The LORD said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud over the atonement cover. – Leviticus 16:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 14, 2012): Leviticus 16

A few years ago I was caught out on a golf course at the beginning of an intense thunderstorm. We had seen the storm in the distance as we made our way through the back nine of the course, but on the sixteenth hole all in a sudden it seemed that the storm was upon us and lightning was everywhere. And we knew that the prudent thing was to make our way to the clubhouse as quickly as possible. But that meant traversing the dangers of a golf course in the midst of that kind of a storm. One of my friends walked up beside me and asked if I was preaching the next day. It just so happened that I was and so his response was – then I am going to stick close to you because God will not let the lightning hit you. It was a bit of good natured fun, but it might also have hidden a dangerous belief – that maybe we know the mind of God and that we have some sort of power over him.

If there was a coroner’s report on the death of Aaron’s sons the cause of death might have been listed as offering of strange fire before the Lord. But the truth is that the problem was a lot deeper than just that. It was not just the act of offering fire that was not of God inside the tabernacle, it was the pride of presumption that because they were the priests that they had a measure of control over God and could do whatever it was that they wanted to do in the tabernacle. They seem to have believed that they formed a privileged class inside of the nation of Israel. And they would pay the price for the false belief.

So God responds to Aaron by putting limits on his access to God.  There could be no room for pride here. He would be allowed into the Most Holy Place only when the tabernacle was set to be moved (and at that time God would remove his presence from that place) and on the Day of Atonement when he would enter the Holy of Holies and make sacrifices for the sin of the  nation of Israel. At all other times he would have no more rights to the place of God than the average citizen of Israel. There would be no room for pride or presumption.

Of course, when Jesus dies on the cross, the Scripture says that the curtain that divided the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn. In that moment, all of us were given access to the Most Holy Place of God. But there would still be no room for pride or presumption. With God the rule seems to be everyone or no one – there are very few in betweens. And the danger is that if we forget that, we begin to act like the sons of Aaron, believing that our position with God gives us a measure of control. And to that belief, God responds by bring death – both physical and emotional/spiritual.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Leviticus 17