Strange Fire

All saved believers are today's New Testament priests to serve God. This is the universality of the priesthood, a blessing that saints of the Old Testament did not have. Nevertheless, in serving the Lord, there is a danger of serving according to our natural goodness, even serving the Lord in the flesh making use of all our natural talents and gifts which comes from God. On the one hand, we all must serve the Lord, yet on the other hand, we must not serve in our natural man, we must serve in the spirit by the Spirit of God according to God's ordination. The source of our service must be God, and the way we serve must be according to God, and the goal of our service must be to the glory of God.

Last week, I was so deeply touched by the prohibitions in serving God. I cannot and must not serve God with strange fire. The fire I use must be from God that came through the altar of burnt offering. Any fire not from God as the source is a strange fire; any service that I render as a priest to God yet not our from God is a strange fire. I cannot serve God with my natural zeal and enthusiasm. I must be burning in spirit, serving the Lord. If not, all my service is a service in the principle of strange fire.

Do not be slothful in zeal, but be burning in spirit, serving the Lord. Romans 12:11

As I prophesied and also gave the conclusion of the message on, The Basis of All Our Priestly Service—the Fire from the Altar of Burnt Offering, one of the burdens I released was on these verses:

And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer, and put fire in them and laid incense on it, and they presented strange fire before Jehovah, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from before Jehovah and consumed them, and they died before Jehovah. Leviticus 10:1-2  

Then Jehovah spoke to Aaron, saying, Drink no wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die; it shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, both to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean; Leviticus 10:8-10  

What struck me most in this portion of the word is God's speaking directly to Aron on the prohibition of strange fire, "Drink no wine or strong drink." This implies that the offering of strange fire has a connection with wine or strong drink. The ministry portion below enlightened me to see clearly the relationship between strange fire and strong drink.

The offering of the strange fire might have been related to the drinking of wine. Right after Nadab and Abihu’s death, God charged the priests not to drink wine [Lev. 10:8-9].…Drinking wine, in the Bible, signifies the over enjoyment of the worldly, natural, or physical, material things. In other words, if we overly enjoy anything of this world, this always makes us drunk. When we are drunk, we are excited and out of control, doing things without regulation. It might have been that the two sons of Aaron were drunk, so they were excited and went beyond themselves to do something without being regulated. This means that they offered strange fire in a presumptuous way. The  offering of strange fire was a sin of presumption. They presumed to do something for God. Actually, that was not a real offering to God but something of their presumption against God’s regulation.

People do presumptuous things because they have overenjoyed something. They are drunk. When the priests are drunk, they lose the discernment of holiness (Lev. 10:10), and they are unable to teach God’s people (v. 11). When we lose our discernment because we are drunk, we are not being regulated; so we surely cannot teach others so that they can be regulated. (CWWL,1979,vol. 2, “Basic Lessons on Service,”pp. 106-109)

The Lord's speaking was so timely; for me and also for the saints in the local church in Gurugram. This message also enlightened our understanding of the word of God through the help of the ministry of the word. Besides, our experiences confirmed the point of truth. Praise the Lord for the ministry of the word!

Lord, save me from offering any strange fire. Lord, save me also from wine and strong drink. Lord, may my priestly service to You be according to your divine ordination.