Editor’s Introduction
James Begg (1808-1883), the son of a Scottish minister, is well-known by those who have studied the history and principles of the Free Church of Scotland. Though younger and lesser known than Thomas Chalmers, he was a leading evangelical during the turbulent conflict leading to the Disruption of 1843.
Begg served a variety of charges, most notably Liberton Kirk in the Established Church and Newington in the Free Church. Within the Free Church, he continued his steadfast adherence to the teaching of Scripture as articulated in the Westminster Standards and was a leading figure within the Constitutionalist side of the union controversy. Desirous of union, he insisted that it be upon grounds that honor the constitution of the Church.
He published several books on a wide variety of subjects from worship to social reform and founded the Scottish Reformation Society. Additionally, he founded and maintained for 21 years The Bulwark, or Reformation Journal, and edited with contributions The Watchword and The Signal, all periodicals adhering to the Westminster Standards and promoting the Constitutionalist cause. He was elected moderator of the General Assembly in 1865. He labored constantly for the good of the church; his earthly life coming to its end in 1888.
– Jonathan Mattull
Purity of Worship, or the Reverence Due to God
Selected from: The Watchword: A Magazine for the Defence of Bible Truth, and the Advocacy of Free Church Principles, Vol. II, October 1, 1867 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1868), 212-216.
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.—Lev. 10:3
Notice the historical incident by which these words were suggested. The sacred writer informs us that “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.” This was truly a most distressing event, and one that was calculated to produce a deep and indelible impression on the minds of all concerned. The day of the occurrence was that on which the tabernacle, so long in building, was first opened. The Lord had just taken possession of it by the symbol of His presence. The shekinah, or burning light, was now resting between the cherubims, and shining on the mercy-seat, and “the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people.” We are also told that “a fire had come out from before Him, and consumed the sacrifice” which had been laid upon the altar. This betokened His acceptance of the offering which His people had presented to Him, as well as of the rich and beautiful sanctuary which they had prepared for Him. Hence, as soon as they saw the fire coming out from His presence, and lighting upon the sacrifice, “they shouted, and fell on their faces,” overcome with a sense of mingled gratitude and awe. It was therefore a great and memorable day among the children of Israel, and Nadab and Abihu may well be supposed to have shared to the full extent in the excitement that universally prevailed. They had only a few days before been consecrated to the office of the priesthood, and it seems they had not been called upon to take any part in the ceremonies that took place on this occasion. These were conducted by Aaron himself, under the direction of Moses, probably on account of the special importance with which they were regarded. But the young priests were impatient to enter upon their work; and therefore, during some pause in the services, while their father was absent, they snatched up their censers, and proceeded, without call or authority of any kind, to offer incense. In doing so it is stated that “they offered strange fire before the Lord.” That which they ought to have used was the sacred fire which had been specially provided for the purpose; but, whether from ignorance or indifference, they put common fire into the censers, “which the Lord had commanded them not,” and hence the sudden and awful doom with which they were visited. God is a jealous God; He will not give His glory to another; nor will He suffer any living creature to forget what is due to His Sovereign Majesty. He therefore resolved, at the very outset, to check the spirit of irreverence and presumption, of which these young men had been guilty, by an act of chastisement that should never be forgotten. Accordingly, as Nadab and Abihu approached the golden altar, with their burning censers in their hands, as they drew near to the bright light which stood above the mercy seat, and which symbolized “the glory of the Lord,” a flash, like that of lightning, darted forth from the midst of it, and killed them on the spot. In the emphatic language of the text, “there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them.” We may all imagine how Aaron must have felt when summoned to witness this terrible visitation—when he saw his two sons lying dead on the floor of the sanctuary, wrapped in their priestly robes, and with their censers still smoking by their sides. We may imagine it, but what words can express the unutterable agony of that sight! We are told that “Aaron held his peace,” as if struck dumb with consternation and dismay. Moses it was that first broke silence, as he addressed his heart stricken brother in the words of our text: “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.”
