All Consuming Fire
When I was younger, I was a little bit of a pyromaniac. But aren’t most boys? I loved seeing things burn, and as I got older, I loved making them burn a little too much. When I was around 12, the woods around our house caught on fire. My dad went into the thick of it with nothing but a water backpack sprayer. My brother and I took shovels to the much less dangerous end of the fire. The end of the story is we, with the help of every volunteer fire department in the area, got it contained and no houses were lost. But at one point in the middle of the fire, that didn’t seem likely. I remember the fire jumping the road not too far from our house. My dad, my brother and I jumped in his truck to go let the fighters know it was in a new area. When we rounded the curve in the road, we were faced with a literal wall of fire. I’d never seen anything like that. A big part of me was scared to death, but there was another part of me that was fascinated. How could something that big, something that formed that quickly, be so destructive and so captivating at the same time? 

I thought about this story as I read the story of Moses on the mountain last week. Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and slavery and into the wilderness. Do you get frustrated with the people like I do as you read the story? God frees them, allows them to plunder Egypt on their way out, and the first obstacle they encounter, they beg God to let them go back. God parts the sea and allows them to cross on dry land. The next day they complain about water. God provides the best water they’ve ever tasted. The next day they complain about food. God provides bread in the morning and meat at night. The theme becomes, “We’d have been better off back in Egypt!” But reality was they were so much better off in the wilderness. They just couldn’t see it. 

God brings them to Sinai and literally sets the mountain on fire. It rumbles and shakes under His weighty presence. He invites Moses to join Him on the mountain. God forbids the people from approaching the mountain, but He allows them to hear and see all of the happenings. And it was in the middle of that amazing miracle that the nation unraveled at the seams.

Before Moses can descend, Israel has made their own ‘god’ to worship and thrown a huge party for him. Moses was so livid, he destroyed the tablets with God’s own handwriting on them. God was so angry, He tossed around the idea of wiping them out and starting over. Only His amazing grace kept this from happening. 

How do people stand in the presence of the awesome fire of God and ignore Him? The only answer I have is the slave mentality. This group of people was enslaved for so long, they could not shake the habits they learned in captivity. Rules in slavery are simple. 1. Trust no one, not even God. 2. Only believe what you can see. 3. Never think about the future. 4. Always do what feels best in the moment. 5. Only think about yourself. 

Do any of these rules sound familiar? Do you think we may have some tendencies from captivity lingering in our culture or even in our own heads? The only way we can ignore the mighty fire of God when it is blazing right in front of us is if we have our eyes fixed on an entirely different reality. We like to shape our own reality–including the things we worship–so we can maintain control of our lives. The only problem is, as the nation of Israel learned again and again, the realities we create are thin, frail copies of the real deal. We can sacrifice to lesser gods and end up empty in the end. We can build lives around money, careers, superficial relationships and cheap authority and watch the next storm or disease or breakup take it all away. Or we can operate according to the fire of God.

If you hear those short-sighted rules and immediately feel an affinity with them, you have a choice to make. Will you go on living as a slave to your own desires and the culture that feeds them, or will you submit to God’s rule in your life? The thing is, there are many who have walked the dry sea bed, eaten the manna, seen the fire and turned away. Listen to me carefully. Those people die before they know what’s happened to them. They live their lives in a whirlwind and wake up one day to find it’s all gone
and then they’re gone, too. The Godly live a different life. Things slow down dramatically when you are faced with a wall of fire, especially when you know that seemingly dangerous fire is the presence of the Lord. It’s not hard to adjust your values and dreams in the presence of One so mighty. How will you respond? 

“You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.’ The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear.’ But you have come to
the city of the living God
to the church of the firstborn
to God, the Judge of all
to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant
See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? ...for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’” (Hebrews 12:18-29)

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