Tonight I learned that the Israelites were not allowed to eat Geckos. Its true…geckos were unclean and therefore inappropriate snacking material. This must have been good news for the Geckos, and I am convinced that it was good news to the Israelites as well. My family has two geckos and I have never been tempted to munch on either of them.
That was your pretty much meaningless fact of the night….lucky you!
(Your pretty much meaningless fact came from Leviticus 11)
Your more useful (I hope) fact came from Leviticus 10.
This is the story of God ending the lives of Aaron’s sons because they did not follow his instructions when offering incense before him.
I have to admit…this story made me angry the first zillion times that I read it. This did not sound like the merciful God that I had learned about in Sunday School.
What was this?
As an adult, looking at this passage, I have to admit that it still doesn’t really jive with me…
Where is the G rated God?
The truth is that God has never been G-rated. Since the beginning, he has demanded that his people acknowledge him as God and that they truly honor him.
He gave Aaron’s sons very specific instructions which they chose to ignore.
As a holy God, he could not allow himself to be dishonored…so he had to bring the fire. He had to make his power clear…and two men died
God gave them everything that they needed in order to remain alive, he didn’t set them up to fail. He gave them everything that they needed, but they did not choose to take him seriously…
We serve a holy God who cannot be taken lightly.
Later in the passage God tells Aaron and his remaining sons: “ You must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean”
I believe that God was saying that the Aaron’s sons had treated him as if he were common…when he is not.
In our lives we are very good at forgetting the same thing that Aaron’s son forgot. We forget that we serve a holy God that cannot be taken lightly. We need to PAY ATTENTION to his instructions and not to take him lightly.
We are also very good at treating the common as if it were holy. We turn our own rituals…favorite foods…relationships…leisure…into the holy.
We treat the details of our lives as if they were more important than our walks with God. We act as if our common television shows were more holy than our devotional time with God…
We are wrong.
Fortunately, God has given us a way out, he doesn’t often choose to let fire from heaven loose upon us.
But he does want us to remember that he is Holy…and that he must be treated as a holy God.
That’s all for tonight…thanks for reading my blog. I really appreciate it.
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