The following message is provided by Eternal Weight
of Glory.
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EternalWeight.com.
And tonight I want to take a look
at the two final prophecies about the Messiah,
the coming Messiah, which will be in Malachi
3 and Luke 3.
And we'll probably spend some time in the
Luke passage, but let's read this passage in
Malachi first.
It's a very profound word that he gave
a few hundred years before Jesus came.
Chapter 3, verse 1.
Behold, I am going to send my messenger,
and he will clear the way before me.
So this must be Jesus speaking through Malachi.
And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly
come to his temple, and the messenger of
the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he
is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
But who can endure the day of his
coming?
And who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire and
like fuller's soap.
Luke 3.16. And I'm going to go
over this here in a few minutes, but
he's been preaching for a while.
And then all of a sudden he goes
into this prophecy, really, that's about to be
fulfilled.
John answered and said to them, All, as
for me, I baptize you with water, but
one is coming who is mightier than I,
and I am not fit to untie the
thong of his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit
and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand to
thoroughly clear his threshing floor and to gather
the wheat into his barn, but he will
burn up the shaft with unquenchable fire.
Okay, that's quite a word.
The title of the message is Jesus in
the Fire of God.
And when we're talking about the fire of
God, we're talking about a spiritual phenomenon that
occurs when the Holy Spirit comes in a
greater way and manifests His presence in a
greater way to where people can feel and
sense the presence of the Lord.
So that's what we're talking about.
And I'm going to break this message down
into three aspects of the fire of God
that kind of coincide, not exactly, but sort
of coincide with three periods of the Lord's
dealings with the church.
And they're reflected in these scriptures that we've
just gone over.
The first one is the refiner's fire.
That began during Jesus' ministry on this earth
as He was walking around Palestine and so
on.
He gave a word that was penetrating, that
had the power to penetrate people's hearts.
And it acted as a refiner's fire when
He spoke.
And the second happened after the resurrection as
the church period began.
And, of course, it was the day of
Pentecost when Jesus baptized those 120 people who
were waiting on Him in the upper room.
He baptized them with what?
The Holy Spirit and fire.
And then the third aspect of this fire
of God is the unquenchable fire that John
mentioned, which won't come in its entirety until
the great separation after the second coming of
Christ.
So we'll get to those here in a
minute.
Let's start off with the refiner's fire.
Malachi predicted that the messenger was going to
come first.
And in the fourth chapter, actually the last
two verses of that chapter, he calls Him
Elijah.
And he says, Elijah will come before the
great and terrible day of the Lord.
Now it's hard to imagine the great and
terrible day of the Lord.
You know, Jesus riding on a donkey, and
He's sweet and full of love and so
on.
But there was something that I think a
lot of us miss in today's Christianity.
There was an aspect to Jesus that was
a terrible aspect, if I could put it
that way.
Not terrible like we think of terrible, like
a bad thing, but full of terror.
And the reason I say that is because
Jesus had a way when He spoke with
people, there was a word that would go
forth and deal with people's natures and so
on.
But let's look first at the messenger before
we get in.
I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
John 3.3, it says that John came
into all the district around the Jordan, preaching
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sin.
And, you know, in other words, John had
an anointing from the Holy Spirit, but it
was different.
It was a different kind of anointing.
His anointing was to bring people into a
repentance that would culminate in water baptism for
the forgiveness of past sins.
It was kind of a symbolic act of
cleansing away the sins of your past.
And that was John's call.
That was the way that he was going
to prepare the way for the Messiah who
was going to come after him.
He was kind of like coming in and
just breaking up the fallow ground in Palestine
in those days.
You know, I mean, I don't know if
you understand exactly, but it's like a 10
-mile walk from Jerusalem down into the Jordan
Valley, and it is extremely hot, hot and
dry there, you know.
And these people that were coming out to
hear John, I mean, just imagine, they're walking
10 miles.
It was down below.
The Jordan Valley is like 1,000 feet
below sea level.
