Holy Fire

Jesus declares in Luke 12 that He came not to bring comfort, but fire—a fire that purifies, divides, and transforms. This message calls us to face the real Jesus, not the one we remake in our own image. Tune in as we explore the unsettling but life-giving truth of Christ, the all-consuming flame.

Transcript

No. Turn with me, if you would, to the Gospel According to Luke, chapter 12. The gospel according to Luke, chapter 12. And if you've been with us for any stretch of time, you know that we've been in Luke chapter 12, like three or four Sundays, okay? And so when you find Luke 12, go ahead and stand with me for the reading of our Gospel text this morning.

Notice these words. This is the word of God. This is Luke 12, verse 49. Jesus said, I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed.

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on, five in one household will be divided three against two and two against three. They will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother in law against daughter in law, and daughter in law against mother in law. He also said to the crowds, when you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say it is going to rain.

And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say there will be scorching heat. And it happens. You hypocrites, you know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky. But why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Jesus, thank you for your strong and sharp words. May your word be a sword that divides soul and body, that divides sin from holiness today. And we pray, Lord, that you would pierce our hearts with your word. In your name we pray. Amen.

And you can be seated.

Well, it doesn't take much to see that these are shocking words from the mouth of Jesus. And oftentimes, as we have really been road tripping with Jesus, if you will, this summer, remember that he sets his face to Jerusalem. And now we are in chapter 12, still on that journey to Jerusalem, where once he arrives, this will be the end, and he will be betrayed, he will suffer, and then he will die at the hands of the religious leaders and. And the government at the time, which was Rome and so on his way. Jesus gives us especially, as we've seen in chapter 12 of Luke, many hard things to consider.

And wouldn't this be the time to drop those hard things when you're coming down to the end? That's when, well, you got to say what you got to say. And Jesus says it here, and it is sharp and it is a bit shocking and quite confusing perhaps, as we first look at it now, one of the jobs of the preacher is to sort of maybe help us to understand some of these words so that we don't get confused by them. But this is a tall order for our text today. But nevertheless, it is before us to do.

But before we do that, before we start trying to, because this is what we do, soften the language. Well, surely Jesus didn't mean that for sure. Fire. Notice the kinds of things he's saying here. Fire, division and decision before we start going and explaining away.

Well, he certainly doesn't mean division because, you know, he. He's the Prince of peace. How can the Prince of peace say, did you not know that I didn't come here for peace?

How is this? Well, before we get to explaining that away, perhaps, and we never want to explain it away to the point that it doesn't hold a sting. Okay, let's sit in it for just a moment and say this right up front. The fire that Jesus wants to bring is not a camp Kumbaya bonfire that has its little stones that keeps the fire contained, but rather it's a fire that is like a wildfire. And you know what feeds a wildfire?

Wind.

Now you start messing around with these biblical images of fire and wind, and you have the Holy Spirit that should be preeminent in our mind, right? For he is the flame of God, the flame of love. He is the fire of God that descends at Pentecost, is he not? And Jesus says here, I wish he was already kindled on the earth. Now, as of yet, here in Luke 12, Jesus has not gone to the cross and he has not descended to the lower parts and, and then resurrected and ascended to the heights of the Father's right hand to then Send the Spirit 50 days later on Pentecost.

Right? That hasn't happened just yet. And so Jesus is sort of prophesying that it's going to happen, and that's why he transitions us straight into baptism. Right? I mean, it's almost, if you're not careful with the symbolism here, it just seems like he's randomly saying things.

And I, you know, I thought this morning, I thought, you know, this is a hard text and like, some of us just want to be like, ah, let's move on to the next one. You know, And a lot of times we do that in our reading. We don't stop and sit in the discomfort. We don't sit in the sharpness of these, these words of Jesus, in the contradiction that it seems to be. Instead, we just move on.

And I think that the disciples probably did that, don't you? Well, here's Jesus again saying something about the cross, something about suffering, something about the hands of the religious leaders. I don't know what he's making of that, do you? No, let's just move on. He said it three times, he predicted it, and they were still surprised when it happened.

One of the things Luke 12 is telling us is, don't be surprised. Look here, I'm saying it here. Remember the unfaithful servant? Remember the guy who piled his life up just so he could relax a little bit? No, that is not the Christian path.

In fact, we fight to the end. And in fact, we are under attack constantly by the evil one.

And so he says right here in verse 49, I came to bring fire to the earth. And the term there in Greek has to do with throwing fire or hurling fire. So again, it's not a camp Kumbaya, my love. Kumbaya, you know? Right.

