In the past few months I have read two books (or parts of two books) that have referenced Nadab and Abihu as illustrations of God’s response to carelessness in believers. I acknowledge that “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come” (I Cor.10:11), but we must be careful that what we learn is what God intended.

The passage that encompasses Nadab and Abihu’s demise says, “Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord” (Lev.10:1). No doubt, applications for the priesthood dropped off severely after this event but what actually precipitated God’s judgment?

The books I have seen lately that reference this event take the same line that I was taught when I first became a believer. The argument goes that these two sons of Aaron had not been careful to prepare the sacrificial fire and incense exactly as God had commanded. This carelessness with God’s clear commands brought his wrath down upon these two men. The application has always been that we must be extremely careful to know and interpret God’s word correctly or we will incur his wrath. The practical outcome of this view has been more than having great respect for God’s word, however. The outcome has been a theology that emphasizes pure doctrine above all else in our faith and even suggests that our pure and accurate doctrine is what makes us acceptable to God. This view suggests that we are saved by grace but stay saved by correct doctrine. This essentially places doctrine above relationship and makes God a vengeful teacher who brutally punishes his students if one word is misspelled, one comma is misplaced, or one preposition is left hanging.

That view is what cause denominations to refuse fellowship with other denominations whose theology does not perfectly match their own and makes us more concerned about correct doctrine than love, mercy and justice. It is true that we must agree on some doctrines – but those are essential doctrines about Christ – his deity, his incarnation, his resurrection, his sinless life, and the sufficiency of his sacrifice. Those who deny these truths are in a very dangerous place but that does not mean that our salvation hinges on a correct understanding and teaching of everything else in the Bible – forms of worship, translations of the Bible, end-times theology, etc. If it does, then we are saved by correct doctrine rather than by grace and we live a fearful life wondering what carelessness or error has cost us our salvation or will soon bring God’s wrath upon us.

So what is Nadab and Abihu all about if not the judgment of God on those who offer strange or unauthorized fire? A few verses later the text says, “The Lord said to Aaron, ‘You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the Tent of Meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.’” (Lev.10:8-9). I believe this is a clear indication that the sin of Aaron’s sons was not a sincere misunderstanding of the commandments for the ritual but was drunkenness with a disdain and total disregard for the holiness of God and their own holiness as priests. Their problem was a matter of the heart rather than a doctrinal problem.

To hold the position that doctrinal correctness in every area of scripture is what makes us acceptable to God makes other events inexplicable. Remember when David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and danced before the Lord. He wore priestly garments as he led the procession of the Ark. Those garments were only for the tribe of Levi. David was of the tribe of Judah. Hezekiah clearly admitted that the people were unclean according to the rules of the sanctuary and unfit to keep Passover but God allowed them to keep Passover anyway with his blessing. No commandment I have read authorizes the drinking of wine at Passover but Jesus certainly did so without penalty or sin. Each of these seem to violate the letter of God’s law but their hearts were turned to God. No fire for them! Does that mean we can be careless and uncaring about the word of God? Absolutely not. But we do need to know that imperfect understanding and mistakes when one’s heart is turned toward God does not bring his wrath.

Many believers are afraid to receive any new teaching if it varies from what they have always been taught. Many whose hearts have yearned to see the power of God expressed in their lives have shied away from the gifts of the Spirit because they were told such expressions are “strange fire.” We should obviously test the spirits, as John says, but when we seek God with all of our hearts his Spirit is faithful to lead us into all truth even if we stumble a bit on the way. Fear of a wrathful master is what kept the servant from investing the talents that were entrusted to him and the same fear cost him what his master had given him.  Those who discovered Jesus had to push past the doctrines of the Pharisees that they had been taught all of their lives. God always wants to give us a greater understanding of who he is and what his Spirit has for us. God is always up to something new and he is always looking for new wineskins.

Prophets Without Honor

When Jesus had finished these parables, he moved on from there. Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked.  “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. (Matt/13:53-57)

There is nothing more discouraging than trying to share your faith or your understanding of scripture with people who have known you in the past and discovering that you have little to no credibility with them. Sometimes it’s people who knew you before you encountered Christ.  Sometimes it is family members.  I’m not saying that you can never lead old friends, acquaintances, and family members to the Lord.  You can and many do, but on occasion you get no audience.

Jesus experienced the same thing.  In Matthew 13, Jesus revisited his hometown – Nazareth.  He began teaching in the synagogue and, at first, people were amazed and impressed. Matthew says, “They were amazed. Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?’ they asked.”  But their amazement soon turned to resentment and rejection.  These were people who had known Jesus and his family before he left to begin a public ministry and declare that he was the Messiah.  Some of them remembered the scandal of Mary’s pregnancy.  Others remembered him working on their homes or building basic furniture for them.  They remembered Mary and Joseph and their children coming to synagogue and being taught. They may have even remembered Jesus playing practical jokes on friends or always having a runny nose as a kid.

