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No, we are going to the Old Testament
In fact, we're going all the way back to the book of Leviticus
today so you see just how big of a Contrast that is between
what I just said and the sermon itself there, but that's alright.
We're gonna get through this. Amen So Leviticus chapter number
10, we're gonna read the first couple of verses. There's a thought
here that I wanna share with y'all. I got the privilege of
sharing this at Pacific Garden Mission back in July, and I just
felt like it'd be good to share it with you here today as well.
So I hope it'll be a blessing and encouragement for you today.
So Leviticus chapter number 10, verses one and two, the Bible
says this. and Nadab and Abihu, the sons
of Aaron. Okay, sounds like we're starting
off pretty good. We're talking about the sons of Aaron here. Aaron,
the first high priest for Israel, okay, took either of them his
censer, okay, he's got, you know, those old time lamps there, you
know, you get the, you know, like the Aladdin's lamp type
deal there. Okay, well, they got the censers, looks like they're
gonna do some work. All right, and put fire therein. Okay, hey, hey, those lamps ain't
no good if they ain't got no fire. This is sounding really
good, really good. and put incense there on. Okay,
yeah, you gotta have fuel for that fire. Yeah, the incense,
that's what you need. Incense, the type of prayers.
This is looking great. And offered. Yes, praise God,
they're offering up to God. This is awesome. Strange fire
before the Lord, which he commanded them not. Uh-oh, Houston, we
got a problem. In fact, verse 2 says, and there
went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died
before the Lord. I want to preach here real quickly
on this thought of strange fire. Our most gracious Father in heaven,
we thank you Lord for all you've done for us. And this is certainly
a subject that each one of us, and I suppose it actually does
go back to what I was saying about Paul and Silas that are
in jail. We ain't doing it right. We ain't doing it your way. We
are trying to do it with unconfessed sins. Whatever the case is, we're
offering strange fire. And you judge strange fire. Because it is not your holy fire. It's not regulated fire. Or regulation
fire, I should say. So Lord, help us please, please,
please, please to get our acts together. To do as you would
have for us to do. Because we want to do right. Yes indeed, we surely want to
do right. So help us, Father, please. And
I pray, Father, that if there's someone, somewhere in the sound
of my voice, that does not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
that somehow, through this sermon, they'll see, hey, wait a minute,
I'm living a life of strange fire. I need to get saved. And they'll act upon it, please.
Help us now, Father, because only You can. In the glorious,
wonderful name of our precious Savior and High Priest, Jesus
Christ, we ask You, Father, Amen and Amen. Strange fire is essentially fire
that does not come from the approved, original source. Men generally
don't care. Me have fire. Good enough for
me. I can cook with fire. I can shape
metal with fire. I can keep warm with fire. I don't care where fire came
from, whether me striking two stones together, or lightning
come from sky and strike wood. Me good. But when it comes to God, though,
And the Bible describes him as a consuming fire. You see many
places he talks about his wrath and comparing it to fire, the
book of Nahum. You see God's fiery wrath coming
down upon them. But fire also cleanses too, because
fire is what melts the gold and separates the gold from the dross.
God wants the right fire. Offering strange fire, it's simply
going to cost you a lot, quite possibly everything. That's what
happened here with Nadab and Abihu. It cost them everything
to offer the wrong kind of fire before a holy and righteous God. It's gotta be done the right
way. And there are instances even with man that we recognize
that we've got to have the right fire. recently here in 2024,
the Summer Olympics took place. And I got to thinking about the
tradition that goes back several decades with the Olympics. And
what they do is they start with the cauldron there in Greece,
because Greece is who created the first Olympics and all that.
