Child of Fire

It's holiday season, isn't it. It's been a beautiful worship service already.

I've been enjoying the music, the readings. Festivity is all around the stages,

Decorated Christmas lights are everywhere. Schools put on concerts of joyful music.

We sing Joy to the World and Silent Night, and everyone seems happy.

And yet there are times in our lives when these joyful feelings just are not

there, times when festivity feels like farce. December of two thousand and nine

was like that for me. I'd been laid off from a job I had

in Tennessee, been unemployed for several months, and then in November I accepted

a new position in Maryland. For several reasons, my wife and I decided

that the family wouldn't join me until after the end of the school year.

In late November, I left my home in Tennessee and drove to Michigan to

visit my parents. I wanted to see my dad for what I knew would

be the last time. The visit seemed shorter than it was, but work

was calling, so I drove from there to Maryland. Started my new job

the first week of December. Friday of that week, I was at a

gas station filling my car. In the phone call Caane. It was mom

and Dad was gone. Christmas was hard that year. Today's message is about

Jesus. It's for all of us, because all of us need him.

But maybe maybe for someone here this holiday season is marred by loss, by

loneliness, or by the pain of rejection. If you are that someone,

I have been praying that you will be especially blessed by the word of God

today. Let's pray together, Heavenly Father. We know that you've already been

here and you've been bringing us blessings. As we contemplate Jesus coming to this

world to be one of us forever. We pray that your spirit will continue

to lead to fill this place with your presence, to lead our hearts to

yours in Jesus' name. Amen. The man had found her unusually attractive.

Yes, she looked good, but there was more to it. It must

have been the kindness, that that attitude, that was always looking for a

way to ease someone's discomfort or to encourage somebody, or her honesty. She

was just real, transparent, no guessing. Or maybe it was the purity

of her character that was so unusual. Yes, he decided she was a

rare find, especially in the community where they lived. He had been devastated

by loss, his wife had become defintely ill, and then one day his

marriage was over because well, we're going to skip the euphemisms, because she

was dead. She was dead, her body had been prepared, she had

been buried. There were mourners. Some days it seemed as if a horrifying

nightmare was playing out all around him, not quite touching him and yet ready

to crush him at any moment. But now all of that was over.

For the last few months, he had been growing in confidence, growing in

hope for his own future and for that of his children, and how they

needed a mother. Every time he talked with her, his future looked brighter,

his loss seemed more distant. Yes, he'd been recovering. He knew

she was the one. They were engaged to be married. Their commitment to

each other was very deep and strong. Well, at least at least he

thought it was. But then, in one moment of blinding pain, his

world again came crashing in on him. How could she have done that to

him? What happened to the purity that he thought he had seen in her?

Where was the commitment? The beauty he thought he'd seen in her character

now looked like mockery. Was it even possible that he had been so deceived?

She didn't just get pregnant. She had a story. And what a

story it was, he thought it. Creativity alone merited a Pulitzer Prize for

fiction. The Angel Gabriel, the Holy Spirit, Mary. How could you

have fallen so low? He thought at that moment. At that moment,

the Christmas story had no joy for Joseph or for Mary. Neither of them

felt like singing soft Christmas hymns about some holy night. Of course, the

story doesn't end there. Most of us know the story. Gabriel appeared to

Joseph as well and explained that Mary's son really was the Son of God.

I can only imagine the mixture of feelings that must have rushed through Joseph's mind

at that point. Of course, he had to have been relieved to know

that Mary really was honest and pure after all, as he had always somehow

thought. But he must have been stunned by the new responsibility that was his.

And yet he rose to the occasion. He went ahead with the marriage

and adopted the baby that he knew was not his. Another story. When

I lived in California many years ago, there was a beautiful town that I

never got tired of visiting. It's in the hills, surrounded by lush forests.

I had a dear great aunt who lived there, and I drove there

often to see her. Just driving there was inspiring. Moving from the central

valley, the road would start to climb through hills fragrant with thick evergreen forests.

The magnificent trees were everywhere. The town was truly beautiful, and its

name seemed so fitting. The name of the town was Paradise, But in

November twenty eighteen, the name turned ironic. Fire swept through Paradise and surrounding

towns. Houses became ashes and cinders. Cars and trucks were reduced to ghastly

skeletons. The town of Paradise in nearby Conkaw each lost ninety five percent of

their structures. Other nearby communities fared only slightly better. Lives too many lives

were lost. On Christmas twenty eighteen, some people in northern California did not

feel like singing. All is calm, all is bright, but the time

that we have together today is about Jesus. So let's get back to the

story of his life. We're going to move forward in time about three decades

now. Jesus has been born and has grown up, and at this point

it seems like the very air is electric with excitement. There's talk of a

new king, there's talk of revolution. Understandably, authorities are on edge.

