Fire! Fire! Fire
"When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze."—Isaiah 43:2.
BEFORE I explain the metaphor of the text
• Can we agree that we are not sufficiently grateful.
• Not grateful for the preservation that God provides us in escaping the fire.
I know I address some/morning who have escaped the very midst of the fires in their life.
• If this is you, bless God for the preservation/past
• And celebrate his goodness in plucking you out of the fire.
• Be extremely grateful to God because others are dying in the black heap of ashes.
we are still in the land/dying/but we are unburned and unsigned.
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Now let us take the text with real significance.
Of course walking thru the fire is the severest form of trouble.
But/beginning/verse trouble is described/passing through water.
Representing the overwhelming influence of trails in which the soul encumbers, so much so that it is like a man sinking in the waves.
• Ever feel you were continually sinking?
• "but God says, I will be with you."
But going through the fire expresses/actual consuming and destructive power of trouble and temptation.
• The metaphor of fire is more vivid
• not to say more terrifying than the waters of the river
• both represent tribulations, temptations, and afflictions.
These are faced by/church/people of God who are called to pass through them.
But the richness of the promise of the metaphor/fire/water/ comforts the Christian for it says, “When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, and the flames will not burn you.”
I will talk of three things, this morning
• as the Holy Ghost may enable me;
• first of all, a terrible pathway,—walking around the fire;
• secondly, an awful danger,—the danger of being burned and utterly consumed;
• Thirdly, a double insurance,—"you will not be burned, and the flames will not set you ablaze."
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I. First, then, I’ll speak a little about this TERRIBLE PATHWAY.
The children of God/never had/easy road to journey.
• I look upon the fields of fire, the field is ablaze
• The very heavens are like a furnace.
• But across that field lies the pathway to heaven.
• And beneath the blazing clouds
• The whole Church of God must make its perpetual journey.
It started in the first fire:
• The first Church/God/earth/person/Abel/it was persecuted.
• Cain lifted up his cruel club to slay his brother.
When the children of Seth were the representatives of God's chosen
they were without doubt/subject/mockery/descendants of Cain.
• Then Noah/preacher/righteousness endured 120 years.
• Enduring thru hardness of heart
• and carelessness of an unthinking world:
• He and his family/the remnants of the church/latter parts.
They were constantly exposed to laughter/persecution of men.
• Then God destroyed/earth/water
• and the whole race of man was contained in the ark.
• Now, you would think:
• the Church within the ark would be secure from molestation!
But no, we find him ready to detect the failings of his parents.
No doubt a ringleader of everything that was vile and vicious
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• From that day forward
• whether you read the life of Abraham, Isaac or Jacob
• it still stands true.
• "He that is born after the flesh persecute him that is born after the Spirit."
Whether I refer you to the history of Israel through their years in Egypt or to the hosts of God constantly opposed by the marauders of the Amalekites, it will be true;
• Thru much tribulation the people of God must always make their way to Canaan, the promised land.
• Looking forward to history:
• Look at David/Saul
• Hezekiah/Sennacherib
Between the faithful followers of God after the captivity who rebuilt the temple
• How about Sanballat the Horonite
• between the Maccabees and Antiochus Epiphanes
• so you see there must always be preserved a deadly feud
• let it be seen: the world must hate God’s people
• they must harass them and seek to hunt them out
And we must steadily pursue our own march through the billows of fire till we come to our eternal resting place.
• Find a home at a Church
• and you will smell the furnace not far off.
• Find me a follower of God
• and I will show you a host of enemies ready for attack.
Up until the Savior came the kingdom of heaven suffered violence.
• Not only from the Sons of God who would take it
• but from those enemies who would assault it.
• From the blood of Abel
• down to the blood of Zecharias the son of Barachias,
• the pathway of the Church has been a blood-sprinkled time.
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Since that day, what tongue can tell the sufferings of the people of God?
• Since Christ became martyr as well as Redeemer
• has there been a season in which God's people have not been made to feel that they are not of the world
In apostolic times
• Stephen expires beneath a shower of stones
• James is killed with a sword
• Isaiah was sawed in half
• Peter/wife was crucified upside down
• believers are scattered abroad.
