Fire

1 Kings 18:21-24; Acts 2:14; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Corinthians 3:11-16; Mark 9:49-50

Fire plays a larger part in the earth than most people realize, and fire is used symbolically in Scripture with equal or even greater importance in the spiritual world. “Does not even nature itself teach you?” links up what is material in the way of illustration and what is spiritual, which is infinitely more important.

Four is the number in Scripture which stands for what is universal. It is remarkable that four things make up the material universe, viz., matter, water, air, fire. You may think that matter and water and air are more important than fire, but this is not so. Without fire we should have no universe. What is the sun in the heavens but a mighty globe of fire? Without the fire of the sun we should have no life on this planet. We should have no crops, no clouds drawn up by the heat of the sun, distilled from the mighty oceans, to water the ground. There is fire in our bodies. The food we eat is turned to heat among other things. If fire were out of our bodies we should be dead.

Then without fire as a destructive agency we could not live. If all rotting putrid things were unconsumable we should be overwhelmed by matter setting up most insanitary conditions, rendering human life impossible. Fire is our greatest friend, without which we could not live.

In the spiritual world fire is just as important, and as much our friend, without which we could not be blessed. But let us turn at once to the greatest expression of God’s love as seen in fire symbolically expressed.

Briefly let a few words describe the scene. There stand 850 false prophets of Baal, spiritist mediums everyone of them, unspeakably wicked, the sport of Satan, along with wicked king Ahab and the thousands of Israel gathered on Mount Carmel. On the other side stands Elijah, magnificently courageous, for had not Ahab searched for him for years to put him to death?

Elijah cries aloud, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.” Then follows the challenge for each side to take a bullock, cut it in pieces, lay it on the wood upon the altar, and put no fire under, and said Elijah, “And call upon the name of the Lord; and the God that answers BY FIRE let Him be God” (1 Kings 18:24).

The prophets of Baal call upon their false god. No fire leaps from a cloudless sky. They become frenzied in their call upon Baal. But Baal responded not. He was only an imagination of the devil.

Then Elijah called upon God. In a few well-chosen words of prayer he beseeches God to honour his faith in the eyes of these idol worshippers. The fire falls on the sacrifice well-saturated with water. God answered by FIRE, and the people cry aloud, “The Lord, He is the God.” The prophets of Baal spake not. They refused to acknowledge that the challenge had gone against them, and they paid the penalty with their lives.

But let us here carefully follow the meaning of the fire consuming the sacrifice. Is it not an amazing illustration of the mighty love of God? If righteousness alone and not mercy were in question the fire would have consumed the guilty sinners that stood by their thousands round that altar. But righteousness AND mercy were in question at that hour.

Transfer your thoughts to what is here so wonderfully foreshadowed and illustrated. See the fire of God’s judgment descend on none less a Person than the Divine Son of God, become Man, taking in wondrous grace the sinner’s place, enduring the fire of God’s judgment that the believer may be blessed. Let that scene awe you, fill you with adoring gratitude! Fire is indeed your best friend.

You must either accept the blessed Saviour, who endured the judgment of God on our behalf, as your Saviour, or else the judgment will descend on you to your everlasting ruin.

But all this has a very practical side to it. If the fire has fallen upon the Sinless Victim for our salvation, fire must mark us as believers in the way of bringing us into moral accord in our lives with the will of God. This brings us to our second Scripture.

On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the believers, “there appeared to them cloven tongues as of FIRE and it sat upon each of them.” Here we get a plain intimation of the holiness of God’s indwelling the believer by the Spirit, that the Spirit is there to consume that which is of the flesh. This is done by bringing the believer into exercise by the Word and by the discipline of the Father to self judgment as to ways and things about us not worthy of God, refusing them in our lives, leaving the Spirit free to be engaged in His delightful occupation of guiding us into all truth.

This brings us to our third and fourth Scriptures. Believers must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, our fourth Scripture bringing before us a very striking verse, “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by FIRE.

Saved by grace we all understand, but what does it mean by being saved by FIRE? It means that at last the Lord will bring us to the same judgment as Himself as to all that has been unworthy in our lives, and we shall see the last of it destroyed by fire, that is, we shall bow to the judgment of God as to it, the rubbish, in that sense, will be consumed.

