Go with me if you would back
to Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews 12 and look with me at
the last verse of the chapter. For our God, is a consuming fire. What a statement. What a way to describe God. What a way to describe the God
of heaven and earth. Now, let's ask this extremely
important question. How many gods are there? He said, our God is a consuming
fire. How many gods are there? The
answer is one. There is one. He is not a true
and living God. He is the true and living God. In Isaiah 45, he said, I am the
Lord and there is none else There is no God beside me. So there's one God and it would
be very beneficial for all of us to know that He is a consuming
fire. I want our children to know this.
I do. I want all of us to know that
He is a consuming fire. Now I'll tell you what stands
out most to me about that verse. The Word is. It does not just say that our
God will consume with fire. It says our God is a consuming
fire. That means He consumes with Himself. He is a consuming fire. What
does He consume? We all know that the answer is
sin. He consumes sin. Lot was warned to get out of
Sodom and Gomorrah, lest he be consumed with their iniquity. He was warned of that. And God
rained down his fire and consumed the iniquity of those two cities,
which was people. He consumed the sin by consuming
the sinners. Psalm 104 verse 35 says, let
the sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked
be no more. God consumes sinful men and women. Now this is vital for every person
to understand. Sin and wickedness in man has
not changed. All have sinned. All do sin. All will sin. Sin and wickedness
in man hasn't changed. And God hasn't changed. He has
not changed. That verse right there does not
say that our God was a consuming fire. God is. He is. He was, He is, and He
shall be. Now I have something that I must
declare, and then after that I have something that I must
declare. I have warning, and I have comfort,
and both of them are going to come from this truth right here.
Our God is a consuming fire. The one and only God that there
is stepped foot on this earth and revealed to this world who
he was before he came from a virgin, before he was born of a virgin.
He stepped foot and revealed himself before he came born of
a virgin. God came down on Mount Sinai
And verses 18 through 21 tell us that. Look at verse 18 here
in Hebrews 12. It says, for you are not come
unto the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, nor
unto blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet
and the voice of words which voice they that heard entreated
that the word should not be spoken unto them anymore for they could
not endure that which was commanded." That's what they realized and
that's what all people realize when they see the law truly of
Mount Sinai. They could not endure that which
was commanded. And if so much as a beast touched
the mountain It shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart.
And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly
fear and quake. When God stepped foot on Mount
Sinai, the whole thing exploded with fire. The whole mountain
was on fire. And God said, if anything comes
near this mountain, it'll die right there in its sin. If anything
tries to touch this mountain, that mountain that can be touched,
if anything tries to touch it, it'll die in its sin. And the
thundering and the quaking, it was so fearful. All the people
begged, please don't let God talk with us. Please don't let
him speak directly to us. The voice of the Lord God is
terrible. It is terrible. It is full of
terror. Many people are still hearing
that voice to this day. Many people are. Go with me over
to Psalm 29. Psalm 29 verse 1 says, Give unto
the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Worship the
Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon
the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full
of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh
the cedars. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars
of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like
a calf. Lebanon and Syrian like a young
unicorn. The voice of the Lord divided
the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh
the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness
of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord maketh
the hinds to deliver, and discovereth the forest." There's nowhere
to hide. And in His temple does everyone speak of His glory. Everyone. When God revealed who
He was on Mount Sinai, Everybody realized he is a consuming fire. He's a consuming fire. Even Moses
said, I exceedingly fear in quake. Look with me at Exodus 24. Exodus 24 verse 12 says, And
the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me in the mount, and be
there. And I will give thee tables of
stone, and a law and commandments which I have written, that thou
mayest teach them. And Moses rose up, and his minister
Joshua, and Moses went up into the mount of God. And he said
unto the elders, tarry ye here for us until we come again unto
you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are
with you. If any man have any matters to
do, let him come unto them. And Moses went up into the mount,
and a cloud covered the mount, and the glory of the Lord abode
upon Mount Sinai. And the cloud covered it six
days, And the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the
midst of the cloud, and the sight of the glory of the Lord was
like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the
children of Israel." Very terrible. Very terrible. Can you imagine? Moses had to walk up into that. This is how God revealed himself. This terrible, thundering fire. And he said, come to me. And Moses had to walk up into
that. In order for him to meet with
God, he had to walk straight up to that fire. I was thinking about that, and
this thought went through my mind. After Moses walked up to
the fire of God, walking up to Pharaoh was a piece
of cake. God was going to send him on
a mission to deliver his people. He said, you're going to walk
straight up to the face of Pharaoh. He said, before you do, come
to me. Moses had to walk up to the fire of God after Moses saw
the terror of God. He didn't fear what man could
do to him. Not after a man sees the terror of God. Every man or woman that truly
sees God knows he's a consuming fire. He is a consuming fire. Let me show you something over
in 2 Kings chapter 1. I've always loved this. 2 Kings 1, a man named Ahaziah
was the king in Samaria, Israel. He was a wicked king and he worshipped
false gods. Verse 1 says, Then Moab rebelled
against Israel after the death of Ahab, and Ahaziah fell down
through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria,
and was sick. And he sent messengers and said
unto them, Go inquire of Beelzebub the god of Ekron, whether I shall
recover of this disease. Moab attacked Israel. Ahaziah
hid up in the lattice above his bedroom, fell from it, was badly
injured and then told his messengers, you go ask this false god, Beelzebub,
the god of Ekron, if I'm going to live or die from this. Verse
3. But the angel of the Lord said
to Elijah the Tishbite, his prophet Elijah, arise, go up to meet
the messengers of the king of Samaria and say unto them, is
it not because there's not a god in Israel that you go to inquire
of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron. Is there not a god in Israel
you could worship and inquire of? Verse 4, Now therefore, thus
saith the Lord, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which
thou art gone up, but shalt surely die, and Elijah departed. You
go tell the king that God says you're going to die because you
don't worship the true and living God. So those messengers went
back and they told the king that. And the king said, now wait a
minute, who said this to you? What did he look like? And they
described him to the king and he said, I know exactly who it
is. It's Elijah the Tishbite. He said, you bring him to me.