• The Roman lion takes up the fight with Daniel
• Herod delights in the gore of the Christians
Let the catacombs of Rome witness to their sorrowful lives and let the Capitol of Rome witness to their terrible deaths.
Let the old dungeons, some of which still remain, testify to the places where they wore out the Christian martyrs
• If only the lands could speak of the corruption.
• If the earth could only vomit her blood of the stories to be told of how the believers were slain.
• Some tortured, others sawed in half, some stoned
• others burnt to death.
• Yes, none of them the world was not worthy.
The pure Church of Christ has always been the victim of persecution, even though we have never persecuted.
• The church has always maintained unaltered, disunion from the state,
• Yet she has been especially destitute, afflicted, tormented.
If we do have breathing room today in the church it’s because of our timidity of proclaiming the gospel.
• Find the Church of Christ wherever you will
• and you shall find her scorned and despised of man
• Since the first day until now and forever
• it is not respectable to be a follower of Christ.
• Men hate for you to take up the cross!
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The pathway of the Church, then, has been one of fire and flame.
• It is of no surprise, the church is in the enemy’s country.
• She is not among her friends
• she is a stranger upon the earth.
• If we were of the world, the world would love its own.
But Christ said, “you are not of the world but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
He said, “it hated me before it hated you.”
• True Christians are aliens, foreigners
• men that speak another language
• men who are actuated by different motives
• men who live for different results
• who are governed by different motives and drives
• Therefore it is the pathway of trial and opposition.
All things we teach are dead against the pleasures of the world and worldly gain that is no wonder the world opposes us.
Men hate the gospel because the gospel does not like them.
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It has always fared well with the Church when she has been persecuted, her pathway has been through fire.
• Her feet shackled with iron and brass.
• She doesn’t stroll through the field of flowers
• it’s her proper place to suffer.
First of all, the blood of Christ was shed meritoriously and afterwards the blood of his Church is shed testimonially
• to gain the will of the world by suffering.
• This is the way the Church grows.
You see, if the path of fire is a path of terror it is often the path of progress.
• While dying embers smolders in that fire you experienced,
• How often have you observed the new and majestic things that have come from that blazing furnace you faced.
Fearful disasters in your life will stimulate and nourish you to grow in Christ.
• It is no doubt that the sufferings we face
• The fires we pass through will be a great truth that God is glorified.
• Church, you and I do not glorify God much
• for we have very little to suffer.
The blood red crown of martyrdom should be an object of ambition for us as Christians.
• We! What do we suffer?
• Somebody may slander our character. What is that?
• Somebody may call us a religious freak. What is that?
• If we know our conscience is right in the sight of God
• what can it signify?
What should we care if all the babbling tongues of all the liars in earth and hell should be let loose against us?
When I read the stories of the Book of Martyrs, and note how our great reformers fought for Christ, and manfully won the victory, I blush for us.
Church, we live in time that we don’t face the persecutions of old.
• We have much to do, but we have nothing to suffer.
• We cannot prove our love to Christ as they did.
They indeed were a highly honored people who were permitted to glorify Christ even in the worst fires.
• Look at it in this light
• and the light afflictions you have to endure today
• and it will seem to be as nothing at all
How much are our afflictions/persecutions bringing the weight of glory to our Lord and ourselves.
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Through much tribulation we must inherit the kingdom.
Please don’t think it strange for you to go through fiery trials.
If you have the common afflictions of the world do not wonder.
• You must have them.
• The same thing happens both to the evil and to the good.
• You lose in business, you have disappointments
• do not stagger at these in the way to heaven.
• You must have these
• they are necessary to your spiritual health.
Perhaps you have strange temptations, you are placed in a position where you are constantly exposed to sin.
• It must be so.
• This too, is the pathway of God’s people
• you must have these fiery temptations
• after being tried in the fire
• you will come forth as “gold seven times purified.”
• You have mental anxieties.
• Don’t let these seem to wonder you.
• They fall to all the saints of the most High.
