OUR GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE

 

SERMON FOR THE Fourteenth SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

 

WOur God is a consuming FireW

“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29).

 

Dearly Beloved: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

 

T

he church wants something to do. Talk to her about adopting a new social statement, and she’ll lend you her ear; ask her to plan yet another conference on what the word “missional” means, and you’ll get her attention; provide her with the latest twelve-step program for increasing church membership, and she’ll give you her thanks; but try to remind her that the one and only task God has actually entrusted to her is the faithful proclamation of two words—law and gospel—and she’ll just roll her eyes, shrug her shoulders, and flip her hair as she struts off to the nearest street corner. “After all,” she’ll say, “a girl has to make a living somehow.”

            So what is it, exactly, about the God-given task of rightly distinguishing law from gospel, command from promise, Sinai from Zion, Moses from Christ that the church finds to be such a terrible nuisance, such a vexing obstacle to her own self-chosen task of arousing the world’s desire? Why does the very prospect of preaching God’s word so as to kill the old and raise the new make the church so insecure, so unsure of herself that she feels she must get all gussied up if the world is ever to glance in her direction? Why is the church, like Esau, so content to give away her divine birthright for just one measly bowl of worldly potage?

Now the church may well be a promiscuous bride—a point over which there is little dispute—but she’s not stupid. She knows that by adorning herself in the word of law and promise she has absolutely no chance of captivating the world’s wandering eye with her naked splendor. Rather, she knows that when adorned in the covering of God’s two words she will appear to the world as nothing but a leprous hag, a treacherous harpy, a black angel of death to be cast out of its sight and destroyed—by crucifixion if necessary.

And is it really any wonder why? After all, even proud and holy Israel, the chosen people of God, who when first led into the wilderness of Sinai said to Moses, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Ex. 19:8), were swiftly reduced to quivering beggars beneath the thunder and the lightning, the fire and the darkness, the gloom and tempest and trumpet blast, as they pleaded desperately to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak another word, or the sound of His voice will devour us!” (Ex. 20:19). If even the righteous nation of Israel, whose sanctity was unsurpassed by that of any other—if even they begged God to just shut His mouth and leave them alone, then why on earth would we expect the fallen world to stand up and request an encore?

In that wilderness of Sinai, where the law was revealed in all its dread and fury, in all its terror and might, of what use to Israel was its ritualized sanctity, its white-washed garments, or its three days’ worth of preparation? Answer: none whatsoever! With all of their sanctimonious piety, with all of their religious zeal, yet they could not endure the presence of God’s glory, but instead took flight as if God weren’t their God at all, but the devil himself. And, strangely enough, this is precisely what the writer to the Hebrews teaches us to do when he says: “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (vv. 28-29).

Now, to be sure, there is only one true God. As it is written, “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Dt. 6:4). But this one LORD of all will be yours in one of two ways, or better yet, in one of two words. Either He will be yours hidden in the law, or He will be yours given in the gospel. In other words, either His very heart will be preached to you in the form of a promise, “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased,” or His heart will remain hidden from you in the deafening howl of His silence. And so we find in Luther’s Small Catechism the persistent refrain, and true definition of worship, “We should fear and love God…”

Contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as orthodoxy, that is, “right worship” of God. The “right worship” of God depends on the difference, not between the tiresome categories of ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary,’ ‘high’ and ‘low,’ but solely on the difference between the ultimate categories of life and death. The “right worship” of God, as He comes to you beneath the crushing hammer-blows of the law, is to fear Him—and not only to fear Him, but to fear Him in such a way that you run as fast and as far away from Him as you possibly can. Thus we read that the people of Israel stood at a great distance from Sinai, having heard the command of the LORD, “Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death” (Ex. 19:12). Now did this commandment serve in any way to affirm the Israelites in their own purity and holiness, or to confirm them in their own righteousness and chastity? Not for a moment. Instead the law did that for which it was sent: to “pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow” (Jer. 1:10a), to break the old being’s stiff-necked presumption of its own righteousness to pieces.

The law comes to lay its mark upon the clean and the unclean, the righteous and the sinner, the blessed and the damned, for the sole purpose of separating them—and making sure they stay that way. According to the law, there are two basic stuff in life: that which is holy and that which is unholy—and never the twain shall meet. The law enters this old world searching for the one who is righteous; and finding none—no, not even one—proceeds to distribute the just wages of sin: death. Now the law does not carry out its verdict without first securing the blindfold of justice over both its eyes. For the law, being spiritual and holy, shows neither partiality nor prejudice, but abides by the most stringent of non-discrimination policies, tracking down and damning sin wherever and in whomever it is found—regardless of age, race, ethnicity, creed, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and, yes, even divinity.

Herein lies the conflict. For the gospel also comes to lay its mark on the clean and the unclean, the righteous and the sinner, the blessed and the damned, but for the sole purpose of uniting them—and in such a way that they remain united for all eternity. According to the gospel, there is no law to separate the holy from the unholy, but only true freedom in the One who is “all in all”: Christ the Crucified. He is our God, this man, Jesus—and no other. He is the one who has consumed your death and damnation in Himself, by becoming them in His own person, and defeating them there once and for all. And so, as your God and Lord, He commands that you worship Him rightly, with reverence and awe, by knowing Him as the One so wrapped in your sins that they are His, and by knowing yourself as the one so wrapped in His righteousness that it is yours.

And so, as it turns out, the proper distinction of law and gospel is not some abstract principle, or a particular “style” of preaching, or one way of interpreting the Bible among others. The art of rightly distinguishing law from gospel, command from promise, Sinai from Zion, is none other than the art of laying your sins on the Lamb of God slain, for you, from the foundation of the world. And it is an art to be practiced, not in an armchair, but here and now and at the hour of our death.

            You have not been led to the dark and withering flame of Sinai, where your life once depended on standing far off and away so as not to hear God’s voice; but you have been led to the burning fire of Zion, to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, where your life now depends on its being united to Christ—so united, in fact, that when the blessed promise fills your ear anew you no longer know how to separate yourself from the person of your Lord, but can only confess with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Make no mistake: God is a fire that devours, and, one way or another, either through the fire of the law or the fire of the promise, you will be consumed. Whereas the word of the law once shook all the earth, now the word of the promise shakes “not only the earth but also the heavens…in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.” And what is that which alone cannot be shaken?—which alone remains? It is the Word of God: Jesus Christ Himself. As the prophet Isaiah said, “The grass withers and the flower falls, but the Word of the LORD abides forever” (40:6).

The church is not being the church when she, like Hosea’s slovenly wife, is out selling herself to the highest bidder, desperately seeking to be an object of the world’s desire. Or when she, like Martha, is frantically running about the kitchen trying to make herself useful, searching anxiously for something—anything—to do but the one thing that is needful. The church is being the church when she, like Mary, is sitting at her Lord’s feet, hearing His word, and so finally finds something worth talking about: Christ has arrived, he has arrived for you, and He has come to make you useful to Him by putting you to death and creating you anew; by forgiving you all your sins and translating you into His kingdom, where He alone abides.

And if you should ever come to a place and a point where the flame of this promise has grown dim in you, and your faith is weak and dying, then listen again to Christ’s promise, wrapping Him in your sins, firmly believing that there—in His body—they have been burnt away like the chaff. You can bank on it. Truly, truly, I tell you, your God is a consuming fire. AmenW