Hebrews 12:25-29

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Hebrews 12:29. Consuming fire.— Deuteronomy 4:24. Not intended as in any sense a description of God, but “an anthropomorphic way of expressing His hatred of apostasy and idolatry. The reference is made in order to show why we ought to serve God with holy reverence and fear.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 12:25

The Voices of God.—God has always found voices for the communication of His will to men. They always carry responsibility to those who hear them—deepest responsibility to those who not only bear, but distinctly recognise the voice as the voice of God, and fully admit it to be His. And this is precisely the condition of the Christian Jews, to whom this epistle is addressed. They had received Jesus Christ as the voice of God, and doing so had brought them into the most serious responsibilities, which it was impossible for them to shirk. They admitted the Mosaic dispensation to be a voice of God; and so did the writer. But they admitted the voice that spoke in Jesus Christ to be a new and later voice—the last message that had come direct from God. It could not possibly honour God for them to refuse that later voice, and fall back upon their confidence in the earlier one. In order to reassure them, the writer contrasts the two voices, and argues for the deeper responsibilities attaching to the reception of the later one.

I. The voice of God on earth.—A voice that could be heard by human ears, that could be apprehended and written down, and that could put into rule and order all their human conduct, duty, and relations. They came under serious responsibility who received that voice for the guiding of their lives; for the voice was supported by severe and holy sanctions.

II. The voice of God from heaven.—A voice that no human ear could hear, but every human soul might hear if it would. That voice speaks the holy will to the man’s love, and the man first hears with his soul, and then writes the laws upon his heart. In figures the writer says what a searching thing the new voice is. It shakes—tests—everything that is shakeable. It confirms everything that is unshakeable. And the spiritual sanctions that support this voice must be in every way more searching and more awful.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

Hebrews 12:25. Refusing God’s Voice.—The writer has finished his great contrast of Judaism and Christianity as typified by the mounts Sinai and Zion. But the scene at the former still haunts his imagination, and shapes this solemn warning. The multitude gathered there had shrunk from the Divine voice, and “entreated that it might not be spoken to them any more.” So may we do, standing before the better mount of a better revelation.

I. The solemn possibility of refusal.—The exhortation is addressed to professing Christians, who have in so far exercised faith as that, by it, they are “come to Mount Zion.” The true application is to Christian men. And it does not mean entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. Then, again, it is to be noted that the refusal here spoken about, and against which we, professing Christians, are thus solemnly warned, is not necessarily entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. For the Israelites, who made the original “refusal,” to which that which we are warned against is paralleled, recognised the voice that they would not listen to as being God’s voice, and just because it was His voice wanted to hear no more of it. And so, although we may permissibly extend the words before us to include more than is thereby originally meant, yet we must remember that the true and proper application of them is to the conduct of men who, recognising that God is speaking to them, do not want to hear anything more from Him. That is to say, this warning brings to us Christians the reminder that it is possible for us so to tamper with what we know to be the uttered will and expressed commandment of God as that our conduct is tantamount to saying, “Be silent, O Lord! and let me not hear Thee speak any more to me.” The reason for that refusal, which thus, in its deepest criminality and darkest sin, can only be made by men that recognise the voice to be God’s, lies just here, “they could not endure that which was commanded.” So, then, the bottom of the whole thing is this—that it is possible for Christian people so to cherish wills and purposes which they know to be in diametrical and flagrant contradiction to the will and purpose of God, that obstinately they prefer to stick by their own desires, and, if it may be, to stifle the voice of God. Then remember, too, that this refusal, which at bottom is the rising up of the creature’s will, tastes, inclinations, desires, against the manifest and recognised will of God, may, and as a matter of fact often does, go along with a great deal of lip-reverence and unconsciously hypocritical worship. These men from whom the writer is drawing his warning, in the wilderness said, “Don’t let Him speak! We are willing to obey all that He has to command; only let it come to us through human lips, and not in these tremendous syllables that awe our spirits.” They thought themselves to be perfectly willing to keep the commandments when they were given, and all that they wanted was some little accommodation to human weakness in the selection of the medium by which the word was brought. So we may be wrenching ourselves away from the voice of God, because we uncomfortably feel that it is against our resolves, and all the while may never know that we are unwilling to obey His commandments. The unconscious refusal is the formidable and the fatal one. It comes by reason, as I have said, at bottom, of the rising up of our own determinations and wishes against His commandments; but it is also due to other causes operating along with this. How can you hear God’s voice if you are letting your own yelping dog-kennel of passions speak so loudly as they do? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart that is all echoing with earthly wishes, loudly clamant for their gratification, with sensual desires passionately demanding their food to be flung to them? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart where the janglings of contending wishes and earthly inclinations are perpetually loud in their brawling? Will it be heard in a heart which has turned itself into a sounding-board for all the noises of the world and the voices of men? The voice of God is heard in silence, and not amid the noises of our own hearts. And they who, unconscious, perhaps, of what they are doing, open their ears wide to hear what they themselves, in the lower parts of their souls, prescribe for themselves in obedience to the precepts and maxims of men around them, are really refusing to hear the voice of God.