Such, then, being the historical incident by which those words were suggested, let us now look for a little at the practical lessons which may be drawn from it. Confining ourselves at present to one or two of the plainest and most prominent, we are reminded,
1. First of all, that in our approaches to God we must be careful to pay Him the honour which is due unto His name, “I will be sanctified,” he says, “of them that come nigh me.” Hence, in the form of prayer which our Lord taught His disciples, this lesson takes precedence of all the rest, being embodied in the very first petition it contains: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name;” while Paul, when speaking of the spirit in which we should approach Him, says, “Let us have grace, whereby we may worship Him acceptably, with reverence, and godly fear.” And referring to a truth, of which the tragical event we have just noticed forms a most signal illustration, he adds, “for our God is a consuming fire.” If Nadab and Abihu had had any proper sense of the holiness of Jehovah, they would not have been guilty of the light and irreverent behavior into which they were betrayed, and for which they were so suddenly and so terribly punished. That punishment shows how offensive such conduct is in the sight of God; and though the genius of the ancient economy was more stern and severe than that of the new, yet, as if to prove that there is no difference between them in regard to the matter before us, an incident of a similar kind occurred at the very first establishment of the Christian Church. We refer to the case of Ananias and Sapphira. They also came to offer sacrifice to the Lord—the sacrifice of their substance; but they did not sanctify Him in their hearts. On the contrary, they kept back a part of their property, while they professed to be giving the whole. If they had any real knowledge of God at all, they must have felt that He was quite aware of what they were doing; and if they believed that He was privy to the act of deceit which they attempted to practice, and yet supposed that He would wink at it, they must have entertained very low and unworthy notions of His character. They thought they could deceive the apostles, and get no small credit to themselves for the liberality they displayed; and as for God, they, as it were, resolved to take Him into their own hands. And for this act of combined imposition and presumption, they were struck dead in the house of prayer, and in the presence of the disciples—struck dead, like the sons of Aaron, before the Lord—struck dead with the lie in their mouth! And as the fate of Nadab and Abihu at the commencement of the tabernacle service was designed to impress upon the people of Israel the danger of trifling with the ordinances of God; so the case of Ananias and Sapphira was intended to convey a similar lesson at the very dawn of the Christian dispensation.
2. But the statement in the text teaches us further, that, in drawing nigh to God, we must do so in the way of His own appointment. The manner in which we are to worship Him is as distinctly prescribed, as is the frame of mind in which we ought to approach Him. The minute care with which the arrangements of the Levitical service were laid down is enough to prove this; while the second commandment not only forbids the worshipping of God by images, but “in any other way not appointed in His Word.” But Nadab and Abihu, careless of what they did, went both into the tabernacle at once, instead of going each in his turn; the law being that only one priest was to offer incense at a time.
Besides this, they went without being authorized, thereby deranging the order of the services appointed for the occasion. And yet further, they not only offered “strange fire,” as we have seen, but also, there is reason to believe, strange incense, which was expressly interdicted. In all these respects they acted as “the Lord commanded them not.” They followed their own way and their own will, without regard to those rules which the Lord had ordained for the regulation of His worship. It was not that they meant to cast any dishonour upon Him; there was, perhaps, no thought of that kind present to their minds at the time. On the contrary, they seem to have been carried away by a false zeal, by a sort of carnal and superficial excitement, which led them to attach but little value to rules of any kind. They were evidently anxious to take some public part in the proceedings of the day,—to show themselves to the people in the execution of their priestly office; and it is also possible that they thought they might be able to make some favourable impression upon their minds by the forwardness which they manifested, and the fervour they displayed. Hence it did not appear to them to be of much consequence whether they followed the prescribed ritual or not. In short, they were light and thoughtless young men, full of self confidence, and devoid alike of solid piety and of sound judgment. “Fools will rush in where angels fear to tread;” and this may perhaps account for some of those unwarranted innovations of which we see such strange developments in our own day throughout every part of the kingdom. The parties who are engaged in introducing them appear to be very zealous, and it is on the ground of giving more fulness and impressiveness to the service of God that they plead for them. Whether they are consistent with the spiritual worship which God demands, and above all, whether they are in strict conformity with those laws and ordinances which He has laid down for our observance, they do not care to inquire. All they seem to be concerned about is the immediate effect they are fitted to produce; and