And these people would make that long walk
down there, and John was bringing forth a
word that was affecting them.
Look at verse 7.
You know, these poor people have made this
long walk.
They're exhausted.
They're thirsty.
They're wiped out.
And, you know, John being the sensitive type
he is and, you know, seeker sensitive, he
starts off with, you know, the soft word,
you brood of vipers, who warned you to
flee from the wrath to come?
You know, I don't know how well John
would do in America today, you know.
I'm not sure, but he had a way
of getting right to the issues that he
was dealing with.
And he went on to, well, look, in
verse 9 he said, Indeed, the axe is
already laid at the root of the trees,
so every tree that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the
fire.
Now, these are only the highlights, and we
don't know all that was said that day.
But whatever was said, there was three groups
of people represented there that day.
There was the crowds.
Then there was the tax gatherers, which represented
more of the sinful element in Palestine.
And then there were the Roman soldiers.
So there were these three groups of people,
but they all said the same exact thing.
What must we do?
What should we do?
Something had stirred them and terrified them about
the coming wrath of God, and they were
concerned, and what they wanted to do or
know was, John, how do we change our
behavior to escape the wrath that's coming?
Well, you know, in other words, what was
happening was John's message was bringing about outward
changes of behavior.
But because we hadn't gotten to Calvary yet,
and it wasn't Jesus, you know, his words
weren't the same.
They didn't have the power and the authority
to go into people's hearts.
Jesus, when he came, there was a different
sense about his preaching.
In other words, he preached the same basic
message, repent for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand.
He said the same words that John said,
the exact same words, and I don't know
what else he preached in those early days,
but he was preaching the same kind of
message, but there was something much different when
Jesus preached than when John preached.
When we're talking about a refiner's fire, we're
talking about a white-hot furnace that was
so hot that they could put big chunks
of silver into it, and it would actually
melt that silver, and all the dross would
be separated off.
And that's a refiner's fire.
It's white-hot.
Jesus' words were white-hot to the soul.
They just had the power to cut to
the quick and penetrate people's souls and expose
selfish motives and root out sinful attitudes.
Whether he was preaching to the crowds or
interacting with individuals or debating with the Pharisees,
whatever Jesus was doing, his words came with
power.
His words had the ability to cut into
the deepest recesses of our hearts.
Now, if you just flip the page of
your Bible over to the next chapter, we'll
see an example of this right off the
bat.
Well, let's just read it here, starting with
verse 14.
Now, this is after he's been baptized and
after he's gone through the temptation in the
wilderness.
So he's undergone those things, and now he's
being launched into ministry.
And verse 14 shows us how it happens.
And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power
of the Spirit, and news about him spread
through all the surrounding district.
And he began teaching in their synagogues and
was praised by all.
And he came to Nazareth where he had
been brought up, and as was his custom,
he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and
stood up to read.
And the book of the prophet Isaiah was
handed to him, and he opened the book
and found the place where it was written,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to
the captives and recovery of sight to the
blind, to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.
And he closed the book, gave it back
to the attendant, and sat down.
And the eyes of all in the synagogue
were fixed on him.
And he began to say to them, Today
this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
And all were speaking well of him and
wondering at the gracious words which were falling
from his lips.
Now, you know, when Jesus starts talking about,
you know, blessings for the poor and release
for the captives and sight for the blind
and freedom for the oppressed, that's the kind
of messages we like.
Lots of promise and positive preaching and all
the great things God's going to do for
us.
We like to hear Jesus preach like that,
don't we?
We like those kind of messages where he's
just telling us all the wonderful things he's
going to do for us.
And that is part of Christianity.
There's no doubt about that, you know, that
there is a wonderful positive side to it.
But Jesus preached in the fire of God.
And he wasn't here to just bring a
positive word to tickle ears.
Jesus was more concerned about people's hearts and
their eternal destinies than he was about making
them feel nice.
So he didn't end his sermon right there.
And when they were all talking well about
him, you see that word all in verse
22 and 15.