II. The sleepless vigilance necessary to counteract the tendency to refusal.—“See that ye refuse not.” A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptations around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle. “Blessed is the man that feareth always,” says the psalm. “The confident”—by which is meant the presumptuous, and not the trustful—“goeth on, and is punished.” The timid—by which is meant the self-distrustful—clings to God, because He knows his danger, and is safe. If we think that we are on the verge of falling, we are nearer standing than we ever are besides. To lay to heart the reality and the imminence and the gravity of the possibility that is disclosed here is an essential part of the means for preventing its becoming a reality. They who would say, “I cannot turn away because I have come,” have yet to learn the weakness of their own hearts, and the strength of the world that draws them away. There is no security for us except in the continual temper of rooted self-distrust, for there is no motive that will drive us to the continual confidence in which alone is security, but the persistent pressure of that sense that in ourselves we are nothing, and cannot but fall. I want no man to live in that selfish and anxious dread “which hath torment,” but I am sure that the shortest road to the brave security which is certain of never being defeated is the clear and continual consciousness that

“In ourselves we nothing can,

Full soon were we down-ridden;

But for us fights the proper Man,

Whom God Himself hath bidden.”

The dark underside of the triumphant confidence, which on its sunny side looks up to heaven and receives its light, is that self-distrust which says always to ourselves, “We have to take heed lest we refuse Him that speaketh.” If there is any need to dwell on specific methods by which this vigilance and continual self-distrust may work out for us our security, one would say—By carefully trying to reverse all these conditions which, as we have seen, lead us surely to the refusal. Silence the passions, the wishes, the voices of your own wills and tastes and inclinations and purposes. Bring them all into close touch with Him. Let there be no voice in your hearts till you know God’s will; and then with a leap let your hearts be eager to do it. Keep yourselves out of the babble of the world’s voices, and be accustomed to go by yourselves and let God speak. Do promptly, precisely, perfectly, all that you know He has said. This is the way to sharpen your ears for the more delicate intonations of His voice, and the closer manifestations of His will. If you do not, the voice will hush itself into silence. Thus bringing your lives habitually into contact with God’s word, and testing them all by it, you will not be in danger of “refusing Him that speaketh.”

III. The solemn motives by which this sleepless vigilance is enforced.—“If they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth”—or, perhaps, “who on earth refused Him that spake”—“much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.” The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience. The voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty, and of the clearer utterances which are granted to us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it.—Anon.

Hebrews 12:27. Things Passing and Things Permanent.—Outside in the world and within our own souls there are stable realities. It is well for us to see them and to have them rising up and becoming stronger under the shock of every earthquake. I. Illustrate this law of things. II. Show some of the benefits that result from it.

I. To illustrate this law.—

1. The Jewish dispensation was shaken, but the great realities enclosed in it remain.—The coming of Christ in the flesh was the signal for the overthrow of that venerable and magnificent system. The Jewish nation has ceased to be the peculiar people of God, but there is a spiritual Israel, all of them priests, to offer sacrifices continually, in lives holy and acceptable through Jesus Christ.

