beloved, I want to say this carefully, and I want to say this gently, but I want to say this clearly. If you have Catholic friends, you need to understand that they give worship to the Queen of Heaven. They have named her Mary, but they call her this. It's one of her titles. She wears a crown in all of their things. You need to recognize that this is not a Christian religion. There may be Christians in it, which baffles my mind, but I'm not going to get off on that. but it is not a Christian religion. It is a religion that worships everything but God and everything but Christ. Beloved, there is no room in Christian worship for the prayers offered to saints, to icons, to Mary, or to human priests. For Christ alone has entered the holiest place, and Christ alone carries our worship to God, and Christ alone shed his blood for our redemption. He had no help, He had no friends. He had no co-anything. He alone is our access to God. And if you doubt this, understand that Jesus himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me. So at the moment that you say there is some other way to get to God except for Jesus, you have ceased being Christian. If you contend that there is some other alternate path, I don't care whether it's Muslim or Islam or Baha'i or Jewishness or just being a good person, you are not Christian in your thinking. If you are contending that there is some other route that will get you to God besides Jesus, you're just calling him a liar. Those are His words. Jesus said, nobody comes to the Father except through me. Period. You cannot honor Christ and call Him a liar. Those things do not coexist. I'm not saying that anybody who thinks this way is a bad person. No worse than I am. We're all bad people. That's why we need a Savior. But I am saying that if you are not clear about this, your thinking is not Christian, and if you are contending that you can get to God in some other way besides what God has prescribed in the person of Jesus Christ, you are not a Christian. I don't care how many times you've been baptized. I don't care how many times you've walked an aisle. I don't care how many prayers you've made. If you think that something besides Jesus is your hope, you are not a Christian, period. And I don't say that to shame you, I say that so that you might cry out to Christ for what only Christ can give. Because this church will not save you and that church will not save you. Only Jesus Christ. This is our hope. And to give our attention and worship to anything but Christ and think that it's a path to God is to call Christ a liar. And worse than that is to call God a fool. Think about this. God was so determined that Jesus was the only way to get to him that he slaughtered him. It's a little excessive if he was wrong, don't you think? I mean, if God wasn't right in that, If we could come up with some other religion that's a little friendlier, a little nicer, a little more sensitive to people's feelings and preferences, and Jesus is just sort of this maybe kind of sort of thing, that sort of says something really big and terrible about the God that we claim to worship. Because God established our access to him the blood of his Son. And that is the only path that he will ever honor. You cannot come to him with anything else. You can only come to God through the blood of Jesus. The last offense I want to speak about with you about strange fire is the act of worship being offered by those who do not belong to God. Now, before I get into this, let me just say plainly that you cannot ever worship until you have been converted. Because your heart is wrong, your object is wrong, your practice is wrong. But the attempt to come into the presence of God, if you are not called His, is not a notable virtue. It is, in fact, something that will harm you. and in the end, it will destroy you. Turn with me to Numbers chapter 16. Numbers chapter 16, and we're gonna look at a couple of sections of this. I'll try to fill in the gaps as effectively as I can as we go through this. Now Korah, the son of Ishar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, on the sons of Peleth, the sons of Reuben, took men, and they rose up before Moses with some of the children of Israel, 250 leaders of the congregation, representatives of the congregation, men of renown. And they gathered against Moses and Aaron, and they said to them, You take too much upon yourselves, for all the congregation is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? So when Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he spoke to Korah and to all of his company, saying, Tomorrow morning the Lord will show who is his and who is holy. And he will cause him to come near him, and the one that he chooses he will cause to come near him. So do this, take censers, Korah and all your company, put fire in them and put incense in them before the Lord tomorrow. And it shall be that the man whom the Lord chooses is the Holy One. You take too much on yourselves, you sons of Levi. Now, skip over to verse 35 of the same chapter. We're going to come to the conclusion of the story. Fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering incense. