Now, the part of the chapter I want to focus on is there in Leviticus chapter 10 at the
beginning of the chapter, verse 1, where the Bible reads,
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein,
and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them
not.
And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.
Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified
in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified, and Aaron
held his peace.
Now just to bring you up to speed in the story here, in Leviticus 1 through 9, God is giving
all kinds of instructions unto the children of Israel about all the different burnt offerings
and sacrifices and things they're going to perform unto him.
And in the last few chapters, before chapter 10, he gives very specific detailed instructions
about exactly how they're going to dedicate the tabernacle, the types of sacrifices that
are going to be offered, the order in which things are to take place, and so forth.
Now Aaron was ordained by God to be the high priest, and he had sons that were going to
carry on that ministry after he's gone.
And these sons were also going to help with the ministry of serving the Lord in the tabernacle
under the Old Testament or Old Covenant.
His sons were Eleazar, Ithamar, Nadab, and Abihu.
And Nadab and Abihu, after God has finished giving these very specific instructions about
what he wanted done, they decided to just kind of do their own thing.
They just decided, you know what, we're just going to grab a couple of censors, we're just
excited about what's going on, and we're just going to burn some incense unto the Lord.
It was nothing that God had commanded them, that he had told them to do, they just took
it upon themselves to do this.
And when they did that, the Bible says that there went out, verse 2, there went out fire
from the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord.
Now whatever these men had done was a serious offense in God's eyes because of the fact
that they were killed for it.
Now there are a lot of other people in the Bible who did a lot of other things that God
did not just sit there and just kill them right then and there.
This is something that made God very angry, it also made Moses very angry, that they had
just disregarded the instructions about what they were supposed to be doing.
Now if you stop and look at this passage, you have to ask yourself, what was the sin
of these young men?
What did they do wrong?
Were they offering incense unto a strange God?
No.
Were they worshipping a God other than the Lord?
No they were not.
What was it that made God so upset?
And when you read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which are considered by most
people to be the boring books of the Bible, a little bit heavy reading, not exactly the
most exciting part, I heard somebody recently say, whoever preaches out of Leviticus anymore?
Well Bible believing preachers that want to preach the whole counsel of God, preach the
whole word, but who preaches out of Leviticus is considered a boring part and the reason
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are often considered boring is because they
go into such detail and they just go into just graphic detail about how the tabernacle
is going to be built, how many rings to put on the curtain, what to make the curtains
out of, what color they're going to be, how to make the ark, how to make the tabernacle,
how to make all the different accoutrements that are going to be used to kill the animals,
all these different altars and washings and all these different things.
And you say, oh, why do we need to know all this?
But there is something that we can learn from these things.
Even though we're not living under the Old Testament, we can still learn because the
Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine.
And even though we don't go to a physical tent and a tabernacle with curtains and rings
and all these different things, what we can learn is that when God tells us how to do
something, we need to do it the way he told us to do it.
And if God goes into all this great detail about how he wants something done, he expects
you to do it the way that he said to do it and not to deviate from that.
When they were building the tabernacle, God said to Moses repeatedly, be sure that you
build all things according to the pattern that was showed thee in the mouth.
Build this building the way I'm telling you to build it, is what he's saying.
Another thing we can learn from this story is that just because someone's heart is in
the right place, just because someone is trying to do something in the name of Jesus
or in the name of the Lord doesn't necessarily mean that what they're doing is right if what
they're doing is contrary to what we find in the Word of God.
All the way back to Cain and Abel, we find Cain worshiping the true God and even giving
an offering unto the true God, but his offering was not accepted because God wanted him to
bring of the blood.
He wanted him to bring of the first slings of the flock.
He wanted him to bring the lamb for a sacrifice.
He wanted the lamb to be the offering and Cain brought fruits and vegetables because
he was a tiller of the ground.
He was not a shepherd and so he said, well, you know, I prefer produce.
I like to make things grow.
I'm vegan, you know, and so I'm just kidding, but anyway, yeah, he's going to bring these
fruits and vegetables and he offers them unto the Lord and the Lord tells him no.
And the Bible says God did not have respect unto Cain's offering because it was not what
he told him to offer.
So this idea that just, hey, it's just as long as your heart's in the right place, just
as long as you're doing it in Jesus' name, anything goes, is not a biblical concept.
Now we can carry that philosophy over into the New Testament and say, okay, we don't
have the tabernacle, we're not offering animal sacrifices, we're not bringing of the blood
and the fat of lambs, but we do have instructions given unto us in the New Testament about how
we should live our Christian lives and about how we should worship the Lord and about how
church should be and we should follow those instructions and not offer just strange fire
unto the Lord.
Just ways of worshiping God that are not found in scripture.
Just aspects of our church service and just things that we do, rituals and traditions
that we perform that weren't mandated by God.
We should rather worship God and serve God in the ways that he has prescribed in scripture.
And there are so many different ways that we can apply this.
Let me say this, many things that are done in churches today in the name of Jesus Christ
are not scriptural and they are strange fire unto the Lord.
Even if they are meant as a worship to the Lord, even if they are meant to serve the
one true God, it doesn't make them biblical and it does not mean that we should participate
in these types of things.
So let me just give you some examples of things that are used.
Go to Deuteronomy chapter 4, let's just look at some examples of things that we see in
churches today or things that can creep into a church service that we don't want to have
in our church because we don't want to be like Nadab and Abihu, just serving God in
ways that he did not ask us to serve him.
Now if you look at the way that we do our church service at Faithful Word Baptist Church,
there is a reason why we do the things that we do.
Now why do we sing hymns at our church?
