Yes I know, this is not a post on abuses in the Charismatic or Pentecostal movement. Sorry to disappoint. Nor will this post be about the recent conference called Strange Fire by John
MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, Justin Peters and others. Come to think of it (since I'm name dropping), it won't even be about Mark Driscoll crashing MacArthur's conference in the parking lot. What I will admit is that I couldn’t help using this title in
a clever effort to draw people in for some honest-to-goodness biblical teaching.
Sorry (*sheepishly* I'm a sinner)
I pray it detracts a little from or offsets the negative aspects that were initiated by the aforementioned conference mostly because of uninformed assumptions, fallacies of composition, broad-stroking and a multitude of other issues. I will state clearly I am remaining neutral for now. What I will state with certainty is this post is about fire. Perhaps not strange but fire none the less.
Sorry (*sheepishly* I'm a sinner)
I pray it detracts a little from or offsets the negative aspects that were initiated by the aforementioned conference mostly because of uninformed assumptions, fallacies of composition, broad-stroking and a multitude of other issues. I will state clearly I am remaining neutral for now. What I will state with certainty is this post is about fire. Perhaps not strange but fire none the less.
Fire
is mentioned often in the Bible. It is used by men and by God. The most
pronounced use that I can think of in the Old Testament is direct from God and is the pillar of smoke
and fire in the Israelites wilderness wandering. It is literally a visual symbol of God's presence with His people.
Exodus
13:20-22 ~ “And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge
of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to
lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light,
that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the
pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
The
other mentioned use of fire that stands out is the tragic story of Nadab and Abihu who in a moment
of laxness lost their lives for their irreverence to God by offering Strange
Fire (from which MacArthur drew his analogy). Whether Nadab and Abihu neglected to follow God’s outlined sacrificial
system out of presumptuousness or out of thoughtlessness and inattention,
their fault was severely punished so that all might learn to comply exactly
with God's commands. Not shirk certain aspects or play loose with the rules. Again, in this instance, we see God's presence among His people...this time in sharp judgment.
Leviticus
10:1-3 ~ “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his
censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not
commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and
consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said
to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Among those who are
near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be
glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace.
The
most pronounced use of fire either literally or as simile that I see in the New
Testament is when the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples and followers of
Jesus.
Acts
2:1-4 ~ “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one
place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty
rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were
sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and
rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the
Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave
them utterance.
There are plenty of uses (or abuse)
of fire mentioned in the Bible outside of Nadab and Abihu also. I will focus on the
“firebugs” or what we would consider today to be the more incendiary in the lot. We know them as arsonists or people who
deliberately set fires. When I say arson I mean the textbook definition or a crime
of intentionally and maliciously setting fire to buildings, vehicles or other
property with the intent to cause damage. Please understand this is
tongue-in-cheek as many of these incidences of arson are in keeping with God’s
plan and are allowed by him.
First
up on the pyre we have Jericho, Ai, Hazar and all the cities of the Midianites (Joshua
6:24, Joshua 8: 19, Joshua 11:11, Numbers 31:9-10). This reaction is actually
quite simple to explain if we look to the Cross. God wishes to blot out and
eradicate sin. When Christ died on the Cross, sin and death lost once and for
all. God didn’t play games. Sin is the most dangerous thing in God’s universe
and it doesn’t belong here. The blotting out and eradication of these cities is
the same scenario. God doesn’t just wish to sweep sin and depravity off to the
side…he wants it gone. So these wicked and sinful cities are literally wiped
from the map by fire.
The
next episode is exactly the same thing but instead of cities it is individual
people(s). God can have wholesale destruction of wickedness or it can be on a
more intimate individual level. Intimate is the name of the game here.
Joshua
7:24-25 ~ “And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and
the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and
his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they
brought them up to the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, “Why did you bring
trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned
him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.
This
punishment deals with not only the guilty parties but it also deals with those
that might have been tainted by their attitudes and motives. We see a smaller encapsulation
of what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot. Lot and his family had been
contaminated by the sin of the city they dwelt within. Those within small
isolated groups are easily contaminated with poor thinking. Today we need only
look at places like the Westboro Baptist Church to see this same thing. When
God chooses to act decisively against sin….it is usually dealt with in a
holocaust. As a matter of fact the primary symbol of judgment is usually by
fire.