In both of those passages, he was being
praised by everyone.
Everyone loved Jesus at this point.
And this is the Jesus everyone loves in
the church today.
When it's only a positive message, everybody likes
a message like that.
You know, what's to be upset about?
But Jesus understood something about these people in
Nazareth.
He knew that they were holding on to
a false concept of their relationship with the
Father, with God.
It was all mercy.
It doesn't seem very merciful when Jesus comes
in and starts, you know, cutting deep with
his scalpel.
But it is all love and all mercy.
So he starts confronting them.
He's going after that Jewish pride just because
they were Abraham's sons.
You know, they were descendants of Abraham that
somehow that meant that they had an automatic
end to heaven.
And Jesus is going after that false thing.
And that's what he did all the time.
I'm telling you, no matter if he was
just talking to individuals or whoever he was
speaking with, Jesus would just cut past all
the nonsense and go right to the heart
of the matter.
You can open up to any of the
Gospels, anywhere he's talking, and it is the
same thing every time.
He's going right into the heart of the
issues.
And so he starts confronting them.
I'm not going to read it all, but
he starts showing them how the Lord bypassed
the people of Israel in favor of heathens,
pagans, the dirty ones outside of Israel, the
lady in Sidon and Naaman and so on.
And you can see the reaction here in
verse 28.
And all, there's that word again, now all
the people are thinking something different.
All the people in the synagogue were filled
with gratitude because he loved them enough to
share the truth with them.
Right?
No.
No, they were filled with rage as they
heard these things and they went on to
try to kill him, but it wasn't Jesus'
time to die.
He just was getting started.
So he just somehow just passed through their
midst.
Jesus preached in the fire of God.
Every time he spoke, he was in the
fire of God, meaning that his words had
the power to go inside a person and
work such a change and bring to light
every dirty, filthy thing that was in there.
Why?
So that people could be freed.
It's really what this was releasing the captives
and bringing sight to the blind and freedom
to the oppressed.
That's what his words were there to do.
But, you know, we all have a heart
and we're going to react to the words
of Jesus, one way or the other, really.
And, you know, it's the same fire that
melts a candle but hardens a piece of
clay.
It's not that the fire is different.
It's not that the word is different.
It's just that people are in different, you
know, places in their hearts.
Some people just don't want the truth.
They don't want the truth.
They would prefer to be flattered and lied
to than to hear the truth if it's
going to make them uncomfortable.
Well, praise the Lord, Jesus is not afraid
to hurt our feelings.
He's the one with the eyes of the
flame of fire and can see in our
innermost being.
And when he would deal with people, he
had so much love that even if they
hated him, he still loved them enough that
he would bring the truth to them because
he could see past this little time period
on earth.
He could see past, he could see that
great day of judgment when they would have
to face the reality of who they were.
They could skirt by now.
They could avoid his dealings now.
They could ignore his words now.
But the day would come they would have
to face the music.
It's no wonder that Malachi said, who among
us can live with the consuming fire?
Who among us can live with continual burning?
You know, there's something about Jesus.
How would you like to have him in
your house?
If he's the nicey Jesus that gives us
everything we want and just kind of loves
us and holds us and shows compassion when
we're hurting.
And that is Jesus.
But there's another part to him.
There's another aspect to him.
Alright, number two.
Let's get to the second prediction about the
coming Messiah.
And that was that he would baptize them
in fire.
He would baptize them in the Holy Spirit
and fire, John said.
And of course, we know the story in
Acts.
I'm going to just read these verses real
quick.
When the day of Pentecost had come they
were all gathered together in one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven a noise
like a violent rushing wind and it filled
the whole house where they were sitting.
And there appeared to them tongues as of
fire distributing themselves and they rested on each
one of them and they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit.
Alright, this is another example of Jesus coming
in the fire of God.
It was a little different.
You know, the fire of God, I said
this, didn't I?
The spiritual phenomenon that occurs when the Holy
Spirit draws near.
And that would occur in the Old Testament
times.