Because the Bible says in the midst of the congregation, congregation is another word
in the Bible for church, he said in the midst of the congregation I will sing praise unto
thee.
That's why we all sing praises together.
The Bible commands us to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual
psalms.
That's why we all sing to one another.
We all sing praises to God in the midst of the congregation.
Why do we have prayer in the church?
Because the Bible says I will therefore that man pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands
without wrath and doubting.
That would be inclusive of the church.
Pray everywhere the Bible says.
We have examples of the church gathering together and praying as a group.
We also have prayer in private that the Bible commands us to do.
When we get together and have preaching, that is biblical.
The Bible says till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
That's what we do every church service.
First we just have reading.
We read the whole chapter.
We read Leviticus 10, that's the reading.
Then we have exhortation, which is preaching.
We have doctrine, which is also preaching, teaching of the word of God.
These things all take place in our church services because the Bible has told us to
do these things.
Then we celebrate communion, break bread.
That is biblical.
That is something that God said, as often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me.
And we break bread and drink of the grape juice.
That is all biblical.
These things all come from the Bible.
They are not strange fire unto the Lord when we serve him in the local church.
When we go out and knock doors and preach the Gospel, that's something that Jesus told
us to do.
That's something that we have an example of people in the book of Acts doing.
But some strange fire in today's churches.
Number one, first of all, is images in the church.
And when I say images, I'm talking about statues of Jesus, pictures of Jesus, statues of Mary,
pictures of Mary, pictures of the apostles, all of these religious images and icons that
people have.
And supposedly it's not unto a false god, it's unto the true God, but what does the
Bible say?
Let's look at Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 9.
It says, only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently lest thou forget the things
which thine eyes have seen and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life.
But teach them thy sons and thy sons' sons, specially the day that thou stoodest before
the Lord thy God in Horeb.
When the Lord said unto thee, gather me the people together and I will make them hear
my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth,
that they may teach their children.
And ye came near and stood under the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire under the
midst of heaven with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.
And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire, you heard the voice of the Lord,
but saw no similitude, only ye heard a voice.
Now why is that significant?
God is saying that when he appeared under the children of Israel in that burning Mount
Horeb, they did not see an image of God.
They did not see what the Lord God looked like, all they did was just hear a voice.
And that's why God commands them very clearly, a little bit later in this same passage, not
to make any kind of an image.
Go down to verse 16.
It says, lest ye, and go to verse 15 actually, let's start in verse 15.
It says, take ye therefore good heat unto yourselves, for you saw no manner of similitude
or image on that day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.
Let ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure,
the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness
of any winged fowl that flyeth in the air, the likeness of anything that creepeth on
the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth.
Now a lot of people say, well, the reason God doesn't want them to make these images
is because he doesn't want them worshipping another God.
But hold on a second.
He said, wait a minute, remember when I spoke to you, did you see an image?
No.
So don't make an image.
So he's even saying, don't even make an image of me.
And Paul reiterates this in the book of Acts when he says, we ought not to think that the
Godhead is like to an image that we can make out of silver or gold or any such thing.
So when you have graven or molten images of Jesus and God and Mary and the saints, these
are things that God said don't make it of male, don't make it of female.
So what is up with a statue of Mary?
Is that biblical?
It's a female image.
What about a statue of Jesus?
He said, don't make an image.
Don't make it of me, don't make it of anyone else.
We should not even make a statue of a man.
Let's say Pastor Anderson died and we say, oh, let's honor Pastor Anderson, let's make
a statue of Pastor Anderson.
That would be idolatry, that would be a graven image, that would be lifting up a man higher
than he ought to be lifted because he's a flesh and blood human that needs to return
to the dust and we don't need a statue or a molten image of any person.
But not only that, he said, don't make statues or images of animals.
So we don't want to have a molten or graven statue of an animal.
Like for example, a lot of people will have a molten fish on their car and say, hey, this
represents Christianity.
Well, wait a minute, did God tell you to make a melted fish?
In fact, he specifically said, don't make, it's funny because he listed specifically
verse 18, the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that
is in the water.
He specifically brings up a fish and the two Christian symbols today that are molten that
people will put on their car are the fish and a bird.
The two things, the two specific animals he brings up, at the end of verse 17 he says,
any winged fowl that flyeth in the air.
What do they do?
A metal dove.
Okay, no fish.
Okay, let's put a metal fish and say it represents Jesus.
Hold on a second.
This is strange fire that you're offering unto the Lord that the Lord commanded not.
God did not command you to put a metal fish and say, this is for Jesus.
Put a metal bird and say, this is for Jesus.
He said it's idolatry and you say, well, you're in the Old Testament.
New Testament says, flee idolatry.
New Testament says, little children, keep yourselves from idols, amen.
New Testament will teach all these same things in the book of Acts, through the epistles,
everywhere else.
What else do we have as strange fire today amongst Christians?
This is one that I grew up with and that is the Christian flag.
The Christian flag.
Now, did God tell us, produce a Christian flag?
I mean, he told us all these things.
He said, go into all the world, preach the gospel.
He said, sing hymns.
He said, preach the word.
He said, read the Bible.
He said, go to church, assemble together, congregate.
But did he ever say, make a Christian flag and pledge allegiance to that Christian flag?
Absolutely not.
This is strange fire unto the Lord.
Now, if you look at what the Christian flag is, it was designed by Methodists in 1907.
They don't fly it anymore.
Now they fly the queer flag.
I was in West Hollywood earlier this week, okay, and there was a United Methodist Church
in Hollywood and it had a rainbow sodomite, gigantic rainbow sodomite flag outside the
United Methodist Church.
