Our God Is a Consuming Fire

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 1: 4-10 and Hebrews 12: 18-29 Sermon Title: Our God Is a Consuming Fire Preached on August 25, 2019 The amount of communication we’ve received from our children’s teachers this year has been impressive. Among many other messages, this past week we received one teacher’s newsletter, which began this way: Last week was a very busy week of learning new routines and diving right into this year’s assigned concepts and standards. The students have had a lot of new responsibilities and expectations and many have already eagerly been working to take them on. It is important that we, as the community and families that surround these students, frequently encourage them, remind them how much we believe in them, and maintain the high expectations that we know they are capable of achieving. I thought this message was quite inspirational, but in light of today’s Scripture Lessons, I’d like to reframe some of her language to what might be even more motivating. I wonder how it would feel to parents if their children’s teacher sent home a message like this: Your children are in dire need of reform. They stand on the cusp of abject failure and doom, performing so far below their assigned concepts and standards that their minds are like a deep darkness. So, while today my classroom is all gloom, like a tempest, I will drown their misconceptions and pluck up and pull down their laziness. Some might tremble with fear at the sight of me, but parents, please encourage and remind them that my class is a consuming fire to burn up their ignorance, that wisdom might shine out of each one of them. I don’t imagine such a message would be received well, while again and again this is the message of Scripture. Radical change is necessary. Old habits must be left behind, and there is no time for mincing words. Even Jesus, when he walked the earth said, among other things, “I will separate the wheat from the chaff. I will put a new heart within you [because (to paraphrase) the heart you have isn’t getting you where you need to go].” The Prophets, especially, used the same kind of language to describe God’s work in the world: Amos spoke of the plumb line used by God to measure the crookedness of our society’s walls, that we might be rebuilt with justice and righteousness. Malachi said that our God is like a refiner of silver, who will heat us and refine us until we reflect his image, or that He is like a fuller who will scrub us with fuller’s soap until all impurity is bleached out of us. These are images that are familiar enough in Scripture, but teachers can’t talk this way. Or can you imagine if your doctor looked over your blood work and quoted from the prophet Isaiah: “You have become like one who is unclean, and all your righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. You are fading like a leaf, and your iniquities, like the wind, are going to take you away.” That’s just not how people talk, but why? My sense is that in our world today, it’s because parents who received a harsh message from their child’s teacher would move their child to a different class as soon as possible. Likewise, we want our doctors to be nice and we’ll change doctors if ours isn’t, which is normal enough, however where is the line between being nice and tolerating bad behavior? Where is the line between being kind and mollifying those who are hurting themselves? Where is the line between lying and telling the truth? We are a people who need to change and we live in a world that needs to change. I know it, you know it. But who among us wants to be corrected? Isn’t it much nicer to be affirmed? This week President Trump re-tweeted a quote about himself from Wayne Allen Root who said, “President Trump is the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world.” According to the Washington Post, encouraged by these accolades the President said, “I am the chosen one,” which is a bold statement. It might be going out on a limb a little bit, but this morning I’d like to say that, maybe he’s not exactly right about that. However, this is how we all are in a sense. Even when reform is needed, we’d rather be patted on the back. What must be addressed are the bad habits that clog our arteries, but we don’t want to change our diet. On the road to education, what must be confronted first is the reality of ignorance in a culture of persistent denial, but critical words are hard to hear, and I wonder if that’s because we fear that we are either wheat or chaff, not both. That’s been a problem of mine for a long time, though I’m learning to deal with it. I left Marietta High School thinking that I was all wheat, thought there was plenty of chaff to deal with. I graduated with a 3.7 grade point average, which at first, sounds pretty good. Then I arrived at Presbyterian College and realized that maybe padding my Senior year with two periods of shop and one of weight training hadn’t been such a good idea. I tested right into remedial English where I had to face the reality that there were big holes in my education. For example, I didn’t understand how to choose which article, “a” or “an,” should go before an adjective of noun. My teacher noticed this and when she suggested I go and get some help from a tutor it was a blow to my self-esteem. I faced an important decision then: heed her