Are You Offering Strange Fire on the Altar of Your Life?

Leviticus 10:1-3

The Sin of Nadab and Abihu

¹ Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. ² And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. ³ Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the LORD spoke, saying,

‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy,
And before all the people I will be honored.’”

So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

We could learn so much from the mistake of Aaron’s sons.  Much of what is practiced today, the holding of God’s hand along with the holding on to the traditions of men, is akin to offering strange fire unto the LORD.  Verse three clearly says that “those” who come near Him, “will” treat Him as holy.  So I ask: is it treating Him as holy to deny the very feasts He has given His people and replace them with pagan ones?  The feasts that are celebrated in the modern church are strange fire to the LORD.

I think a common mistake is the misunderstanding in the church of the significance of the altar.  For it is the altar that makes the sacrifice holy, not the sacrifice.  So let’s look at what an altar means in Scripture and then we can see that our very lives are an altar or memorial set up to the YHVH and we should not be offering strange fire on it.  I am taken aback by the fact that one would even have to address this subject with true believers, but the veil has been lifted from my eyes and now I see that I am one of few when I once thought I was one of many.

THE ALTAR

Genesis 8:19-21

¹⁹ Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by their families from the ark.

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹ The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.

Psalm 24:1-3

¹ The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains,
The world, and those who dwell in it.
² For He has founded it upon the seas
And established it upon the rivers.
³ Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD?
And who may stand in His holy place?

Noah immediately builds an altar and offers sacrifices to Elohim because the altar is God’s calling card that this place is Mine.

Genesis 12:6-8

⁶ Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. ⁷ The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him. ⁸ Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD.

Genesis 26:18-26

Quarrel over the Wells

¹⁸ Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them. ¹⁹ But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water, ²⁰ the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him. ²¹ Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah. ²² He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”

²³ Then he went up from there to Beersheba. ²⁴ The LORD appeared to him the same night and said,

“I am the God of your father Abraham;
Do not fear, for I am with you.
I will bless you, and multiply your descendants,
For the sake of My servant Abraham.”

²⁵ So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

Genesis 35:6-8

⁶ So Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. ⁷ He built an altar there, and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed Himself to him when he fled from his brother. ⁸ Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried below Bethel under the oak; it was named Allon-bacuth.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all built altars after having encountered YHVH.  They were memorials and ways of honoring the Lord over all.  For the sake of brevity, I will let you do the research on just how many altars were erected, but I do want to look at some significant altars that King David built.  David purchased two different altar plots; one for the Temple Mount and one for the altar to sacrifice the final Passover Lamb, Yeshua HaMashiach.  The type of money he used is significant as well.

Remember the point is to show the significance of an altar and that our God is Holy and will not tolerate being approached with base or profane practices.

1 Chronicles 21:17-27

¹⁷ David said to God, “Is it not I who commanded to count the people? Indeed, I am the one who has sinned and done very wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? O LORD my God, please let Your hand be against me and my father’s household, but not against Your people that they should be plagued.”

David’s Altar

¹⁸ Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. ¹⁹ So David went up at the word of Gad, which he spoke in the name of the LORD. ²⁰ Now Ornan turned back and saw the angel, and his four sons who were with him hid themselves. And Ornan was threshing wheat. ²¹ As David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out from the threshing floor and prostrated himself before David with his face to the ground. ²² Then David said to Ornan, “Give me the site of this threshing floor, that I may build on it an altar to the LORD; for the full price you shall give it to me, that the plague may be restrained from the people.” ²³ Ornan said to David, “Take it for yourself; and let my lord the king do what is good in his sight. See, I will give the oxen for burnt offerings and the threshing sledges for wood and the wheat for the grain offering; I will give it all.” ²⁴ But King David said to Ornan, “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price; for I will not take what is yours for the LORD, or offer a burnt offering which costs me nothing.” ²⁵ So David gave Ornan 600 shekels of gold by weight for the site. ²⁶ Then David built an altar to the LORD there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And he called to the LORD and He answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering. ²⁷ The LORD commanded the angel, and he put his sword back in its sheath.

2 Chronicles 3:1

The Temple Construction in Jerusalem

¹ Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

David purchases the Temple Mount with gold.  Gold throughout the Scripture is a sign of divinity.

2 Samuel 24:23-25

²³ Everything, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.” ²⁴ However, the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. ²⁵ David built there an altar to the LORD and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. Thus the LORD was moved by prayer for the land, and the plague was held back from Israel.

Silver in the Scripture is a sign of redemption.  It is believed that this altar that David bought is the Mount of Olives where the Messiah was actually crucified as an offering unto the LORD.  Joseph’s chalice that he hid in Benjamin’s bag when he was under Pharaoh was silver because he was going to be the redemption of his family and the children of Israel.  In case you have never seen it, Joseph is a type of the Messiah.

Again, the altar is what makes the sacrifice holy, not the sacrifice.  The Father had to accept the sacrifice of His Son on the altar at the Mount of Olives or the sacrifice would be null and void.  Since we are now the Temple of Elohim, we hold the altar, or calling card of YHVH within us.  If we fill our firepans with Easter (the feast of the impregnation of the earth in preparation for the birth of the sun god on 12/21), Halloween (feast of the dead), and Christmas (the feast designed by the church to cover up the winter solstice and birth of the venerable sun god), we are offering strange fire on our altar in the Temple of YHVH.

³ Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the LORD spoke, saying,

‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy,
And before all the people I will be honored.’”

So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

Notice Aaron’s response: silence.  Aaron knew that what his sons had done was wrong.  He did not make excuses like, “well their hearts were right.” Because he knew that they were not.  The church needs to stop making excuses, be silent, and know that He is LORD.  Turn 180 degrees and conform their lives to the way YHVH wants it done.  Put your strange fire down and offer the proper sacrifice.