But let us be very clear. The truth that is brought out in these Scriptures is intended to have a PRESENT effect upon our lives. It is a terrible thing if we know about the judgment seat of Christ, if it does not affect us. In such a case we may well stand in doubt as to the salvation of the one so characterised by utter lack of conscience as to this solemn truth.

But some young believer may say in bewilderment, “I thought when I was converted that I was saved for ever. I remember the preacher quoting to me the words of our “Verily, verily I say to you, He that hears My word, and believes on Him that sent Me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life” (John 5:24). Now if our Lord says that I shall never come into condemnation or judgment, how is it that you say I have to appear at the judgment seat of Christ?

The answer is, As a believer you will never come into judgment, the words of the Lord must be true; and yet you must appear at the judgment seat of Christ. Weigh over this statement and as you grasp it you will see how both Scriptures are true, and how the one does not in the slightest degree contradict the other. The believer’s person will never come into judgment, but his works will be manifested, then he will suffer loss for every action in his life that has been of the flesh and sinful, and he will receive a reward for all that has been of the Spirit of God in his life.

An illustration will help. Years ago there were two kinds of judges in a northern city. There was the Lord Chief Justice of England sitting on the bench at the assize court. A celebrated murder trial was on. The man charged with the murder was found guilty. The judge sentenced him to death. His person was judged, and he well knew what that meant.

Now the person of the believer will never be judged. That would be to call in question the finished work of Christ on the cross. Moreover, when we appear at the judgment seat, we shall have been caught up at the second coming of Christ, and be already with bodies of glory like our Lord. There can be no question as to our salvation in such circumstances.

Now at the same time that the judge was sitting on the bench at the assize court there was a flower show in the same city. The judges came along. What did they come for? Not to judge the exhibitors, but the exhibits; not to judge persons but works, to manifest by their awards what was worthy of a prize, and set aside as unworthy of reward that which would stand for loss of money, time, and skill. You can understand that the exhibitors were not anxious about themselves, but greatly interested as to the award of the judges as to their exhibits.

Our fourth Scripture speaks of the two classes of deeds under six symbolical figures—gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. Gold, silver, precious stones can stand the test of fire, so all that is in our lives of the Spirit of God will stand the test of the Lord’s scrutiny, and will receive a reward, though it is not wrought of ourselves but by the power of the Holy Spirit, such is the grace of God. But wood, hay, stubble, are consumable, and set forth that in our lives that is of self and sin, and will come under the condemnation of the Lord, and, thank God, our commendation, too. And in coming to the same judgment we shall see the last of it. We shall rejoice that rubbish and worse shall be consumed. We shall be thankful for the fire that can consume. Then not a question will be left to disturb throughout eternity.

But the judgment seat is set before us in order that we might be encouraged to please the Lord, and refuse in our lives all that is of self and contrary to Him. So we see how fire symbolically has a large place in Scripture, and sad it is for us if it has not a large place in our desires and prayers.

This brings us to our last Scripture. It is a truly remarkable statement, “Every one shall be salted with fire.

Now salt is a preservative agent, whilst fire is destructive. How solemn it is when we find in the next world that fire can have a preservative power. “Salted with fire.” This alas! will be the everlasting fate of the unbeliever, forever under the judgment of God. The poet Keble wrote truly,
  “Salted with fire they seem to show
  How spirit lost in endless woe,
    May undecaying live.”

Then the believer is told that every sacrifice shall be salted with salt, and to have it in himself. Salt is a preservative. The believer is in a scene where moral decay has set in, and the Lord would have the preserving power of divine energy that links up everything with God, binding the believer in heart with God and holiness of walk, rejecting all that is of the flesh.

The question is asked, “If the salt have last its saltness, wherewith will ye season it.

Is this not a searching word to us, Christians? The essence of salt is its flavour. Without it it is of no use, neither for the land nor the dunghill. What use is a Christian, if he has not some testimony for Christ? What use is a carnal saltless Christian? So we are exhorted to have salt in ourselves and have peace one with another.

May the solemn, yet blessed teaching about fire, symbolising the judgment of God, be profitable to each one of us.