July 9/23 God: A Consuming Fire Hebrews 12: 14-29

Today we are continuing our series based on the book of Hebrews. We are reflecting on Hebrews 12:14-29 God – A Consuming Fire. The writer to Hebrews calls us to holiness; a strange call for many people today. We’re called to a way of living with God. We do this by coming to him in a spirit of reverence and awe, with an awareness of God’s holiness and majesty. The writer takes us to mountains, drawing our eyes upward to God in order to hear his voice. God is a consuming fire, a God who, through Jesus’ sacrifice, burns away our old selves in order to reveal our new selves as his children. 

Transcript

God - A Consuming Fire

Hebrews 12:14-29

C.S. Lewis might have had Hebrews 12 in mind when he wrote about when the children of Narnia first hear about Aslan the Lion from Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Lucy responds, “I think I should be quite frightened to meet a lion. Tell me, is he a safe lion?” “Safe?” Mr. Beaver answers. “’Course he’s not safe. But he’s good.” Those who meet Aslan or hear his earth-shaking roar are filled with awe. They know that ripping them to shreds in a moment would be little more than swatting a mosquito for Aslan. Yet when Lucy and those on the side of good look into Aslan’s eyes, they see a kindness and tenderness that’s fiercely determined to show them love.

God’s holy. He’s pure, right, and just. He never does wrong and he’s so against sin and evil, that anything stained by sin is allowed to come close to him. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we have no real hope of ever being able to come close to God the way we are. In Leviticus, God calls us to be holy because he is holy. Nothing that is less than holy can come near him. The writer to Hebrews is connected to the temple and so holiness is tied up in his day-to-day life and work and he reminds us that holiness is important to everyone who follows Jesus. Lance and Mikenna, this is an important day in your faith journey with Jesus as you have decided that you want to follow Jesus, to walk on his way. Part of following Jesus is becoming holy, so what is being holy then?

Holiness is about being set apart as God’s people. The writer of the letter takes us back to Israel at Mount Sinai after they left Egypt. In the Bible, mountains often were considered significant sacred places where the people would go to meet God and Sinai becomes a huge moment in Israel’s relationship with God. God covers the mountain with a dark cloud and his voice rolls out from the cloud like thunder. Within the cloud flashes lightening and the sound of thunder warns the people to stay back. God tells Moses, “Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.  He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live.’ Only when the ram’s horn sounds a long blast may they go up to the mountain.” 

The people are told to make themselves ready to be in God’s presence. It’s no casual thing to be in the presence of God. Israel had just seen God destroy the Egyptian army after opening a path through the Red Sea. This is a God of power and majesty on the top of Mount Sinai. This isn’t a God you come close to with grubby clothes and an attitude. Even Moses is affected by the power and majesty of God, “I am trembling with fear,” he says as he prepares to go up the mountain to meet with God. Moses knows that this is a living God who has decided that he’s going to build a relationship with this group of people. But sin creates a situation where we must be cleansed and made holy and pure before we can enter the presence of God. This is why Moses trembles with fear. He realises that he’s nowhere near holy enough to be in the presence of God, but he trusts God’s mercy and grace and heads up the mountain to talk with God.   

Mountains draw people’s eyes upwards. As our eyes are drawn upwards, they look beyond the top of the mountain and the universe itself is displayed before us. It begins to dawn on us that God is the Creator of everything we see, and much more beyond that. We’re called to look at God through eyes that recognise that God is a majestic, powerful, awe-inspiring God. We talked about wonder being part of our faith journey in our Profession of Faith classes. Here at Sinai is a call to worship God with an awareness of God’s holiness and majesty. He’s no ordinary God, this is the creator of heaven and earth, the defeater of powerful empires and their gods. 

Mount Sinai is time of change and transformation for the people. The people hear God’s voice and are given laws that will shape how they live with God, each other, and the nations around them that also show them who God is. Bryan Whitfield writes about worshipping God with reverence and awe as, “an encounter with God in which God’s people hear God’s voice and are, by the Holy Spirit, transformed. God, after all, accepts us as we are. But God never leaves us as we are.” Profession of Faith recognizes that this is simply another step in following Jesus, another step in becoming who God is calling us to be. Following Jesus as we listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit is a life-long journey, a journey we call sanctification, a journey of becoming more like Jesus. We walk this journey together as a church family, as part of the family of God.  

Mount Sinai is often associated with fear and trembling, but the writer to the Hebrews doesn’t want to leave us trembling in fear. He takes us from Sinai to Zion. We move from a barren frightening mountaintop in the wilderness to a city on a hill, the heavenly Jerusalem, the place of the living God where the people of God gather. John gives us a wondrous picture of the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation 21.John writes, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” 

On a different mountain, Golgotha, Jesus takes away our sinby becoming our sin, taking it all on his own shoulders, separated from his loving Father as he comes before the God of Sinai, the great Judge. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, he takes our place and enters the darkness of judgment and spares us the force of God’s anger. Jesus is the only one who can keep the Law of Sinai; this allows us to approach the God of Zion now. We’re called to come into the presence of God, to come close as a child draws close to their parent. God is a consuming fire, not to destroy, but to purify us, make us clean so that we will not be destroyed as we come close. God is worthy of our praise and we approach him with reverence and healthy awe inspired fear because of his great love and absolute commitment to us. 

On Mount Zion there’s an awesome awareness of the power of God as thousands of angels worship around the throne of the Father, with Jesus beside him as our mediator. God is the great judge, but our presence there is guaranteed because of Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. Revelation 4 gives us a picture of the throne room of heaven, an image that echoes back to Sinai and the themes of worship and purity that flow through the Old Testament and through this letter, “From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God…. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back…. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.” 

The writer is pulling together the different things he’s been talking in his letter, bringing us into the presence of God. Jesus takes away the fear of Sinai and brings us to God the Father to worship in the throne room on Mount Zion in a spirit of celebration. We’re called to come into the presence of God, to come close as a child draws close to their parent. God is a consuming fire, not to destroy, but to purify us, make us clean. God’s worthy of our praise and we approach him in worship with reverence and healthy awe inspired fear because of his great love and absolute commitment to us. 

Worship is at the heart of Mount Sinai and Mount Zion, worship shaped by Golgotha. The call is to allow worship shape our daily lives and The Message translation of Romans 12: gives us a picture of what that looks like, “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”