Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 10-12.

Aaron’s sons had just seen the glory of the Lord appear in the Temple and fire come out from it to consume the burnt offering and other offering pieces on the altar.  Yet, two of them used fire from other sources to burn incense in their censers, contrary to what God’s command for the incense to be burned in the censer using coals taken from the altar.  Now, what makes this interesting to me is that God’s command regarding the fire for incense burning was not recorded in any of the passages we have read so far this year.  One explanation for the death of Aaron’s two sons here is that they should not have burned incense in the censers until they had proper instructions from God.  The second is that the command had been previously given by God (perhaps along with the instructions for the incense altar), but not placed in the account being given by those composing this for one reason or another.  Either of these explanations have useful lessons we can learn from them.  The first one teaches us not to get out ahead of God’s instructions in our desire to worship and serve Him.  The second one teaches us that we should take God’s commands seriously, that the consequences for failing to do so can be deadly.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.