After days of instruction and training, and seven days of consecration, two of the newly minted Aaronic priests decided to offer their own version of worship to the Lord before the people of God. This was the first worship service in the newly ordained Tabernacle. The Lord was so pleased that He allowed His glory to appear to all the people, and sent fire that consumed the offering that Aaron had placed on the altar. The people let out a great shout at this display and fell on their faces before the Lord. It was at this time of appropriate and authentic worship, that Nadab and Abihu drew attention to themselves, by ad-libbing their own fiery display. Not only was their activity ill-timed and distracting from God’s glory, it was against the training and instruction they had been given as priests. Their fire was “profane,” not taken from the altar as was prescribed, but lit from their own fire, and placed in their own censer. Their motive for this false worship was not revealed, but the Lord’s response is revealing. The same fire that went out from the Lord to consume the offering on the altar, now went out and “devoured” Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron.
The Lord would not allow His priests to vary from His worship order, especially at the inaugural service of the Tabernacle. If He allowed such self improvisation from the beginning, how far might the people stray after a time? Every detail of the worship service had been revealed to Moses, so that the people would be prepared for its future fulfillment in the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Any variation, whether subtraction or addition, would garble the message that pointed to Jesus.
There seems to be a similarity between the deaths of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10 and that of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. In both cases, they are at the beginning of a new era. The sons of Aaron, offered “profane fire” at the first worship service of the Mosaic Covenant and the Lord struck them dead. And Ananias and Sapphira offered a false offering just as the Church age commenced following Pentecost, and they both fell dead for it. The Lord seemed to be setting a precedent, that those who would worship Him must worship in “spirit and truth” (John 4:24). False worship would not be accepted.