The United Methodist Church in Tempe flies a sodomite flag and elsewhere in the city,
you'll see it at United Methodist churches, they will fly flags representing men with
men and women with women being perverted, okay.
But they started out flying the Christian flag.
They don't fly that anymore.
But listen to this.
The ecumenical, this is from Wikipedia, under Christian flag, the ecumenical Christian organization,
Federal Council of Churches, now succeeded by the National Council of Churches and Christian
churches together adopted the flag on the 23rd of January, 1942.
So this thing has its origins in an ecumenical movement of trying to unite all Christianity
under one flag.
Here's the problem with that.
We as Baptists do not want to be united under the same flag with the Catholics, with the
Methodists, with the Mormon, with the Presbyterians.
We're Baptists.
Why are we Baptists?
Because we believe the Bible, we don't believe in the Pope.
Otherwise, you know, you might have stumbled in the wrong church, the Catholic Church is
down the street, you got your images, you got the Pope, you got everything you need
down there.
But here we're Baptists, we're Bible-believing Christians.
We don't believe in uniting with all apostate forms of Christianity.
Now listen to this.
You say, well what's wrong with the pledge to the Christian flag?
I grew up in Christian school pledging every day the Christian flag.
Who grew up pledging this pledge of allegiance to the Christian flag?
Several people.
I grew up pledging it every day.
But the pledge that we pledge today is not the original pledge.
Listen to the original pledge to the Christian flag.
I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior whose kingdom it stands,
one brotherhood uniting all mankind in service and love.
Okay, so this is not a Biblical message because we can't unite all mankind because the Bible
divides those who believe on Christ from those who don't believe on Christ.
The righteous and the wicked.
Today's pledge of allegiance used in most Baptist churches or Baptist schools says,
I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands,
one Savior crucified, risen and coming again with life and liberty to all who believe.
You say, well what's wrong with that?
Because it says that you're pledging allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior for
whom it stands.
So we're not just pledging allegiance to Jesus Christ, we're also pledging allegiance to
that flag.
Why would I have any allegiance to that flag?
I mean, do you know what allegiance means?
It means, hey, if that flag is going somewhere, I'm going with it.
I mean, I am swearing allegiance to that flag.
I mean, I am on the side of that, but hold on, what is that?
What do you, you know, when it's flying above Catholic churches, when it's flying at the
Vatican, when it's flying in all these different places, and you're like, oh, I pledge allegiance
to that flag.
Is that Biblical?
Show me in the Bible a strange fire that's being offered to the Lord.
It even takes place, I've been in a church service.
I've been in church services.
We're in the middle of the church service, everybody stand up, let's pledge allegiance
to the Christian flag, I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag.
That is so unbiblical, it is so extra biblical, it is strange fire offered to the Lord.
You say, well, their heart's in the right place, yep, sort of like Nadab, sort of like
a Bahu.
Stop doing it.
We need to stop doing it.
We never started doing it, okay.
But anyway, we don't have a Christian flag.
I won't fly that flag.
It's not biblical, it's not something that God told us to do, it's flown in a lot of
weird places.
The Bible says, wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and
touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you.
He never said, hey, unite with everybody.
Just unite with everybody who names the name of Christ.
That is not true.
The Bible says that even a brother who walks disorderly should be separated from, if he's
not following the scripture, okay.
And not only that, let's really make this hit home, and this might offend some people,
but the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag.
And that actually takes place in many churches.
They'll do both.
And I went to a preaching service here in the Phoenix area less than a couple years
ago and it was like, I abstained.
I was like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
I'm not going to sit there and pledge allegiance to the American flag and then pledge allegiance
to the Christian flag.
When did God say, oh, don't forget when you congregate, you know, pledge allegiance to
the Roman Empire.
Don't forget to swear fealty to Caesar before every church service.
Say, well, that's different because Caesar was really bad.
You know what, Caesar Obama is worse than any of those guys.
Our president, who I believe is a homosexual, I mean, there's all, first of all, you say,
why do you say that?
First of all, there's been all kinds of evidence produced that he's a homosexual.
You just don't hear about it in the mainstream media.
Second, look at him.
Third, look at what he stands for, what comes out of his mouth, what he talks.
Every time one of these sports players comes out and says, I'm a faggot, he calls him up
and congratulates him.
And he, by the power invested in him, he literally issued a statement a few days ago that said,
by the power invested in me, by the Constitution of the United States, I hereby declare the
month of June to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender month in the United States of
America.
That would make Nero blush.
I don't know if it would or not, but anyway, I'm just kidding.
But what I'm saying is, those guys were perverted too, but what I'm saying is that we today
have a guy in power who's a very wicked person, I believe he's a homosexual, I believe he's
a reprobate sodomite, you know, there's so much mountain of evidence to that fact.
And not only that though, but if we're pledging allegiance to the American flag, what if our
country doesn't stand for what's right?
And what if, I mean, are we just going to stay true to it to the bitter end?
And if you say this kind of stuff, it's unpopular with people, but let's see what the scripture
says.
Jeremiah chapter 21, Jeremiah 21, you're unpatriotic.
Show me the word patriotic in the Bible, Nadab.
Show me the American flag, Abihu.
Show me swearing allegiance to a nation when the Bible says that our citizenship is in
heaven with the Lord, our citizenship is with the true spiritual nation of Israel, our capital
city is the heavenly Jerusalem that's going to descend from God out of heaven.
Hey, this world is not my home, I'm just passing through.
And I'm not going to sit there and swear allegiance to that flag of the United States of America
no matter how perverted our nation becomes, even when our nation just openly says, June,
we're celebrating sodomy.
