6. “The Danger of Drawing Near to God” (Leviticus 9 and 10)

                                                The Danger of Drawing Near to God

                                                             Leviticus 9:23-10:20

What do you think it will be like to see God face to face?

If you’ve been with us for a while, perhaps you’ll realize this isn’t the first time I’ve asked this question. It’s an important one. Scripture tells us that on the last day, all of us, you and I and everyone else who has ever lived, will be raised from the dead and brought before God’s royal throne.

Have you ever thought about what that will be like? To enter God’s presence and see him, your Creator, face to face? 

In the Bible we see that even brief glimpses of God can be a fearful thing. When God appeared before Israel at Mt. Sinai and spoke to them, the people trembled in terror. When Isaiah found himself appearing before God he wailed, “Woe is me, for I am undone.” 

And yet, paradoxically we also find throughout the Bible an awareness that part of what it means to be human is that we have a deep longing to be near to God. Moses asked the Lord to show him his glory. David writes that he longs for one thing: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord; he says, “my heart says to you, Your face, Lord, do I seek.” The apostle Paul longingly says, “Now we see dimly as in a mirror. One day we will see face to face.” 

Centuries later, commenting on this deeply human desire, the mathematician Pascal wrote, “What is it, then, that this longing and this feeling of helplessness cry out to us, if not that we once enjoyed a true happiness, of which there now remains but an empty trace that we try in vain to fill with everything around us. Yet none of these can provide it, for this infinite abyss cannot be bridged except by God himself.” 

The very thing that is frightening—to be near God, is also what we most deeply long for. And one day, we will experience it: we will see God face to face. What will that be like for you?

Our passage, which really is Leviticus 8-10, picking up from last week is about this very thing—it’s about drawing near to God. It depicts a significant moment in the story of the whole Bible. The great tragedy that sets the biblical narrative into motion is when Adam and Eve, through their sin, fell from the presence of God. Once, they were in the garden, walking with God, seeing him face to face. But by their rebellion, they lost this intimacy, and all of humanity lost this connection to God with them. From that moment onward, God has been at work to enable people to come back and once again be near to him. 

This is how we should understand God’s rescue of his people in Egypt: he did this to bring them back to his presence on Mt. Sinai. This is why he gave Moses instructions for making the tabernacle: so that God could once again dwell with his people in the middle of the camp. 

And, importantly, this is what the ordination of Aaron as high priest is also about. Aaron, a representative of Israel, has been designated to be the new Adam, the human being who on Israel’s behalf could once again draw near to God, who could bring humanity back into God’s presence.

This is why God tells Israel that at the end of this ordination process, “Today, the Lord will appear to you.” Because that’s what this is about: the Lord will appear. You will enter his presence through Aaron being elevated to this holy place.

As we saw last week with Nick, the process began with God telling Moses to call all of the leaders of Israel, representatives from all the clans, to gather in the courtyard of the tabernacle near the entrance to the tent itself, and bear witness. I wonder if for them it might have felt a bit like watching the moon landing did for my parents’ generation. As my Dad tells it, for the span of about a week, it was like the whole nation, maybe the whole world was holding its breath, watching to see what would happen in this dangerous, daring endeavor. What captivated people was more than just curiosity about what the moon was like. Probes had landed on the moon before this. No, what was so riveting about it was that one of us, a human being, was going where we had never gone before.

In the same way, people who came together on that day were gathering to watch one of them go somewhere that they had never gone. 

Because Aaron was one of them. 

He was different from Moses in this regard. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, calling Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, Moses said to God: “Oh Lord, I’m not eloquent.” Moses was kind of a loner. He wasn’t confident in crowds. So God says, “Isn’t Aaron your brother? I know that he can speak well. He can speak for you to the people” Aaron had a kind of charisma; he knew how to connect with people. 

Throughout Israel’s journey, Moses appears kind of unapproachable; he was a man of conviction and vision, but he didn’t make small talk; he didn’t slap people on the back in comradery. That was Aaron’s job—people connected to Aaron. Aaron took what Moses said and helped people to hear it. Aaron is a man of the people. 

And so now it’s Aaron—old Aaron, now in his 80’s, one of them, someone they could have a beer with, who is about to go somewhere extraordinary. 

If there’s any confusion about this connection between Aaron and his people, God ensures that it’s made absolutely clear in his clothing. At the beginning of chapter 8, in the sight of these witnesses, Moses puts on him a special sleeveless robe called an ephod, and on both shoulders are gems with the names of Israel’s tribes. Then Moses puts on top a special breastplate with 12 gems right over Aaron’s heart, and those gems, again, had the names of Israel. He was literally carrying on his shoulders and on his heart the names of his people. Where Aaron went, all of Israel whom he represented also went. 

And where he was about to go was God’s presence. See, the thing that would distinguish the priest from all other important figures in Israel is that the priest belonged to the house of the Lord. He was essentially a house servant, handling the food, guarding the door, symbolically with blood cleaning the house. Among the priests, the high priest was very much like the butler of the divine home. Like Adam at the beginning of time, he lives near God, serving day and night in God’s presence. 