Anybody? No. We used to go to Camp Kumbaya, literally. Camp Kumbaya was the name of the camp that we always did youth camp in. You know, it's nice to have a little bonfire, but it's not nice to be near a wildfire.

And Jesus said, I'm hurling down a wildfire. Much more like Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone. A fire that purifies, but stings.

So this uncontrollable fire is powered by God's Holy Spirit. And if you remember what John the Baptist says, it all makes sense here. These first two verses here of fire and baptism and how they go together. Because the baptism Jesus is speaking about, of course, is the baptism of his passion, his suffering and death. And we even speak about baptism in this way, don't we?

We go under the waters of baptism and to suffer with him and to ultimately die. It is our death because we as humans are not water creatures. So when we go under the water. I love when we do an infant baptism and the water goes over the face. The baby's just trying to get a breath of air and seems like we're suffocating and doing all this kind of.

We're not. They'll be fine. It's just sprinkled. But nevertheless, there's something about water being poured on us that just isn't natural. It represents our death, but then coming out of the water, new life.

So this. This baptism of suffering. You know what John says, right? John the Baptist, Jesus cousin, the forerunner of the Messiah himself, says, I baptize you with what? Water.

But there's one coming that will baptize you with what water and what fire you see? Water, spirit, fire. We're talking about here, these symbols of our faith that we are constantly told in this sanctuary to remember our baptism and be thankful, but remember that baptism is not our security in Christ or some sort of profession on our part to Christ, but rather identifying with his suffering, death and resurrection. So that if we are to resurrect, which is the end of all man, because it's the end of the man Christ Jesus, then if that is our end, we must suffer with him. We must die to ourselves in order to live to Christ.

In other words, there is no resurrection without a death. Which again is why the famous words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer echo for me. When the Lord bids us to come and follow him, he bids us to come and die. But when we die, we find new life. But not until we lay it down.

As long as we hold on to our life, we will lose it. If we lose our life, we will have it.

That's the economics of divinity.

But we make a mistake often, and I think it's one that if we get it right here, then we can understand this text a little bit better. And that is this. We often mistakenly divide the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament. Sometimes we even joke about it. Right?

Yeah. Aren't you glad we're not back in Old Testament times? But could I just remind us this morning that Yahweh of the Old Testament is Yahweh of the New Testament? In other words, what I'm saying is this. Yahweh is Jesus and Jesus is Yahweh.

And if there's a problem with that, it's on our end, not his.

And so if things seem a little hard or harsh at times in the Old Testament and nicer in the New Testament, it's just because the Old Old Testament has majored in judgment and the New Testament majors in grace. But the Old Testament minors in grace and the New Testament minors in judgment. But they're both good. They're two sides of the same coin, if you will. In other words, the judgment of God is his grace.

If he were not to judge the world of its sin, wouldn't we be in a bad place?

Imagine a regime like the Third Reich lasting for a thousand years because we live that long, thanks be to God. That's not the case because his judgment perhaps was delayed. No. Instead, his judgment comes, and thanks be to God, when it does, we act like we don't like judgment until we've been treated unjustly. And then we call for justice.

But when it's upon us, we don't want it.

You know, people often ask a question like, why do good things or bad things happen to good people?

Is that classic problem of evil. But I think what we misunderstand is there are no good people.

That's hard to say, isn't it? Like, because when I look at you, I'm like, oh no, they're good people. You know, like, they're good folks. But what we. It's funny that St. Augustine, his favorite illustration for proving original sin was not to use adults, but instead to use toddlers.

And if you ever had a toddler, you can see they're a little tyrant, are they not? See, with the chuckles that I hear out there, you agree with me. You don't have to say amen. As soon as you're dealing with a toddler, you're dealing with a little tyrant. And if you were to just transplant that same activity that a toddler gives us.

I want it now. That's mine. You know, you're like, buddy, first of all, that's mine. I bought it, okay? I try to remind my kids of this.

Often they don't seem to get it ever. But you know, then the Lord taps me on, yeah, you don't get it ever either. You think you can do whatever you want to with your money, but it's all mine. You think you can do whatever you want to with your time, but guess what? It's all mine.

I gave it to you as a steward. You see, we're really just all little toddlers until we're sanctified by God's grace. And that only comes by discipleship, following Jesus, living in the spirit and doing as our Hebrews text says, casting away every weight. And the sin which so easily beset us or get us off track. Think about that.

