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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Danilo Vitorović

Strange Fire; Sabbath

It's such a pleasure and blessing to be here.

My wife and I moved out of the area a little bit ago, but we miss this community very much.

And just to remind everyone attending here on a regular basis, you have a huge blessing of having this community.

We believe in salt of the world, so it's a good time to be here, but then it's a good time to spread this message, to spread this message everywhere.

I would like to invite all of us to bow our head and pray before we start our study.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for a Sabbath blessing.

Thank you for this special and holy time that we can have, and we can be together, and we can study your word.

May your Holy Spirit speak with clarity and power, and may each 1 of us starting, Lord, with me, be repentant and understanding of our need for Savior and also understanding of hope that is in you.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.

It was a cool winter evening, not far from here at Los Angeles International Airport.

There was a flight coming, US Air flight from Columbus, Ohio, toward LAX.

This was a Boeing 737 that was under command of Captain Shaw and First Officer Kelly.

Both of these pilots were very experienced, And the flight was quite routine.

There were no problems and as they were coming to the approach and they were positioning to the approach, everything was routine.

To quote, to quote First officer Kelly, everything looked real good.

They got on the tower frequency and they got clearance to land at the strip 24 left, runway 24 left.

This was just several minutes before 6 p.m.

Around the same time, another much smaller plane, and for those of you interested and knowledgeable about planes, this was twin-turbo, two-engine plane, twin-engine turboprop airplane, twin engine turboprop airplane SkyWest, operated by SkyWest, flight 5569, and had 10 passengers and 2 pilots.

We're going to move now to another town in California where a wife of 1 of the passengers on this SkyWest plane was folding laundry in their home and watching TV.

She did hear that there was an accident at LAX, but it involved U.S.

Air flight coming from Ohio, and her husband was not coming from Ohio, and he was not on U.S.

So initially she was not paying attention.

But as the new story developed, there was an understanding that there was another plane involved in the accident, much, much smaller plane.

And a sense of dread started coming down her.

Because the visibility of this particular runway, 24 left, was not ideal from the tower.

And because the communication between air traffic controllers had some delays, this airplane, SkyWest airplane, was cleared to be in a hold position for takeoff at runway 24L.

As Boeing 737 was landing in basically crashed SkyWest airplane, all 12 people on board died instantaneously, And many other people on Boeing 737, on US air flight, died from smoke and fire that ensued.

As the evening developed and the news kept coming in, the wife of 1 of the passenger, Connie, came to this understanding that her husband has perished.

A small lapse of judgment on the side of air traffic controller came at tragically high cost for Connie and many other families whose loved ones were involved in this accident.

The National Transportation Board later on investigated what happened at LAX.

And they noted that although LAX has 4 landing strips, they use them interchangeably for airplanes both to take off and to land.

And this is what basically made this accident possible.

But what actually created this accident was miscommunication, lapse of judgment in the air traffic controller's mind.

Is it possible that the church has as important job as air traffic controllers have.

We know that air traffic controllers have critically important job.

They are responsible for safety of thousands of people every hour, maybe tens of thousands of people every hour.

But is it possible that there is another tower, another city on the hill that plays as important, if not more important and critical role affecting not only safety of our everyday life, but extending its influence into time eternal.

Is it possible that the church, the present day chosen people and its worship services bear the same critical role in preserving and sharing the truth.

As Apostle Paul said in Romans 3, 2 of historical Israel, because to them were committed scriptures of God.

Is it possible that the church today, to us, to whom scriptures of God are committed, that our type of worship, our worship, influences society, both in moral and eternal realms.

Maybe in even more important ways than air traffic controllers.

And even more importantly, it makes a difference between life and death in eternal realms.

When an incident happens like 1 that we just discussed, the National Transportation Safety Board comes out and investigates.

They come up with a report and recommendations.

And the reason why these reports exist is obviously to give closure to the families whose loved ones are lost, but also to prevent future tragedies, to make sure that the same errors are not made again and that pilots, air traffic controllers and manufacturers do not make errors that will cost people's lives.