Apparently they had heard great stories about miracles he was performing and witnessed his anointed teaching themselves.  But anointed teaching often challenges dearly held perspectives and “settled theology.” Remember the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7.  Jesus said in several places, “You have heard that is was said…but I say unto you.”  Many of the Jews had grown comfortable with their understanding of God and their view of the world.  The teachings of Jesus implied that there was something lacking in their view of God and how to have a relationship with him.  I’m certain that they at first began to feel uncomfortable with his teachings and then angry as his teaching challenged them.

The first response of the flesh and a religious spirit when anyone suggests that a person’s approach to God or their understanding of his word has been lacking is to take offense and to accuse the teacher of self-righteousness and a “holier than thou” attitude.  That is exactly what happened to Jesus. Suddenly his teaching raised questions about the adequacy of their faith their understanding of the Torah.  It wasn’t long before some began whispering, “Who does he think he is?”  In their own minds, they rushed to discredit his teaching and even his miracles by discrediting him.  They simply recast him in the role of the boy who grew up in a home on the wrong side of the tracks in an ordinary working class family.  In that moment, they refused to see him as he was in the synagogue – the Anointed One of God – but would only see him as the person he used to be.  Few miracles were done that day because of their unbelief. We are also told that even his own brothers refused to believe who he was until after the resurrection.

There are a several lessons to be learned from this account.

1. Sometimes, we are not the one who should be talking to certain friends or family members about our faith or life changes they need to make – sinful lifestyles they need to abandon.  For whatever reason we are so familiar to them that our words carry little weight.  That is especially true when adult children try to speak into their parents’ lives. When the gospel is declared or when we call people to repentance the word carries authority – no matter how gently we say it.  Many parents can never give up their role of authority over children – even grown children – so they can’t receive anything from one of their children that has authority attached to it.  Close friends and siblings are often the same.  In those cases we need to simply ask God to influence them through other people.  Love them.  Pray for them.  Realize you may not be the one to speak to them about their lives.

2.  Sometimes we believe that if God would just do a miracle for our unbelieving friends or family members, they would immediately come to faith and give their lives to Jesus.  Sometimes a miracle and the kindness of God expressed through that miracle does create faith, but not always.  The Pharisees witnessed numerous astounding miracles but never came to faith.  The people of Nazareth heard of many of his miracles and saw a few, but took offense at Jesus rather than believing on him.  I love miracles and believe we should ask God for them everyday.  I’m just saying that miracles do not always open the door to faith. God knows what the key is to every person’s heart and we need to pray for that revelation when trying to reach any person for Jesus.

3.  We need to watch our own hearts when people come to us with a teaching, an insight or even a rebuke that doesn’t line up with what we have always believed.  Sometimes, when people challenge my theology or my motives, I can feel offense begin to rise up in me and something wants to dismiss immediately anything they have to say.  But God calls us to maintain a humble spirit, to be teachable, and to always seek truth.  Proverbs tells us that a wise man receives correction and is thankful for it.

How can we do less and how can we judge whom God will use to sharpen our understanding of his word and his ways or to call us to a heart correction?  Many in Nazareth missed the Son of God because they judged God’s messenger.  I’m certainly not saying to receive every new teaching or even every rebuke.  But consider them, pray about them, and be humble enough to receive those things from people you disapproved of in the past, from those who don’t have your education or income, or even those who seen a bit eccentric.  Remember John the Baptist – camel skin clothes, long hair, and a diet of locusts and honey.  Eccentric!  Be blessed today and be open to hearing from God from all kinds of people in your present or even from your past.

When I was young in the faith, I viewed spiritual error as drifting from the correct side of the road to the other side.  As I have grown older in the faith, I have realized that a ditch exists on both sides of the road.  Satan can damage the body of Christ and individuals in his body with either ditch.  God’s truth is in the center of the road and wandering too far left or right can put us into mud and weeds up to our bumpers.

I think one of the most subversive and diabolical strategies against the church today is the “tolerance card.”   The world rails against biblical values and biblical stances  and always polishes off its arguments with the accusation against the church of “intolerance. ”  Whoever is representing the world then smugly quotes Jesus when he said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged (Mt.7:1).

As the 21^st century presses on, fewer and fewer things are considered wrong. By today’s standards, God should have issued only two or three commandments on Sinai instead of the “pesky ten”.  Today, very few people are held responsible for their failures, shortcomings, crimes, or moral choices.  Science is being “used” as the ultimate authority to declare that hardly anyone is capable of restraint because of hormones, genetics, or brain chemistry.  Since no one can “help themselves” or because they were “born that way,” these poor people should not be held responsible for their actions.   Of course, Christians are exempt from that free pass.  They are mean, intolerant and bigoted by choice, not because they were born that way.