Not just the sin, but sometimes the weight. In other words, things that aren't sin but still attach us to things of this world in a non productive way. Or we still like things more than people, things more than God.

And of course we always kind of point to this, but it's true, isn't it, that sometimes we'd rather spend time here than with a person and man, I'm just telling you. Or maybe with a pet than a person, or maybe our house than a person, or maybe our car than a. Or our bank accounts than a person. Listen, the two greatest commandments is not to love God and our things, but to Love God and your neighbor. Not your nice neighbor.

Yes, just the neighbor. Which means the next person you meet, maybe that's the waiter or waitress that doesn't serve you well. How do you love them?

You say, pastor, you're really like, you know, kind of stepping on toes or whatever. Listen, it's really not me. I feel like Jeremiah. You remember Jeremiah? And our text was from Jeremiah.

Jeremiah. I love that dude. But here's the thing. His name became a household joke. You know what they called him?

Jeremiah tells us what they called him. They said, here comes the guy who's only got bad news. Here he comes again. He's just going to tell us more bad news. You know what he ended up telling him?

He told me, he said, look, the Babylonians are coming. And, and guess what? You need to go ahead and give up now. Here's the prophet of God. He said, you need to just go ahead and surrender.

Don't even try to fight because it ain't gonna work. Give up now. You know what they did? They threw him in a pit. You remember?

They threw him in a cistern and he sank down into the mud. They tried to get rid of him. They didn't want to hear it. And Jesus word is a word, just like Jeremiah's. In fact, when, when the disciples, when he asked the disciples, who do people say that I am?

In one of the gospels they say, jeremiah, the prophet. Now Jeremiah didn't do any miracles that we're aware of. He had no converts. Jesus had a lot of converts and he did a lot of miracles. Why would Jesus be equated with Jeremiah?

Because he had a word from God that was on fire. And people want to contain the fire. They like to get near it, to be warmed by it, but for it to be controlled. But here's the thing about God. He's an all consuming fire.

He's a wildfire and he blows where he will. Which means if you let him in, you don't get to decide what stays or goes.

And it's hard for us, isn't it? It's hard for me. If Jesus says, I want that, it's like, why, that's a good thing, isn't it? I don't see any problem with that. It doesn't matter what you see.

I want that. Give it to me. You ever tried to take something away from a toddler?

Bless you. Right, you're about to be in it for 30 minutes here, right, Little tyrant.

And it proves to us that we think why bad things happen to good people. Well, I'M not sure there are any good people. According to the scripture, we're all sinners. We're all in the same boat. Which is kind of nice because we all in this room, we're all in the same boat.

And here's what GK Church said. We're all in the same boat. Yeah, we're seasick. That's what we are. I might add this.

We're also homesick. You see, the reason we're sick of this world sometimes, because we're not made just for this world. Made for something greater from something eternal. Everything that your eyes behold, everything that you've ever touched or sensed with your five senses, every bit of that will pass away. Every single bit of it.

You say, Surely not that building. Oh, yeah, that building will go one day, 2,000 years from now. There won't be much left that's here today. Can you imagine being back in Egyptian times when you saw these things and saw these rulers, you thought to yourself, you know, that regime's never going to. Oh, yeah, it's gone.

And most of us can't even name one person from it.

But there's one kingdom, brothers and sisters, that will last forever. That's the kingdom we've got to be more invested in than any little kingdom down here. And here's the crazy thing that, you know, because we often think, oh, yeah, well, then we need to just be like heavenly minded then, not worry about down here. But here's the thing. That kingdom, guess where it's come down Here with us.

The kingdom of God descended here and Jesus planted his church to push forward the borders of his kingdom. And we're still doing it to this day. We do it through martyrdom, we do it through giving. We do it through a church like this and all the other churches that are littered around today. God's kingdom moves forward and you're a part of it.

If you're in Christ, then you're in his kingdom. Where he reigns is what his kingdom is. Is he reigning in your life? Then his kingdom is active. And you bring the kingdom then to your work.

And sometimes your work might contradict with the kingdom, right? Contradict with politics, contradict with family.

And this is why Jesus says, no, I didn't come to bring peace to earth. We're at war with that kind of earth. Instead, I came to bring division.

It's interesting that our in the Jeremiah reading, he actually says, is not my word. Like fire says the Lord, says Yahweh, Lord there on all caps, is always Yahweh. And like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces. So when Jesus comes, he is a fireball, okay? And he's a hammer.

