John Bevere - This Is What Happens If You Don't Fear the Lord
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Because this is so important, we must understand what happens when we come into the presence of the glorious God of all creation with reverence. Okay, you just read chapter 9, and I want to dive into this a little deeper, because it is essential to grasp what occurs when we enter the presence of the glorious God of all creation with reverence. As we saw in Leviticus chapter 10, Nadab and Abihu were authorized to come into the presence of God; they were priests. They entered and offered profane fire. Profane means treating what is sacred as common and what is holy as ordinary. They approached God’s presence with an irreverent attitude, and boom, they were dead. I mean, we’re talking about six feet under, buried dead.
Did God just get angry and reach out to smite them? No, here’s the deal: if you go to the beach on a nice summer day wearing your swimsuit, lying out on the beach, and enjoying it, you feel refreshed with a nice tan and lots of vitamin D—it’s healthy for you. But the sun is 93 million miles away from us. If you choose to go near the sun, say 10,000 miles from it, it will burn you up in a heartbeat. What we see here is that the greater the glory of God, the swifter the judgment. The more concise and quick the judgment. If you look at Nadab and Abihu, they were Eli’s sons. A couple of hundred years later, they went to the same tabernacle, taking offerings by manipulation and force, committing adultery with the women coming to the tabernacle.
Okay, these are like pastors or ministers in the church. A woman comes to the church, and they go to the back room and commit adultery with her. I mean, whoa, this is 90 feet away from where Nadab and Abihu were judged. Okay, what’s going on here? If you look at 1 Samuel chapter 3, during the time of Nadab and Abihu, the Bible says the word of the Lord was rare and there was no widespread revelation. When God’s presence comes, we receive revelation because He reveals things to us, right? What happened was His presence had lifted. In essence, they are not 10,000 miles from the sun; they are like Neptune, far away.
Okay, there is no effect; they aren’t even getting vitamin D; they aren’t even getting a suntan. There are various degrees of God’s presence. You say, «But John, that’s Old Testament.» Wait a minute—there was a man and his wife in the New Testament who brought an offering. There was nothing wrong with that, but they did it irreverently and were buried under the ground. So what we’re seeing here is that the greater the glory, the swifter the judgment. Peter walks right out of that building, and they lay the sick on the streets of Jerusalem—not one street, but streets. Peter just walks by, and they get up healed. Everybody—everybody got healed.
That’s like a pastor walking through a big hospital and emptying it. That’s the kind of glory, the greatness that was on Peter. So when Ananias and Sapphira lied to him, there was instant judgment. Now, there have been pastors who lied in the 20th and 21st centuries, and people haven’t fallen over dead. Why? Maybe we’re not as close to the sun as we should be. You understand what I’m saying?
The glory is not manifesting. The Apostle Paul made an amazing statement: some men’s sins are evident, preceding them to judgment, but the sins of others are manifested later. What Paul is saying is that when the glory of God is strong, what is willfully disobedient and irreverent will be judged more swiftly, whereas with others, it happens later. If you look at Nadab and Abihu, it happened later: they were killed by the Philistines, put to death by them. Just because God’s judgment is delayed doesn’t mean it’s denied. That’s why the fear of the Lord keeps us in touch with what pleases God, even if His presence isn’t strong. We will talk about that in another chapter.