So fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. – Leviticus 10:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 8, 2012): Leviticus 10

Our actions carry with them their own consequences. I think sometimes we come running to God because we want to get away from the consequences, but God has never told us that that was an option. He has promised us his grace and strength to get through the tough times and he has given to us freely his forgiveness in the times that we mess up, but he has never said that our actions will be without consequences. It is one of the reasons that we need to pray about big decisions before we act. And we need to be a people that are constantly in the Bible so that God can actively speak back to us. Too often I have had a person come to me to tell me that they were going to do something that was clearly forbidden biblically with the words “in my situation, I think God is okay with it.” And then I have watched them follow through – and crash and burn. It is at that point that they come back to me hoping that God will absolve them from the consequences, and I have to remind them that it just does not work that way. We earn our own consequences – and often we have to suffer through them.

I am currently working on a series of messages slated for the fall that is asking questions about God’s anger. It is easy to read a passage like the one we find in Leviticus 10 and find an angry God. We may even read the author write of God’s anger, but in these instances I am not sure that that is really what is going on. I wonder if this passage, and others like it, is really about the consequences of our actions. It is something that most of us try to train our kids to think about – the fact that consequences exist.

Maybe the big difference between the Biblical texts and today is how often sin resulted in death. But I also wonder if that was maybe just a visual way of making sure that we understood the relationship between our own actions and the consequences that follow them. I am also not sure that we are free from death now. Sometimes I am sure that the sicknesses we suffer through have a lot to do with the way that we have decided to live our lives – our lack of health is just another consequence. I know that we do suffer death because of our sin – it is a spiritual death that threatens to turn is into a kind of spiritual zombies just trying to make it through life one event after another. And spiritual death is not worse than its physical counterpart.

In this verse, it is simply God’s presence that consumes the offenders – and I admittedly like that wording. And I think that we need to understand that coming into God’s presence while actively rejecting him is always a dangerous thing to do. It is also dangerous to enter into his presence out of a sense of routine. Our worship is always something we need to prepare ourselves for. Are you ready?

      

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Leviticus 11