Musical Promoters of God

“After the death of Aaron’s two sons—they died when they came before God with strange fire—God spoke to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to enter into the Holy of Holies, barging inside the curtain that’s before the Atonement-Cover on the Chest whenever he feels like it, lest he die, because I am present in the Cloud over the Atonement-Cover.” (Leviticus 16:1–2, The Message)  

Sometimes I wonder why people don’t take the worship of God very seriously. I don’t mean to say that they are serious when they worship. In fact, some people sing and play during worship and it sounds great. The problem is that oftentimes we take our performance more seriously than God.

God wants worship which honors Him the way He likes it. The two brothers presented “strange fire”, which was an unauthorized fire. The coals which were supposed to be used all the time, they took it upon themselves to present fire from someplace else.

“He will take a censer full of burning coals from the Altar before God and two handfuls of finely ground aromatic incense and bring them inside the curtain and put the incense on the fire before God; the smoke of the incense will cover the Atonement-Cover which is over The Testimony so that he doesn’t die.” (Leviticus 16:12–13, The Message)   

The fire which burned their desire to worship God came from someplace other than God. They tried to promote themselves rather than God. Even if we come as children of God to worship Him, we may come with the wrong motives. We come to perform in front of an audience that makes all of eyes center on the performer.

However, God will not tolerate sharing the altar with someone else. God will not share His glory with anyone else. He takes the worship of Himself very seriously.

“Moses said to Aaron, “This is what God meant when he said, To the one who comes near me, I will show myself holy; Before all the people, I will show my glory.” Aaron was silent.” (Leviticus 10:3, The Message)  

We should be like musical promoters of God in our worship. A musical promoter spends his time trying to promote the musical artist. The promoter does not try to promote himself. His job is to point people to the main artist whom we will watch at the show. In the same way, we are called as Christians to be musical promoters of God. Our goal is to point people to God, not ourselves.

Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash