Check Out for Dead Flies!

Aaron comes from a family of ministers to God. His siblings Moses and Miriam were renowned spiritual leaders. All the sons of Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar were priests. In the earlier part of his life his call was to be a mouth piece to his younger brother Moses. Leader wise Moses was like God to him (Exodus 4:14-16). I admire the practical humility with which Aaron operated as a second leader. With Moses and his faltering lips (6:12) and with Aaron and his eloquent speaking skills, a tremendous cooperation would have been on exercise when the brothers functioned as leaders. No wonder unity among brethren was compared to precious oil running down Aaron’s beard in Psalm 133:2. For these unique qualities of Aaron, we see in Psalm 115:12, the Lord blessed the house of Aaron. Bible history says that there were eighty three high priests in the family line of Aaron. To name a few descendants: there was Phinehas, a spiritual zealot, Zadok, an awesome priest, Ezra a spiritual reformer and John the Baptist.

Yet there was a dead fly in the perfumed life of Aaron. During a prolonged absence of Moses, Aaron made a golden calf for worship, yielding to the peer pressure of the crowd. This led to sins of idolatry, immorality and shame to a wider community of the Israelites (Exodus 32:1-6). Like father were his sons Nadab and Abihu who brought sin to the community. These two sons had death as a punishment for this sin (Numbers 3:4)! We find multiple mentions of this “dead fly” in the rest of the history of Israel. In 1 Kings 12:26-30, we find notorious Jeroboam another “dead fly” who made golden calves following Aaron, for people to worship. From Jeroboam many Kings in Israel carried the dead fly odour to future generations.

Aaron was one who was called by God to be a priest. We now know that the call to be a priest cannot be taken lightly. The way and manner Aaron was fallible points us to an infallible “High Priest”- Jesus! (Hebrews 5: 1-5). Now the Bible also tells us that every believer of Jesus is a priest! (1 Peter 2:9) When Aaron reflected godly characters, his life was like a perfume. Blessings were his share. Dead flies in a perfume give a bad smell (Ecclesiastes 10:1).  For Aaron, it was yielding to Satan which was like a dead fly in the perfume. The resultant bad odour also got smeared through the generations after him.

It is time for us to check out for dead flies in our life. A God who can turn water into wine, replace a heart of flesh in the place of a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26) can work on a “bad” smelling perfume and make it a “sweet” smelling perfume! Living a life as fragrant as a perfume all through, has challenges like how Aaron had! So what I can do is to look to Jesus, the perfect priest for His grace. It is “He” who enables me to smell like a sweet smelling perfume!