A Consuming Fire

For our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:29

Two young boys straddled an old wooden bench pretending it was their spaceship. Space suits woven with imagination enabled them to explore “Jupiter” and “Mars.”

“Now, let’s fly to the sun” said one to the other, “it will be fun to walk around in the flames.”

A chuckle came from the other room and with it the voice of authority, “You’re going to burn up.”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” retorted the young voice, “our space suits are made out of that fire-proof stuff.”

“That doesn’t matter,” came the final word. “The sun’s so hot that your whole spaceship would melt away before it came within a million miles of the sun.”

“OK,” said the boy, “we will go to the moon.”

God’s holiness is also taken very lightly. It’s seldom remembered that He is completely unapproachable for sinful man. He is a consuming fire. No sinner alive can even stand before the glorified Christ. Both Ezekiel and John had short glimpses of Jesus’ fiery splendor, but fell down as dead men when they saw it.

When Christ came to earth as the Savior, He veiled His glory for a short time to redeem fallen man. However, He will retain His radiance for the rest of eternity never again to lay it aside. It is only because He clothes His ransomed creation with His own glory that there will be fellowship in heaven forever.

To believers, Christ is our Refuge, Stronghold, and Fortress. We have nothing to dread or fear. To those who refuse to believe, at the great white throne, the Lord Jesus will be seen as a consuming fire. Now is the time to be concerned and do something about that. 

The Express Image of God

…who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Hebrews 1:3

        In a famous sermon illustration, a little girl comes home from Sunday school and starts to draw a picture. “What are you drawing?” asks Mom.

“I’m drawing a picture of God,” replied the little voice.

Mother responded, “Nobody knows what God looks like.”

“Well, they will after they see my picture,” the girl said with confidence.

Humans are hard wired to get in touch with their Creator. This drive often takes wrong turns that lead to false religions that superficially cover that longing. Most Americans would jump at the chance to see God, if it would take 10 minutes or less and cost little or nothing. Others sometimes call themselves atheists and ignore or repress that drive but that usually leads to feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, or frustration. 

For this reason, idols and images became popular even during Adam and Eve’s lifetime. The children of Israel bowed down before golden calves and thought they were worshipping the LORD and in the Middle Ages praying to icons and images was standard practice. Since this goes against the second commandment, it’s not the way God planned for knowing Him.

Jesus is the express image of God. This doesn’t mean that He has the same facial features as God or that He is a small version of a gigantic human-like figure in heaven. Christ was a living, breathing object lesson that demonstrated the character of God. His words, actions, and attitudes reveal to us the true and living God, so much so that He could say, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also” (John 8:19).

It’s interesting that one reason Christ came to save mankind was that we would be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). In Genesis 1:27 “God created man in His own image” but the resemblance was marred by sin. Now, through Christ, we can be conformed to the image of theExpress Image of God.

Awesome

He has sent redemption to His people; He has commanded His covenant forever: Holy and awesome is His name.

Psalm 111:9

Sometimes there seems to be a total disconnect between how people use a word and what it actually means. I've heard the term “awesome” used to describe a pizza, a football game, a sunset, a double rainbow, and a party. If I were to write a definition based on current use it would be, “A descriptive term that acknowledges an object or experience to be distinctively better than mediocre.”

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Perhaps the closest usage of the word to its actual meaning came when my son went skydiving for the first time. As I looked up at a small aircraft against the cloudless, blue, Kansas sky, I saw a tiny speck eject itself. Falling to the earth at 180 miles per hour I could clearly hear him yell, “Awesome!” However, if this really was awesome, he wouldn't have been able to speak at all.

The truly awesome is so terrifyingly intense that someone experiencing it is unable to speak because he is awestruck. The Apostle John’s vision of Christ on the Isle of Patmos was awesome. When he saw the Son of Man who had eyes like a flame of fire, a voice like many waters, and a sharp sword coming out of His mouth, John fell down like a dead man. There was just too much to process so the mortal yielded to the immortal.

Moses climbed up a flaming mountain alone to encounter an Awesome God. The writer to the Hebrews described it this way: “And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I am exceedingly afraid and trembling’” (Hebrews 12:21).

Soon and very soon, the Lamb will break the seals of God’s judgment on the planet that crucified Him. John foresees it this way: “Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains” (Revelation 6:14-15). In that day when people experience Awesome, they’ll be fleeing from the wrath of the Lamb and not thinking about pizza.

God with Us

Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, "God with us.”

Matthew 1:23

The given name on my birth certificate is “Richard”; it means “strong leader.” My wife’s name is “Carol” which means “manly” or “strong.” If you told me what your personal name means, I probably wouldn’t care. There’s usually not a lot of correlation between names and what they are supposed to mean.

Immanuel is Hebrew for “God with us.” That’s not what it means; it is the phrase all sounded out. But you wouldn’t know that if you do not know Hebrew. It is a description, not a name.

People who want others to know the meaning of their child’s name often use an English word for their moniker such as “Faith,” “Hope,” or “Huckleberry.”

Even so, putting a label on someone is no guarantee that they’ll live up to expectations.

Starting in the 1990’s, hundreds of baby girls in this country have been named “Unique.” Since that name caught on, now none of them are. Even with over 30 variations of spelling (which includes Uneek, Euneke, and U’niq) a person’s name usually is a classifier and not a describer.

The New Testament has been translated into more than 2,000 languages. In each case, Matthew 1:23 contains a transliteration of the word “Immanuel”; the name is converted to the script of the native tongue so that it can be sounded out to something that resembles Immanuel in English. That text might be Spanish, Arabic, or Mandarin but the result is mostly the same; the reader comes across a hard to pronounce Bible name that means nothing to him.

But then comes the translation “God with us” and its understood. It doesn’t matter if the person is an Eskimo from north of the Arctic Circle or an Aborigine from the Amazon rainforest; it’s explained to them in their own language. Jesus Christ is “God with us.”