2. The forms of human society are shaken, but the principles that regulate it remain. Christianity intensifies social struggles by pouring new light upon human rights and duties, but great principles of right and freedom assert themselves amid all changes.

3. Outward systems of religion are shaken, but the great truths of the Church of Christ remain. Organisations with a particular human name, locality, and administration are shaken, but the spiritual children of God built on Jesus Christ, the great corner-stone, abide.

4. The temporal circumstances of men are shaken, but the great possessions of the soul remain. In disease, sickness, death, old age, faith in God abides.

5. The material frame of man is shaken, but the immortal spirit remains. There may be a growing life within corresponding to the growing death without.

6. The whole system of nature is shaken, but the new creation remains. When the curtain is gone, we may say: Isaiah 51:6.

II. Some of the benefits that result from this law.—

1. Finite minds can only learn by such processes of birth, growth, death, revival.

2. Painful changes are the consequence of sin, yet an aid to its cure.

3. We learn to cleave to the permanent things as our portion. Jesus is the abiding Friend.

4. It is Christ who shakes all things, but He stands unshaken. “To whom can we go,” etc.—J. Ker, D.D.

Hebrews 12:28. Religion.—What is religion? Sometimes we hear religion put in a kind of opposition to theology. “Let us have religion, but not theology.” But theology is the indispensable basis on which religion rests. The word “religion” is not used in the Old Testament. It is found in three places in the New.

1. Galatians 1:13. In the original the word rendered “the Jews’ religion” is Judaism. St. Paul says he had formerly lived and been forward “in Judaism.” This word is like Christianity. And as we can say “the Christian religion” to mean the same thing as Christianity, so our translators used “the Jews’ religion” to mean the same thing as Judaism.

2. Acts 26:5: “Straitest sect of our religion.” The religion here referred to means the whole creed and worship of the Jews.

3. James 1:26: “Seem to be religious … this man’s religion.… Pure religion and undefiled.” Here religion stands for devout habits of life. The religious man was one who had the form of godliness according to the fashion of his time. A man who assumes an exterior of religion, St. James says, professes that he desires to worship God devoutly. Let him know that the devout worship which is real, and which God approves, is best shown in charity and unworldliness. But the most original, simple, and universal sense of the word is fear of God. It denotes the awe which instinctively possesses the human mind in contemplating the supernatural. This awe or fear may be of any quality, ranging from the noblest and most exalting reverence down to the most superstitious cowardice. An irreligious mind is a mind without this awe. The religious sentiment is instinctive or natural. In no portion of humanity will you find it altogether wanting. It appears in various shapes. That which is most opposite to it is thoughtlessness or superficiality of mind. If human beings can be kept in a perpetual whirl of trivial occupations and interests, the very instinct of religion may be almost starved. But wherever an atmosphere is created for it by reflection, there a feeling of awe is sure to be inspired by the mysteries of the unseen world. In the early stages of civilisation it has always been in a great measure through contemplating the incidents and processes of nature that the fear of the unseen powers has been developed. Some races have been more affected by the dangerous and destructive occurrences of nature; others by the orderly and beneficent aspects of nature. The fact that religion has often manifested itself in hateful and cruel superstitions is an undeniable and important one, and has made this name “religion” odious in the eyes of some. But we are really not bound or concerned in any way to clear the name “religion” from these imputations. It is far better that we should honestly admit their truth; it is profitable to remember them. In itself religion is not to be called either bad or good—that is, it may be the one as well as the other. It may be either a terrible curse, or an exalting and purifying and sustaining sentiment. A secondary sense in which the word “religion” is often used is that of customs and ordinances of worship. These are the forms in which religion clothes itself, and to these accordingly the name of religion is naturally given. If any one attempts to describe a religion, he will find it impossible to keep such modes and forms of worship separate from the account of the being or beings to whom the worship is paid. So when a religion is spoken of, the creed and the worship are generally combined in one. The creed represents what is believed concerning the unseen world—concerning God, and man’s relation to God. The nature of the creed always affects the nature of the worship. People fear God in a manner corresponding to what they believe concerning Him. The creed, therefore, is sometimes what is chiefly meant when a religion is named. For example, when we speak of the Christian religion, we very generally mean the system of doctrines or the creed supposed to be held by Christians in common. But when it has come to mean a system of doctrines, the word “religion” has diverged considerably from its first and most proper sense. Religion is first the fear of God; secondly, by a natural extension, the mode of worship; thirdly, the belief on which the worship is founded. When we desire to be accurate, it is better not to use the word “religion” in this third sense. There are several words we may use instead, such as “creed,” “faith,” or “theology.” Religion rests on creed or theology. It is idle to talk of having religion without a theology. If you urge a man to be religious, he will want to know whom or what he is to regard with awe, to whom or what he is to consecrate himself. Illustrate from a Christian teacher requiring the faith of a heathen people. He must teach what is to be believed. (See the work of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra.) By bringing men to believe in Jesus Christ and in the Father, the preachers of Christ undoubtedly nourished in them an ever-increasing fear of God. It is impossible to believe in God, to think of Him, and not to fear Him. But the fear of the just and gracious Father emancipates, and does not enslave. The fear of the true God is allied with faith and hope and love. It gives courage, instead of melting it away.—J. Llewellyn Davies, M.A.