In the month of June, we as a nation, through the power of the United States Constitution,
are celebrating sodomy for a complete month.
I pledge allegiance to the American flag, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation
corrupt, perverted, promoting abortion and homosexuality to all.
Not going to do it, my friend.
Get mad at me.
Quit the church.
Go find some Baptist church that will have both flags that you like.
American flag, Christian flag, throw in an image of a long haired Jesus into the mix
while you're offering strange fire unto the Lord.
But in this church, we want to be biblical.
We want to stay true to scripture.
I don't want anything to do with sodomy.
It's wicked.
I don't want anything to do with abortion.
I don't want anything to do with the things that our country is starting to stand for.
I don't want anything to do with trying to take over and occupy the whole world with
military bases.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want any part of that.
That's the new world order.
That's a one world government.
It doesn't stand for anything that I stand for.
Look, it'd be one thing if you said, well you know what, in my personal life, that's
how my politics are.
Okay, fine, have your politics.
But why are you bringing your politics into the house of God, the house of the Lord, and
you're going to put your political banner, look, there's no God that we bow to except
Jesus Christ.
There's one king in this building.
It's the Lord Jesus Christ.
We don't acknowledge Obama's power in here.
We don't acknowledge any earthly leader.
We acknowledge Jesus Christ in this building.
This is God's house.
And you know, yeah, we have a human government that rules over aspects of our lives outside
of this building, but inside of this building, this is God's house.
He rules.
We're going to swear our loyalty to him and him alone and not some earthly government.
But the problem with making an oath or a pledge or affirmation is that you might sit there
and pledge allegiance, right?
And then like 30 years later, what happens when that country is a totally different place?
What happens when that country stands as I'm totally different?
You've already pledged allegiance to it.
I mean, that doesn't, you know, we don't want to do that.
We don't want to get wrapped up in that.
I mean, what if you're in Germany and you know, you're pledging allegiance to Germany,
right?
And then all of a sudden Hitler gets in power and you're like, wait a minute, hey, you pledged
allegiance, buddy.
Okay.
Well, let's go.
Let's go take, you know, let's go take over Europe.
Let's go.
Let's go massacre innocent people.
Let's do it.
But see, we somehow think America is just different.
Well, that's just different.
That's different.
Well, you know, it's, it's not really different.
Okay.
But if we look in Jeremiah, we can see the nation of Israel.
Now let me ask you this.
Was the nation of Israel ever declared to be, you know, a nation that was God's people?
Of course.
I mean, when, when the nation of Israel was founded, it was a nation that was founded
because, hey, this is a nation of, of holy people, a nation of priests, you know, and
a peculiar people unto the Lord.
Now was that ever specifically said about the United States, like the United States
is a holy nation founded by God?
No.
Was that ever said about, you know, Germany?
No, it wasn't.
But was it said about ancient Israel in the Old Testament?
Yes, it was.
But even ancient Israel, of whom it was said that they would be God's peculiar people,
look what it says in Jeremiah 21 3, then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say
to Zedekiah, Zedekiah is the king of Judah at that time, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight
against the king of Babylon and against the Chaldeans which precede you without the walls,
and I will assemble them into the midst of the city, and I myself will fight against
you, with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger and in fury and
in great wrath.
Now this is God right here telling the children of Israel, I'm not on your team anymore.
I'm not on your side anymore.
I'm going to help the king of Babylon defeat you.
I am angry.
He said I have fury, I have anger, I have wrath toward you.
So do you see how a nation can go from being blessed by God to being cursed by God?
Do you see that?
Was the nation of Israel under God's blessing at one time?
Oh yeah.
But what about when they served other gods?
What about when they turned away from the Lord?
What about, go to Psalm 106 and we'll see this more clearly, what about when they began
to offer up their children as human sacrifices, as infants?
What did God do then?
Just keep blessing them?
Just keep thinking that it was a great nation?
Keep protecting them?
No.
At that point God turned away from them and said, you know, I'm going to fight you now.
I'm not for you anymore.
I can't bless you anymore because you've gone into abominations and wickedness.
So why do we think that America can just do whatever and just always be under God's
blessing, always be on the winning side, always be under the Lord's power.
And look, you say, oh you just hate America.
I don't hate America.
You know what?
I love the people of America, but I do not love our government.
It's not a government that represents the people.
You know, I mean most people in America don't worship Satan, but the government does worship
Satan.
Okay?
People in America are not comfortable murdering innocent people, at least I hope not.
I mean the way things are going, I guess they will be soon.
But I mean I'm just saying, you know, it's not, and look, I don't love people that are
wicked and reprobate and murderous, you know, killers of children and just homos.
You know, obviously there has to be a line drawn where we say, wait a minute, can God
really bless us anymore if this is who we are?
And it seems like Baptists today have just failed to draw that line.
And they're just going to just march to the bitter end.
I mean I guess just because they pledged it so many times growing up, they're just like,
we just stay with it, stay with it, stay with it, just never stop.
We still, God, we're still America, you know, the greatest nation ever, godly, look we're
known around the world now for being perverts, is what we're known.
Through Hollywood and through, you know, that's what we're known for with President
Pervert leading the way.
But anyway, it says in Psalm 106, 34, of the children of Israel, it says, they did not
destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among the
heathen and learned their works, and they served their idols, which were a snare unto
them.
Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood,
even the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan.
The land was polluted with blood, thus were they defiled with their own works and went
a whoring with their own inventions, therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against
his people.
So you see how God can even kindle his wrath toward his own people?
When they go into this kind of sin and iniquity of shedding innocent blood, of killing the
children and so forth, which is, that's what abortion is.