They start with the cauldron there in Greece, they light the
fire there. And then they will have runners
take a torch and they will pass this torch. They'll run for a
certain distance, pass the torch to the next guy, and that person
will run to the next person and pass the torch, so on and so
forth there. And they will run it all the way, one way or the
other, until they finally get to the city that is hosting the
Olympics, whether it's the summer or the winter, either way. And
once they arrive at that new Olympic Stadium, they will take
that torch and they will go up to that cauldron there at the
new Olympic Stadium, and they will light that cauldron on fire,
symbolizing the opening of that season's Olympic Games. Well,
as I was doing a little bit of studying there on the Olympic
flames, I found that there was one time they had a bit of an
issue. You see, there's rules in regards to that fire. If the
fire goes out, they actually have a van or some other form
of storage nearby that has other authorized Olympic torches inside
of there with a flame present that they took from off of that
cauldron there in Greece and they keep it safe in there so
if the torch ever goes out they can relight it with one of these
other torches or just swap out the torch altogether so that
same Olympic fire that began in Greece continues through to
the Olympic City. But one time, I believe it was
back in the late 70s, the flame at the cauldron had been lit,
and everything's going great, but that particular venue, this
one day, they weren't having any events there. They were spread
out at other sites. And the fire in that Olympic
cauldron went out. And as such, it's not burning. The fire had gone out. Well,
there was a plumber nearby who realized that the fire had gone
out. And what he did was he pulled out his trusty lighter and he
went up and he just reignited the flame. Hey, it's all good
in the hood. The fire is going yet again. A couple hours later, the Olympic
officials were told about what happened, and they immediately
ordered the extinguishing, I'll get out in a moment, of that
fire. It was strange fire. It had not been lit by the fire
from the cauldron all the way back there in Greece. So what
they did was they had They still had the torch with the fire off
to the side secured so it doesn't go out. They took one of those
torches there after they had extinguished this fire and they
brought the torch with the official Olympic flame on it and used
it to reignite the fire there in that cauldron. Because for
their ceremonies, okay, human ceremonies, They wanted the real
thing! Church, why is it we don't want
the real thing with God and His fire? Did you know that when
John the Baptist was preaching, he promised that the Messiah
was going to come and do two things for all those he would
save? He would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire! Yeah! Go ahead, look it up there
in Matthew. It'll show you with fire. You and I, we need that real
fire from God. His regulation approved official
fire from God in our lives. Because if we ain't got it, we're
just a bunch of pretenders going on out there. We're just a bunch
of hypocrites. We're no better than the scribes
and Pharisees that Jesus complained about. Because we're playing
a part. But we might be saved, but we're
not actually doing right. I mean, Nadab and Abihu were
Israelites. Heck, they were Levites. You
know what? Even further, they were the two
oldest sons of Aaron. One of them, Nadab, was meant
to be the next high priest after dear old dad died. Abihu was
the spare, just in case something happened to Nadab. Well, something
happened to both of them. Because they offered strange
fire. And I want to look at this subject
here real quickly. I want to look at these boys here. And
just for clarity, I'll throw this out there. All of my points
will begin with the letter R. So if you're taking notes, you
know what to go with. But number one, they got in a
hurry and rushed. Yeah, yeah. And Nadab and Abihu,
the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer and put fire
therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before
the Lord, which he commanded them not. At what point does
God say, hey, you two, I need you to go and offer fire? I need
you to actually go out there, get you each a censer, put some
incense in there, and start burning it. Where does God tell them
specifically to do it? Answer, he doesn't. They were
rushing. Yeah. I don't know why. I don't. You don't know why. No one knows
why but these two and God. That's it. As to why they rushed. But they couldn't wait to get
the authorized flame from God off the altar. They went ahead
and did it themselves. I don't know. One of them pulled
out their Zippo lighter. They banged rocks together. Hey, lightning
struck over there and fire started. Obviously that's what God, the
source that God wants us to use. I don't know what it is that
caused them to do it. And I don't know what causes
you and I to do the exact same thing in our lives. We get ahead
of God all the time. Oh, this is what God would have
me do. And I got to run and hurry up and do it. Now don't misunderstand. There are times when God's telling
us to do something. We need to do it. Don't put it off. But until God tells us to do
it, don't be rushing to do it. Okay? But that's what these guys
did. Became a rush job to them. Gotta
hurry up, gotta get it done. They said there's no time to
do the right thing now. We need to do the thing now. Excuse me. Now maybe they'd have
been okay if they'd have just waited a couple more minutes
and went out there and actually got the right stuff. Excuse me. But whatever it is, they decided
they needed to take a shortcut. Shortcuts, they can be useful,
but not when it comes to dealing with eternity, folks. I understand
there are things that, you know, we just feel that we've just
got to absolutely do. But if it's not God's plan, God's
way, in God's time, we're trying to rush God. I mean, yeah, we
certainly would love for God to do things in our time. Oh
man, so many things. But instead, nah, I got to rush
it. Sometimes we just offer up a
really quick prayer. God, would it be for your will
for me to do this? Okay, good enough for me. Obviously,