Hebrews 12:29. The Christian’s God is a Fire.—Emphasis lies on the word “our.” “Our God is a consuming fire.” The God of the Jews was—that must be granted. The God of the Christians is—that should be apprehended. The mildness of Christianity has made it often to be misrepresented. There is the intensest severity behind love. There is nothing so searching as love. The sternest person in the world is the good mother. The passage in Deuteronomy shows what the precise idea of the passage is—a jealous God. Jealousy is that feeling we have when one whom we have a right to think loves us turns from us to set his love on another. That human feeling represents the Divine feeling towards apostates. Fire is a fitting figure to represent the activity of the Christian’s God, because fire consumes the consumable, and purifies the unconsumable. God works in the Christian to secure the end which is secured when fire acts on metals—He delivers the Christian from everything that would hinder his being and becoming his best possible.

God a Consuming Fire.—“Fire” as a symbol of the Divine nature is a most happy and expressive symbol. For if fire is the first thing we are taught to fear, do we not early learn to love it too? Do we not gladly gather round the hearth, and spread our hands to its fostering warmth? Is not “the hearth” a familiar synonym for “the home”? Is not “the home” the name for all that we hold most precious and dear? Fire destroys; but it destroys the dead wood to comfort the living man. It only burns us when we handle it wrongly or foolishly. Fire burns and destroys; nevertheless, it is so much our friend, human civilisation and comfort and progress depend so utterly upon it, that the wise Greeks had a fable of one who was man, and yet more than man, who, in the greatness of his love for the human race, stole fire from the gods, and was content to endure an immortal agony that he might draw down this sovereign good from heaven to earth. Fire is a destructive agent, but it is also a creative, vivifying, conservative agent. Through the broad reaches of geological times fire gave form to the very earth on which we dwell. Its daily task, its common work, is not destructive, but most serviceable and benignant. So when we find God compared to a fire, we have to remember