And there's this preacher named John who has been talking about the coming of a

great one. He has been calling for repentance and baptizing people, telling them

to prepare for judgment. Turn with me to Matthew three. I want to

read two verses here. We're going to diverge a little bit between them,

so you might want to put your finger in it. But Matthew three,

and we're gonna start reading it. Verse eleven. This is John the Baptist

speaking. He says, as for me, I baptize you with water for

repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, and

I am not fit to remove his sandals. He will baptize you with Listen

to it the Holy Spirit and fire. John here is using his popularity to

call attention to Jesus, I'm baptizing you with us water you see running past

you in the Jordan River. He says, Maybe I'm popular right now,

but the true hero of Heaven infinitely outranks me. I'm not even important enough

to take off his dirty sandals at the end of the day to wash his

feet. If he had a household slave, that slave would outrank me because

of who he serves. Now look at those last words in the verse again.

John said he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Why

fire? Fire is destructive. Sometimes it destroys large portions of towns and cities,

like Paradise in twenty eighteen, or London sixteen sixty six, Chicago eighteen

seventy one, San Francisco nineteen oh six, and especially tragically Dresden nineteen forty

five. We could mention many more. But there's something else I want to

notice about fire. Fire does not destroy everything. I haven't been back to

look, but I can assure you, without having been there, that those

boulders on the hillsides around Paradise are still where they have been for thousands of

years. They're unharmed. In Dresden, charred bricks unharmed, were used again

to rebuild the city after the war. And when God met Moses at the

burning bush, God appeared in the form of a fire, this destructive force,

this raging fire, was doing no harm to the bush. Let's read

about a nexus three verses two and three. Then the Angel of the Lord

appeared to him in a blazing fire in the midst of a bush. And

he looked and behold, the bush was burning with fire. Yet the bush

was not being consumed. So Moses said, I must turn aside and see

this marvelous sight. Why the bush is not burning up. Normally, vegetation

in the middle of a fire would soon be destroyed. But this was no

ordinary fire. This was the Angel of the Lord. This was the God

of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is the Great I Am. And

he shows in Exodus chapter three that he can be present in something that you

would expect should be consumed and do it no harm. Keep that in mind

as we proceed back to Matthew chapter three. The John the Baptist goes on.

He says, he puts puts up an interesting metaphor. Here he says,

his winnowing fork is in his hand and he will thoroughly clear his threshing

floor, and he will gather the wheat into the barn. But the chaff

he will burn up with quenchable fire. To unpack what John is saying.

Here, picture the farmer and his crew harvesting the wheat back in the time

of John. First, they would cut the wheat with a sickle and tie

it into bundles. They had to handle it carefully, because if the kernels

of wheat were to fall into that rough dirt in which they were grown,

they would be lost forever. The workers carefully carry these bundles. They tie

the wheat into bundles. They carefully carry the bundles to a place called the

threshing floor. The threshing floor is a pavement. It might be made only

of packed earth, but it is large. It's round its level, and

it is very carefully smoothed out. The workers untie the bundles of grain and

spread them out on the floor. Then someone uses a winnowing fork to lift

the grain, stalks and all and toss it into the breeze. That's when

the separation happens. Now, I want to remind you that in scripture,

breeze wind is a consistent symbol of the Holy Spirit. As everything settles back

down, the grains of wheat fall more or less straight down because they're dense.

The stalks get blown by the breeze off to one's side. Farmers can

feed these to the animals. Later, the worthless chaff blows further away.

It's light and easily affected by the wind. It might blow clear off the

threshing floor. Then, finally, wherever these piles of chaff land, they're

burned. They're burned with unquenchable fire. The threshing floor is a place of

decision, a place of separation, so that the chaff can be committed to

fire without harming the precious wheat. We you and I are much like wheat.

The kernel of what God created you to be is in you and in

me, and yet it is surrounded by sin. And what is worse,

sin is part of us, and we cannot fix it. We can never

aid ourselves. Like fire, the Holy Spirit destroys. He consumes Hebrews twelve

and Hebrews twelve twenty nine. Or you read that our God is a consuming

fire. Also like fire, he doesn't consume everything, but he consumes sin.