And the ordination process was the way that Aaron and his sons would get there, would be able to, in a sense, return to the garden.  

And like people 60 years ago were glued to their TV sets, similarly all of the leaders watched carefully as old Aaron and his 4 adult sons went through day one of the process with the washing, the clothing, and then all the different offerings being conducted by Moses. At the end of this all the watching crowd were told to go home, but Aaron and his sons were told to wait—to wait there, by the entrance, for 7 days. And the reason they are given is rather ominous. “At the entrance of the tent of meeting you shall remain day and night for seven days, performing what the Lord has charged, so that you do not die.” 

To draw near to God on behalf of God’s people is a glorious thing, but it is also dangerous, requiring extreme care. If Aaron and his sons aren’t careful in following God’s instructions, the results can be fatal. 

And they will be.

For 7 days Aaron and his sons are careful to follow God’s instructions, and at the end of that time, the elders are called back again to watch the culmination of this ordination process. No, having been purified, symbolically faultless in God’s eyes, Aaron and his sons are given their first responsibilities as God’s house servants—conducting sacrifices for the people to atone for their sins.

And so they do. Exactly as God has instructed them, they offer sacrifices first to cleanse themselves and then also to cleanse the people. When it is all done, Aaron lifts up his hands toward the people as the authoritative servant of God and perhaps with a smile, on God’s behalf blesses them. He is telling them that because of the atonement provided by these offerings, they are welcome before God.

And then, the moment everyone has been waiting for happens. Not just Moses, but Aaron, one of the people, one who represents all of them, walks into the tabernacle to come before the face of God: it is as if humanity is ascending into the heavenly realm. A few small steps for Aaron, but a giant leap for all of Israel. 

You can imagine the quiet among all of the crowd waiting, nervously watching to see what will happen when one of them enters the house of God to come before his face. After a while, eventually, Moses and Aaron come out. Aaron immediately turns to the people to proclaim to them what he heard from God himself, “The Lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” The Lord turn his face toward you. 

To show the truth of those words, God himself does exactly what he said he would. He appears. The glory of the Lord appears to all people, and fire from God consumes the offering. Heaven, in a sense, for a moment, has come down to earth. The barrier, at least in part, is removed. For a moment, because of the work of their high priest, the people are brought near to the face of God, welcome in his presence. And so they shout with joy, even as they fall on their faces.

But the story is not over. We stopped at the end of chapter 9 last week, but if you look at 10:12 you see instructions still related to the ordination ceremony and its offerings. The ceremony isn’t even finished.  But before things are wrapped up, something horrible interrupts the celebration taking place in the presence of God. 

Aaron’s oldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, do what they think they should do next. It is the priest’s responsibility to offer incense on the altar of incense that resides in the tabernacle. And so they take some fire—likely starting it themselves with a flint and some kindling—they put some coals in a special pan called a censer, and they get some incense and put it in, and they walk forward, to offer incense before God, symbolizing the prayers of the people before the face of God. 

This seems to be entirely well-intentioned. Nadab and Abihu believed they were serving the Lord. But there is a problem. The fire, we are told, is “unauthorized,” fire that is different from what the Lord had commanded. It’s not exactly clear what this means, but the likeliest interpretation is that the only fire the priests are supposed to use is fire taken from the altar of burn offerings, which is, symbolically, God’s fire. They were supposed to take this holy fire—the fire from the place where atonement had happened, the fire that was from God and with that fire draw near to the altar of incense, which was just in front of the holiest part of the tabernacle. 

But using the divinely sanctioned fire is not what Nahab and Abihu did. Perhaps they forgot God’s instructions or didn’t think it was particularly important. Instead, they brought before God their own fire, fire different from what God commanded.  

And as a result, verse 2, “Fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them…and they died before the Lord.” 

How fast the mood of a crowd can change. Just a few seconds ago everyone had been filled with happy energy; there was singing, awe, joy. The people’s man, Aaron, had entered into the heavens into God’s presence and brought Israel close to God. The words of Aaron’s blessing are still ringing in people’s ears. “The Lord cause his face to shine upon you!” And in this euphoria, without much thought, Aaron’s oldest sons rush to ignite the altar of incense and, suddenly that same fire that devoured the offering blasts them, and in just a blink of an eye, Aaron’s two oldest sons are dead. Everyone goes quiet. And the joy turns to terror. What has just happened?

Moses is immediately given a word from God, and in the silence he speaks to Aaron. “This is what the Lord has said. Among those who are near me, I will be sanctified. And before all the people, I will be glorified.”

Whenever we are shocked by something in the Bible, we need to pause there; because our reaction shows us that there is something we don’t understand—a place where our way of thinking needs to change. So let’s consider these words. “Among those who are NEAR me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.” Paraphrased, “When someone comes close to me, I will ensure that my holiness is clear; among the people, I will ensure that my glory is known.”

God is saying that the death of these two men was necessary so that his holiness would be upheld and the glory of his kingship made clear.

