November 22, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“You will be like an oak with fading leaves, like a garden without water. The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire.” (Isaiah 1.30-31)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

One of the realities I deal with in the image mentioned at the end of Isaiah, chapter one is: will the fire keep burning. God declares to Israel, and the listening world, that ignoring the truth about the reality of God results in an unquenchable fire. Does that mean that in the moment when something is burning that it will continue to burn until there is nothing left? Does it mean that the fire cannot be stopped and it will consume everything it can? I have images of such things in my own life and understand the consequences in real time. It doesn’t mean they are bad, only that they are real. One such experience is a campfire. There were times when we simply let the fire “burn out.” This is the case with a bonfire. The fire was so large and the fuel for the fire so great that it exceeded the ability to “put it out” so it was left to “burn out.” When there is no more fuel for the fire, the fire will just die. What about those fires that burn so hot there is no other way to extinguish them but to let them burn out except the source of fuel seems to be continual? I read the other day of fires that are burning from fuels deep inside the earth where a seam in the rock allows the smoke from the fire to be seen but the fire cannot. Captured in a space beneath the surface the fire cannot escape but the source is so great it just burns for days and years and years of years. I think you may know where my thinking is going on this. What of hell?

Let’s first speak of the term “passion” as the Apostle Paul suggests it as a danger in our lives. Are there things we have a “burning” passion for? Paul speaks of one such fire as “porneia,” or lust. It is the root word for what we more commonly know today as pornography. We do not have to limit the application of this term to pornography. We can include the whole host of sins which humans allow to rule uncontrollably in their lives. Consider the scripture mentioned the other day which says “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” That “love” mentioned is speaking of a porneia. It is a “burning desire” which takes control of a person’s life. Their thinking and actions are influenced by that desire. In that desire, the focus on “what is truly good and healthy for one’s life” is distorted and becomes consuming instead of enlightening, destructive instead of constructive. What if a person were to “die in their sin”? This means they had no opportunity to repent of their sin before death. Knowing there is a hell (the antithesis of heaven), the recognition of the danger of one’s sin may become known but the “quenching of the fire” is impossible. I do not want to imagine having to live in the knowledge of my sin and its consequences and never being able to change them. In truth, on our own we cannot. Only with the divine intervention of God’s love, mercy and grace can that fire be extinguished and the life that was being consumed thus restored. Perhaps this is what Peter was considering as he proposed “He who ascended also descended and preached to the captives that they would be free.” (1 Peter 3.19; Paul mentions something similar in Ephesians 3.) This would suggest that those who died before the power of the gospel was revealed in Jesus Christ were given the opportunity to receive it and be delivered by it. Sadly, there would be those who, even then, would deny it. One such individual would be Satan, the Fallen and Cast out Lucifer. His passion for sin, the separation of self from God, is so great and so determined that he cannot release it and no longer has any desire to do so. Have we ever been so angry at someone that we just can’t forgive? Interesting that it was Peter who asked Jesus “How many times am I obligated to forgive until I can give up?” Jesus answer would lead us to understand the obligation: seven times seven (Jubilee) or even seventy-seven times (as some translations propose) or even further to say seventy times seven (the Grand Jubilee). In other words: until you cannot do it any longer or “when hell freezes over.”

Now we might consider that “reality.” Will hell ever freeze over? On the day when the New Heaven, New Earth, New Jerusalem come into being will the “old truly pass away” as the “new takes its place”? Reading in Revelation, we are told of the gates of the New Jerusalem which are not sealed by anything but the presence of God. The glory of His presence is the barrier between “light and dark.” In that darkness there is the continued weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Those are the signals of unrepentant sin and sinners. When the Dragon, the Beast, Satan and all who hold on to him are cast into the lake of fire, it seems to be an unquenchable reality. There is no death which brings peace to those who are in it. The agony of their death without redemption burns forever. I don’t think it doesn’t mean that God can’t put out the fire and relieve them of their torment and misery but that He won’t. Maybe it would serve as a reminder to the “saints” of what could have been save for the grace of God. Perhaps it helps to define and maintain cognition of what is good by what is not? There can be no complacency in Heaven. Nothing can be taken for granted in Heaven. The saints with the angels declare to glory of God and the triumph of Christ over death forever and ever in recognition of what could have been but is not. The fear of the Lord is the joy of our salvation. The more we learn of that in this world the more we will appreciate it in the next.

For Isaiah and the nation of Israel and for those nations who set themselves against Israel and against God, this is a stark reality check. Mighty ones of God, it should be a reality check for us, too. Let those with eyes to see, perceive the truth. Let those with ears to hear, listen for the truth. Let those with a mind to comprehend, accept the truth and the freedom it will give to those who believe it, receive it and walk in it all the days of their lives.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit in order that others be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind so we would know we are Your people and You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.