A Consuming Fire

...for our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29)

 

People find it difficult to read the Bible, for the most part.  And why would it not be difficult to read 4000 years of the history of a people, with all of its shifts in understanding of how God dealt with a difficult nation and with all the nations around them?  It takes an understanding of the history of ideas, some geographical understanding, and most of us, the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit to begin to put all the pieces together into a comprehensive whole.  And even then, the Word of the Lord escapes our best efforts to understand....as Paul shows us, even under the tutelage of the greatest Hebrew scholar, He missed God's meaning, until he received the revelation of Jesus Christ and the truth imparted by the Spirit of God dwelling in him.  Prayer -- communion with God --- is the essential element to approaching the Scriptures.  The Word must come to us; we cannot go to it, except in prayer and humility, asking for divine revelation.  Even the Apostles had to go to Jesus after He taught the crowds:  "Explain to us the meaning of the parable," they begged Him. 

 

And after the Resurrection, "He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" as "their hearts were burning within them."  It was only after Pentecost, when the tongues of fire divided and descended on each one, that the Scriptures came alive and made themselves manifest to their understanding.  And yet we, with arrogance, assume we can grasp the Scriptures without the help of the Holy Spirit, without the fire of divine revelation. 

 

We want the Scriptures without the experience of Pentecost, because we are afraid of the fire.  After all, did not Paul say to the Hebrews, "our God is a consuming fire"?  But then, also Moses, 1500 years before Paul had said the same thing in Deuteronomy 4:24:  "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."  For some people, that statement is enough to keep them away -- because they will not read the rest of the Scriptures.

 

One of the most interesting studies we can make is to follow the concordance entries on the word "fire."  Instead of opening the Bible at Genesis 1 and attempting to plow our way through to Exodus, it is probably better for a beginner to take one word and to reflect on all of its meanings and contexts throughout Scripture.  And "fire" is a great way to begin.  By the time we get to the fire of Pentecost, our 'hearts will be burning within us!"

 

What is it that the fire "consumes"?  Understanding that one question should make us re-think our fear at the isolated truth:  "Our God is a consuming fire."  If we knew what it was the fire consumed, we would run into the fire with great abandon, with joy!  For example, in Deuteronomy 9:3, Moses tells the people that they will go into the Promised Land, and "dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heart it said, 'Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?'  Therefore, understand today that the Lord your God is He who goes before you as a consuming fire...."

 

And Isaiah 66:14-15 says "the hand of the Lord shall be known to His servants, and His indignation to His enemies.  For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.  For by fire and by His sword, the Lord will judge all flesh." 

 

Like a parent armed with vengeance against the destroyer of his/her child, the Lord advances against the enemies of His children -- the destroyer that corrodes the spirit of His little ones.  His 'consuming' fire consumes the destroyer, the evil one.  What have we to fear from the 'consuming' fire?  For the fire He places in our hearts itself is destroying His enemies -- the laziness that keeps us from loving Him, the lust that destroys our souls, the addictions that keep us chained to slavery and will not release us into freedom of love and goodness.....

 

Jesus said that He had come to 'cast fire' upon the earth.  Would that we catch the fire He died to give us!