(1) that though fire consumes, it consumes that which is dead in order to feed and nourish the living;
(2) that though fire burns and destroys, it also gives life, conserves life, supports life; and
(3) that while destruction is but the occasional and accidental effect of fire, its real and constant task is to quicken and cherish and bless. Thus interpreted, fire becomes a very welcome symbol of the character of God. But can we fairly welcome it, both as consuming and as destroying fire? The love of God is no weak, puling sentiment, but a masculine, nay, a Divine affection, which, for their good, can bear to inflict pain, and even the worst extremities of pain, on those whom it embraces. If when the fire of Divine love kindles upon our sins and sinful habits, in order that we may become pure, we will not let them go, what can happen but that we shall be burned, as well as our sins, until we can no longer retain them? On the other hand, if, when in His holy love God calls us to pass through fiery trials, we willingly cast away from us the besetting sins which He has devoted to destruction, from which we ourselves have often prayed to be redeemed, one like unto the Son of God will walk the furnace with us (for was not even He made perfect by the things which He suffered?), and we shall pass out of it, not only unharmed, but transformed into His likeness. We have before us the leading passages of Holy Writ in which God is compared to a devouring or consuming fire. Read in their connections, they do not convey harsh or repugnant suggestions. If we can say of fire, that it is not an implacable enemy, but a constant and benignant friend; that it never becomes our enemy till we abuse it; that we use it and love it far more than we fear it; that it consumes that which is dead to warm and serve the living; that it holds all things in being and in order; that, if it destroys, it also quickens, nourishes, and preserves; that to destroy is only its occasional and accidental work, while to vivify and preserve and nourish is its common task,—if we can say all this of fire, can we not also say it of God, and of the love of God as revealed in Holy Scripture? Is not He our gracious Friend till we compel Him to become our enemy? Is not our love toward Him, should it not be, more than our fear? Does not He seek to consume our dead works and evil lusts only that He may feed and liberate and strengthen that in us which truly lives? If He sometimes destroys, does He not commonly quicken and nourish and conserve? Is not destruction only His strange occasional work, while His constant task from day to day is to vivify and cherish? Is not His anger but for a moment, while His mercy endureth for ever? What can be more full of comfort and hope for us than to learn that at the centre of the universe there burns a sacred fire of Divine love, to which all intolerable but unconquerable evils will be as stubble?—S. Cox, D.D.