People experienced the fire of God but it
was different in Old Testament times.
It was the Holy Spirit who unleashed the
Holocaust upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
That was the Holy Spirit.
And it was the Holy Spirit who spoke
to Moses through the burning bush.
And it was the Holy Spirit that consumed
the mountaintop of Sinai.
And it was the Holy Spirit that flashed
forth that destroyed Nadab and Abihu.
It was the Holy Spirit and it was
the fire of God because the Holy Spirit's
presence was strong during those different times.
But here it was different.
The fire of God came differently in this
setting because now it's on the other side
of Calvary.
Jesus the Messiah has been murdered and has
hung on the cross and has taken the
sins of the world and something is different
now on planet Earth.
There is a completely different dynamics in the
spiritual realm.
So here the fire of God comes to
these 120 people who are sitting in silence
waiting on the Lord.
All of a sudden God shows up.
And it's a mighty outpouring.
But this time the fire of God goes
into people.
Instead of it being an outside phenomenon or
whatever, the fire of God goes into people,
into those 120 people, and there was a
power unleashed in the spiritual realm that had
never been experienced before that.
Something very dramatic happened on this earth the
day of Pentecost.
Something very powerful happened that day.
We see the effects of it immediately.
Peter who was cowering and denying the Lord,
just 40 days later the Holy Spirit comes
upon him and he starts preaching fearlessly to
this crowd of people.
And whatever he said that day, they were
so affected that they cried out, what do
we need to do to avoid the wrath
of God?
And then he, of course, went on from
there and he had a long history after
that of preaching with a mighty fire and
writing in the fire of God.
But it wasn't just him, it was the
other 120 as well.
Those people, something powerful happened inside them and
they spent the rest of their lives living
out that fire, burning themselves out for the
cause of Christ.
And it's been that way all through church
history.
There have been different times when God's presence
would come in a greater way.
We've heard of the Great Awakening, the Second
Awakening.
We've heard of revivals.
One example, I could grab so many, but
one really wasn't a revival.
It was a group of people in England
in the 1880s that began meeting together just
for the purpose of seeking God.
And it became known as the Keswick Convention.
And F.B. Meyer and different ones would
go there and minister and it became a
gathering spot for people who were hungry for
a real word from the Lord.
And there was a 19-year-old girl,
her name was Amy, and she went to
these meetings.
She loved being in the presence of God.
Well, you know, she was so affected by
what happened at the Keswick Convention that she
went over to India and spent the next
50 years living out her life trying to
rescue temple prostitutes, young girls as young as
six years old that were being turned into
sex slaves and so on.
She spent the rest of her life, Amy
Carmichael.
But it all started back at the Keswick
Convention where there were a group of hungry
believers just hard after the Lord.
And somehow, because of their determination to have
the Lord in a real way, God's presence
was manifested mightily, and it affected her and
affected many other people.
The fire of God will burn the dross
out of us, the ugly things that are
buried deep in our hearts, just that poisonous
self-life.
The fire of God has the capacity, the
ability to get in there and just purify
that, just cleanse it out of there.
And it has the power to establish a
reverence and an awe for the Lord.
And it has the power to set a
person on fire, not just a flash of
emotion, you know, or enthusiasm that wears itself
out after a week or two or a
month or two, but something that can get
into a person like Amy Carmichael or these
120, something that can get into a person
and will just keep burning for year after
year after year after year.
That's what happens when you get affected by
God, by the fire of God.
But there's also another one.
John said, His winnowing fork is in His
hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor and
to gather the wheat into His barn, but
He will burn up the shaft with unquenchable
fire.
This fire that's being spoken of here is
a fire that separates.
When God's Word comes forth powerfully, now let
me put it this way.
When God's Word comes forth weakly and anemically,
no one gets their feathers ruffled over that.
Nothing is going to be said.
I don't want to say it in the
wrong way, but a lot of the radio
preachers, I'm thinking of one in particular that
I love to listen to.
He's a great teacher.