I had the thought, so that's God telling me, yes, if we go
and do it. I remember years ago, I was preaching at a church,
and somehow or other... This is a guy, I think, I got
to talking about cars, and the reason we have some of these
problems with these cars is because we ain't stopped and actually
took the time to pray about it and wait for God to direct us
to the right car. The one he wants for us to have,
if we actually need a car. Had a couple come up to me after
service. How in the world did you know? What are you talking
about? We've had nothing but problems with our car since we
bought it six months ago. We didn't pray about it. We said
this is a car we like and we bought it. The worst part was
he was a mechanic. But sometimes we rush. Preachers will rush too. Don't
let anyone ever out there tell you that we don't mess up. Preachers
don't get in too big of a hurry at times. We do. We're just as
human. We're just as fallible as the
next person. But let's try not to be Nadab
and Abihu. Cause that's, yeah, that's a
problem. Let's not offer up that strange
fire, cause we're rushed. You know what else? Aside from
them rushing, they thought it was their right. Yeah. They are
the sons of Aaron, the two oldest. Dear old dad is the current high
priest here in Israel according to the divine. Therefore, it's
our right to do as we wish. And quite frankly, we can do
whatever we want. That's always nothing but problems
when we decide we can do whatever we want because it's our right.
And they felt they can do it whenever they wanted to. Yeah, getting away from God's
time, God's way, God's plan. Kind of like how, and I'm not
preaching against anyone specifically here, but people will say my body,
my choice. Genetically speaking, that's
not your body. It has its own genetic code,
that little baby growing in there. You had your choice. You made
your choice. You ended up where you are. And you know what the fascinating
part I found out about that was? When COVID hit. And suddenly
it was no longer my body, my choice. Now it was, you must
mask up. You must get these inoculations. You must get the COVID vaccine. You must, you must, you must.
You must remain six feet away. You must do this. You must do
that. You must not go to church. It's okay for you to go to Walmart.
You can't go to church. Remember all those musts? The right suddenly
went out the window because someone decided it was
their right to dictate everything. Now I'm not bashing against the
COVID stuff either. I'm just saying. We need to be careful. We need
to be certain about what is our right. Okay? A lot of people think,
well, hey, I live here in America. I have rights. Yeah, you've got
rights. You have certain unalienable
rights. Doesn't mean they're right with
God. Here's an example for you. I
heard of a pastor. He went up into Canada and he
started preaching and he started preaching against homosexuality.
He got arrested. Went before the judge and the
judge told him, Sir, you are no longer in the United States.
You are here in Canada. You do not have First Amendment
rights to say whatever you want. He got in a lot of trouble. Now,
put that to the side and understand this. God looks down at us and says,
you may think it's your right to do this, that, or the other,
whenever you want, with whomever you want, with whatever you want,
but do you have the right with me? And the only way you've got
the right with God is if you are right with God in what you're
doing, how you are doing it, and when you are doing it. Otherwise,
it's strange fire to Him. If it's strange fire, by the
way, just to let you know, in case you did not understand from
our text here, where it said in verse 2, and there went out
fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the
Lord. Yeah. He did not approve. And there
were consequences. We can very easily have consequences
too for acting upon what we think is our right, but it's not His
will. Strange fire is also radiant. The word radiant means that it
looks just as good. Honestly, fire is fire. You're
looking at, I understand there's electrical fires, there's grease
fires, there's wood fires, there's coal fires. I get all that, okay? But when I'm looking at fire,
I couldn't tell you, okay, this one came from off of my stove
versus this fire coming off from my neighbor's hot water heater,
okay? I couldn't tell you. They look
like flames to me. They both radiate light. They
both have certain colors to them. It's good. It glows. It's showy. It gets attention here. And for these two guys, Nadab
and Abihu, it showed how important they
are. And who doesn't like to feel
that way, feel important? Guilty. Get the big head occasionally. Not just the bald head, but the
big head. Or sitting there like, hey, yeah, I'm all that and a
bag of chips. I am the man or I am the woman,
whatever the case may be there. Remember Brandon Morris, years
ago he testified that He got the big head once, and he started
going around telling people, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm booking
meetings with my pastor, Larry Brown. Both of them gone home
to be with the Lord now. But Brandon, if he was still
here, he'd tell you, booking meetings with my pastor, and
he got up there to preach this one time, and he started stuttering
and stammering, couldn't get nothing out as he's trying to
tell people where to turn in the Bibles. Then he said he got
the big idea, he was gonna sing a song and he, oh man, he absolutely
butchered the first couple of words and all of a sudden his
pastor got up and told him to sit down. As he was radiating
a strange fire. He had let it get to him, he'd
let his ego get out of control. And what happened? He got put
down for it. been there, done that, still
got the t-shirt that don't fit. In fact, I've been there many
times. Oh, the stories I could tell
you about letting my ego get out of control. But church, if
what we are radiating is not God, If what we are radiating
is our self, is our cause, is our thing that we're trying to
show off here, then it is strange fire to God. It's like taking
and going out to your favorite restaurant. Money is no option,
or no object, because you've got a pocket full of $100 bills.