Moving
on to the Book of the Judges we see Judah fight the Canaanites at Jerusalem and
burned the city. We see a few things here. First of which is that Jerusalem has
already been settled albeit by non-Israelite peoples.
Judges
1:8 ~ “And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck
it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire.”
Second,
we see the city being cleared or purified by fire for the building of God’s
city which will inevitably house His Temple. It is the taking of God’s holy
city by the very tribe that will give rise to the Messiah. This is not an
accident folks. As with the story of the cities, Achan and now Jerusalem we see
a desire by God through His sovereignty and/or providence to avoid cross
contamination of sinful culture and a people intended as a holy priesthood unto
the nations of the world. To prevent contamination you need to prevent contact
with the contagion. So…God deems it necessary to remove the contagion. What
better way than to burn it off. Sadly, this did not end the pagan influence as the Jebusites would still be a thorn in the Israelites side until the time
of David (2 Samuel 5:6)
So
what do we have in Judges 9:49? We see the fulfillment of Jotham’s (Abimelech’s
youngest brother) curse of Judges 9:20.
Judges
9:20 ~ But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the
leaders of Shechem and Beth-millo; and let fire come out from the leaders of
Shechem and from Beth-millo and devour Abimelech.”
Judges
9:49 ~ “So every one of the people cut down his bundle and following Abimelech
put it against the stronghold, and they set the stronghold on fire over
them, so that all the people of the Tower of Shechem also died, about 1,000 men
and women.”
Why
do these men meet with such a horrid death inside the walls of the stronghold? Abimelech
(son of Gideon) was not a monarch so much as a tyrannical despot. He had 69 of
his 70 brothers murdered to secure his position of power (all except Jotham). More
importantly he is a polytheistic (believed in multiple gods) king of Gerar. He
is essentially supported and put into power by Baal-berith worshipers. God sends
an "evil spirit" between Abimelech and the men of Shechem (v. 24)
that proves disastrous for the men of Shechem and they are subsequently burned
to death by the pyro Abimelech. I guess there is no honor among thieves or
dignity among wicked depraved sinners. Abimelech will then meet with a similar ignominious
and humiliating end by having a millstone dropped on his head like a Wile E Coyote
and Roadrunner cartoon. He is then thrust through with a sword by an armor-bearer so it would not be the blow of the stone from a woman that actually killed him.
Further on we see Samson
the strongmen used “lit-up” foxes to trash fields of grain of the Philistines
in his on-again off-again relationship with them.
Judges
15:4-5 ~ “So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned
them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he
had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the
Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well
as the olive orchards.
The
men of Dan burned down the Canaanite city of Laish
Judges
18:26-27 ~ “Then the people of Dan went their way. And when Micah saw that they
were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his home. But the people of
Dan took what Micah had made, and the priest who belonged to him, and they came
to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with
the edge of the sword and burned the city with fire.
The
men of Israel turned their swords against the children of Benjamin and then set
fires at all the cities they came because of the fallout from the Levite and his
concubine
Judges
20:48 ~ “And the men of Israel turned back against the people of Benjamin and
struck them with the edge of the sword, the city, men and beasts and all that
they found. And all the towns that they found they set on fire.
We
then have that genius King Zimri who essentially commits a real painful suicide
by burning down his house while he was in it after having seen the city had
been taken by his usurper Omri.
1
Kings 16:18 ~ “And when Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the
citadel of the king's house and burned the king's house over him with fire and
died,
In
a reverse spin on judgment we see Nebuchadnezzar burned Jerusalem.
2
Kings 25:9 ~ “And he burned the house of the Lord and the king's
house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down.
In
the same way that God’s people will burn entire cities upon entering the Promised
Land early on, God will reverse the punishment and inflict it on His own people
for their stiff-necked rebellion and disobedience against Him. Just as Habakkuk
will prophesy…God will raise up a nation as the Israelites enemy (Habakkuk
1:6-The Chaldeans/Babylonians) and use the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar to judge
His own wicked people. It is concurrent with this prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would
commence his military march through Nineveh (612 B.C.), Haran, and Carchemish,
on his way to Jerusalem.