Moreover, you will have to endure the attacks of Satan
• You must go through the valley of the shadow of death
• and fight with Satan as other Christians do
• you are not exempt from the hardness of Christian warfare.
If you have mounted yourself to the mountain of God, you must climb; if you are to win the crown, you must win it by sheer might.
• This is not a strange thing.
• when you are doing good things
• you will meet with difficulties
• Don’t let them stagger your walk.
• It is right and it is natural.
Listen, if there’s a pathway and it is not by fire, you need to tremble, but if the road is hard, thank God.
• If your sufferings are great, bless the Lord for them
• If the difficulties in you path are many
• lift them up with faith and don’t let them cast you down.
• Be of good courage, and wait on the Lord
Set this constantly on your minds:
• the Lord has not promised to keep you from trouble
• but to preserve you in it.
• The Lord didn’t say, "I will save you from the fire,"
• no He says, "I will save you in the fire,"
•
• Not "I will quench the coals,"
• but "they will not burn you,"
• not "I will put out the furnace,"
• But "the flames will not burn you."
Write it down and expect it to come true, that in this world you will have tribulation.
Through flood or flame all you need to do is follow your glorious leader.
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II. I will now turn to my second point—there is AN AWFUL DANGER.
The promise of the text is based on a prophecy that follows it.
As I glance my eye down the chapter
• I see that it tells us how God taught his people by terrible things in the past;
• and how he has terrible lessons to teach them in the future.
If the judgments of Egypt, Babylon, Ninevah are behind us, we have startling destines that are before us!
• There are people to be gathered in
• We are to be the agents in gathering them!
• Fear not, says the Lord
• You walk through the fire in fulfilling my mission.
• The fire of prophecy is no poetic fiction, it is real fire.
• It will burn.
• If it doesn’t burn the believer
• It’s not because it don’t want too,
• it’s because a supernatural restraint is laid on it
• or some supernatural protection is around the believer.
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Dear Saints, the Church has had very painful experiences that persecution is a fire which does burn.
Too many have forsaken the Church as Demas forsook Paul.
Or the hypocrites who crowd our aisles at their leisure and then proclaim their falsehood to the wicked.
• Their piety would not stand the fire
• they could walk with Christ in their suits on Sunday
• but they could not go barefoot with Christ in the world.
They have no objections whatsoever to be with Christ on his throne
but they have difficulties with going with him to his cross.
They don’t mind bearing the weight of His glory
but the weight of His cross is too much too bare.
• Iniquity is raging on every side of us!
• It’s flames are fanned by every wind of the world
• and fresh victims are being constantly being drawn in.
• It spreads to every class of Christians.
• The weak the strong the shakers and movers and the complacent turtles.
• We must walk through the fire.
We who are God's witnesses must stand in its very midst
• pouring streams of living water upon the burning fuel
• and if we are not able to quench it
• at least we must strive to prevent its spread.
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There are men and women who have lusts that are just inflammable at this point, not yet ignited to a fire.
• They are in imminent danger.
• “Fire! Fire! We may well cry.
• Here is the fire alarm to you this morning
There is another here who is in the midst of vulgar companions.
• I cry to you, “Fire! Fire!
• Here is the fire alarm to you this morning.
To those who are compelled to live in a house where you are perpetually tempted to evil
• I cry to you, “Fire!” fire!
To you who are tagged each day as a Christian and have to bear the sneers of the ungodly
• I cry “Fire! Fire!”
I pray we never here fall into average Christianity.
There have been multitudes who have perished in the valley of temptation.
• How many, too, have fallen under the attacks of Satan!
• This is a fire that does burn.
• Many a man has said, "I will be a Christian;"
• but he has met devil on the road and he has turned back.
• Many a man has put on the harness
• but he has given up on the battle,
• put his hand to the plough and looked back.
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There are more pillars of salt than one.
• If Lot's wife was the only one to look back
• that would be different
• but there have been tens of thousands like her who have looked back to the plains of Sodom
• and like her, as they are in their spirit
• have stood forever what they were,—lost souls.