But you never hear anything about this side
of Christianity from him.
You never hear a word that makes you
want to fall on your face and repent
and seek God or a word that exposes
something in your heart that the Lord wants
to get at.
You don't hear that kind of stuff.
It's good, solid teaching.
But when a minister is preaching in the
fire of God, it has the power to
separate.
I don't know how to explain it, but
Jesus did it all the time.
He would constantly separate the sincere from the
insincere, the genuine from the false-hearted, because
His Word would come in and it would
cause people to go one way or the
other.
What I'm trying to do is establish something.
Here is how Jesus communicated.
He communicated in the fire of God.
Here we're looking at a separation.
That's what the winnowing fork is all about
is separating the wheat from the chaff or
the wheat from the tares.
Now we all know the parable of the
wheat and the tares, but I'm just going
to read these three verses here.
Jesus would say later on, So just as
the tares are gathered up and burned with
fire, so shall it be at the end
of the age.
The Son of Man will send forth His
angels, and they will gather out of His
kingdom all stumbling blocks and those who commit
lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace
of fire.
In that place there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth.
Now I'll tell you, I don't know what
the new modern commentators say.
I never read them.
I always read the older ones, but they
all are in agreement that the tares are
false believers.
They're hypocrites.
They're people in the church who just have
a superficial level of Christianity and they've never
let it really get down into their heart.
They've never really had a heart change.
They're like the people who listen to John's
preaching.
There's an outward change in their behavior.
They adopt the rules of the evangelical movement.
Don't cuss.
Don't fornicate.
Don't drink.
Don't smoke.
All these things you're not allowed to do,
but the things that are down in the
heart that only the Holy Spirit sees, those
are ignored and sidestepped.
And Jesus knows who is who.
And there is a great separation coming, you
know, in the end of the age.
I want to just say this.
I'm going to end here in just a
second.
I want to read a quote.
But I want to say this, that Jesus
is lovely.
You know, I love him with all my
heart.
I love him for all that he's done
for me.
I love him for the way that he
has rebuked me and confronted me at times
and corrected me many times.
I love him for all the times that
he's shown compassion on me and just wrapped
his loving arms around me.
I love him for the way he has
taken care of my wife and the way
he has taken care of us in our
lives.
I love him for the different things he's
allowed me to do.
I could go on and on and on
for all the reasons I love Jesus.
You know, but he is a lovely person
in the sense that there is just none
of that ugly self in him.
None.
Just not even a shred.
But I never want to lose sight of
the other side to Jesus.
There was a girl who worked in a
zoo in Cincinnati.
This probably happened, I don't know how many
years ago, seven years ago, ten years ago,
something like that, probably ten years ago.
And she was a college student and, you
know, I think she worked there in the
summertime or something.
And she had the job to feed the
big cats.
And, you know, what happens is when you're
doing a job regularly, just day in and
day out, you forget.
Like I worked in the L.A. County
jail system for a time.
And, you know, I was in there with
murderers all the time.
And you start to let your guard get
down.
You get a little sloppy after a while
because you get used to it.
And she was that way.
And one day she threw a chunk of
meat in and a lion in an instant
grabbed her by the hand or arm or
something, got a hold of her and ripped
her arm out of her socket.
It's a reminder to me how suddenly the
Lord can strike.
He is love incarnate.
He is.
But I never want to lose sight of
that other side to Him that He is
a consuming fire.
That He is the Lion of the tribe
of Judah.
He is not someone to be taken lightly
and to be treated like a pal or
something.
He is our God.
He is our Creator.
He is the judge that we will all
stand before one day.
I'm going to read this Alexander McLaren quote
to wrap it up here.
Here we are, cold, foul, dark, dead.
And there is that fire of God, able
to cleanse, to enlighten, to give life.
For a Christian to be cold is sin.
We sit frostbitten and almost dead among the
snows.
No evil is more marked among the Christian
churches of this day than precisely the absence
of the spirit of burning.
