Preventing A Spiritual Firestorm Series

Paradise, California.

Lahaina, Hawaii.

What comes to mind when I mention those two towns? What do they have in common?

Yes, wildfire devastation. Firestorms that destroyed nearly the whole towns.

I think most of us remember the terrifying and incredibly speedy devastation that each of these towns experienced as a result of a firestorm. It was now six years ago, on November 8, 2018, when nearly the whole town of Paradise, California, population 27,000 was destroyed in the course of a single day as a result of the Camp fire. Eighty-five lives were lost, 50,000 people were displaced and nearly 20,000 structures destroyed by a wildfire that moved so fast that firefighters believed it burned the equivalent of a football field every second.

Then there was the fire on the island paradise of Maui, in its capital city of Lahaina. Again, nearly the whole town was destroyed in the course of a single day--2200 structures were damaged or destroyed and more than 100 lives lost by a wind-driven brush fire that started outside of town.

The cause of each of the fires were eerily similar. A downed power line, a severe drought and strong winds proved to be a deadly mixture.

Did you know that there's such a thing as a spiritual firestorm? A spiritual firestorm can be as devastating to the spiritual lives of those who experience it as the physical firestorms that devoured Paradise and Lahaina. The Book of James defines a spiritual firestorm as a series of events that begins with an unbridled tongue: "So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among [c]our body’s parts as that which defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our [d]life, and is set on fire by hell" (James 3:5-6).

It's a frightening description. Just like those physical wildfires, spiritual wildfires result from combustible conditions. The combustible conditions certainly include the tongue, generally involved at least one heart that is infected with a root of bitterness, and are often spread by, the dry brush of all things, a passive, listening ear and then the fierce winds of gossiping tonguesl.

And that's exactly what had happened, and was about to happen again in the church of Corinth, Greece in 58 A.D. For those of you who haven't been with us, the Church at Corinth on the isthmus between the Peloponnesian Peninsula and mainland Greece had been planted by the Great Apostle Paul about 51 A.D. He had remained there for 18 months building up the new believers in that church before he departed for other ministry opportunities in Europe and Asia minor. Now, seven years later, the church has been infected with division and dissension. This is now Paul's second letter to be delivered by the hand of his apostolic delegate, Titus, to Corinth in an attempt to put out the spiritual fire that was threatening to destroy the church at Corinth.

The causes were many, including the fleshly desires of the believers who had returned to the deeds of the flesh from the fruit of the Spirit that was intended to characterize true believers. There had been some substantial evidence of repentance after the writing of the first letter to Corinthians, a personal painful visit by the Apostle Paul himself and the visit of Titus the previous year. And yet a problem remained. That problem consisted of a number of false apostles, servants of Satan, as Paul described them, who had infiltrated the church at Corinth during his absence. They were rivals of the Apostle Paul, and they attempted to advance their own ministries among the Corinthians at the expense of the reputation of the Apostle Paul by spreading false accusations about his motives, his manner and his message. The problem was persisting in Corinth because the true believers in Corinth were tolerating these false teachers, their false teachings and their slanderous accusations against the Apostle Paul. Since the spiritual welfare of the Corinthians was at stake--these false teachers were threatening to lead the Corinthians believers entirely astray from their sincere and pure devotion to Christ, the Apostle Paul felt compelled to defend himself, not for his sake, but for the sake of the spiritual welfare of the Corinthians. He's embarrassed by the fact that he has to defend Himself, or boast about his spiritual accomplishments, in order to win the Corinthians back from the absolute spiritual disaster that following the false apostles threatened. But he does so, considering that their spiritual lives are at stake. And what he is, in effect, doing as he writes the last three chapters of II Corinthians, is he is attempting to put out the brewing firestorm that threatened the lives of all the believers in Corinth, and the integrity and testimony of the Church at Corinth.