Our God Is a Consuming Fire

Hebrews xii. 29.

WHAT comfort there is in these words! Once they only filled us with alarm: now they are the tidings of great joy.

It made a great difference, on the shores of the Red Sea, on which side of the cloud the hosts were placed. To be on the one side meant terror and dismay: “The Lord looked unto

the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians.” But to be on the other side mean comfort and hope: “It was a cloud and

darkness to them; but it gave light by night to these.” Similarly, a great difference is made by our position towards God, as to whether the words at the head of this chapter will be a comfort or a cause of anxiety. If we are against God — enemies in our mind, by wicked works sinning against His gentle, Holy Spirit — we can look for little relief in considering the majestic symbolism of the passage. But if we are on His side, sheltered under His hand, hidden in the cleft of the Rock, conscious that we are in Him that is true — then we may rejoice with exceeding great joy that “our God is a Consuming Fire.”

In Scripture Fire is the invariable symbol of God’s nature and character. It was as a lamp of Fire that the Almighty passed between the pieces of Abraham’s sacrifice. It was as fire, which needed not the wood of the acacia-bush for its maintenance, that He appeared to Moses in the wilderness, to commission him for his lifeio6 “H Consuming dfire.”

work. It was as fire that His presence shone on Mount Sinai, in the giving of the law. The Divine acceptance of the sacrifices throughout the ancient ritual was betokened by the fire that fell from heaven, and fed upon the flesh of slain beasts. Malachi said that Christ would come as a refiner’s fire; and when the forerunner announced His advent, he compared it to the work of the ruddy flame, which destroys and purifies: “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” - He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” It was, therefore, also in perfect harmony with the entire range of scriptural symbolism, that the Pentecostal descent of the Holy Ghost was accompanied by cloven tongues, like as of fire.

Of course, we must not, and would not, deny that there is a punitive and terrible side to all this. It is no light matter to persist in sin. “In flaming fire.” He will take “vengeance on them... that obey not the Gospel

of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “He is terrible in His doing toward the children of men.” Fire — which is our most useful ally; which labours for us day and night in our furnaces and fire-places — is harmless and helpful, so long as we obey its laws and observe its conditions: but when once we disobey those laws, and contravene those conditions that which blessed begins to curse, and leaps forth upon us, carrying devastation to all our works, so that. the smiling fields become a blackened waste, and our palaces a heap of ruins. So it is with the nature of God. Hi is gentle, loving, and forbearing: but if a sinner persists in sin, shutting his eyes to the light, and closing his heart to the love of God, then he must needs discover that “with the fro ward He will show Himself forward.” “Kiss the Son, lest He bfi* io8 “U Consuming jfire,”

angry, and ye perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little.” But let us turn now to some of those gracious thoughts, which are enshrined in this passage:

Fire searches. Surely this is one of our greatest needs. There is so much of selfishness and sin in the very best of us. Sometimes we get a glimpse of what we are, and turn our thought swiftly away from the horrid spectacle. And what we ourselves dare not contemplate, we carefully hide from the gaze of our tenderest friends. Ah, what pride, what vanity, what self-conceit, are ours! — fretful, if not sufficiently admired; jealous, if outshone; mean enough to take advantage of another, if only we can do it without being found out; capable of the same vile sins which flame out as beaconlights in those who are not restrained by the same outward bonds as we are. No malioious critic with biting purification. words has ever touched the inveterate evil of our hearts, or said a tithe of the truth of us. We have never ourselves realized how bad we are. We need not be surprised at any further discoveries that may rise up to confront us with shame and agony. But it is well to be searched. The ancient motto bade men know themselves. The discovery of what we are will drive us most quickly to God for His cleansing and grace. We need not wish to dwell upon our sins, as though health could come by considering disease; but we may gladly accept the searching of the fire of God. Let us know the evil things that are within us. Let us be taught how much wood, hay, and stubble been have built on* that foundation, which has undoubtedly been laid in our hearts. Let us submit to the discoveries of disease, which the stethoscope, the searching finger, the probing-knife, will disclose.

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O God, who art as fire, search me and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts!

Fire cleanses. Yonder metal is mingled with many inferior ingredients: the earth, in which it has lain for centuries, clings to it; dross depreciates its value. But plunge it into the glowing furnace; raise the heat until the gleaming light is almost intolerable to the gaze; keep it in that baptism of flame — ere long the metal will be cleansed of its impurities, freed from alloy, and fitted for any mould into which you may desire to pour it. Is it not thus that God will deal with us? He is a consuming fire.

Iti the olden vision, when Isaiah lamented his uncleanness, there flew unto him one of the seraphim, who had taken a live coal from off the altar, which he laid upon his lips, saying, “Lo! this hath touched thy lips; ytre {transforms,

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and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.” And will not God do as much for us again? We have been cleansed from the stains of our many transgressions: but do we not need this deep, this thorough, this fiery purification?

There are three agents in purification — the Word of God; the Blood of the Son of God; and the Fire of God, which is the Holy Ghost. We know something of the two former: do we know the meaning of the latter? We have been purified by the Water and the Blood: have we passed also

through the Fire? “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with Fire.” We cannot define, in so many words, the manner of this sacred operation — it is a matter for holy consciousness: but the heart knows when it has experienced it. It is not that temptation ceases to assail; or that there is no possibility of again yieldii.g to sin; or that the evil tendencies of the old nature are eradicated: but that there is a burning up and consumption of evil things which had been too long permitted to hold sway, and to mar the glory of the work of God in the heart. There is deliverance, where there was bondage; there is purity, where there was corruption; there is love, where there was malice, envy, ill-will.

This blessed operation of the Holy Ghost may be experienced by those who will take no denial, and who by faith claim all that He waits to do for them. Let us, then, appropriate that expressive prayer of Wesley’s hymn:

“Refining Fire, go through my heart!”

Fire transforms. That poker lying in your fender is hard, and cold, and black; but if you place it for a few moments in the heart of the fire, it becomes soft, intensely hot, and glowfive {transforms* ing with the whiteness of incandescence. Take it out again, and all its old qualities will re-assert themselves; but whilst in the fire, they cannot be manifested: the iron is transformed into the likeness of the flame in which it is bathed.

Thus is it with ourselves. By nature we too are hard, and cold, and black; and the tendency of our nature will always be in these directions; waiting to re-assert itself, when left to its own devices.

But if only we can for ever dwell with the devouring fire, and dwell with the everlasting burnings of the Love and Light and Life of God — a wonderful change will pass over us; and we shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory. No longer hard, we shall be moulded into any shape He selects. No longer cold, we shall glow with love to God and man. No longer black, we shall be arrayed in the whiteness of a purity, which is that of intensest heat.

Too long have we shrunk from the burning, fiery furnace, which is not sorrow, or trial, or pain — but God. Let us get into God. Let us open our nature, that God, the Holy Ghost, may fill us: then shall we become like

Himself; our grosser natures shall seem to ascend to heaven in horses and chariots of flame. In God’s Fire we shall become Fire.