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Tell Eliezer, the son of Aaron, the priest, to pick up the censers out of the blaze, for they are now holy, and scatter the fire some distance away. The censers of these men who sinned against their own souls, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar, because they presented them before the Lord, therefore they are holy, and they shall be assigned to the children of Israel. So Eleazar the priest took up the bronze censers which those who were burned up had presented, and they were hammered out as a covering on the altar to be a memorial to the children of Israel, that no outsider who is not a descendant of Aaron should come near to offer incense before the Lord, that he might not become like Korah and his companions, just as the Lord had said to him through Moses. So the sons of Korah sought to wrest the right of worship from the line of Aaron. They wanted to take over. They wanted to be the people in front. They wanted to be the people in charge. What were the problems here? Well, first of all, they were not the people that were chosen by God. I want you to pay attention to the fact there's nothing special about Aaron. Aaron was Moses's brother, but that wasn't really the issue. The issue was God chose Aaron. And God said, I chose you, I picked you. And you should see the parallel here because there's nothing special about any of us. God doesn't choose us because there's something cool about us. God doesn't choose us because we're gifted. God doesn't choose us because we're talented. God chooses us because God chooses us. And just as he chose Aaron, so he chooses us. So the problem that the sons of Korah faced first is that they were not chosen by God. They didn't have the heart for God. They were for their own advancement. What was their argument? Aaron, you're making too much of yourself. We're all like you. We're all holy. We want to have what you have, Aaron. Their heart was for themselves. Their heart was for their own advancement. Their heart was for their own things. They also didn't have the right tools. Notice how their sensors are described in the last half of this. What material were they made of? Bronze. What was Aaron's sensor made of? Gold, right? Now this isn't because God is greedy for gold, it's because gold represents purity, gold represents holiness, gold represents that which has already been dedicated to God. So these people were bringing their other things into the mix and saying, ooh, ooh, ooh, look at our things, look at our ways, look at our practices, make us like him, right? So what was, do we see some parallels here for the other things that are going on? Second Commandment, Fourth Commandment, Moses' instruction in Deuteronomy, right? See, this is all really the seed of the same root. This is all exactly the same thing being shown to us in so many ways because we tend to not get the point. They did not know the call of God. What they knew was human pride and arrogance. They knew that they wanted something. And they proclaimed that they had the right to speak for God. But God alone chooses who will approach him, and God alone chooses who will speak to him. In Job chapter 42, verses seven to nine, do you remember what God told Job's friends? Job's friends? I don't want friends like that. They were not very good friends to him. Do you remember what God told them at the end? I'm not gonna read the passage, you can look it up later, but he said to them, you guys have spoken lies about me. You didn't speak truth, Job spoke truth, so I want you to go and offer sacrifices and offer offerings in front of Job, and then Job will pray to me for you, and I'll hear him. It's a remarkable statement in the midst of everything that Job had been through and how much these men hated him in their actions. They pretended to be their friends, but they despised everything he was about. Now, this is not just in the issue of Job or in the issues of Korah. It's also in the issue of sometimes we think that a position entitles us to a privilege, right? And it doesn't. It does not matter whether a man is called to be the pastor of a church. If he's not called of God, he's just a guy. He's just flapping his gums. And there has to be the reality that God is the one who issues the call, and God is the one who has ordained a man to do a job. Because you remember who Uzziah was? Remember King Uzziah? If you come in on Wednesday nights, we went through Uzziah a couple of years ago as we were wandering through the Old Testament at a breakneck speed, which terrified me. But anyway, Uzziah was a king and Uzziah lived about the last 15 years of his life as a king in exile because he got leprosy. You remember why he got leprosy? 2 Chronicles 26 verse 19 says, Then Uzziah became furious, and he had a censer in his hand to burn incense, and while he was angry with the priests, the side note is the verses before said that he was angry with the priests because they wouldn't let him burn the incense to God, leprosy broke out on his forehead before the priests of the house of the Lord beside the incense altar. Uzziah was king. He was not a priest. He did not have the right to burn incense to God. And these priests, at the risk of their own lives, were preventing him from doing what he wanted to do because he was about to kill them for not letting him offer incense to God. He thought that his position gave him a privilege. And God said, nope, it does not. And God struck Uzziah with leprosy, and although he was a good king, I still don't know exactly what went wrong. Uzziah is remembered as a good king. He was a king who faithfully sought God. He was a king who sought to restore the people back to the right worship of God. But he got a little full of himself, and he got a little full of his own position. He got a little full of the things that he thought he wanted. And it cost him. Because in the end, God determines whom he will hear based upon his will and purpose. He hears the godly. You say, well, that sounds kind of strange. Well, he hears the godly. Why? Because he makes us godly. Psalm chapter four, verse three says, know that the Lord has set apart for himself him who is godly. And the Lord will hear when I call to him. You like how he slipped that in there? I know that I belong to the Lord. And I know that I belong to the Lord because the Lord has set me apart. And that's why I'm godly. It's not because I'm good, it's because God has set me apart. And because God has set me apart, I know he hears. He also hears a cry for repentance. 