Verse nine. Then the king sent unto him a
captain of 50 with his 50. 51 men. And he went up to Elijah, and
behold, he sat on the top of a hill. And this captain spake
unto Elijah, thou man of God, the king hath said, come down.
And Elijah answered and said unto the captain of 50, if I
be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven and consume
thee and thy 50. If I'm God's messenger of truth,
if I have God's truth, then let him reveal himself as he has
declared himself to be, a consuming fire. Let fire come down from
heaven and kill every one of you. Verse 10 goes on to say,
and there came down fire from heaven and consumed him and his
50. Again, also the king sent unto
Elijah another captain of 50 with his 50, 51 more men. And
he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king
said, come down quickly. You come down right now. And
Elijah answered and said unto them, if I be a man of God, let
fire come down from heaven and consume thee and thy 50. And
the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his
50. This is who God is. The God that
does not change. This is who He is. The fleshly
mind naturally says, surely not. Surely not. Even if He was that
way, He can't be that way anymore. He can't be. You all know what
2 Peter 3 says. There are going to be scoffers
in the last day saying, where's the promise of His coming? Everything
continues just like it was. He said, they're willingly ignorant
of the fact that the world which was kept in store by the Word
was reserved to a flood. They willingly forget about that.
God said, I'm going to flood this earth. And he did. And he
said the same world is now kept in store reserved to fire. And
God is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness.
He said he's long suffering to us. But the day is going to come
where everything is going to melt with a fervent heat. It is coming. The fire is coming
again. Second Thessalonians 1 says the
same thing. God is coming back in the judgment
of his fire. It is coming again. The reality
of God is he is a consuming fire. That's the warning. That's the
warning that must go out. Here's the comfort. I'm going
to tell it and then we'll read it. There is mercy to be had. There is mercy to be had. Right here in 2 Kings 1, this
captain and his 50 came, came in their rebellion, God consumed
them all. A second captain and his 50 came,
serving the wrong king, God consumed them all. Verse 13 says, And
the king sent again a captain of the third 50 with his 50.
51 more men. And the third captain of 50 went
up and came and fell on his knees before Elijah. And besought him
and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life and
the life of these 50, thy servants, be precious in thy sight. Behold,
there came fire down from heaven and burn up the two captains
of the former fifties with their fifties. Therefore, let my life
now be precious in thy sight. I am begging you for mercy. I'm
just begging you for mercy. Verse 15, And the angel of the
Lord said unto Elijah, Go down with him, be not afraid of him.
And he arose and went down with him unto the king. God said,
Spare his life, spare his men. Spare his life and spare his
men. I want to tell the world to cry out for mercy. Just cry
out for mercy. Just stop everything else and
cry out for mercy. I mean, stop everything else.
And just cry out for mercy. James and John, when they saw
how the Lord was rejected, The kind, generous, loving, merciful,
good God who came. When they saw that
he was rejected, they got upset and they asked the Lord, they
said, do you want us to call down fire from heaven like Elijah
did and consume them all? That's what they deserve. And
God said, you know not what manner of spirit you are in. For the
Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. I came to save. I came to redeem from the fire. How did He do that? By entering
into the consuming fire for them. I came to be a substitute in
the fire, a sacrifice under the fire for my people, bearing all
their iniquity, bearing all their flame. Now, you have to see this. Go with me to 2 Chronicles 6. 2nd Chronicles chapter 6. This
is Solomon. This is so glorious. This is Solomon dedicating the
temple of the Lord as soon as it was built. He stood at the
altar of sacrifice. Before all the congregation of
Israel. And he prayed to God on all their
behalf. This is the last thing he said
in his prayer. 2nd Chronicles 6 verse 42, he
said, Oh Lord God, turn not away the face of thine anointed. Remember the mercies of David,
thy servant. He said, Lord, for the sake of
your anointed. Would you please remember your
covenant of mercy toward us? That's all he said. Lord, this
is our only hope, this is our only plea, this is our request.