He's the hammer. And here's why. Because he's the sure rock that breaks all other foundations, which by the psalmist says, even the foundations of the earth are shaken. That's because when you're dealing with God, you're dealing with the base of reality itself. You want to know what's real?

God is. He's the foundation of everything that springs forward from that beautiful sunrise this morning that I saw reflecting on my grass that grows. He's the Lord of nature. And now I get to look at you here, all. Every single one of you, more precious than all the sparrows.

And he cares and knows every time a sparrow falls. But he says, how much more you in this room? How much more you. Which is why we must always have the order, right? It's God, then persons and then everything else.

You know, here's the cool thing about God. When he comes into our life and sanctifies us, it's not a matter of just trying to get ourselves and drag ourselves. And you have to do that sometimes. Until that habit is formed in you. Until.

Until that virtue is formed in you, you do have to drag yourself along. But once it's there, it's a joy. Like it's not even. It's, I want to do this. In fact, I love to do this.

And that's why we can immediately see how far we have to go. Because I can look at my life and say, oh, boy. Some of those things I just don't sometimes even joke. Yeah, I'm just not really a people person. Well, I mean, heaven, I don't know if you know this or not.

It's gonna be filled with people.

Like, it's not probably a good thing to say and just be proud of. I just don't really get along with people very well. Because hell is a place where you're by yourself, isolated, in some darkness.

Heaven is just the opposite of that. It's where there is no hiding at all.

And see, that's why this fire that he brings, you see, is a fire that lights it all up. But here's the thing. We as sinners are moving out of the darkness and into the light. And I don't know if you've ever done this before, but you ever gone into, you know, there's that cave. I forget where it is.

Somewhere in Alabama. And I've been to it before. And you go all the way to the End of it, you know what I mean? It's like way down in there and they cut off all the lights. I mean, it's a darkness like I've never experienced before in my life.

You know what I mean? Like, even on a dark night, you still got the stars out there, right? It's like Lord of the Rings again, right? You look up and you got that one star still shining. Not that cave.

That cave is pure dark. You put your hand right here, you wouldn't be able to see anything. And you know what? After you've been down there and kind of this dim artificial light, you come out again, it's full day. You're like.

You're like this, right? You ever done that before? You know, like this movie theater and then jack up the lights. It's like, golly, bro. What?

That's the kind of fire.

If God's word doesn't hit you like that, I don't know, that you're reading ought to make us draw back and wince. Like, whoa, what? What? It takes us a minute to get acclimated to his pure light. And here's the problem with us is we like that artificial light.

You know, if artificial intelligence is a danger, artificial light is a danger for us. And you know who's preaching artificial light and shining artificial light all the time? These false prophets. The very ones that Jeremiah's word about here, that God himself, he says, the prophets who lie to my people in my name, calling what is evil good?

And let me just tell you, you can scroll right here on your phone and find a bunch of that. You can find churches with a bunch of that. And without getting into a list today of those things that would probably offend some of you in this room. And, you know, it's something I've done before, and it's something that I've lost friendship over before, not just in the preaching, but in actual conversation with someone. You know what?

God's truth is better than family?

Because God's truth is not some truth that's just abstract out there in universe. Instead, what we're told is the truth of God is Jesus himself.

So if we don't love the truth, what does that mean? It means ultimately we don't love Christ.

But let me tell you, when you hear the truth that is in the gospel, the truth that is in every single word of scripture, every single word, if we don't love that truth and it takes us a minute to get acclimated to it and we don't understand, we kind of wince at it. That's okay, because we're coming out of the darkness. But as soon as we say, you know what? God couldn't be like that, we begin to form an idol. And, you know, in the Old Testament, it majors in idolatry and in smashing those idols.

It's why we must be. I must be continual iconoclast, an idle smasher putting the hammer to a false understanding of God. Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true. You tell that toddler, you know what? Here's the reason you can't go over there and spend the night.

That's. They're not gonna understand.

Here's how electricity works, buddy. Here's. Here's how your DNA works. They're not gonna understand, but doesn't mean it's not true.

Just because we don't like it or our culture doesn't like it doesn't mean it's not true. Now, here's the thing. We don't have to be nasty about it either. And Jesus isn't nasty about it either. Because here's the thing.

People are not our enemy. You see, that's the mistake we make. We've got the truth, and then all of a sudden, we go, all right, I'm the hammer. No, they're in darkness. They must be shown the light through forcing it and not through pressure.

Got a buddy that just says, you know, pressure, not grace. Not pressure. I love that. And it is. But grace means speaking truth, though.