It's killing your child, that's what the Bible teaches.
And it says in verse 41, he gave them into the hand of the heathen, and they that hated
them ruled over them, their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection
of their hand.
So what I'm trying to show you is, we don't want to sit there and swear allegiance to
a Christian flag, because that is basically saying that we're in the same battle, we're
in the same team, with everybody who's flying that flag.
You say, well, they stole that flag from us.
No, we stole that flag from them.
It was designed by the Methodists.
It was first made popular by the World Council of Churches.
It started out as an ecumenical thing.
That's always been what that flag is about.
Why would I pledge my allegiance to that flag and to Jesus?
My allegiance is with Jesus, period, no flag.
And then we say, oh, I pledge allegiance to the American flag.
But what does it represent?
The republic for which it stands?
Not into it.
Not supportive of it.
Not proud of it.
Not waving it.
And then not only that, it says indivisible.
It says, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic
for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible.
Now what does indivisible mean?
It means they can never be divided up.
I mean, we've got to stay together, friend.
All the way from Maine to California, all the way from Washington to Florida, it is
indivisible.
That means that no state could ever leave the union.
So I mean, no matter how weird or how many perverted, how perverted one part of that
nation gets, we just have to stay connected to it always and forever.
I mean, does anybody really believe that?
It cannot be divided.
We must be indivisible.
It's just a, it's government propaganda.
Okay, you know, because obviously after the Civil War, they want to make sure nobody tries
to break off or anything.
So it's just indivisible.
You know, we've got to just drill that into children growing up.
It can never be divided.
It can never be broken down.
Of course, because they want to unite it all into a one-world government, we can't be dividing
it smaller.
We've got to be uniting it bigger.
North American Union, European Union, you know, stuff like that.
You say, ah, you're crazy.
No, you're crazy if you think that the Lord Jesus Christ wants you bringing these things
into a Christian worship service.
Bringing these strange flags into a Christian worship service, putting your hand on your
heart, you know, and doing your pledge onto stuff that he never told you to pledge, Nadab.
But look, if you would, at Psalm 33.
I want to get into a fourth thing.
We talked about so far, we talked about, hey, these images are strange fire unto the Lord.
They're not something that God told us to do.
We talked about the fact that the Christian flag is, that's offering strange fire unto
the Lord.
He never told us to pledge allegiance unto him.
And he especially never told us to pledge allegiance to an ecumenical flag flown by
Christians from the Vatican to United Methodists to whatever, okay?
He definitely didn't tell us to pledge allegiance to an earthly nation that changes and is not
getting better but getting worse.
He didn't tell us to pledge that.
That strange fire that you're offering unto the Lord.
This is not a part of a Christian worship service according to the Bible, okay?
Not only that, today in Christian worship services we have the beating of drums being
brought in as a part of worshiping the Lord and serving the Lord.
You say, well Pastor Anderson, why does that matter whether drums are beaten in church
in the house of God?
Well, here's the interesting thing about that.
If you look in the Bible, God talks a lot about musical instruments.
And in fact, in the book of Psalms, he commands us to praise the Lord using musical instruments.
Some people will say, hey, we just need to sing a capella, no instruments.
That is unscriptural, my friend, because the Bible is very clear over and over again that
God wants us to use musical instruments to praise his name.
And he gives all these lists of musical instruments that he wants us to use to praise his name.
And in the New Testament he says, speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual
songs.
He tells us in the New Testament to sing Psalms.
And the Psalms go on and on about musical instruments, using musical instruments.
So God is pleased with singing and playing musical instruments to praise his name, which
is why in our church we have musical instruments.
We have piano, we have organ, sometimes we have a guitar, sometimes we've had a trumpet,
it was too loud, we need to get a mute for that thing.
But anyway, these are biblical things.
Let's look at what the Bible says about those musical instruments.
For example, in Psalm 33 verse 2 it says, praise the Lord with harp, sing unto him with
a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.
Sing unto him a new song, play skillfully with a loud noise.
So God is praised and exalted when we sing loud, when we play instruments loud, and when
we play skillfully.
I mean what do you think pleases God more?
A piano player who hasn't practiced, he's messing up, he doesn't know what he's doing,
he's playing a really rudimentary, just finger pecking one note at a time, just index fingers
only playing that piano.
Or when somebody has put in the hours and the effort and the time to learn how to play
skillfully with a loud noise.
God is pleased when we do our best.
And the Bible says, whatsoever that hand finds to do, do it with thy might.
You know, we appreciate brother Matt, he's a very good piano player.
And oh, talent.
No, playing piano is 90% hard work, 10% talent.
Okay, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of practice, he spends many hours practicing, I spend many
hours practicing piano, and I can't even hold a candle to him as far as piano playing,
and I spend a long time practicing, okay.
Because it's very difficult to learn how to play these instruments right here, okay.
My son Solomon does an awesome job on the organ, okay.
Those are things that take time to work at, and God is pleased, it's a sweet savor in
God's nostrils, just as the offerings of the Old Testament, when he hears God's people
praising him.
And when you're singing from your seat, by the way, don't just go through the motions
during the singing.
You know, sing out loud, lift up your voice and praise the Lord, the Bible says.
Lift up your voice, sing praises to God, let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.
This is important, this is what God has told us to do.
But here's what's interesting, he often lists the instruments.
Go to Psalm 150, the last Psalm, Psalm 150.
I got to hurry this morning, but I want to get to as many of these scripts as I can.
I don't have time to get to all the scriptures that list the musical instruments.
There are just too many.
