"The unfolding of your words gives light ..." (Psalm 119:130a)

Month: January 2016

Plucked from the Fire

firestorm

On August 31, 1894 a firestorm swept across the woodlands of northeast Minnesota, swallowing the thriving town of Hinckley and several other smaller burgs as it cut a swath thirty miles wide as it plunged northeastward. As the inferno hit Hinckley temperatures soared to as high as 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit and the wall of flame soared up to one hundred fifty feet high. The heat vortex may have ascended as much as 30,000 feet into the sky. Under the intense heat steel wheels on train cars and the tracks upon which they once ran melted and ran into pools like water seeking its lowest level. Hundreds of lives were consumed by the flames as people frantically tried to outpace the driving firestorm.

Daniel James Brown in his account of the tragedy in Under a Flaming Sky recounts the story of one particularly fortunate group of the endangered from the tiny village of Partridge.

“A few of the villagers commandeered handcars and stated pumping their way up the tracks; others simply ran along the rails behind them. The largest group, though, remaining remarkably clearheaded, set out on a road toward a logging camp where a hundred acres had previously been burned over by another fire. It was three miles away—a long haul—and there was no chance to pause or rest, as a survivor later remembered: ‘All the time the fire was right behind us. The smoke had gathered again and thickened into a grayish-black mass which rolled forward at an incredible speed with a deafening roar, whining and rumbling. We had barely reached our place of refuge when the great wall of smoke behind us split, or rather was flung asunder, and a blood-red flame of fire shot out like a flash of lighting. In a moment, every particle of smoke had disappeared and in its place we saw a sea of fire as far as the eye could scan.’” (p.122)

Jesus echoed the prophets before Him in promising a judgment by fire. On the last day He separate the peoples and “will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matt. 25:41).

Indeed, the end of the Book tells us all, “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15).

But there is hope, for Jesus bore the judgment of God against our sins in His own body on the cross. In those moments the fires of God’s holy wrath swept over Jesus who stood in our place, His death accounted as ours that we might be free.

This act in which Jesus satisfied the just wrath of God against us is called “propitiation.”

  • “Therefore [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17).
  • Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
  • “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10)
  • “God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:25a).

Jesus is the only safe ground from the coming wrath of God. When we flee in faith to Him we find ground where the fiery wrath of God has already burned over and where the fires of judgment will never again be visited. Flee to Jesus and be saved!

The Idiocy of Idolatry

american.idol

In Isaiah 44:9-23 the prophet is on a rant against idolatry. It is a diatribe against idols. And it is one we need to hear, for idols not far from any one of us.

The great irony in Isaiah’s words is that while the Israelites had chosen god’s which they have “made” with their own hand (or minds), it is the true and living God who has “made” them!

Notice the emphasis …

  • “All who fashion idols … Who fashions a god … He fashions it with hammers …” (vv.9, 10, 12)
  • “Thus says the LORD who made you . . . I formed you . . . Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb …” (43:2; 44:21, 24)

All of the words in bold render the same Hebrew word which means “to make.”

The cure for idolatry says Isaiah, is found first in what the Lord Himself has done (redemption) and then in our response to it …

Remember
Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.” (44:21)

Return (repent)
“I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.” (44:22)

Rejoice
“Sing, O heavens, for the LORD has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the LORD have redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel.” (44:23)

Idolatry (whatever form it may take) is, then, fundamentally …

1. A departure from reality. Remembering is a function of our intellect, our minds, of our brains. This should tell us that long before a person “fashions” an idol with his hands, he has already “fashioned” it in his thoughts. We in the Western world who tend not to indulge in “classic idolatry,” fashioning gods with our hands and bowing down to them, are no less in danger of idolatry than those in the 2/3’s world who may have a greater proclivity toward physical idols. We do well to ponder just how we fashion gods with our thoughts, assumptions, reasoning and goals. We need to “remember” the reality that God has formed us before we have formed our gods. He has redeemed us to make us His servants. While we may have forgotten God, we “will not be forgotten” by Him!

2. A deluded journey. Because of a miscalculation in thinking about reality (imagining a world with the Lord God defined out of the equation), we have undertaken a deluded journey. The only answer is to turn around and return to the truth, thus changing our journey. This is possible only because even while we were delusional, God redeemed us for Himself and blotted out our sins.

3. A dungeon of despair. Instead of the joy of worshiping offered to the true God who redeemed us by His grace, we are entombed to a life of marionette, puppet gods. We hold them up, we manipulate their strings … and we have no one over us to rescue and redeem us, the future is up to us and our efforts to make the gods we have fashioned “perform” according to our desires. There is no higher purpose, just our whims and wishes sought through manipulations of hunks of wood, stone and metal that we ourselves have fashioned. Worship thus becomes about manipulation, not joy.

So let us remember Him who has fashioned and redeemed us. Let us return to Him even now, through His Son, Jesus. Let us rejoice in the grace freely given through Jesus and by which the Father will receive us.

© 2024 Light to Live By

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