It doesn't mean stepping aside it. It means speaking it, but speaking it in love. In other words, being willing to get in that person's life, being willing to spend time helping develop that, even in our own life.

And I think that's why. Exactly why Jesus says, you know what, you know how to predict the weather, but you don't even know how to predict your own present time. It's hard for us because we just kind of live our life. We don't oftentimes back up and say, like, where do we fit in the story?

But we fit in the story. Like, the story's still going. You remember. I hate to use it again, but Lord of the Rings, right? And you remember Frodo and Samwise?

They're trekking to Mount Doom. It's bad. You remember this, and then they start trying to, like, encourage their so by saying, hey, you remember. You remember all those people of old, like, they had these big heroes, and, like, you remember how they came through, like, a hard time, you know, And Sam is trying to encourage Frodo here. And I said, yeah, I do remember that.

And then Sam's like, you know what, Mr. Frodo? I think we're in that story. Like, I think we might be actually part of that bigger story. And I think one day, Mr. Frodo, we'll actually be talked about by others and encourage them by holding strong even when the darkness seems to overwhelm us even when it seems like there's no hope possible. All of a sudden, the tides turn.

All of a sudden, light begins to shine. You see, here's the good news.

We already know who wins in the end. And it's not evil.

It's good because God is good. And evil compared to God is nothing.

So don't be overwhelmed by nothing but instead put yourself, your faith, your trust, your life on the sure foundation that crushes all others and allow him to shake up your life.

Allow his fire in not with stipulations, not with a contract but with a blank piece of paper. Here's my life. Lord, write your story. Tell me what is next for me.

Put your hammer to the weight and the sin which so easily get us off track. And, Lord, if I've made an idol of you, would you smash that idol?

I really mean that. Every single one of us. Kind of interesting. Every single one of us have a picture of God in our head, you know, in our mind, in our mind's eye. But not all of them are correct.

I had a professor, you say, you know, everybody's a theologian, just most people aren't good ones. And he was looking at me when he said it.

And, you know, I look back at my image of God when I was a child, when I was a teenager, I was in my 20s, 30s now in my 40s. Like, he keeps getting bigger, he keeps getting better, he keeps getting truer.

And that's why if we need to stand for truth on things, it's now that we need to do it, not later. In other words, it's our time to show true Christian anthropology or what mankind really is. Because that's the big question in our time, isn't it, really? Honest, Most people are not asking a lot of questions about God but they're surely asking questions about what a human is.

It's on the news every day. It's in all our magazines, all our papers, all our shows. Everybody's trying to figure out what a human is. That's our time. And you know where we go to find out what a human is?

Jesus Christ and his Word. And then we build all the other stuff and substantiate it in all the ways that we do.

Do you want the real Jesus? If so, tell him, lord, I think I've made you too small in my life. If you don't go to him in every problem, then he's too small.

You see, Jesus is not just a nice guy that came to the earth and taught some cool things that now everybody's been softened by so that we don't have to think about that old God of the Old Testament. Instead, Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament, to bring it to its true conclusion in his own person.

A good teacher wouldn't have gotten crucified, but his words were like fire. And people don't like that. Not an uncontrollable, all consuming fire. And so they put him to death. And in our little ways we try to do the same.

If we're honest, we don't want to hear it. Truth divides, you know, the law of contradiction. Non contradiction is like the surest. It's like the first step in philosophy and logic. Right Is like one thing can't be this and not that.

It has to be one or the other. It's the basis of all reality and has been proven over and over again as much as anything scientific, more than anything scientific, in fact. And I find that that same sort of law of non contradiction right here at the base of reality. Think about this. It's Christ.

It's His Word or our Word. And His Word will always crush our Word, which is why we lift up His Word. We ought to lift up His Word. We ought to long and desire for His Word, not our own.

So don't hide from the light. Even when it blinds you, don't hide from it. Sit in that a while. Sit in it a while and by God's Spirit our eyes will adjust. And what we'll see is we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness.

So that people are not our enemy, people are the victims. And so that when we speak the truth in love, it's with a tear in our eye and a prayer behind every single word.

Otherwise we become a little tyrant. Just like the Pharisees were heaping things on people. So today, brothers and sisters, I implore you, surrender to the fire. Come under the water, suffering the suffering of the cross, so that it leads to light, truth and resurrection, new life. So that we, as the writer of Hebrews says, can be made perfect in Christ.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May it be so of us. And of our time. Amen.

Total Duration 00:36:45