Reading Meditation: Consuming Fire
Derived from a meditation from a Scripture reading on the Lord's Day
Please read Deuteronomy 4:23-31 where we consider that God is a consuming fire.
In Deuteronomy chapter 4, Moses warns the people of Israel that they are not to worship other gods as the other nations because God brought them out of Egypt and they are His inheritance:
19 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. 20 But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.
Deuteronomy 4:19-20 (ESV)
This is an idea we find throughout Scripture, the nations were disinherited at Babel (Deuteronomy 32:8), they pursue the false gods. But Israel is the inheritance of the Lord, they were brought out of Egypt by the Lord for Himself (Hosea 11:1). All this is related in the backdrop of Moses being forbidden from entering the promised land (Deuteronomy 3:23-29). This was after striking the rock twice (Numbers 20:10-13). The penalty was so severe because the Rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4). So Moses is now warning the people of the price of disobedience. But specifically in this passage, of breaking the covenant with God and going after strange gods because God is a jealous God:
23 Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you. 24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4:23-24 (ESV)
Moses makes predictions of what will happen if they do break the covenant with God. Take particular note of the people of Israel being driven from the land and being utterly destroyed:
25 “When you father children and children's children, and have grown old in the land, and you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed.
Deuteronomy 4:25-26 (ESV)
We read in 1 Kings that Judah and Israel were as many as the sand on the seashore as they possessed the land (1 Kings 4:20-21). But in that time of prosperity in we read Solomon disobeyed what Moses commanded and married women who did not know God and he built high places for Moloch and Ashtoreth, among others, and worshipped these false gods. All this after building a Temple for the true God:
4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8 And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.
1 Kings 11:4-8 (ESV)
As we know from history, what Moses said happened. The people of Israel were driven out from the northern kingdom of Israel and from the southern kingdom of Judah. Isaiah prophesied:
22 For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.
Isaiah 10:22 (ESV)
As we read in the book of Nehemiah, even after God destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem, a remnant did return to the Lord God. They rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple. As for God not forgetting His Covenant with His people, saving His remnant while and being a consuming fire for the covenant-breakers, take time to read Isaiah 65 through 66.
As we think of the consuming fire, we might be discouraged with this very real judgment of God against evil. We all have sinned and therefore need a Savior (Romans 3:21-25). In the Advent of Christ, we see that the fire consumes evil, it destroys the wicked, yes, but it refines the righteous:
1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. 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. 2 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 fullers' soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Malachi 3:1-4 (ESV)
We should not be discouraged, because those in Christ are refined to be like Him. The sin that brought utter destruction to Israel was putting their faith in God, but also the false gods. Remember, God is a jealous God, He will not share His bride with another, as no husband would. So put your faith in Christ and in no other! Only Jesus Christ can make you righteous.