You could barely pull it out of your pocket. It is monster-sized
wad of $100 bills. and you take all of your friends
out to go pay, to eat this food, and you're gonna go pay, and
you got that wad of $100 bills, you start counting them out,
okay? This pays the bill, here's a $100 tip for my server, and
everything looks good in the hood, except for the fact that
every last one of those $100 bills is counterfeit! It's fake! And the restaurant catches it. Yeah. You may have been radiating
that you had it made in the shade. You may have been radiating that
you were rich as can be. But you broke. And you can take that same wad
of counterfeit hundred dollar bills and in your ignorance throw
them in the offering plate there at church. Oh, praise the Lord. He allowed me the blessing to
go and bless that church with $10,000, all $100 bills. I even put in a nice envelope
there. They are all facing the same
way. I even put them in sequential
order. Boom, right there in the offering
plate for them. But every last one of them is
counterfeit. Guess what? It don't mean nothing. Yeah. Don't mean anything. They're
fake. Someone will find them. And it'll
be an embarrassment. Are we radiating God? Or are
we radiating strange fire that is obviously not of God? Yeah. Had a problem on our end, if
that's the case. Let me just say also that this
Strange fire is by nature radioactive. In their case, for Nadab and
Abihu, it was very quickly eating away at their lives. These boys,
they struck that fire onto their sensors there, and they had no
idea they had mere minutes left to live, if they even had minutes
at that point in time. They were dying. Nuclear bomb
just went off in their face. They are about to die It ultimately killed them And given how they chose to go
out it seems Quite frankly because they had to do things their way
with their material I would say it would be fair to say they
didn't have actual faith in God to supply the need. Because we need God to supply
our need. I don't care how much money you got. I don't care how
much you got in the bank. I don't care how easy access
you got to the materials you need. If God ain't supplying
that need, then it's strange fire and it ain't gonna be proper. You can stone me for that later,
that's fine. I know a lot of people, they've
spent hundreds and thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars
to build things, and God ain't in any of it. And it might still
last to this day, but it ain't of God. I really believe those two boys
end up splitting hell wide open. That's me, I could easily get
to heaven and be proven wrong, but that's what I think. And
there are times that our lives, we're gonna find that they're
gonna be hampered. Everything that can go wrong is going to
definitely go wrong. But you know it tends to be that
God in those situations, He's actually trying to get our attention.
And all we're doing is we're letting the radioactivity of
this strange fire eat away at us. And God's trying to say,
look I don't want you to be destroyed by this. Stop it. Please let
me help you to get away from this problem that is going to
destroy you. Because your life could easily
end up being cut short. Their lives certainly were cut
short. I don't read where these guys were old men. Men, yes. Old, no. Aaron and Moses were
old. These guys, no. Not everyone who dies young is
living in sin. We should keep that in mind.
And not everybody who lives to be an old man or woman is living
for God. We should keep that in mind as
well. But we need to keep in mind that 1 John 5, 16 says that
there is a sin unto death. A line. Not in the sand, but
a line in concrete, titanium, whatever. It's something that's
not going to be changed. that we could potentially cross
with our strange fire and God's gonna say, that's your final
step, I'm taking you out. We don't want that church. Flee
the strange fire. Get to the regulation fire. Because that's the type of fire
we need. We need regulation fire. Regulation means that it's been
approved. This is the right thing. This is official. This is what
you need. So how do I get it, preacher?
