What did they do wrong?

THE SIN OF TWO PRIESTLY BROTHERS
(and the Non-Sin of their Two Brothers)

During a TV interview a missionary was asked what five books of the Bible would he take with him to that proverbial island, should he be marooned there. His answer was, “Well, Leviticus certainly wouldn’t be one of them.” This put-down of one of “the five books of Moses” led me to look into it more carefully and see if it would be all that useless should one be left with it on that lonely island. With George Knight’s Leviticus at my side I have been making my way through this neglected part of the Bible. I am impressed with all the goodies and I am persuaded that one would do well to linger with the great truths of this book, whether on an island or not.

If you were brought up among Churches of Christ, there is one story in Leviticus that you have heard again and again. It may in fact be the only thing you know about that book. It is the story of Nadab and Abihu, the priestly sons of Aaron, who committed such a grievous sin that “there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord” (Lev. 10:2). There may be some ambiguity as to precisely what it was that the priestly brothers did that caused such heavenly wrath to come upon them. The KJV tells it this way: “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” (verse 1).

Ambiguity or not, our folk through the years have found in this story an incontrovertible argument against instrumental music. The young priests took “strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not,” which is the case with instrumental music. It is “strange” music since it is not authorized in the New Testament, and God has not commanded it, not at least for the New Testament church. The implication is clear enough. Those who elect to us an instrument incur the wrath of God, and if judgment does not come as speedily as it did on Nadab and Abihu, there is no question but what it will come in the last day.

This is a classic example of how we have allowed ourselves to treat (or maltreat) the Scriptures, and it illustrates how our interpretation of the Bible is responsible for many of our problems.

Without getting deeper into the story, it should be apparent to us that we are guilty of what might be called “accommodative interpretation” in that we apply to others what we do not apply to ourselves. Is everything that is “strange” to the New Testament church therefore sinful, whether tuningforks, hymnals, baptisteries, shaped notes, communion cups, Sunday Schools, etc., etc.? Is it not indeed “strange” that a people can erect multi-million dollar edifices (amidst a starving world) and yet insist that the use of a piano is sinful since it is something the Lord has not commanded. Are we therefore to conclude that God has commanded luxurious buildings? One of our new edifices in Lubbock has been likened to a Hyatt Regency hotel, including a glass elevator! Why is this not offering something to the Lord “that he commanded not”?

It shows that we are very human and sinful in that we find good reasons (not always the real reasons) for doing what we want to do, and yet we are not so gracious to others when they choose to do what they want to do. Churches of Christ can be and are very modern without instrumental music, and we don’t worry too much about how “strange” we would appear to the primitive church or whether God has “commanded” our modernity. We only apply that logic when someone else practices something that we don’t want or don’t need. We thus have a way of redefining terms: a heretic is one who practices what we object to; an anti is one who objects to what we practice.

Still without getting into the nature of the sin of Nadab and Abihu, a reading of Lev. 10 will reveal that Aaron had two other sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, who also sinned, or so it seems, arousing the anger of Moses, but the response of both heaven and earth is very different than in the case of Nadab and Abihu.

The surviving brothers, also priests, were to eat the flesh of the goat they had sacrificed for the sins of the people, but they burned it instead (Lev. 10:16). Moses was angry over this infraction of the law, and rebuked them: “Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it to you to bear the iniquity of’ the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord.” He goes on to tell them that they should have eaten the sacrifice “as I commanded you” (verse 18).

Aaron explains to Moses why the young priests did as they did, and verse 20 says, “And when Moses heard that, he was content.” There was no fire from heaven, no wrath from God, and Moses was satisfied, even though there had been an infraction of the law.

While verse 19 gives Aaron’s explanation, one cannot be certain what it was, but it appears to say something like this: due to what has happened today to their brothers, Eleazar and Ithamar (and also Aaron) felt that they should offer the sacrifice for their own sins, for it was hardly a time for eating; “if I had eaten,” Aaron explains, “would it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord.”

There is something very noble here that one hardly expects in a code of law. The surviving brothers had suffered a frightening experience in seeing their own kith and kin destroyed by fire from heaven. Now that it was their turn to go to the altar to make a sacrifice, it seemed inappropriate for them to claim part of the meat for their wages, even if the law prescribed this. Sensitive as they were of their own sins and unworthiness, they offered all the sacrifice upon the altar, making no demands for their priestly service.

When Moses saw what they had done, he was angry, for they had not followed his instructions, which of course were the instructions of God. But when he saw that they had acted out of the sensitivity of their hearts rather than a lack of sensitivity, he was satisfied that they had done the right thing - even though it was legally wrong!

Now why haven’t we heard more about the other sons of Aaron, good old Eleazar and Ithamar, who like their brothers, Nadab and Abihu, transgressed the law, but were justified in doing so? Why is it always Nadab and Abihu and the judgment of fire?

Here we have the key to understanding the sin of the first two priestly brothers: their hearts were not right before God. Theirs was a presumptuous sin, for they believed that they knew better than God and Moses how a sacrifice should be offered. They knew very well that the “holy fire” that burned at the altar continually was the source for all the fire to be used in making a sacrifice. Still they took their pans, turned away from the fire that burned at the altar, and took fire from some place beyond the sacred precincts. They then sprinkled incense upon this “strange” fire, which was to go up to the nostrils of God as an acted prayer.

They were saying in effect: our fire is as good as yours and we are going to do as we please. It was a high-handed sin, and God did not tolerate it. Fire came forth from the presence of God and consumed them.

Why would priests trained in the ritual do such a thing? Why do men lie, cheat, steal, and fornicate? It is rebellion against the holiness of God. Sinful man is always saying, Don’t tell me what to do or how to live, for I will do as I please. This was the attitude of Nadab and Abihu, and this explains why they acted as they did.

The infraction of their two brothers was motivated by the very opposite of this. Smitten as they were by the holiness and wrath of God, they could not bring themselves to eat and satisfy themselves at such a time, even if this is what the law prescribed. Moses understood and his anger subsided when he saw it was from an obedient heart that they had acted rather than a rebellious heart.

Now don’t you agree that we should lay the story of Nadab and Abihu to rest and forget it as an argument against instrumental music? It is an indignity to ourselves to treat the Bible in any such way. A church may choose to use an instrument, not after the rebellious spirit of a Nadab and Abihu, but with the sensitivity for God’s majesty of an Eleazar and Ithamar. We must watch ourselves lest we point to the wrong two sons of poor Aaron! A person may use a piano for the same reason we use a hymnal or four-part harmony, not after the order of Aaron’s rebellious sons but his obedient ones.

This is not to say that the sin of Nadab and Abihu is not very much with us today. In fact it is more and more evident in the consumerism, secularism, and humanism of both the church and the world. Whenever we turn from the will of God for our lives and are bent upon doing our own thing in our own way, and let the fear of God be hanged, we are following in the way of Aaron’s foolish sons.

But when we stand with hat in hand, smitten by the sins of the world and awed by the magnanimity of God, we are more like Aaron’s other two sons - even when we fail to dot every I and cross every T. —the Editor

Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them the dictates of conscience. Nor does divine Providence deny the help necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but strive to live a good life, thanks to his grace.—Documents of Vatican II