The fire of God's personal presence destroys sin in us. When the Holy

Spirit lives in us, sin cannot. If we insist that sin live in

us, the Holy Spirit will not amount of sin? Is okay? Not

even one say, bite of fruit? If God has forbidden that tree,

and yet it's part of us. And that is because as soon as we

touch sin, it infects, it pollutes us. As soon as Adam and

Eve disobeyed and took that fruit, they were forever changed, and they could

not fix themselves. And yet a question comes up, how is it that

the Holy Spirit can destroy sin in us and not destroy us? After all?

Doesn't Romans six point thirty two say the wages of sin is death.

The metaphor of the threshing floor shows shows God separating us from sin in a

supernatural work. But how does he do that? That question leads us further

on into the story of Jesus' life. Come with me and your imagination to

the garden of Gathsemine. Watch Jesus. He has always been the strong one.

He has been the source of strength to everyone around him. But now

now he can barely walk. He staggers as if he were drunk. He's

groaning he leaves most of his disciples, walters forward with three who are especially

close to him. Then, in the presence of these three close friends,

he confesses his struggle, as you read in Matthew twenty six thirty eight.

Then he said to them, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of

death. Remain here and keep watch with me. And he leaves even those

three. He lurches forward a little longer than falls to the ground to wrestle

in prayer verse thirty nine. And he went a little beyond them and fell

on his face, saying, my Father, if it is possible, let

this cup pass from me, and yees ye, not as I will,

but as you will. What is happening here is that your sins and mind

are being heaped on him. He who knew no sin, is being made

sin for us. His life is already starting to be crushed out. And

yet there is vastly more that he must bear. As a human. He's

weak as a human. He depends on the Father and has to be strengthened

in order to live long enough to fully bear our sins. We heard in

the scripture reading this morning of Isaiah fifty three. It was our sins that

he himself bore, and our pains that he carried from Gosemine all the way

through till the very end in Calvary. He carried our sins so that we

do not have to So we carried our sins. But what about our feelings

of loneliness, of our rejection of inadequacy? Did he do anything for us

when we feel that deep emotional pain that sometimes seems so crushing, so heavy

on us? Do you do anything for us? There? Didn't Isiah write

that he bore our sins and carried our pains. To answer that question,

let's rejoin the story of Jesus again several hours later. Now we find Jesus

hanging on the cross. He is completely naked, and we might feel a

little embarrassed for him. He is experiencing the shame, the shame that Adam

and Eve carried after they sinned, but before he clothed them with grace,

before he dressed them in the skins of animals. Now he is fulfilling the

prophecy of those animal skin garments. Watch closely. He himself is dying like

those animals whose skins God used, And like those animals, his clothing has

been given to those who deserve it the least, to those who were the

most active in crucifying him. His clothing is a symbol. His clothing shows

us that his righteousness is offered for those who least deserve it, for those

who put him on the cross, for you, and for me whose sins

put him on the cross. What a glorious act of grace, What a

gift? Will you accept it now? Don't wait to make yourself better before

accepting the gift of jesus grace. Jesus is surrounded by enemy during rabble,

priests and rulers, all inspired by demons to revile him in the most cruel

way that the demons themselves can imagine. Everything is black for him. As

intense as it is, the physical pain of crucifixion doesn't even register in his

mind. He is losing the one relationship that means the most to him in

all the world. From Matthew twenty seven forty five. Now, from the

sixth hour, darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour, And

about the ninth hour, Jesus cried in a loud voice, saying, el

lee, el lee, Lemma sabaktani, that is my God. My God,

Why have you forsaken me? Why did you abandon me? Why have

you rejected me? To us? As humans? Possibly the greatest mental anguish

is the loss of relationship, and that loss is especially searing when we are

rejected and have no one to turn to you. And I cannot even begin

to imagine the suffering of the Son of God, who had never not been

in perfect union with his father. Nor can we imagine the suffering of the

Father when, to say us, he must appear to reject the one who

had always been with him as almost as part of him. On the cross,

Jesus took it all, all our loss, all our pain, all

of our guilt, all of our shame, all of our disease, and

finally all of our death, and in doing so he opened the way to

send us the third person of the God had the Holy Spirit. He opened

the way to fill us with the Holy Spirit. The Cross and the fire

are our only hope. Jesus in the Holy Spirit, the work of the

threshing floor and the work of the unquenchable fire. I don't know what sins

you struggle with most often. Maybe it's something widely regarded as evil, or

maybe you are more tempted by the kind of sin that church members too often

make peace with, perhaps the pride and self sufficiency of Laodicea, perhaps resentment

or covetousness loving the things of the world. But whatever it is, don't

let anyone tell you that sin is ownly the outward breaking of the law.