This seems strange to us. But I want for a moment to consider the courtroom. If you’ve ever been in a courtroom, you’ll know that there are certain rules. When the judge enters, the bailiff says, “All rise.” There are only certain ways that a judge is allowed to be addressed: only when a person is given permission to speak, and they must call the judge “your honor.” And no one is allowed to approach the judge’s bench unless they’re given permission. 

Why all these rules? This is not about the judge’s ego; it’s not a power trip. It’s about something bigger, symbolic. The judge represents the entire legal system; how he is treated represents how the government is treated. 

And if someone in the court stands up and just starts speaking, interrupting the process, saying all sorts of bad things against the judge, maybe even trying to draw near to the judge without permission, what happens? The judge’s course of action is clear: he or she must immediately find this person in direct contempt of court. The judge must do this, not because he or she is annoyed, but because, to quote one legal source, such behavior “hampers the court’s functions, tarnishes its reputation, or undermines its authority.” To uphold justice and the authority and reputation of the court, the judge cannot allow contempt to go unaddressed. 

Nadab and Abihu were before the face of God, they were before, not just the judge’s bench, but something far, far greater, before the throne of the Almighty. And whether they realized it or not, in their casualness with God’s instructions, in their failure to do what God said, they were showing contempt. They were failing to uphold the holiness of God, failing to honor God as the glorious king.

This is, in fact, what all sin is: an expression of contempt for the Almighty God. When we who bear his image, demean ourselves and others with our words and behavior, we demean the holiness of God. When we fail to treat God as the one who is above all else and the one we worship, we reject his glorious authority. Sin is contempt. And in the presence of God, before his face, such profaning of God’s holiness, such challenging of his glory cannot and must not stand. The entire order and goodness and beauty of the universe stands upon the holiness and rule of God. 

And this is why Nadab and Abihu could not live.

We find this shocking because you and I simply do not see clearly. Our perception fails to see just how great and holy God is, and because we are so used to sin, we do not see just how contemptuous it is toward him. The reality is that even the smallest sin, even the hint of corruption or decay or death before the face of the eternal, holy, and pure God: these are deeper and graver insults than even the most heinous act of treason that can take place in any human kingdom.  For God to allow sin in his presence would be for him to elevate chaos over order, injustice over righteousness, lies over truth. God cannot and will not look at evil and say, “That’s fine.”   

And so he says, “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified. And before all the people I will be glorified.”

The Bible tells us that one day, all of us, you and I and everyone else who has ever lived, will appear before the face of God. When Christ returns, the dead will rise and all will be brought before the throne of God. 

What will it be like to come before the face of God? Leviticus offers us a complicated picture. On one hand it is a privilege of tremendous joy—it is what we were made for. And what’s more it is something God wants: he earnestly seeks to bless and welcome his people into their home. And yet, it is also a terrifying thing for sinners who have lived with contempt toward God to come before the face of one so holy and glorious. 

Revelation tells us that on the final day, many will try to flee, calling to the mountains, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, for who can stand before his wrath?” Because they know that if Nadab and Abihu could not live, they in their contempt can certainly not stand before the face of God and survive. 

Among those filled with terror will be some who were part of Christian communities such as ours, people who heard the good news of Jesus and yet, tragically, never truly took hold of Jesus. They heard of God’s way of forgiveness and perhaps even took comfort in the idea, but they never truly accepted the way of safety offered them by God. They never embraced Jesus as their King and Savior and High Priest. Scripture warns us very clearly that when people hear about Jesus and yet never choose to entrust themselves to him, for them “there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume God’s adversaries.”

For while the Bible is very clear that God is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, what we see so clearly in the story of Nadab and Abihu is that he is and always has been a consuming fire. Our God has no place for sin or contempt: there is no hope for those who forsake the way that God has provided. 

But as sobering as those words are, we must not let them distract us from something entirely wonderful: God has indeed provided us with a way, a way that allows us to enter into his presence with confidence and joy and without any fear of death. It is a much better way than was available on that day at the tabernacle, because God has provided us with a much greater high priest than Aaron, who in his sin was insufficient to bridge the gap. We have a high priest who is one of us, a man who knows us and identifies with us, and yet also is one with God. 

Like Aaron, Jesus offered sacrifices, but unlike Aaron it wasn’t bulls or goats: he offered his own body on the cross, a perfect and precious sacrifice able to cover all of our sins. Like Aaron, after he offered the sacrifice and rose from the dead, right before leaving this earth, Jesus lifted up his hands and blessed his people, “The Lord bless you and keep you the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face toward you, and give you peace.” And then, having blessed his people, our great high priest who represents us went before the face of God—not, like Aaron through the curtain of an earthly tent, but by ascending into heaven. God received him, the one who carried us on his shoulders and on his heart, God received him with joy, forever. Hebrews tells us: “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.” 

And so, the writer of Hebrews goes on to say: “Now we can have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, for he has opened to us a new and living way. We have a great high priest over the house of God. So let us draw near to God with full assurance.” 

Apart from Jesus, there is no hope for any of us before a holy God. But in Jesus, in our great high priest there is a way that is opened that will never close, a way where we can come to God and see him face to face, welcomed, not just as servants, but as sons and daughters. 

So in Christ, let us draw near now.