2 Chronicles 7.14 says, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and heal their land. This is something that we as Christians in America need to be remembering and praying all the time. And this isn't that God would turn the wicked, evil pagans away from their sin. That's not what God says here. Remember, he doesn't hear them anyway. He says, if my people, who are called by my name, will turn from their sin, then I'll hear their land. Look, awakening in a nation always begins with revival in the church. And revival in the church is when God's people turn from their sin. It's on us. It's our sin that has gotten this nation into the condition that it is. And God calls us to turn from our sin and to seek his face. In the end, he hears because of Christ, because the intercessor gave his life for his sheep. John 10, 11 says, I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. John 10, 15 says, as the father knows me, even so I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. The good shepherd died for the sake of his people. And this is crucial, because the last offense that we're gonna just deal with and then go is to offer no fire at all. And while offering strange fire might kill you, offering no fire absolutely will. Because the wrath of God against sin cannot be appeased by any work of man. We are ruined from our mother's womb, and all of our works are sin. Psalm 51.5 says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Isaiah 64, 6 says, we all are like an unclean thing, and all of our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Proverbs 21 says, even the plowing of the wicked is sin. And the truth is, is that the holiness of God breaks out against our sin. He must be appeased. This is why God slaughtered his son. because his wrath against our sin has to be appeased with blood. Turn to Isaiah 53, if you would. Isaiah 53, we'll start reading at verse four. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken. smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone into his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, Yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before a shearer's asylum, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and judgment, and who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief when you make his soul an offering for sin. He shall see his seed, and he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. For by his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he will bear their iniquities. Christ Jesus bore the wrath of God for our sin. He drank our portion of hell. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 says that God made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. This is the great exchange of the gospel. This is the reality that God has appeased his own wrath by pouring it out in its completeness upon his Son. Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath. He drank our portion of hell. And in doing so, He offered by His own blood the cloud of incense that protects you from the glory of God, that makes it possible for you to come into His presence, that makes it possible for you to have a relationship with Him, that makes it possible for you to see Him. It is only by the blood of Jesus that we have access to the Father. It is only by crying to Him for mercy, by asking for God's forgiveness, by acknowledging what He has done, by abandoning our attempts to save ourselves and by receiving from Him what He freely offers. It is the glory of God to save a people undeserving. It is the glory of man to pretend that they deserve it. And those two glories are not compatible. God says to us, abandon all of your pretense and come to me with empty hands, crying for mercy, and you will find it in Christ. Why is the gospel so offensive to people? Because it strikes at the heart of their pride that says God should be happy with me, God should receive whatever I give him, and he should be pleased that I chose to give it. And the gospel says no. God calls you to repent and calls you because he wants to, not because you deserve it. Let's pray. Father, I ask that you give to us grace in this day, and I pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes and ears and hearts to the truth of the gospel. God, strip away from us every pretense that exalts us in your face. Strip away from us every effort to make ourselves worthy. Strip away from us every effort to make ourselves clean, and cause us to cry out to you for the mercy that is only found in Christ. God, I pray that you would let your word sink deep into our hearts this day, that you would equip us with the gospel for the sake of the nations, and that you would allow us, God, to examine our own hearts with quiet confidence and rejoice in the fact that we are yours because of you. I pray, Father, that if there's any this day that are here or hearing my voice in some other form who do not know you, that you would even now call them to life, call them to repentance, and save them so that Christ might reign in yet another heart. Father, we ask these things, that Jesus would receive the full reward of all of his suffering, and that every person for whom the Lamb died would be swept into the kingdom. Bring much glory to him, and help us walk in grace. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. you you