There are scriptures and scriptures and scriptures that list the musical instruments, in Psalms,
in 1 and 2 Samuel, in 1 and 2 Chronicles, all throughout the Bible, that just list and
list and list.
But let's just look at a few highlights, Psalm 150 says, praise ye the Lord.
It says, sing unto him, I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong place.
Praise ye the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary.
Now sanctuary means holy place.
Now we don't have a tabernacle made with hands.
In the New Testament, the house of God is just the assembly, the church, the congregation.
Whether we're in this building, or we could literally all get up right now and finish
the sermon in the parking lot.
You guys want to do that?
No, we don't have to do that.
But we could literally go out in the parking lot and it would still be church, still be
a holy place, still be an assembly.
But the Bible says here, praise the Lord, God, in his sanctuary.
Praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts.
Praise him according to his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet.
So if we're to take out a trumpet right now and play along with our praises, a musical
accompaniment of trumpet, would that be biblical?
Absolutely.
It says praise him with the trumpet.
It says praise him with the psaltery and harp.
Those are stringed instruments.
It says praise him with the timbrel and dance.
Praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
So look, somebody told me the organ is a wicked instrument.
But what does the Bible say?
Praise him with the organ.
And this is a pipe instrument, of course this is not a real organ, this is a fake organ
because it's electronic, but it sounds like an organ, real organs have giant pipes and
everything like that.
But he said praise him with the organ.
Praise him with stringed instruments, which by the way, for those of you who don't know
anything about music, this is a stringed instrument.
If you open it up, it has hundreds of strings, the piano.
He says praise him with stringed instruments.
Praise him with the organ.
Praise him with the timbrel, and I'm going to talk about the timbrel in a moment.
Praise him upon the loud cymbals.
Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
So a cymbal is basically those, you know, the metal, you know, okay, that's a cymbal.
I guess God wants things to be loud, I mean a trumpet is like the loudest instrument.
Cymbals are the loudest instrument.
He says, he says, let everything that hath breath praise the Lord, praise ye the Lord.
So not only do we have Psalms giving us all these lists of instruments saying praise him
with this, praise him with that, praise him with this, praise him with that.
Go to 1 Samuel chapter 10 and we can see just some examples, and again I'm only turning
to a few of these.
I want to make it very clear, these are not all the scriptures that list musical instruments,
okay?
There are more in Psalms, there are more in 1 and 2 Samuel, there are more in 1 and 2
Kings, there are more in 1 and 2 Chronicles, this is something that's listed many times
in the Bible.
I'm just showing you a few.
Does everybody understand that?
Just a little sampling.
Look at 1 Samuel chapter 10 verse 5.
These are just a few examples.
Remember that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is the garrison of the Philistines,
and it shall come to pass when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet
a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery and a tabret and
a pipe and a harp, and the pipe is an instrument there, they're not smoking a pipe, he said
a pipe, a harp before them and they shall prophesy and the Spirit of the Lord will come
upon thee and thou shalt prophesy with them and shall be turned into another man.
Go to 1 Chronicles 15, again, just trying to hit a few highlights here, just showing
you different parts of the Bible, different highlights, listing off some musical instruments
that God's people are commanded to use, that God's people have historically used throughout
the Old Testament, throughout these stories that we read, 1 Chronicles 15, 16, and David
spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments
of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals.
Are you seeing some of the same instruments being listed, psalteries, harps, cymbals,
by lifting up the voice with joy?
Go to 2 Chronicles chapter 5, 2 Chronicles chapter number 5 and verse 12.
Second Chronicles 5, 12 says, also the Levites, which were the singers, all of them of Asaph,
of Heman, of Juduthan, with their sons and their brethren.
By the way, that's the same Heman who had 14 sons and 3 daughters.
It says, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at
the east end of the altar and with them 120 priests sounding with trumpets, that's a lot
of trumpets, came even to pass as the trumpeters and singers were as one, meaning that they
were all in symphony together.
They were not playing in a cacophonous way where, you know, they're out of timing with
each other.
They played as one.
They all played together.
It says to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord and when they lifted
up their voice with trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music and praised the Lord,
saying for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever, that then the house was filled with
a cloud, even the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand and minister by
reason of the cloud for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God.
What's missing?
I mean, when you read these scriptures, you've got wind instruments, such as the pipes that
are being played.
You have brass instruments, such as the trumpets that are constantly being played.
You have percussive instruments in the tabret and the cymbals.
You have stringed instruments.
You have organs, but what you never see is the beating of drums, never.
Now some people will try to say, because many people have been asked the question, where
are the drums in the Bible?
Where are the drums?
I mean, why aren't they playing drums?
Is it listing all these instruments?
Why is it not listing drums?
Don't tell me they didn't have drums back then, because drums, anyone will tell you,
drums are the oldest instrument.
I mean, you do this as a toddler, you know, oh, they haven't thought of drums yet.
Well, no, drums are the most basic instrument.
You go to the most primitive tribe, where they're running around half naked and they're
totally primitive, and what are they going to do?
I mean, that's, you know, they're not necessarily sounding like a philharmonic orchestra if
you go to these tribes out in the middle of nowhere, the aboriginal tribes, you know,
whether, in any part of the world, whether it's ancient tribes of Africa, of North America,
of Australia, of Asia, it's just a lot of, yeah, they're not sitting there and, you know,
they don't have a symphony orchestra, folks, because that's the most basic thing that there
is, is just pounding on a drum.
So here's my question.
If God wanted us to worship Him by pounding on a drum, why didn't He list that?
When it's the most basic, oldest instrument known to man is beating on a drum, why didn't
He bring it up?
Over and over again.
And I told you, go home and read all of it.
