In that book the Lord had given His chosen people a law to obey. A law that was to save them, a law to enrich them, a law to make them inGodded, a law to make them the best of what a human can be. He gave them this law for he wanted a called-out people, a people who are counter culture, a people who are holy. After he had given his laws, he added the words “I am a consuming fire and I am a jealous God therefore I will burn out against you if you do not follow my law.”
In previous chapters, the writer gives the believer so much positive motivation to follow and obey Christ; you’ll think he’ll have no nee of negative motivation. Yet he talks of judgement and wrath.
Take a look at some of the reasons he gives to help us stay faithful.
Remember that this time we are in the New Testament. The Old Testament was a ‘come and see’ religion. In the Old they had a written law on parchments that when diligently obeyed results in physical success.
In the New we have an invisible law written on our hearts and minds. A law when diligently obeyed leads to whole success. This success is that we become like Christ, become inGodded. The new religion of those who are inGodded is one of ‘go and tell what Christ has done for you.’ This is unlike the old whee people came to see what the Lord had done, this time its up to us to go and tell.
Take a look at the reasons he gives to motivate us to obey
- Christ is better than angels
- Christ is better than Moses and the prophets
- Christ left his throne in heaven and became a man to save us
- Christ became like you, yet didn’t sin
- Christ is now a mediator
Christ has made it possible for you to enter the rest of god: formally, God’s own people couldn’t enter this rest but now with Christ who has ascended to the right hand of the father and entered his rest you too can enter the rest of god.
Christ is the hope of all who believe in him; we who sat in darkness and all our days were help in bondage to the fear of death are now set free to hope. Formally we had no hope, but now we have great hope.
Christ has made you a child of god.
Christ has become your high priest who always lives to intercede for you
There are many reasons for you to stay faithful to Christ but we’ll use the as recorded for us in Hebrews chapter 1 to chapter 11. In chapter 12 we are encouraged by the writer in these words “My son, do not make light of the lords disciple, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son” (verses 5,6). That is Paul’s way of saying “God loves you, that is reason enough to be faithful.”
In verse 14, we are told to be holy if we want to see the Lord. This is where the tire meets the road. The writer is just repeating Jesus in saying “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Christ asks all who believe in him to be perfect. He asks us to throw off all sin. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, also asks the same of us. We therefore have a need to be holy.
Christ is so much better than all of life. Christ requires that we follow him daily. Let’s turn our attention to Acts 28 so we can get an illustration of what it means to us to serve a God who is a consuming status. The story is of the Apostle Paul shipwrecked on the island of Malta and the subsequent happenings.
The account says that to keep warm a fire was started. Paul in an attempt to add more wood to keep the fire going gets a snake wraps itself around his wrist. I believe the snake bit him as the wood got close to the fire, the heat brought out the snake.
How is this related to our topic?
For illustrative purposes let’s say the snake represents our evil nature while the fire represents God. You who are saved, do you know that God is in you, do you realize that your God is a consuming fire burning within you. You who don’t yet know God, allow Him to be God in your life and you can overcome the evil within you.
You have been asked to not let sin reign within you, to not let sin have mastery over you, to not offer the parts of your body to sin, to not conform to the world, to put off the desires of the world.
Its so easy for us to say we love God; God asks us to prove our love by being new in mind and soul. We ask, how can we be clean and new and He says “be born again.” Then He asks us to put off the old man and put on the new.
To do that we need to ask God who is a consuming fire to burn out the sin. Has He not said he will baptize us in fire? Is he not the one who said He’ll sit as a refiner of metal and purify us? The Christian God is a consuming fire and if we allow him he’ll burn out all the sin within us.
The closer we get to God in His word and prayer the more he purges us of sin. There is a need to be holy and there is power in God to make us holy. Our desire to be sanctified is God given and it’s God who supplies us with the sanctification.
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