What does Tribe teach about consuming fire?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on consuming fire starts with two events that sit on the same page in Leviticus: fire from God that produced worship when it consumed the burnt offering, and fire from God that killed Nadab and Abihu on their first day as priests. Brian Hunter holds those two moments side by side and refuses to let either one cancel the other out. The God who showed up in both events is the same God, and the tension between them is real. Brian defines that God this way: a consuming fire who will never compromise holiness for love. He cannot make exceptions to his own holiness. If he could, he would be less than perfect, and a less-than-perfect being cannot be God.
When people run into that tension, the first question that comes up is simply why. Brian says that is a completely human question and you should give yourself permission to ask it. But he pushes back on it as the most productive place to stay. As he puts it, "God does not owe me an answer at all. There's no pleading with him." The more useful posture, one that came from a person in the room named Michelle, is to ask God what he wants you to learn about him in the situation. That question moves toward relationship rather than frustration, and Brian says God delights in giving understanding even though he owes none.
The deeper point Brian drives toward is that a perfectly holy God who cannot overlook sin, and a world full of people who have sinned, creates a genuine dilemma. He calls it the most extraordinary problem in the universe, and says "the most incredible dilemma in the history of the universe required the most brilliant solution ever conceived." That solution is Jesus, whose death is not a polite covering of small mistakes but, as Brian says, a literal erasure of sin. Leviticus, read with that frame, is not a book of arbitrary rules. It is a blueprint for holiness that points forward to why Jesus matters as much as he does.
Taught from Leviticus 9:18-24 · Leviticus 10:1-6 · Hebrews 9:27-28 · Psalm 2 · Luke 12:47-48
“God does not owe me an answer at all. There's no pleading with him.”
From A Consuming Fire
The passage taught · Hebrews 9:27-28
27 Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, without sin, to those who are eagerly waiting for him for salvation.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 24, 2025 A Consuming Fire Brian Hunter explores Leviticus 9-10 and Hebrews 9 to ask how a holy God can love sinful people without compromise, and why Jesus is the only answer.
- February 23, 2025 Finding Jesus in Leviticus A pastor and congregation wrestle with Leviticus 9-10 and Hebrews 9 to ask how a holy, consuming God can love sinful people without ever compromising his holiness.