if that effect is likely to be more attractive to the public taste, more pleasing to the eye and the ear, and the rest of the senses, they consider that reason enough for desiring to set them up, whether they are in accordance with scriptural order or not. In these matters they seem much more anxious to consult the will of man than the Word of God, and think themselves quite entitled to set aside the one in order to satisfy the other. And if you look at the parties by whom these experiments are made, you will have no difficulty in perceiving the sort of spirit by which they are actuated. Are they the wise, the thoughtful, the godly of the land by whom such innovations are sought after? Nay, verily, but the weak, the flippant, the sentimental, the flaunting lovers of sensual excitement and theatrical display; those who have much of the romance of religion about them, while they show but little of the reality, and who interest themselves in the formal and the ceremonial, just because they have no hold of, and no sympathy with, what is truly and properly spiritual in the elements of worship. This love of change, this craving after something new, is a sad enough symptom of the inward state of those by whom it is exhibited. It proves that they are as yet without any solid foundation on which their souls can rest. If they have any religious principle at all, it is too feeble either to stay their minds or to stablish their hearts; for it leaves them crying out, “Who will show us any good?” And when they are found seeking relief in the invention and multiplication of outward ceremonies, the fact shows plainly enough the spiritually effete and vapid condition into which they have fallen. For what is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Learn of me, says Christ, and ye shall find rest to your souls. He that drinketh of the water of earthly wells shall thirst again, but he that drinketh of the water of life shall never thirst. No man having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith the old is better.
3. But we hasten to observe, farther and finally, that we ought to approach God in the exercise of those dispositions and affections that befit His character and service. We are bound to abstain from everything, both in feeling and in act, that is calculated to lessen His glory, or to detract from the reverence and godly fear with which all men ought to regard Him. To think that He is honoured by certain things that are occasionally done by those who profess to serve Him, is indeed to cherish a poor estimate of His character. To imagine, for example, that He is better pleased with well-turned sentences, with artistic melodies, with studied looks and dramatic gestures, than with the simple utterances of the heart; to suppose that our prayers will be more acceptable to Him if we are dressed in a particular garment when we utter them, or if we turn our faces to the east at a certain part of them, or if we lift up our voices and sing them, instead of humbling our hearts and our looks while we say them; to suppose this is surely to degrade the character of God, and to bring Him down to the level of the poorest idol of wood or stone that was ever worshipped. It is sad that the service of God should be conducted by thoughtless triflers who dare to associate His name with such pitiful frivolities as these. The sin of Nadab and Abihu was as nothing to theirs, and we may well dread lest the anger of the Lord should smoke out against the men who are guilty of such desecration, as well as against the churches and communities that are so devoid of spiritual understanding as to tolerate them.
How different these childish devices from the plain directions of the divine Word, which require us to “draw near to God with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” The great Teacher tells us that “God is a spirit,” and that we must therefore worship Him “in spirit and in truth.” Man looketh at the outward appearance, and those who desire to be seen of men will concern themselves chiefly with what men can see—the dresses, the postures, the scenic decorations and the outward appliances of worship—but they forget that the Lord looketh at the heart. Because He is the true God, He requireth truth in the inward parts, and therefore, says the apostle, “let us draw near with a true heart.” We are farther directed to approach Him “in full assurance of faith”—that is, in the full confidence that if we come with true hearts, and by that new and living way which He has himself appointed, we shall find acceptance with Him. Without faith it is impossible to please Him, or indeed to realise His presence at all, and the stronger and fuller our faith is, the more do we glorify Him. We must also seek to “have our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” The apostle declares elsewhere that it was for this very end that Christ came, that He might purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. A misguided and perverted conscience is the source of all false worship, and this (commonly called the religious faculty) must be purified by the blood of sprinkling from ignorance, error, superstition, and whatever else is apt to trouble or defile the homage which we offer unto God. And we must, lastly, draw near, having “our bodies washed with pure water.” Like the priests who cleansed their bodies in the laver that stood in the porch, and arrayed themselves in the linen ephod white and clean before they passed in to minister at the altar of God, we must worship the Lord in faith and in the beauty of holiness; and they only who have pure hearts and clean hands are prepared to appear in His presence, or shall stand in His sight.