Our God a Consuming Fire.—The emphasis in this sentence rests upon the word “our.” There can be no doubt at all that the God of the Jews was a “consuming fire.” There need be no question at all concerning the further fact, that the God of the Christians is also a “consuming fire.” Our God, the God revealed and manifested in Jesus Christ. But this is not the familiar thought of the Christian’s God. God is love. Fatherliness, mildness, pity, gentleness, are the familiar characteristics of the Christian’s God. And there is some grave danger of the exaggeration of onesidedness. That is not all our God. Behind it lie all the solemnities of Divine righteousness, august majesty, supreme claims, searching inspections, and the holiest jealousy. The Christian’s God is to be served with thankful trust, loving obedience, and sunniest joy; but He is also to be served with reverence and godly fear; for He is still—nay, He is more truly than He ever was—“a consuming fire.” That seems to be the point of impression of the text. The mildness of Christianity makes it liable to misunderstanding. And it needs to be made quite plain, that there is nothing so searching, so severe, so inexorable, as love. There is an awful strength in gentleness; there is a masterful persuasion in pity; there are inexorable demands in love. We may remember the times when our father beat us with the cane for our wicked ways, but we recall them with a smile, for well we know there was too much passion in them for them to have been effective vindications of righteousness. But among our very holiest memories are the times when we grieved our mother. She did not punish; she did not say much; but the distress of her wounded love smote us to the quick, humbled us into the dust; it was harder far to bear than those fatherly strokes; it was a “consuming fire” of love, and we have never lost the ministry of that “fire” of mother-love, though long years have passed since she joined the assembly of the saints. The writer of this epistle is still full of his contrasts of the two dispensations. In urging the Jewish Christians to maintain their loyalty and faithfulness to the Christian profession, he has endeavoured to touch Jewish sentiment, and inspire to noble things, by reading over the long roll of heroes, who, by faith, mastered a thousand difficulties, and held fast their integrity. He has carefully explained the deeper meanings of those afflictions, anxieties, and persecutions through which they were passing. They were the strengthening and corrective discipline of Divine chastisement. And in a most effective rhetorical contrast he has pictured for them the genius and tone of the two dispensations. The older having its locus in storm-encircled mountain-heights, from which the fires flashed, over which the darkness brooded, and around which the alarming thunder-voices rolled. The new having its locus in a spiritual sphere; in a mount that had no earth-foundations; in a city which was built by God, ministered by angels, and dwelt in by sainted souls. No fires flash in that spiritual sphere; no thunder-voices waken terror in the soul. All is peace and love and service. But his contrast might leave a wrong impression. They might presume on the mildness of the new dispensation, and relax into indifference. He would check that possibility by this strong assertion, “Our God [too] is a consuming fire.” His service too must be rendered “with reverence and godly fear.” We can, however, see a little more precisely what was in his mind; for his words are a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 4:24), and an incomplete quotation. To complete it is to provide the explanation of the term “consuming fire.” The older Scripture reads, “For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” The jealousy of God is expressed in this fire figure. We need search no further than this for its meaning. The text reads thus, “Our God, even the Christian’s God, is a jealous God.” But that is a term which we do not like to use for God. With us it has associations which seem to make it quite unsuitable. And yet the Bible has frequent allusions to the Divine jealousy, and it may be possible to find primary meanings in the term, and to affix careful limitations to it, so that we may recognise its appropriateness as, even in these times, applied to the Christian’s God. It does seem strange, but it may even be right, to apply the term to Christ, to “God manifest in the flesh”; for “our God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” He can burn with the indignation of slighted, wounded love; and that is holy jealousy. Jealousy is that feeling which we have when one whom we love, and who seemed to love us, turns away from us to set his love upon another. Then we are said to burn with jealousy. It is when we have a right to the love which is taken from us, and given to another, that our jealousy becomes so intense and is so righteous. In this way the word can be applied to our God. He is jealous of His honour and His rights when the love that belongs to Him is given to another. He could properly be jealous of His ancient people, who were bound to Him by every dearest tie, when they forsook Him, and set their love on idol-gods—“on every high hill, and under every green tree wandering, playing the harlot”; and against them His jealousy most righteously burned as doth an oven. It is important to notice this distinction—jealousy is natural and proper and right when we have exclusive property in another’s love. The husband ought to be jealous if his wife is unfaithful; a wife ought to be jealous if her husband is unfaithful; a king ought to be jealous if his subjects are disloyal, and set their love on another. It is only when we really have no exclusive property in the love, but try to make out that we have, that our jealousy is wrong and unworthy. It is easy then to see how the term can be properly applied to God, seeing He has absolute, sovereign, and unquestionable rights in the love of His creatures. They ought to love Him with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. And He ought to be jealous and indignant when they turn away from Him, and set their love on another. He may well be to them as a consuming fire. It was precisely in relation to idolatry that God was called jealous in the Old Testament. “Thou shalt have none other gods before Me … for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” And it is to idolatry in some of its later phases that the term is applied in the New Testament. Apostasy is modern idolatry; and towards it God is a consuming fire. But here is a somewhat strange thing, one which needs consideration, and suggests some searching applications. Those who were addressed in this epistle were not in danger of leaving Jehovah to worship and serve idols. They were in danger of leaving the Christian God to take up with the Jewish God, and we are to understand that this aroused the Divine jealousy, and towards this God was a consuming fire. And yet it was the same God. Yes, it was. But it is the grief of love to be loved only for what we were, not for what we are—to be loved for what we were thought to be in the first hours of passionate affection, not for what we are in the full maturity and beauty wrought through the culture and experience of years. A simple illustration will make this quite clear. You had childish views and thoughts of God: there was as much fear as there was wonder in them; but they were most imperfect, and altogether unworthy. He was really no more than a magnified benevolent man. If you now persisted in giving up all those higher, worthier, more spiritual apprehensions of God, which the thousand-fold experiences of your life, and the spiritually enlightened teachings of God’s word, have brought you; if you persisted in going back upon those old child-notions, would you not grieve Him, would you not make Him jealous of your loving that old God better than Himself? Must He not then be to you a consuming fire? But that is precisely what some of those Jewish Christians were doing. And that is precisely what some of you are doing. You are afraid of the God revealed to your manhood, and falling back upon the God of your babyhood. You are leaving the Father of Jesus for the El, the power-God of your childhood. You are wanting all those picture-teachings, simplicities, first principles, which properly belong to a child’s God; and cannot rise into the higher, spiritual, divine apprehensions of God as He is in Christ, which are the holy satisfactions of cultured manhood. And God is jealous of His old self, because it thus takes your love away from Him as He is, and wants to be now to you. The idolatry of the Jewish Christians was not Baal or Moloch, or even Jupiter or Venus. It was an old image of Jehovah which was good enough in its day; but its day had long since passed. They wanted to worship that, to keep on worshipping that. And to them God was a consuming fire, even a jealous God. But we seldom think that we are trying God just as they did. He gives us fuller revelations of Himself. We prefer the old ones. He gives us larger apprehensions of truth. We prefer the little ones. He lifts us into the pure atmosphere of the spiritual. We get down again as soon as we can into the thick, murky atmosphere of the material. And so to-day we make Him jealous, we compel Him to become to us a consuming fire. For though our fullest love is due to Him as He is, we persist in taking it away from Him, and giving it to something that He was. We make an idol of our childhood’s God, and worship Him rather than the Father of Jesus.

