The Incarnate Fire of God
Today is the first day of Advent, a season where we wait and prepare for Jesus to come again. During this season and the Christmas season, we will be digging into the ways that God has made himself known in the past so that we might understand who God is, how he is making himself known in the world, and ultimately how he wants to enter into our lives and become known through us.
Today, we get three images of fire from the Old Testament. We get the image of a bush on fire and yet the bush is not being burned - God speaks out of that fiery bush. We get the image of a pillar of fire and smoke that leads and protects the people of Israel in the wilderness - that same fire would descend on the tent of meeting where people would go in to meet God. We get the image of the blazing furnace that God’s faithful are thrown into and yet who appears in the fire - one like a God. Here we get three images of God appearing in the fire. You might also think about the sacrificial fire of the priests, the refining fire of the prophets, the fiery tongues of Pentecost, or the recreating fire of the second coming. It becomes clear in these that, for generations, God has made himself known through fire.
Why? There must be something about fire that speaks to who God is. The image of the burning bush starts with Moses seeing something and being drawn to come closer. In this we get the image we are familiar with - God as our light. Amid a dark world, we can understand why we need this light. We need it to see what is real and true. We need it to overcome the darkness. We need it to show us the way. We need God just as we need the light and more.
Moses then sees that it is a bush on fire and yet it is not consumed. Here is this blazing inferno that Moses could see from a great distance and yet it did not destroy the plant. The great danger of fire is that it can be so volatile -spreading to and destroying everything it touches. Yet, here it is not destroying. Instead, it is holding onto, surrounding, and encompassing this bush. This plant was alive and good, but now surrounded by the fire of God the bush became something gloriously beyond what we know or understand. It was a place where God dwelled and was known. Here we get this glorious image of how God enters into creation - he brings his fire to rest on something or someone, yet he doesn’t consume them, he speaks through them and glorifies them. If you saw me covered in flames and not consumed, after the initial fear vanished away, it would be a pretty amazing sight, just like with this bush; glorifying and speaking through objects and people is what God has already been doing.
God spoke out of this fire to Moses to deliver Israel. God was using this moment, because he had a plan to free Israel and bring them to a new reality. That fire of God would become the pillar of fire that would lead them through the darkness in the wilderness. They needed that fire, because you see, we can’t escape on our own. We are blind in the dark. We aren’t as powerful as what surrounds us. We don’t know enough. So God like a fire will lead us out, but it is also a fire that leads us to something. This fire led them away from warring countries, brought them to the Holy Mountain, and eventually led them to the Promised Land. God’s fire doesn’t just lead us out of danger and slavery, it leads us to a place of our own and a place full of his bountiful love. God went with them in that fire.
The fiery pillar would be the fire that held back Egypt’s army as they tried to take Israel back to slavery. Why? Because God’s fire is still immense, dangerous, and scary. God holds all power in his hands, so our fate and lives are in his control. Yet, he holds back, instead using his power to create barriers and protect those who are under his care. The Egyptians knew that at any time that fire might leap out and kill them for getting too close. It kept them back. God's powerful reality protects his faithful in this time too. Though we might struggle and get hurt and even die, we can trust that God’s fire is saving us and protecting us from what we need it to - as long as we aren’t the ones trying to cross those lines.
It would be the same pillar of fire that descended on the tent of meeting. God’s fiery presence would come into the very middle of Israel’s camp and God would dwell with them. At the centre of their very living in community was the powerful presence of God. Everything they did and were to become revolved around this central fact. God is with us. God is our foundation. God is our centre. God is our glory. God is the one deserving of all our honour and praise.
When we hear about all of this and understand it, it shouldn’t be surprising when we hear about Shadrack, Meshak, and Ebendigo entering the blazing hot furnace and being unscathed. God’s fire did not consume that bush. It saved, guided, and lit the way for Israel and it was God’s presence with them. That’s what we see in our story from Daniel. God saves, guides and lights the way, they are unconsumed by the fire and he is with them in that fire.
