I’m tempted to not write about an obvious but difficult lesson from Leviticus 9 and 10. It supports what Annie Dillard said about the church, about which I wrote a year ago:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ― Annie Dillard, “An Expedition to the Pole” from Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)

You don’t believe her? Neither did Nadab and Abihu:

Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings. And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and when they came out they blessed the people, and the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. (Leviticus 9.22 – 10.2, ESV, emphasis mine)

Same fire, same language: “And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering…And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed Nadab and Abihu.”

Consumed. That’s what fire does. In the one case, it was a sign of blessing and acceptance. The fire consumed the burnt offering. In the other case, it was judgment. There were apparently different degrees of error and punishment. At the end of Leviticus 10, Aaron and his surviving sons didn’t eat the sin offering, and that was excused. But offering unauthorized fire was not excused.

For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews. 12.29, ESV)

Holy and awesome is his name! The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111.9, 10, ESV)