I. God always has been a consuming fire, jealous of His supreme claims to love for what He is.—Almost the first lesson humanity had to learn was God’s jealousy of His outraged honour. His consuming fire was upon our first parents, who had given up the obedience of love for self-pleasing; and the fire found its symbol in the flaming sword of the cherubim, which guarded the lost Paradise.

1. The God of the patriarch was a consuming fire, even a jealous God; for the horror of great darkness which fell on Abraham, when the smoking furnace and lamp of fire passed between the severed victims, was meant to assure him how exclusive were the claims of the Covenant-maker.
2. The God of Moses was a “consuming fire, even a jealous God”; for the bush that burned, and was not consumed, was the sublime assertion of Jehovah’s exclusive rights in the people of Israel—rights to burn them into national form in the fires of sternest discipline.
3. The God of the people of Israel was a consuming fire, even a jealous God; for His symbolic presence was a cloud which was silver-tinted in the light of day, but flashed and glowed as with the burning of an inner fire in the dark night-sky. And when the young priests forsook Jehovah for the idols of their own self-wills, forth flashed the fires of the Divine jealousy, for their sudden and awful destruction.
4. And the God of the prophets was “a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” The people had forsaken Jehovah, and in a spirit of time-serving had set their love on Phœnician Baal and Astarte. And the Divine jealousy burned. One day on Carmel the assembled nation on the sides of the hill watched in breathless suspense a solitary Jehovah altar, and a solitary prophet, who stood calm and strong beside it. And the fire of God fell, the jealousy of God burned, and that day four hundred men, who had taken from Jehovah the love that was His sole and sovereign right, were consumed in the fire of the Divine indignation, slain on Kishon’s side, to be swept by the coming rain-floods out to the ocean’s nameless grave. There, all down the story of the ages lie the ever-varying illustrations of the truth that God is a jealous God. His glory He will never give to another. The love which is His sole right He will never share with another. Against all phases and types of idolatry His indignation ever burns as does an oven.