It is a pretty spectacular thing that God has already been making himself known in these ways. God has consistently been revealing himself and drawing close to his people. This should lead us to have expectant hearts to watch for and prepare for God to make himself known in our lives and world. He does reveal himself and those who are faithful won’t just see it, they will seek it and make space for it.
That brings me to another side of what God’s fiery presence means for us as it prepares us for Jesus to come again. We mentioned the dangerous side of fire and God. Fire grabs onto almost anything and makes it fuel. God on the other hand grabs onto sin, brokenness, and wrong and burns it up. The tree is not burned up and Daniel’s friends are not burned because they do not need purging or refining. Just as fire burns out the impurities of metal. God’s fire wants to burn out the impurities in us. All those things we hold onto that aren’t good for us. All those desires that are pointed at the wrong things. All those habits that hurt us or others. All those parts of us that corrupt and make us sick. God wants to burn it all away, so that we might become strong and good like him. God fire is trying to prepare us for His Kingdom.
We participate in this refining fire through repentance, fasting, self-control, self-sacrifice, long-suffering, prayer, study, and more. It's not that at all of these things have to be painful, though sometimes they can be. It's that we need to be deliberate about how we are giving and shedding what God is burning away. Consistent habitual Christian practices help us to shed what is not from God, so that we can be more. In God, we can be something different and bigger than this world.
Through this deliberate faithfulness to God, we prepare ourselves for God’s fire to descend and live in us. Pentecost Sunday, the fire of the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples as they were spending time in devoted and communal prayer. Then it rests upon their heads and it begins to speak wisdom through them. These disciples become candles of God’s fire and presence. Now God doesn’t just shine his light to them, he shines through them. He doesn’t just speak to them, he speaks through them. He doesn’t just guide, protect or deliver them, he uses them to guide, protect, and deliver others. Finally, he doesn’t just dwell with them, he dwells in them. Now, we see that God didn’t just want to become flesh (as amazing as that is), but he wanted to become known and present in our flesh. Through Jesus, we are baptized with fire and the Spirit.
This should be our goal right now, to prepare our whole selves to become a vessel, a candle, and a place where God’s Holy Spirit can dwell in His fullness so that we might become images of our incarnate God. We are to become beacons, flares, and lights for the world as God makes himself known through us. We can only imagine the hope and potential behind this preparation and what God is preparing us for.
That leads to how God’s fire is preparing us for the time to come. We know that all of creation is struggling under the weight of sin and brokenness. We know that God has a bigger plan for everything. Scripture tells us that just as he is preparing us through fire, he will do the same thing with all of creation. Through this fire, God will recreate the heavens and the earth. We can only begin to understand what will be burned away and what will be glorified through this godly fire, but we know that this new heaven on earth will be even more glorious than the very best we have ever known on earth.
God made himself known across the generations through a powerful fire. We have seen his glory, his light, his power, his guidance, his protection and more. Now, he wants to use that same fire to prepare us to receive his presence so that we might carry his fire with us and in us. It is an immense promise and hope, that we can already start to experience. God wants to ignite you, so that you too may be his fiery presence. AMEN
This Sunday is the first day of Advent, a time of preparing and waiting for Jesus to come. In this act, we both remember the waiting of all those longing to see the Messiah and recognize our current state of waiting as we long for Jesus to come back and bring God's Kingdom in its fullness. God has been making himself known long before all of this. Christmas just becomes the realization of what all these moments were pointing to.
This Sunday we pour over the ways in which God made himself known in fire - like the burning bush, the pillar of fire and smoke, and the blazing furnace. In this, we will see who God is, how he is acting for us, and finally how he wants to use us. What we will see is that God always planned on becoming incarnate and ultimately now, he wants to make himself known through our flesh. God's mighty fire wants to become incarnate in us.