Jesus clearly taught that the demands of the law go deep. Jesus taught that

sin begins in the heart and flows out from there into our actions. That

is what makes the problem of sin so intractable. It's because sin, once

we touch it, becomes part of us. The hopeless condition of a sinner

is stated clearly by the prophet Jeremiah chapter thirteen, twenty three. Can the

Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots, then you as well can

do good who are accustomed to doing evil. Of course, we can't change

the basic features that God created us with to be someone else. And the

prophet Jeremiah uses that metaphor to uses that image to emphasize to us that we

cannot eradicate sin from our own lives, that we alone are helpless, are

helpless and hopeless. Yes, we might be able to change our outward visible

actions just enough to look good to other people. We might even fool our

own selves, but we can never change our own hearts. We can never

change our own nature. We can never change the source of sin within us.

So maybe you're already doing this, maybe not, But here is my

appeal to you today. Build a relationship with God. Do it the same

way you would with a family member. Listen to him by reading his word,

talk to him in prayer, take time with him often. Keep your

heart open to letting him remind you of something from his word throughout your day.

Keep your heart open to speaking a word in prayer to him as you

do your work every morning, ask God for three things. First, of

your self and self sufficiency and to fill you with the Holy Spirit. Second,

to take everything you have and everything you are as his to be used

as He sees fit in service to others. And third, to clothe you

with His grace. Today you will find that as you make that part of

your lifestyle that God will do a powerful process of change in you. Your

thoughts, your desires will start to change. You'll become more gentle and sensitive

to the people around you. Your love for God will deepen as you spend

time with him, especially especially as you spend time contemplating the love of Christ

and the cross of Jesus. I want to share with you one of my

favorite passages from the book Desire of Ages. On page eighty three, we

read it would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in

contemplation of the life of Christ. We should take it point by point and

let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones. As we thus

dwell upon his great sacrifice for us, our confidence in him will be more

constant, our love for him will be quickened, and we shall be more

deeply imbued with his spirit. Now, of course, the work of creation

was amazing. Jesus is the architect of space and the author of time.

Space and time exist because Jesus created them before he became Jesus, before the

incarnation. He is the engineer of every law of physics, and of each

tiny molecular machine working inside the cells of your body to keep you alive at

this moment. Amazing work indeed, and yet to me, the work of

recreation, I find out even more astonishing, if possible, maybe even more

supernatural than the work of creation in the first place. Friends, we must

stop trying to recreate our own hearts to save ourselves. We must instead devote

ourselves to study and prayer, as we earnestly plead for that deep relationship with

Him that He so longs to have with us. It is through relationship with

Himself that God saves us. It is through relationship that He rights our law,

his law in our hearts. As prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah, Jesus

taught that his law in its most basic form, in its most essential form,

his law is to love. God's law is to love God with true

and total worship. God's law is to love the people around us with genuine,

unselfish and tender regard for their needs. God's law demands love that we

can never generate by any amount of determination or effort, Love that we can

experience only if and as it pours into our hearts continually from the cross of

Jesus. But Jesus has another blessing for you as well. When you follow

Jesus has a disciple of Jesus. There will still be days when loss and

loneliness loom large. There will be times when when conflicts and struggles just seem

overwhelming. They won't magically go away. And yet as your relationship grows,

you will find in Him in Jesus a place of silence, in peace,

a place holy with the presence of Jesus, a place of calm, a

place made bright by the Christ Child who became our redeemer and who sends the

Holy Spirit to us. When we ask, Dear Father, as we come

before you, we have to confess our brokenness. We have to confess our

need for what only you can do. And yet we come to you in

joyful confidence at what you've already done on Calvary, in what you are continually

working in our lives, that supernatural work that we sometimes call sanctification, the

work of transformation in us, the work of healing of the brokenness of our

hearts and the wounds and our spirit. Father, we pray together that your

Spirit will be with each of us, will work in our hearts, will

fill our homes, and minister with us to us through us in this holiday

season, in the name of Jesus. Amen.