II. God is to-day a consuming fire, even a jealous God.—Jealous of His sole and sovereign claims, in Christ Jesus, upon our love. Our God, the Christian’s God, is “a consuming fire.” If it be so, then there must be some forms of idolatry by which nowadays we can be enticed. The apostle John knew that there were such in his day, for he wrote, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” If we are Christians, then our whole soul’s love is given to God in Christ, the Father-God of the ever-acceptable Son, and that love carries to God the full consecration of ourselves, of our life. In that “setting of our love upon Him” God finds His holy satisfactions and delights. Then we know what grieves Him, wounds Him to the very heart, rouses the holy jealousy, and compels Him to be to us a consuming fire. It is our taking that love which is His, which is His sole and sovereign right, and giving it to some one else, to something else, to idol self. Can it be that we ever do this? Can it be that God knows we are really idolaters? Can it be that our heart is divided? Have we in actual fact our own private idols, and do they take our real heart-love and worship? The missionary Paton felt convinced that the apparent religion of the aborigines of Australia was not their real religion, and set himself to discover what it was. At last he found they had in secret smooth stones, kept hidden in bags, and in these their souls trusted. It may be so with us. We bow at the Christian altar, and keep idols of our own at home. Idols we make of persons; idols we make of opinions; idols we make of pleasures. But our text has suggested a kind of idol which we may never have thought of before. The Jewish Christians were in danger of making an idol of the old God they served before they became Christians. And God is represented as being jealous of their leaving His present self to worship and serve His old self. Can it be possible that we are grieving God thus? He has lifted us up, in Christ Jesus, to high, spiritual, noble thoughts and apprehensions of Himself, and to a high and holy circle of truths gathering round His spiritual Fatherhood. Alas! it seems too high for us, and we leave Him to go back upon the bare, poor idea of God which belonged to our childish immaturity, and to the unspiritual days before our regeneration. We make idols of the bald, picture settings of doctrinal truths which suited our religious childhood. It is as if the Christian Jews persisted in becoming formal Mosaic Jews again. It is one form of the idolatry into which Christians fall in our days; and God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12

Hebrews 12:25. Refusing Advice.—I once happened to be on a visit to a great castle situate at the top of a hill. There was a steep cliff, at the bottom of which was a rapid river. Late one night there was a woman anxious to get home from that castle in the midst of a thunder-storm. The night was blackness itself; the woman was asked to stop till the storm was over, but she declined; next they begged her to take a lantern, that she might be able to keep upon the road from the castle to her home. She said she did not require a lantern, but could do very well without one. She went. Perhaps she was frightened by the storm—I know not the cause—but in the midst of the darkness she wandered from the path and fell over the cliff. The next day that swollen river washed to the shore the poor lifeless body of this foolish woman! How many foolish ones are there who, when the light is offered them, only say, “I am not afraid; I fear not my end I” and how many have perished because they have refused the light of God’s truth, which would have guided them on the road to heaven!—Bishop Villiers.

Hebrews 12:29. Consuming Fire.—A traveller writes, “I saw a flaming globe of fire, magnificent indeed, but too terrible for the eye to rest upon, if its beams had been naked and exposed; but it was suspended in a vase of crystal, so transparent, that while it softened the intensity of its rays, it shrouded nothing of its beauty. On the contrary, that which before would have been a mass of undistinguishable light, now emitted through the vase many beautiful and various coloured rays, which riveted the beholder with wonder and astonishment.” Such is God manifested in Christ and out of Christ, He meets the affrighted sinner’s eye as “a consuming fire.” Like fiery flames breaking forth to consume the adversary, He is too terrible for the apprehension. But now He reveals Himself in Christ; His terrible majesty no longer affrights us. His consuming fire, seen in Christ, is like the mild rays of the morning sun in spring, going forth to bless the earth with its cheerful and invigorating beams.—H. G. Salter.

Hebrews 12:27. Removing Shakeable Things.—Let us be glad when “the things which can be shaken are removed,” like mean huts built against the wall of some cathedral, masking and marring the completeness of its beauty; “that the things which cannot be shaken may remain,” and all the clustered shafts, and deep-arched recesses, and sweet tracery, may stand forth freed from the excrescences which hid them.—A. Maclaren, D.D.

Losing Anchor-hold.—I was looking out not long ago upon a very stormy sea. The winds howled, the troubled waves were dashing themselves into spray upon the rocks. Many vessels were in the bay; they could not move for the hurricane, but could only trust to some anchor in the sands, and were tossed wildly up and down. In the night the anchors of two of them slipped their hold, and they were hurled helplessly in total wreck upon the shore. There was no beauty or glory in those poor ships; it is the beauty and glory of a ship when her helm is firmly grasped, and the obedient wind swells her white sails, and the cleft wave bears her onwards towards her haven—“a plume and a power.” And so it is with man.—Farrar.