Don’t look upon our dangers with contempt.
• They are dangers, they are trials
• We need to look upon our temptations as fires.
• Oh, they are fires!
• If you think they are not fires you are mistaken.
III. I won’t carry on any longer here, because I want to get to the nucleus and marrow of the promise.
"Though you walk through the fire you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze."
• Here is A DOUBLE INSURANCE.
• "You will not be burned;" and then follows
• "the flames will not set you ablaze."
• "you will not be burned," to the destruction of your life
Not even scorched to give you the slightest injury for the flames will not set you ablaze.
Just as the holy children came out of the fiery furnace it is said, “upon their bodies the fire had no power, not a hair on their head singed.”
They had no smell of the fire upon them!
So the text teaches us that the Christian Church under all its trials has never been consumed.
• But more than that
• it hasn’t lost anything by its trials.
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The Lord's Church has never been destroyed yet by her persecutors and her trials.
• They have thought they crushed her, but she lives still.
• They had imagined that they had taken away her life
• But she sprang up more vigorous than before.
• She is like Israel in Egypt
• The more they were afflicted the more they multiplied.
The church is always made more beautiful, more fair, more glorious, by the fires.
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Turn, then, to the individual Christian, and remember, that the promise stands firm and fast with each believer.
• Christian, if you be truly a child of God
• your trials cannot destroy you
• and better still, you can lose nothing by them.
• You may seem to lose for today
• but when the account comes to be settled
• you will be a prosperous child of God.
Your trials having worked patience and experience, will make you rich.
• Your temptations have taught you your weakness
• and shown you where your strength lies
• they will make you strong.
From your first trouble, till the last enemy will be destroyed
Satan in his craftiness will never be able to lay a finger on you.
• You will not be burned
• not even your clothes or the smell of fire on them.
• Like Daniel, you will be wholly preserved from the flame.
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I will close now, having spoken the truth of this precious promise.
There are some here who have had wave after wave of affliction
• Everything goes against you.
• Every ship in your life, the wind blows it the wrong way.
When I spoke of walking thru the fire just now, you said, “that is what I’ve been doing, walking thru it for months and the furnace is hot.
• If that is you take my text home this morning.
• Perhaps God sent you here not for the sermon
• but for the text.
Perhaps you strolled here today, on purpose that this text might comfort you.
"When you go through the fire, you will not be burned."
• When your troubles are all over, you will still be left
• and what is more, "the flames will not set you ablaze."
While you think you have lost ground, you will find when you read the Scripture, that you only lose shadows.
• Your ground was always safe
• being laid up in the keeping of Christ in Heaven.
You will discover that these trials of yours were the best things that could happen to you.
I pray you take the encouragement of this text to strengthen you for the future battles.
• You have been going through the fires.
• But you are not consumed yet, and I bless God
Upon your garments the smell of fire has not passed.
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Hold on, through all the sorrow you have
• all the bitterness which is heavy enough to crush your spirit;
• hold on, for your Master sees you.
• He will encourage and strengthen you
If the fires should burn up your piety, it would only prove that your piety was not worth having.
If grace be in your heart the devil can't drive it out.
• If the Lord has called you by his grace
• all the men on earth
• and all the fiends in hell can’t reverse the calling
• and you will find in the end that you have not suffered any loss
• the flame has not burned you.
You shall go through the fire and bless God for it.
From a dying bed, or at least through the gates of Paradise you will look back on your dark paths of the way to heaven
• And you will say, “it was well for me to carry that cross
• And in saying that you now wear the crown.
Who is on the Lord's side this morning of this congregation?
• While Jehovah speaks on high in the thunder
• Let us speak on earth in tones of earnestness.
• Who is on the Lord's side among you?
You that are not, be warned. "The pile of the fire has much wood.
The breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, will kindle it."
You that are on his side, set up your banners today.
He says, "Fear not, I am with you; when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, and the flame will not set you ablaze."
May the Lord bless the words I have spoken.
Though rapidly suggested to your minds, and feebly delivered to you, the Lord bless them for Christ's sake.