Alas, alas for the many thousands of professing
Christians who are wrapping themselves in such thick
folds of non-conducting material that that fiery
energy can only play on the surface of
their lives instead of searching them to the
depths.
Dear brethren, lay open your whole natures down
to the very inmost roots, to the penetrating,
searching, cleansing power of that spirit.
And let us all say to Him, Search
me, O God, and try me and see
if there be any wicked way in me.
As I was praying about this message, I
was thinking about just a couple of incidents
that have happened.
One was a pastor's daughter who I had
dealings with for a time, Kathy and I.
And she's a good girl, you know, just
a lovable personality and so on.
Her dad was a godly man and she
kind of rode on his coattails spiritually.
And one day the Lord gave me a
word for her.
And I said to her, I said, You
know, if you don't start allowing God to
get past that superficial, happy-go-lucky personality
and start dealing with you down in your
heart, you're a nicey little church girl and
that's all you are ever going to be.
You are never going to know what it
means to be a woman of God.
And it was the Lord.
You know, it wasn't just like me trying
to beat up on her or something.
I know when God comes on me.
And that was a word for that girl.
And I'm sorry to say, I never saw
her really respond to it.
I mean, she cried and stuff, but it
just didn't go in.
She didn't let it go in.
But I was thinking about a girl that
one of these students that I dealt with
some time back.
And, you know, I kind of had some
interactions with her.
And all of a sudden one morning I
got up and I looked at my e
-mails and I had a letter from her
and she was pouring out her heart.
And she was saying, I can't hold it
in.
I've got to bring this into the light.
And she just started sharing some nastiness that
she had been involved in that she had
not told anybody about.
And she didn't know what to expect.
You know, how was I going to react
to hearing that?
And she said later that she was really
concerned that, like, I was going to rebuke
her or something.
I don't know.
Maybe she said something about, I'm sorry I,
you know, laid such a thing on you
or something.
And I wrote her back.
And I said, sorry?
I said, my heart is rejoicing this morning
because you are allowing God to deal with
your inner man.
You are letting the Lord come in and
get down into the depths of your being
and set you free and burn some of
that garbage out of you.
Sorry?
Are you kidding?
This is just the greatest news I could
hear.
Not that, you know, not that I wanted
to hear about her sin, but the fact
that she would just come clean like that
and just, you know, throw down the guards
and say the heck with it.
I've got to be honest with someone.
That's what the fire of God will do.
And you young girls, I'm going to say
the same thing I said to that pastor's
daughter.
Please don't be satisfied with being nice church
girls.
God has so much more for you, but
it will never happen unless you let him
in to the depths of your hearts and
really let him get after whatever may be
in there.
And I have no idea what could be
in your hearts.
I just know what the human heart is
like.
All right, let's pray.
Jesus, I thank you that you do come
in a fire.
Lord, I'm so grateful.
I know how you have purged so much
poison out of me over the years, and
I wouldn't want it any other way.
I thank you for it, Lord.
I'll thank you the rest of my life.
I'll thank you throughout eternity.
It wasn't enjoyable to get humbled and rebuked
and corrected at times and so on, but,
God, where would I be if I had
avoided it and sidestepped it?
I thank you for the work that you
do inside of us, Lord.
And I pray, God, that you will take
this word, Lord, this little sermon here that
I've shared tonight, and, God, that you will
bring growth from it.
Lord, you know how to use words.
You know how to disturb people's consciences.
You know how to hound them, Holy Spirit.
You know how to wake them up in
the middle of the night and cause them
to fear the name of the Lord.
You know how, God, to set people free,
to make blind eyes seeing.
You know how to take a nice church
girl and to transform her into a woman
of God, full of the Holy Ghost and
fire.
You know how to do that, Lord.
You're a master at it.
And I thank you, Lord.
I thank you.
I just love you tonight for the way
that you deal with your people.
And I just pray that you'll use this
word, both here in these dear ones' hearts
and lives and those who will listen later.
We bring this all to you in the
name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.