advice or try to change teachers. You know the right answer here but think about how some people view higher education. I could have just gone back home telling my parents that, “grandpa was right. The academy’s been taken over by the liberals who teach evolution and insist that I use the correct determiners in my sentences.” If Jesus said he will be separating the wheat from the chaff, before we can deal with such a challenge, we must first be assured that we are not the chaff. If the prophets said that we are in need of reform, first we must believe that we are worth reforming. If our God is a consuming fire, first we must know that they hymn has it right: it’s our dross that he’ll consume and our gold that he’ll refine, because our God doesn’t want us going up in smoke. Too many of us can’t hear criticism, because when we hit walls in life, when we make mistakes, we think we’re the mistake. Far too many of us confuse correction with condemnation and refinement with rejection. That’s true. We think of grades on a test the same way we think of grades on an egg carton. Some are “As”, a lucky few “AAs”, but once one is labeled as a “bad egg,” he’s fed to the pigs in the slop bucket. Not so with God. Such labeling might make sense with eggs, but don’t be confused. It’s never that way with God. With God, redemption and not rejection is always the point. Consider our First Scripture Lesson. Here we have that great story of Jeremiah the young prophet. He’s only a boy. Then God came along and spoke right to him. A special responsibility He gives Jeremiah, to “pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow,” which sounds quite violent, unless you understand the character of God. For God treats His people the way a gardener weeds his garden. God looks upon the plot and says, “Sure, there is work to do.” “Sure, weeds must be pulled and rocky soil tilled,” but God isn’t going to reject the garden for its defects. God is going to refine the garden until it bears fruit. In the book of Hebrews, it’s the same story. In our Second Scripture reading there is a blazing fire. Darkness, gloom, and a tempest. The sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken. The message is terrifying but remember that this message to us comes from God, who doesn’t give up on His people. You see, by the testimony of Scripture, what becomes clear is God’s intention, that we, be not condemned, but corrected; not rejected, but refined. Our God is a consuming fire, and knowing His character what will be consumed? We fear it will be all of who we are. Only, according to Hebrews, it is for the removal of what can be shaken, that what cannot be shaken may remain. This is how we must understand hardship and trials, test scores and doctor’s appointments, divorces and lawsuits. If life is hard, let us let go of the parts of ourselves that hold us back. If there are bumps in the road, let them shake off our baggage, not derail our journey. When we are tried and persecuted, let us give up on our broken ways of doing things to learn something new. But, to do that, something has to change. We can’t turn back to the old ways; like the Ancient Hebrew people, to have new life we must leave Egypt behind. To bear fruit, we must allow our weeds to be pulled. To receive the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, we must allow the removal of what can be shaken that what is eternal might remain. I believe that’s true, and I believe it’s just like that for a lot of new parents. It’s not all smiles and cuteness, for a baby requires a parent to leave an old life behind. So, when some people call babies little bundles of joy, I don’t. I can think of baptisms that were like trying to baptize a racoon, and I see most babies as wreaking balls who renovate their parents’ lives completely. I think parenthood is something like an old State Farm Insurance commercial. This one featured a man who says he’s never getting married in one scene, and in the next he’s buying a wedding ring. Then he tells his wife in an airplane surrounded by crying babies that they’re never having kids, and in the next scene his wife is delivering their first child. As he cleans a crayon drawing off the wall of their house he says, “we’re never having another kid,” to which his wife responds: “I’m pregnant.” The commercial ends with this man who made all these declarations about what he was never going to do, but on the couch surrounded by his wife and children he voices one last never: “I’m never letting go.” If our God is a consuming fire, then a father must often decide whether or not he will allow the motorcycle to be consumed, because there isn’t room enough in the garage or his life for that and the minivan. Those who go off to school face the same decision. If our God is a consuming fire will they allow their ego to go up in flames that they might learn more than they already think they know? Will politicians listen and change or just go on defending what’s always been? As we age will we allow our freedom, independence, and our driver’s license to go up in flames that we might still hold onto dignity and safety? Our God is preparing us for a new life, so what will we hold onto? Our old life? Our career? Our pride? Our innocence? Our fear? When the earth shakes and the flames come, let go of vanity, that what cannot be shaken, that what is eternal might remain. Amen.