It
is interesting that many of the Old Testament episodes of arson we see that
they are deliberate or planned acts that result in the judgment of those that
are lit on fire. We see acts that would otherwise be considered criminality are
actually acts of justice against those that were horribly wicked and had
reached the tipping point of God’s justice that required they be “removed”.
This included God’s very own people that, because of their apostasy and sin…had
made themselves not God’s people. He therefore removes them to Assyria,
Babylonian exile and inevitably the Jews fall in the Siege of Jerusalem at the
hands of Rome through Titus in 70 A.D.
Jumping
to the New Testament I will mention one more incident and it centers around the
seven sons of Sceva in the Book of Acts Chapter 19. The residents of Ephesus
had gotten wind of the thrashing that the seven sons had taken at the hands of
the demon-possessed man. The seven sons had approached a demon-possessed man
and tried to proclaim, "In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command
you to come out."
It
appears that they picked a person possessed by an evil spirit with a "chip
in his shoulder" and this particular demon was having none of this nonsense
the Jewish men were dishing out. So the demon dished it back. The demon in
possession of the man responds. "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but
who are you?" The man possessed by this evil spirit proceeds to jump them
and pretty much handed them their rear-ends on a silver platter. We then see seven
opportunistic hacks sprinting out of a house screaming with a notable shortage of
apparel. Talk about a wardrobe malfunction.
This
type of story (demons and naked demon-thrashed men) obviously gets around town quickly
in Ephesus…
Ephesus
19:17-20 ~ “And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews
and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus
was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing
and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced
magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all.
And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces
of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail
mightily.”
Some
of the new converts torch their own pagan books on black magic. Certainly they knew
of the danger and evil in the books in their possession and felt the need to
divest themselves of said material. These books were expensive too. They had to
have known the demonic source of said material and burnt them. They gave
testimony of their current wicked practices and behaviors. It is important to
note that these were current Christians still in possession of books containing
the black magic arts. Not pagans who just converted, it is people who already
had believed or were currently believers since the word for those who were “now
believers” is in the perfect-active-genitive which means it was an act that had
been done in the past and continued through until at least the time of this
writing. This tells me that the practice of the magic and the demonic was so
pervasive that even current Christians had still gotten caught up in it.
It
is often expected that once someone converts and becomes indwelt by the Holy Spirit
that they will abide by the Spirit and be good believers. Here, like the
epistles to the Corinthians says otherwise. We see current Christians engaged
in quite sinful actions and practices. Let’s face it people, we’re all fallen
and all get into the presence of God by the grace of God through Christ’s work
on the Cross. This is just another painful reminder for us to chew on. It is
the Spirit within these believers that convicts them to turn over these books
for the burning. Their monetary cost is nothing in comparison to the cost to
one’s soul if possession of them is maintained.
Fahrenheit
451 indeed. This is censorship and arson that I would condone no matter what.
We
see this today in the church when the church and those in the church get caught
up in pagan practices that fly in the face of Scripture. Itemizing them all would be pointless. It is
enough to say that we must remain sensitive to the prodding and impetus of the
Spirit and use spiritual discernment when it comes to avoiding the sinful things
of this world.
It
is of paramount importance to note that the books are burned in light of the
fact that Jesus’ name is being extolled and demons knew of His name and even
Paul’s ( a true Apostle/disciple). It isn’t so much the thrashing at the hands
of the demon but the demon’s actual response to those foolish enough to
proclaim something not believing in Jesus. We see the power of God in the
Gospel, in its proclamation and in Jesus Himself. It is nothing to trifle with.
As a matter of fact… misusing Jesus’ name or abusing God’s grace is akin to
playing with fire. It is therefore not surprising that these acts by these new
converts from paganism and pagan practices just added more fuel to the fire or
the cause of the fledgling church.
2 comments:
nike kyrie 5
nike sb dunk high
off white
yeezy boost 350
lebron 16 shoes
nike sb dunk low
pg shoes
bape clothing
moncler
golden goose outlet
i was reading this replica bags seoul go to my site replica bags navigate to this web-site replica bags us
Post a Comment