The same way our Heavenly Father recorded many incidents and many histories of things that happened in the past, tragedies that happened in the past, that help us understand how to avoid those errors and how to avoid those tragedies.

Tonight, we will study 3 of those incidents.

Incidents that happened during worship services, incidents that happened to people that were involved in prophecy, in leadership, that ended up with tragic consequences.

But we will look into these incidents to understand and learn from their mistakes.

And also to find the hope in the ways how God dealt with them and how these incidents can be helpful to us today.

Let us read from Leviticus 10, 1 through 4.

We have the text on the screen, but let us open our Bibles and read this from the Bible as well.

Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, Each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

So fire went out from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.

And Moses said to Aaron, "'This is what the Lord spoke, saying, "'By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy, "'and before all the people, I must be glorified." So Aaron held his peace.

How these 2 men who were brought in a community of faith, in a family of faith, who were just several months before at the mountain with Moses, with Aaron, and 70 other leaders of Israel, communing with the God face to face and who were just several verses before consecrated for the holy service where God himself provided the fire for the sacrifice.

How is it possible that these 2 men made such an omission, such a tragic, such a tragic error.

In order to unpack this incident, let us look both at Spirit of Prophecy and the Bible.

And I would like to share with you now a report from Patriarchs and Prophets on page 360.

Nadab and Abihu had not in their youth been trained to habits of self-control.

The father's yielding disposition, his lack of firmness for right, had led him to neglect the discipline of his children.

His sons had been permitted to follow inclination.

Habits of self-indulgence, long cherished, obtained a hold upon them which even the responsibility of the most sacred office had not power to break.

They had not been taught to respect the authority of their father and they did not realize the necessity of exact obedience to the requirements of God.

Aaron's mistaken indulgence of his sons prepared them to become subjects of the divine judgments.

What a responsibility on the shoulders of each and every parent.

For each 1 of us today, who have faithful Christian parents, let us think how much self-sacrifice, prayers, and worry they had to make sure that we are on the right path.

And for us here who are actually parents, what a responsibility, what eternal consequences for life of our children, the way how we raise them up, the way how we teach them, the way how we mold their character.

We certainly do not want them to be subjects of the divine judgment.

There is another element that led to the failure of these 2 men.

Another clue that helps us understand what happened.

Let us read further in Leviticus 10, 8 to 11.

And Lord spoke into Aaron and saying, Do not drink, Do not drink strong wine, do not drink wine or strong drink, though nor die sans sui di, when you go into a tabernacle of the congregation, lest you die.

It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations that you might put difference between holy and unholy, between clean and unclean, and that you may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.

White adds some more details on the same topic.

Nadab and Abihu would never have committed that fatal sin had they not first became partially intoxicated by the free use of wine.

All who occupied positions of sacred responsibility were to be men of strict temperance, that their minds might be clear to discriminate between right and wrong, that they might possess firmness and principle and wisdom to administer justice and show mercy.

We see that people who are involved in worship, people who are involved in leadership of God's people, each 1 of us who represent example of Christ to people around us, we have to have clear minds so we can understand when to show justice, when to show mercy, how to distinguish between what is holy and what is not holy, what is right and what is wrong.

And this is a topic for some other time, but the Seventh-day Adventist Church message is the health message among many others, but this is 1 of the cornerstones because God wants us to have clarity of mind so we can understand the message that we need to give to people.

So far, we've learned the foundations of this incident.

The first 1, the training these men have received during their childhood did not train them to respect authority, to show obedience, and to be respectful.

And the second 1, they treated their bodies in such a way that they did not have clarity of mind.

And now let's go to the actual substance of what these 2 men actually communicated, but by bringing strange fire into a holy place.

By departing from God's clear instructions, we can read this together on the screen, By bringing strange fire to the place of worship, Nadab and Abihu brought in confusion.

They effectively communicated that what God says does not matter, that the word of God is inconsequential.

They effectively preach that the great plan of salvation centers on human efforts, not Christ's righteousness, that how we behave does not matter, and that all of this is acceptable to God.

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Strange Fire; Sabbath

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