Read all the times the harp, the psaltery, the cymbals, everything else are mentioned.
You're not going to find it.
So why do we, in 2014, say, hey, let's beat on drums?
Let's beat drums, like, you know, pagans, but here's why.
Because we're not getting it from the Bible, we're getting it from rock and roll.
And basically, rock and roll is the popular style of music in America, and so because
rock and roll is the popular music of America, and we want to be popular, we bring rock and
roll into the church.
So it's not something that's biblical to beat drums, but can you really have rock and roll
without beating a drum?
Is there a rock band out there that doesn't beat drums?
That's why you see churches having the drums set up here and beating the drums.
Now some people, when they're asked, hey, show me drums in the Bible.
If God just wants us to bang on drums in the house of God, show it to me in the Bible.
Here's what they'll often say.
They'll say, well, you know, if you go back to the Hebrew, well, here's the thing.
If you go back to the Hebrew and Greek, you can pretty much make the Bible say whatever
you want, because the people you're talking to don't speak Greek and Hebrew fluently,
so you can just lie.
If you go back to the Greek, homos aren't really homos.
And if you go back to the Greek, you know, when it says, you know, believe on Christ
to be saved, believe doesn't really mean believe.
You know, when you go back to the Hebrew, God didn't really create the earth in six
days.
And if you go back, you know, it's just you just insert whatever you want.
Just go back to the Hebrew and then you just say whatever you want, and nobody can check
it out, because if I showed you Hebrew right now, you'd look at it, it would look like
just chicken scratch on a page to you, and you wouldn't know.
You'd be like, what?
Is that writing?
You know?
So what I'm saying is, it really isn't there.
Now some people will point to the timbrels and the tabrets in the Bible and say these
are drums.
Timbrels and tabrets are drums.
But here's the thing, timbrels and tabrets are not drums.
Because first of all, notice the word tabret.
What are the last two letters there?
That et.
Okay, you know what et means?
Small.
Like, think about this, there's a kitchen and then there's what?
The kitchenette.
The dining room and the dinette set.
So et is an ending in the English language about something that is small.
So a tabret, not only that, but even if you don't believe me about that, look up every
time the Bible mentions timbrels and tabrets, usually it talks about women playing them
and it's always portable when you read it.
Look up timbrels, it talks about they're traveling and they're walking down the road playing
with pipes and with trumpets and they're playing with tabrets and timbrels.
Women are carrying them, Miriam grabs a timbrel, she's dancing around.
She's not dancing around like duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh.
So if you read the, first of all, if you just look at the English word timbrel and tabret,
we know what that is.
It's like a tambourine is what that is.
It's like a little handheld deal that you shake and tap on like a tambourine.
That's what that would actually be.
And if you actually look up every scripture that mentions the timbrel and the tabret,
it makes perfect sense with that definition, but not with the banging on a drum.
But why do we bang on drums today in most churches?
Because of the fact that we're patterning ourselves after the world, patterning ourselves
after rock and roll music.
That's where that's coming from, not from scripture.
So to me, it's a pretty compelling argument when God takes the time to specifically list
all these instruments and just conspicuously leaves out drums, never tells us to use drums.
Wouldn't that be like a strange fire to say, hey, let's bang on drums in the house of God.
Now you could make a case, you could make a case that, okay, there's a time and a place
for drums like, you know, if people are going to warfare, you know, and you're banging out,
you know, a drum like a marching, duh duh duh duh, you know, and you're marching or
whatever.
But look, in God's house, wouldn't it be better to just stick with what God told us to use?
But we can't do that because then we're not going to be cool.
Then we're not going to sound like, you know, rock and roll, man.
We're not going to be, we're not going to be jiving and jamming up here.
But the question is, what is our goal?
To have music that's pleasing to God or just to say, hey, let's just be cool like the world.
Now, the other thing that the Bible's clear on is that in church, we need to sing psalms,
hymns, and spiritual songs.
But yet the trend today is not only to bring drum sets into the church to make it sound
as much like the world as possible, but also the trend has been to bring in one secular
song per Sunday morning.
And I've talked to people who go to Baptist churches now, even King James preaching Baptist
churches, and what they'll do, they'll do the Christian contemporary songs with the
beating of the drums, but then they'll also bring in one secular song per service.
Yep, one secular song per service.
And what they'll do is they'll try to find a worldly song, and these songs have nothing
to do with Jesus, nothing to do with the Bible, nothing to do with God's word, but they'll
try to get a song that kind of sounds like it could.
It could talk about Jesus if we want to think of it that way.
Sometimes they'll even just change the lyrics a little, and they'll sing famous, worldly
songs, and they will just basically just bring them into church.
Like for example, Bon Jovi, Livin' on a Prayer, Livin' on a Prayer, that song was not about
prayer.
Okay, Bon Jovi wasn't writing a song, I just really wanted to write a song that would honor
the Lord, and I just really wanted my fans to realize how important prayer is, and how
God wants us to spend time in prayer.
Who thinks that that's what Bon Jovi was talking about in the song Livin' on a Prayer?
But they bring that in, oh it's got prayer in it, Livin' on a Prayer, and they'll bring
that in on Sunday mornings, and it's popular.
Why?
Because people grew up with that song, they think it's a cool song, they'll sing it on
Sunday mornings.
I wish I had more examples, they're escaping me, I should have written them in my notes,
because I've heard of a ton of examples of this.
