Hebrews 12:29 KJV -" For our God is a consuming fire"
Anna and I spent a November weekend in a rental cabin near Mt Rainer. One of the pleasant features in the rental was a wood stove that could be used to heat the small house. Growing up with a fireplace as the main source of heat I was quite familiar with the comfort of a fire crackling and the flicker of flame that seems to mesmerize you as you watch it. It has been over 25 years since I have been tasked with starting and maintaining a fire place on a regular basis, but I thought I would be up to the task. Each stove has its own quirks and the owner of the rental left some pretty good instructions. After a few tries, I had a good fire going and was able to heat up the house quite well. This became an enjoyable thing for me over the course of the weekend even if at times it was frustrating trying to keep it going without turning the little home into a sauna. Some of the tricks that I had been taught at a young age came back to me. One of which is that a fire usually burns better when more than one piece is involved especially if you can create the tunnel effect where the fire is drawing air between the wood on its way up and out the chimney.
As I sat by that fire one morning reading from God’s Word, I read this verse from the 12th chapter of Hebrews. This verse follows one about serving God with reverence and Godly fear. We might be tempted to conclude, like the Puritans or Quakers did, that God was dangling us over the burning pits of hell, waiting for us to make one wrong move so he can drop us there to be consumed. This is a poor view of our Heavenly Father, the One whom the Apostle John says is Love. This is so much more a definition of him than a description. In this love we see the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. A perfect sacrifice without blemish to be consumed completely. God was satisfied. Yes , we need to recognize His holiness and give Him the reverence due to Him, but also we can see that in Christ we are accepted by God the Father. We can see in that, as wood that burns so much better when it has another piece near it , that we need Christ, the Mediator, alongside us. Otherwise our sacrifices just smolder. We remember Cain, how his sacrifice was not pleasing to God because his heart was not right. It doesn’t tell us, but I picture Cain’s sacrifice smoldering while Abel’s was completely consumed. We saw this as well when Elijah was on Mt. Carmel. He even doused his sacrifice with water and yet God sent a fire from Heaven to not only consume the sacrifice, but also the stones that it sat upon. This happened not because Elijah or Abel were perfect humans, but because Jesus is. Let us not fear the consuming fire, but Let us thank and praise God for his unspeakable mercies to us in Christ.
Hans Lampinen
submitted by Pastor Stan
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