Nadab & Abihu: Consumed By Fire! – Part 3
I don’t know about you, but I want to know about the God who burned them up. Does God want to barbecue sinners, or does He yearn for our well-being and intimate fellowship?
I don’t know about you, but I want to know about the God who burned them up. Does God want to barbecue sinners, or does He yearn for our well-being and intimate fellowship?
God wants us in His presence more than we can know. God is committed to redeeming this world from sin and death and is working to infuse it with the light and life of His presence.
God is committed to a freedom too wonderful to accept without serious contemplation and thought. Such freedom does not decrease but increases faith. It’s about embracing the deeper ethics of our faith and thinking rightly about God and our own purpose in life.
The story of being liberated by a gracious and caring God, of leaving a life of bondage and oppression under a cruel king, and of crossing over to a new life of freedom is one that still resonates
The tree, with it leaves mediating “healing to the nations,” is our mission (Revelation 22:2). It helps us choose how we orient our hearts and live our lives here and now.
Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid in light of what it takes to critically engage the world with the truth about the kind of person God really is. Jesus has already overcome the world and everything in it. You don’t have to be afraid to run into the chaos. Don’t let anything that is happening in the world around you become more important or more powerful to you than the truth about God as revealed by the Person of Jesus.
One can read the commandments as enforced rules that must be obeyed, or one can read them as facilitating a relationship with God—as His commitment to engaging with us to help us see Him as not only our sovereign but also our savior, lover and friend.
What our world needs today is a picture of God’s goodness and love, a rarity in these times.
In this story, we discover an explosion of excessive and sweet joy, the kind we all search for.
For Paul, the gospel is not about being saved from an angry God but a message grounded in God’s rescuing love for the world and fully revealed in the faithfulness of Jesus. Now that’s a game changer!