I know that I was in an independent fundamental Baptist church, and at a wedding, they sang
the song by, oh man, the worldliness is escaping me right now, but what was it called, this
lady, it's called From This Moment, Shania Twain, who knows who Shania Twain is, okay,
so this Shania, worldly people, no I'm just kidding, God bless you, I see that hand, but
anyway, Shania Twain had this song called From This Moment On, and they did this in
the house of God, they sang this song, you know, you're the reason I believe in love,
you know, but here's the thing, they're singing it, they're not singing it to Jesus though,
it's a man and a woman having that relationship, okay, and you know, from this moment, I should
have been a worldly singer, I know, from this moment, I am blessed, I live only for your
happiness, now hold on, I love my wife very much, I love my wife more than anyone on this
earth, but do you think I live only for her happiness?
Because if you do, you're wrong, because you know who I love more than my wife, Jesus,
so getting in God's house, you're in God's house, saying I only live for your happiness,
you're the reason I believe in love, no, this is the reason I believe in love, because for
God so loved the world, God is love, everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God,
God is where love comes from, God is why I believe in love, I live from this moment on
for his happiness, for his glory, I'm not going to sit there and sing a song that turns
it into just my whole life is about my relationship with my wife, now look, that's a critical
relationship in my life, but this relationship is more important, this is number one, but
that song is blasphemous, when you bring it into God's house and you're singing it about
man and woman, and then you're singing living on a prayer, I remember when I was a kid in
Sunday school, they sang, and I know this is going way back in time, but you know the
song Louie Louie, it's like from the 60s, they sang it like, pharaoh, pharaoh, oh let
my people go, but look, these are not Psalms, these are not hymns, these are not spiritual
songs, the point of doing that is just popularity, just to be cool, just to be like the world,
and I wish I had better examples, but I'm telling you, I talked to somebody recently
who said at the Baptist church they're going to, it's like a clock, every Sunday morning
there's one secular song, and it's popular songs, like songs from 2014, songs from 2013,
songs from 2012 that are on the radio, that have nothing to do, they're not even claiming
to be a Christian artist, I mean they're just secular, worldly love songs, and they just
perform them in church, and it's done not because God said bring in, look, did anywhere
in the Bible did God say bring in worldly music, bring in a secular song, bring in a
love song that's not about Jesus and sing that in the midst of the congregation, no
in the midst of the congregation, why sing praise unto thee?
Every song that we sing in this house of God should be directed to the Lord, it should
be about the Lord or to the Lord, it should all bring glory to him, if there's a song
that we're singing, it's not bringing glory to the Lord, it's not praising the Lord, it's
just some worldly radio song, and we're just playing it so that people will come back because
they like the live music, now look, I like live music too, and you know, I love the piano
and organ, I love the singing, it's a highlight of the service, and I love it when you go
to a church and maybe they even have more instruments than this, and they have trumpets,
it sounds great, I'm all for it, God's all for it, but I'm not for bringing in worldly
music, and I'm not for beating on drums, you know, why don't we just go with the list that
God gave us, instead of bringing in something that is just patterned after the world, and
you know, I had one last point, but I don't have time to get to it, I'm out of time, but
let's just not be guilty of offering strange fire before the Lord, let's think about, wait
a minute, what does God want us to do in our church services, you know, does he, what kind
of images does he want, none, you know, what kind of flags and banners should we be swearing
allegiance to, none, you know, what kind of music should we have, well, he told us what
kind, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, should we play instruments, sure, stringed instruments,
organs, pipes, cymbals, that's all fine, a tambourine would be fine, but not to sit there
and beat on drums, just to try to simulate rock and roll so you can perform Living on
a Prayer by Bon Jovi, you know, the hymns in our hymnbook are songs that are similar
to the book of Psalms in the sense that they teach a lot of doctrine, you know, and the
songs in Psalms teach a lot of doctrine, that's how our music should be, and again, you know,
we could do a whole sermon about what our music should be as God's people, but I think
you get the idea, Nadab and Abihu, I'm going to read it one more time, the sons of Aaron
took either of them as censer and put fire there and put incense thereon, and offered
strange fire before the Lord which he commanded them not, and there went out fire from the
Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord, there's nothing wrong with burning
incense, other parts of the worship of the children of Israel, they were told to burn
incense, other times, what was the sin?
They did it when he commanded them not, they did it, it was a specific order of events,
do this, do this, do this, and they're like, hey bro, let's just light up some incense,
man, just praise the Lord the way we want to do it, let's just light some incense, bro,
we're free in Christ, man, just whatever, just as long as we're praising God, man, it
doesn't even matter, Bon Jovi can be used to praise God, I mean, let's just beat on
drums and rock for Jesus, man, let's jam for Jesus, and then boom, just fire from the
Lord.
Hey everybody, let's pledge allegiance to the American flag, everybody, all right, everybody
stand up, pledge to the Christian flag, what in the world does this happen, well God just
sent fire from the Lord, because you're doing all this weird worship that he didn't tell
you to do.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer, Father, we thank you so much for your word,
Lord, we thank you for your grace and your mercy, Lord, we're not perfect, nobody's perfect,
Lord, we're not trying to just criticize or point out everything that anybody does wrong,
but Lord, we need to know why we don't do this stuff, and Lord, I pray that those who
do this stuff would quit doing it.
I know that there are people who have, you know, statues of Jesus, and their heart's
in the right place, Lord, but just help them to learn the truth and quit doing it.
I know there are good churches that pledge to the American flag, Christian flag, they
need to stop doing it, it's not biblical, Lord, help them to get right with you and
get rid of that garbage, Lord, I know that, you know, there are probably a lot of nice
Bible believing Christians that beat on drums in the church and whatever, but Lord, just
help us to be biblical in our music, and Lord, just please help us not to be offering strange
fire before you, help us to worship you in a way that you like, and in Jesus' name we
pray, amen.