Would you please remember your covenant of mercy toward us?
Would you do that for Christ's sake? Chapter 7, verse 1 says,
Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came
down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering. and the sacrifices. God answered him. He said, Lord,
would you remember your mercy to us? And God answered him by
sending fire down from heaven. And he consumed the burnt offering
and the sacrifices and the glory of the Lord filled the house.
And the priest could not enter into the house of the Lord because
the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house. And when all
the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory
of the Lord upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces
to the ground upon the pavement, and worshipped and praised the
Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endureth forever." A moment ago, the song we just
sang, the line said, When I was lost in sin and shame, how you
let me take the blame. That's the key. The way I had
to take the blame. How you let me take the blame? Through a sacrifice. Through
a substitute. Blessed Lord, how merciful that
was to me. Our God is a consuming fire.
That's the warning. But the glory and the comfort
of the gospel is Christ, our sacrifice, was consumed in our
place. When something is consumed, it's
gone. When it's consumed, it's gone. All the sins of His people. All of them. If we belong to
Him, all of them were consumed in Him. We were under the wrath
of His fire. in Christ and it's over. It's
absolutely over. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had to be, by law, they disobeyed
the law. The king made a law and they
disobeyed it. By the king's law, they had to
be cast into the fire. They could not be consumed. Christ was consumed for them. I have always loved how on the
Isle of Patmos, the Apostle John, when he saw the Lord, he said
his feet looked like they burned in a furnace. Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego's feet could not burn in that furnace. Christ's feet were burned for
them. How beautiful are the feet that
bring the gospel of substitution. Well, Hebrews 12, let's close.
Hebrews 12 says, verse 25. See that you refuse him not that
speaketh, that's God. For if they escaped not who refused
him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we
turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. for whose voice
then shook the earth on Mount Sinai. But now he hath promised
saying yet once more, I shake not the earth only, but also
heaven. The fire is coming again. And
this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things
that are shaken. Everything that remains in its
sin is gonna be consumed away. Verse 27 says that those things
which cannot be shaken may remain. That fire is going to come, it's
going to consume everything that is shaken so that the things
which cannot be shaken may remain. And I'm going to close with this
right here. You remember that illustration.
This is the perfect way to describe what he's saying right here.
The glory of our substitute. You remember that illustration
of the wagon trains headed out west back in the days when people
were settling to Montana and Wyoming and they would travel
in wagon trains because it was safe. It was safer to go in a
group rather than to go alone. A lot of dangers out there. And when they were traveling,
they would send a scout out in front of the wagon train just
to search for danger. And if he found anything, he
could run back and report it. One of the greatest dangers they
had was prairie fires. All that tall, dry grass and
all that flat land, the wind that picked up, if a prairie
fire caught, it would just, it spread like wildfire. And he'd
burn everything up in his path. Well, there was a time when a
wagon train was headed out west and they had a scout out front.
And sure enough, he found a prairie fire. It was full force coming
right at him. He turned that horse around and
he ran it as hard as he could back to the wagon train. And
he told the wagon master, there is a prairie fire two miles out. And it's coming fast. It's raging
fast. It's coming right for us. So
the wagon master said, let's pull some grass back so we can
only go one way and let's start our own fire and burn it out
behind us. And that's what they did. And
as soon as that fire got far enough away, he said, now let's
ease all the wagons back. And there they sat. And while they were waiting,
that little boy crawled up in his dad's lap, sitting there
waiting and watching, and here comes a fire. Comes up over the
little hill. And it's blazing, it's raging,
it's coming. That little boy grabbed his father's
neck and he cried, Daddy. And that
man hugged him and he said, What is it, son? And he said, I'm
scared. I'm scared the fire is going
to get us. And he said, son, you have nothing to be afraid
of. We're standing on burnt ground. There is nothing more to burn.
The fire cannot touch us. The fire was already here. Look
down, you can see the scars. That is the gospel of substitution. Everything that can be shaken
is going to be consumed away. But everything that was already
consumed in the substitute will never be shaken. Verse 28 says,
wherefore, because of that, because God's fire has already consumed
us in Christ, wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved,
Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with
reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. What good news? Our God is a
consuming fire and in Christ we've already been consumed.
It's consumed. It's over. Sit still and rest. Let's all stand together.