How do I get regulation fire in my life? Well, number one,
if you are not saved, you need to put your faith and trust in
Jesus Christ, that only He can save you. If you will believe
that He can save you, you've taken that first step. The second
step is simply this, ask Him to save you. Yeah, it's that
easy. Like I said, John the Baptist
said, the one coming after him is gonna baptize you with the
Holy Spirit and with fire. That's how you get the fire in
your life. Oh, and by the way, even if you've been out of church
for decades, okay, you got saved when you were a child, and now
you're an 80-year-old person, and you haven't been in church
for the last 70 years, the fire may look like it is out. You
can't see that glow unless you get really, really, really close
to it. But guess what? It's still there, and it can
be rekindled! You gotta get back to Jesus.
So step 1, believe in Jesus. Step 2, ask Him to save you.
Step 3, get in the book. Read it. Memorize it. Study! Paul said in 2 Timothy 2.15,
Study to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth
not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Study the
Bible. Start fellowshipping with other
believers who are reading their Bibles, who are praying, who
are attending church. Don't forget you also have to
attend church. Garage Baptist is just that, it's supplemental
material. Be sure you are in an actual physical church, if
you are able to get out of the house. Get there and fellowship
with these people and learn together why we got Sunday school now
So that we can help each other to grow to learn this stuff about
the Bible here Why we listen to excuse me the preacher preach
is because we're trying to get as much of the Bible into our
lives as possible Because this is what we need. Bible basic
instructions before leaving earth. B-I-B-L-E. This is the road map
that God has given us. Everything about life is contained
within these pages right here. If we will just simply take and
come to Him. The source of that fire that
we need in our lives. Get some. Hebrews 10.25 says,
Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the
manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the
more, as ye see the day approaching. In other words, don't drift away,
church. Come together right now. This is Sunday morning. A little
after 5.30 on a Sunday morning, Central Standard Time. Church
doors are probably going to be opening in about four hours or
so. for Sunday school. Be on time for Sunday school.
Give your pastor a heart attack just by seeing you there on time
for Sunday school. Church starts at 11 o'clock usually. Be there for it. Hey, there's
a Sunday night service still going on. I know a lot of churches
have gotten away from Sunday nights, but if there's still
a Sunday night, be there if you can. Midweek service, be there. Revival meeting, be there. Oh,
here's a strange one for you. You hear another church is having
a revival? Don't just say, good for them. Go. You need that revival meeting
too. What ain't my church? I don't care. They're preaching
the gospel. They're preaching from the word
of God. Show up there. You need all the help you can
get. Why wouldn't you say I need all the help I can get? Because
like they say, you need Jesus just to go to Walmart, let alone
go to heaven. You go to Walmart, it's going
to take a lot out of you, spiritually. You go to your job, it's going
to take a lot out of you, spiritually. You go to school, it's going
to take a lot out of you, spiritually. Everything about this world is
trying to get you to operate with a strange fire. You need
as much of the regular fire as you can get in your lives, and
you're only going to get that by getting with God! Are you willing? Are you willing to go get that
regulation fire from God, or do you just want to settle for
the bad stuff? That's the question today, church.
Do you want regulation fire or strange fire? It's up to you. Our most gracious
Father in heaven, we thank you, Lord, for all you've done for
us. Lord, this is the sermon you have for us to bring to your
people today. Help and pray, Father, that everyone there in
the sound of my voice heard what they needed to hear, and that
they be willing, willing, and then follow through on getting
what they need from You, to getting to the good stuff. to getting
where our hope is. And let that regulation fire
into our lives and let it burn off the dross that has accumulated. Whether it be over the past few
minutes, the past few hours, the past few days, weeks, months,
years, whatever the case is. Because you're not only a consuming
fire, but you are a purifying fire. And you can help us. You WANT,
on top of that, you WANT to help us. And we're begging you Father
for that help please. In the glorious name of Jesus
Christ we do pray, Amen.
Strange fire
Strange fire is any fire that does not come from the approved, original source. While man generally doesn't care about this God has a much different view of it. Here we see that Nadab and Abihu didn't care and set out to perform a role they wanted without God's consent and it cost them everything. Disobedience to and disdain for God's will will always cost us dearly.
| Sermon ID | 125241652242129 |
| Duration | 34:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Leviticus 10:1-2 |
| Language | English |
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