[photo from Flickr]
This past summer at my church Marshall Eizenga and I preached through a series called The Bible’s Biggest Losers and a couple of the people I preached about were Nadab and Abihu (kind of sounds like names Disney writers would come up with doesn’t it?). Now these names might be a bit unfamiliar to you. Probably because there isn’t a whole lot said about them in the Bible. Nadab and Abihu were sons of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and the first man to be called High Priest of Israel. What’s interesting about their story is that they were literally burned alive by fire coming out from the presence of the Lord. Well, interesting in a kind of macabre kind of way. What did these two brothers do to deserve this?
1 Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to his command. (Leviticus 10:1 NIV)
Where the NIV translators used the word “unauthorized” to describe the fire, the KJV Bible calls it “strange” fire (hence the title of the message). What was so strange about their fire? In the message I gave three reasons: