Fiery Spirits and the U turn of God
Introduction
In our Perth Prayer meeting Tuesday one of the brothers highlighted an unusual passage in the Gospels. Encountering inhospitality from a Samaritan village James and John petitioned Jesus, ““Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?””, Christ however “turned and rebuked them”. (Luke 9:55). The KJV added, “Ye know what manner of spirit ye are of.” I believe this story contains challenge and promise for us. The background to this episode is when Elijah twice in succession called down incinerating fire from heaven on 50 soldiers (2 Ki 1:9-12). Shortly after the prophet ascends to heaven in a fiery chariot (2 Ki 2:11). James and John see themselves as men like Elijah, men of thunder and lightning strike (Mark 3:17). Jesus is not such a man but many of us are more like these fiery apostles than our Lord. I see many Christians more concerned about the moral state of the nation (homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia) than that God turn away his wrath from our society. I do not hear many interceding with wail and lamentation, “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” (Rom 9:2), that there would be a turning in God from the heavy judgement lying over us. We desperately need rains of mercy. I sense very deeply the Lord wants to stir us up to appeal for this U turn. But we must ourselves first turn to him. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” (Isa 45:22)
Angry Men and Women
As our prayer meeting progressed someone confessed his heart was like that of James and John, that there is a part of him that is an angry man. I resonate with this, recently for example I suddenly became intensely angry with Donna, and I can’t even remember what about! From Christ’s point of view, where anger is equivalent to murder (Matt 5:21-22), “even” our complaints about the weather, or anything else, are signs of an angry heart. Well -meaning Christian people sometimes talk about “those gays”, it used to be “those commies”, with a tone that indicates a secret desire for their removal. Deep down most of us wish those who are not like us would become like us, or just “disappear”. Our fiery spirits are giving ground to the devil and grieving the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:26-27, 30). Unthinkingly, every element of “bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, slander and malice” (Eph 4:31), is putting us in opposition to the angelic assistance for which some of us asking. For their fire is pure and holy.
Fiery Spirits
The holy angels have an affinity with his fiery presence. The “angel of the Lord” appeared to Moses in “a flame of fire” at Mt. Sinai (Ex 3:2); when the mountain was cloaked in fire the angels delivered the Law (Ex 19:18; Acts 7:52; Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2). The parents of Samson saw an angelic messenger ascend to heaven “in the flame of the altar” (Judges 13:20). The psalmist expresses angelic activity in terms of the dynamism of forces of nature, “he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.” (Ps 104:4 cf. Heb 1:7). When Isaiah has a vision of the blazing glory of God in the temple, he sees the Lord surrounded by flying crying-out seraphim, whose very name means “burning ones” (Isa 6:2-3). Picking up a burning coal they touch the lips of the trembling man turning him into a prophet of divine holiness. These spirits communicate pure truth. (Do we?) They reveal that the natural character of the fire of God is saving. The angel-fire Moses encountered kindled in him a fire of mercy. Thus, at the incident of the golden calf he appealed with intensity, “Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.” (Ex 32:12). Amazingly, “the Lord repented (U turned) of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.” (Ex 32:14 KJV). The canopy and wall of fire God places above and around his people are flames of compassion (Isa 4:5; cf. Isa 54:2; Zech 2:5). Participating in this fire will evoke a U turn from divine judgement to boubdless mercy. The centre of all this is in Jesus.
Jesus and Fire
John the Baptist prophesied that “the coming one” would baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire (Luke 3:16). However, because John was empowered by the spirit of Elijah (Luke 1:17) the other side of Calvary he did not anticipate that Christ would take the fire of God’s wrath into himself in death (Luke 12:49-50). The angels which strengthened Jesus in the wilderness and Gethsemane were flaming messengers of love and mercy (Matt 4:11; Luke 22:43) enabling him to get to the cross so that God’s wrath might be turned away. Offering himself up in the “eternal Spirit” (Heb 9:14), the cross of Christ was aflame with a love that turned away the fire of God’s blazing anger due to our sin (Rom 3:25). According to the Lord’s own plan, the cross induced a U turn in the Father so that through Christ he is always favourable to those who trust in him. Jesus will return with “eyes like a flame of fire” (Rev 19:12), flames of love which incinerate all evil. This is the fire that will destroy all those who do not trust the gospel (2 Thess 1:8). We must therefore earnestly pray for the proclamation of the gospel.
A Vision of Repentance
The vision of Perth Prayer that all the churches of our city be filled with men, women and children praying day and night with spirits on fire (Acts 18:25; Rom 12:11 lit: “boiling”) appealing to the Lord from the depths of their hearts to release the power of his heartfelt U turn through the work of the cross. The more profound the revelation of Jesus as the all-costly U turn in God the more we will experience a U turn from the apathy of our own hearts towards the lost state of the world to hearts on fire in prayer. “the love of Christ leaves us no choice, because we are convinced that one has died for all” (2 Cor 5:14)
Conclusion
The apocalyptic writers of the Bible were men of true perspective, in our comfortable affluence it is us who have cut down the fiery things of the Lord to manageable proportions. We are promised a latter-day outpouring of a “spirit of grace and pleas for mercy” (Zech 12:10a) in a context which has to do with Christ crucified (Zech 12:10b; Rev 1:5; 7). This word about inflamed intercession applies to our time. As Jesus was irresistibly inwardly moved by love to die for, “‘I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:49-50), so he would move us. Do we want to be so moved? Do we desire a U turn in our own hearts? The Lord always begins great things with a tiny remnant, may each of us be a mustard seed (Matt 13:31-32; 17:20).