Sermon Central
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Our God Is A Consuming Fire
Contributed by Gbemisola Fafowora on Jan 22, 2020 (message contributor)
Summary: When I read this in the bible I got excited that we have a God that loves us and His love for us will consume with His fire anything in us that will not let us live a godly life.
We can never imagine that our God can be a consuming fire. But the book of Hebrews records this in chapter 12 verse 29 that Our God is indeed a Consuming Fire
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.
In the contemporary version
We should be grateful that we were given a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And in this kingdom we please God by worshipping him and by showing him great honour and respect. Our God is like a destructive fire!
What does fire do?
- Purifier
- Destroyer
- Brings judgement
- Empowers
- Transforms
MOSES AT THE BURNING BUSH
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”
So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.
And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.
I had to imagine myself standing and looking at the burning bush and the first thing that struck me would have been the colour of the fire, the bush not consumed, the fact that this was a new experience that I had not seen before and like Moses I stand to look at the bush that had fire on it and I am also looking in awe at what was going on with the bush.
I am also sure that this was not the first time Moses had gone to the desert to tend to his father-in -laws flock. So to now see this bush burning in the desert was definitely a new experience and the burning bush must have caught Moses's attention, and looking around there was no other bush burning except this one.
God is indeed an awesome God. He came down to show Himself to Moses and when the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob saw that He had Moses's attention, He spoke. God could have chosen to speak to Moses in a dream or with an audible voice or even through His prophets which He had done so many times before but He chose to appear to Moses in a different way. I believe the reason for this experience was to prove Himself to Moses and by doing this Moses would have no doubt in his heart that God is the all powerful God and He knows how to show up in our lives.
God is God and He is our Consuming Fire!
The bush was burning but was not consumed by the fire. And after God spoke the bush was still standing there and not destroyed. This means that God can remove in our lives everything that will not cause his glory to manifest in us and after He as done all he needs to do in our lives we are going to continue to stand and then His glory will be seen in every area of our lives.God came down because of the cry of his people and came to rescue them, God sees our cry as well and comes down to rescue us from the hands of our enemies.