The greater problem is that Satan has sown that type of thinking in the church so that sincere Christians have begun to question biblical standards or, at least, their understanding of biblical standards.  Many followers of Jesus now wonder if we are being unloving and intolerant when we stand on the word of God. Too many of us give “science” more authority than the Word and begin to reason that if choices and behaviors are determined by genetics and brain chemistry, then surely God would not hold these individuals responsible and, therefore, neither should the church.  The “Christian thing to do” then becomes watering down God’s word so that it rarely means what it says or understanding morality differently now that we have been enlightened by culture and science.

In that climate, sin starts to sound old fashion and begins to be dropped from our vocabulary.  The cultural norms begin to define what is acceptable in the church and in our lives and anything that pushes back against cultural norms is unloving, intolerant, and bigoted.  Holiness loses all meaning and the church opens the door for the enemy to come in and camp out.  No wonder the church manifests no power. The next step becomes questioning biblical inspiration, biblical interpretation, and whether Jesus is really the only way to heaven. After all, that seems so intolerant and unloving.  But “unloving” is letting someone speed toward a ditch that is five hundred feet deep and certain death because we didn’t want to judge their driving practices.

The other ditch, however, can be just as devastating.  That ditch is a rigid legalism or dogmatism  in the church that divides the body of Christ over all kinds of issues that Paul says are “disputable matters.” He uses that language in Romans 14 about dietary laws, holy days, eating foods sacrificed to idols, and circumcision. Amazingly, he said the only absolute on those issues was that we could not insist that other believers understood those issues in the same way that we did.  He instructed us not to be dogmatic about those issues or demand our way since either might cause another brother to stumble.

I have always been amazed at the outcomes of the Jerusalem Conference in Act 15 regarding Gentile believers.  There was such a huge gulf between Jewish lifestyles and Gentile that I would have expected a long list of demands for changes in the life and ways of these former pagans. Yet, at the end, these new believers were asked only to change a few dietary laws, avoid sexual immorality, and to remember the poor.

We are not saying that they were not being called to biblical standards of holiness. It’s just that sometimes we believe we must all understand all of God’s word just alike or we can’t fellowship one another. If you want to know what the “big rocks” are, a quick study in “causes for withdrawal of fellowship” in the N.T. is enlightening.  I can tell you, no one got excommunicated for new expressions of worship, translations of the Bible, forms of church government, or the color of the carpet in the sanctuary.

In the New Testament, only a few things justify withholding fellowship from another believer. The first is teaching false doctrines about Christ – his deity, his Messiahship, his incarnation, his death and resurrection, and his return (2 Jn.7-11). Another is teaching that salvation is based on works rather than grace (Gal.1:8). The third is open and unrepentant immorality (1 Cor. 5:1-5). Another is causing division and disunity in the church (Rom.16:17) and, finally, we are told to have nothing to do with brothers in the Lord who refuse to work. (2 Thess.3:6).

I have served in fellowships where lines of fellowship were drawn about all kinds of things that seem to be disputable matters. Godly, biblically knowledgeable people who had every evidence of the Spirit of God living in them didn’t always agree on everything.  They often disagreed on issues related to spiritual gifts, end-times, the ministry of angels and demons, baptism of the Spirit, predestination, social issues, etc.

And yet they agreed on who Christ is and that we are saved by grace.  They worked hard, loved their families, and lived righteous lives. They worked to maintain unity in the body of Christ and yet these individuals were marked as unworthy of fellowship because they held different positions on some disputable matter.  Those who insisted on “doctrinal purity” in all doctrines, then became the ones who were actually causing divisions in the church.

Rigid doctrines about non-essentials or non-salvation issues are another huge ditch the enemy wants  to plunge us into. In today’s culture wars, I believe we will all have to guard our hearts, our lives, and our understanding against both ditches. Are we to love sinners, be tolerant of differences, and be patient while people grow? Yes, of course.  Are we to avoid judging others and being self-righteous?  Yes, of course.

But we are not to change God’s word and biblical standards and call it Christian tolerance and we are not to refrain from applying God’s word to a sinful situation so we can say we are non-judgmental. We “judge” others when we establish our own standards and call them righteous, not when we apply God’s standards.  That is called accountability and a call to repentance for the sake of our souls.

Satan can weaken and destroy believers by steering a church into either ditch.  Truth governed by love is the center-line that gives us authority over the enemy.  Pray for wisdom to always stay in the center of God’s will. Remember, that we are always growing in our understanding of God’s word and being absolutely correct in every point of doctrine is impossible because “we know in part.” But also remember that we do know what biblical standards of living and righteousness are and we have no right to change the standard or morph their meanings into culturally acceptable behaviors. Either creates a huge gap in the wall through which Satan may freely enter our lives or our church.