Fire from Above
Sunday, October 29, 2006 – AM
By Pastor Jim May
We need the fire this morning. It’s getting colder outside, but I’m not concerned about the cold air; I’m concerned about the cold spirit and the cold heart in the church. I know that the church, in general, at least those with whom I have contact, seem to be very cold-natured most of the time. I’m ready for some fire. I’m ready for some excitement. I’m ready for the fire of the Holy Ghost that will fall and burn away all of the impurities, the doubts, the fears, the frustrations and the apathy in us. We need a fresh fire today. We need a fresh anointing. We must have that fire from above.
Where is the fire of the Spirit? Why have we not seen the Fire fall? Part of the answer lies in the story of King David found in 1 Chronicles chapter 21.
It all begins with pride and self-sufficiency. David’s army had beaten back the Ammonites, took the crown off of the head of the Ammonite King and put it on his own head. Then he defeated the Philistines and another of the brothers of Goliath from the land of Gath was killed. Then Gath was angered and attacked Israel, and David conquered Gath as well. But how many of you know that when everything is going just right, and all your battles are won without much of a fight, that it’s easy to begin to lean upon your own strength and power instead of trusting God for the victory?
That’s what happened to David. He became convinced that his army was invincible. He was lifted up in his pride and the victories he had won, and he looked at the military might of Israel’s army and said, “That’s alright God, I can handle this on my own for a while. Thank you very much, but I’m doing just fine on my own.”
That’s what is happening in the church, and I believe it’s happening to many of us, right here in Victory Temple. We have become satisfied in our walk with the Lord. God has given us blessing after blessing, victory after victory, and somehow we have come to take them all for granted. God is a good God, opening the windows of Heaven and pouring out blessings upon His people, but if we aren’t careful we will allow all of God’s blessings to bring us to a place of self-sufficiency, a place of complacency and then we are headed for trouble.
David became self-sufficient. He also became stubborn and wouldn’t listen to the voices of his most trusted men who kept trying to tell him to not walk down the path of pride that would bring him into disobedience against God.
The Bible says in 1 Chronicles 21:1, "And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel."
What’s wrong with counting your blessings? What’s wrong with taking inventory of how much of the Word of God you know, or how many times you’ve been to church, or how often you have prayed, or how many times God has blessed you? There’s nothing wrong with remembering, if you are doing so to thank God for all of it.
But David wasn’t numbering Israel to say, “Thank you Lord, for increasing our nation and giving us such great victories.” He was numbering Israel so that he could brag about the size of his army and the power of his people to defeat their enemies. He was learning to lean, but it wasn’t on Jesus; it wasn’t on God; it was on the arm of the flesh.
That’s what I see happening in the church. We are leaning on past experiences. We are leaning on what we already know and have learned from the Bible. We are leaning on the move of the Spirit that we had 6 months ago or 10 years ago. We are leaning on our own spirituality and our own good works. But where is that fresh fire? Where is the out-pouring of the Holy Ghost and fire? We sing that, “It’s the Holy Ghost and Fire and it’s keeping me alive” and that’s what we must have, but where is that Holy Ghost fire today?
I’m beginning to believe that it’s not much more than a smoldering ember because we’ve allowed it to be smothered out with pride and self-sufficiency. We have become stubborn and self-sufficient, just like David.
God had to get David’s attention, so he sent an angle with a sword against Israel and 70,000 Jews died in a pestilence. 70,000 men, women and children lost their lives because of one disobedient king, who was supposed to be a “Man after God’s own Heart”.
Do you understand what that’s saying to the church right now? Every day that we live in a state of lethargy, complacency and self-sufficiency, and we don’t have that fire of the Holy Ghost operating in us, there are souls that are dying and going to Hell. How many people have been lost that we could have reached if we weren’t so complacent? How many souls will burn forever because I didn’t open my mouth and speak to them about Jesus? How many of your family aren’t saved but have never heard you witness to them? How many of your friends and co-workers don’t know Jesus and they don’t even know you are a Christian?
Can you see it? Can you see that our pride in being saved ourselves, and our self-sufficiency in our own salvation, and our own walk with the Lord, has allowed us to sit idly by and watch souls by the thousands leave this world without Jesus!
1 Chronicles 21:3-4, "And Joab answered, The LORD make his people an hundred times so many more as they be: but, my lord the king, are they not all my lord’s servants? why then doth my lord require this thing? why will he be a cause of trespass to Israel? Nevertheless the king’s word prevailed against Joab. Wherefore Joab departed, and went throughout all Israel, and came to Jerusalem."
Joab was the man on the front lines, leading the armies of Israel. He knew that it was God who had won the battles for Israel, not it’s military might. He wasn’t sitting back at the palace with the golden crown of a conquering hero, saying, “Look at me, I’m somebody.” Joab was out there, leading the fight, wielding the sword face to face with the enemy.
But David’s stubbornness would allow him to listen. His pride and stubbornness became the tools that allowed the devil to tempt him. It wasn’t the Devil’s fault that David sinned. David sinned all by himself. The devil only used David’s own sin against him to bring down the wrath of God upon Israel.
But there came a time when David finally began to wake up to what he was doing. After 70,000 people died, and he saw the angel with the sword turn toward Jerusalem and begin again to destroy the people, David and the elders fell on their face in repentance.
That’s when the angel stopped, and stood near the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. David went to Ornan, bought the threshing floor from him, and built an altar.
1 Chronicles 21:22-24, "Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshingfloor, that I may build an altar therein unto the LORD: thou shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen also for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meat offering; I give it all. And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without cost."
If we want the Fire to fall, there’s a price to pay. You can’t short-change God. If you really want to have that Fire then here’s the price. It’s repentance for whatever has come between you and God. It’s obedience to God’s Word and, finally, it’s in building an altar and giving yourself as a living sacrifice to God.
1 Chronicles 21:26, "And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering."
In the Book of First Kings there is another story that will tell us how to get that Fire to fall once again.
This time it’s Elijah and 450 prophets of Baal on the top of Mt. Carmel who are involved.
King Ahab, the worst King that Israel ever had, and Jezebel, his idolatrous wife, were in power and Israel had slipped into absolute idolatry.
Where is the church today? Yes it’s Sunday morning and vast numbers of Christians are right where they need to be – in church. Their bodies are present. You can see them every Sunday morning sitting in the chairs, standing around the church, bowing their heads in prayer, or sleeping on the pews. Every once in while you might even see a few who will sing along with the worship teams, or tap their foot to the music and maybe even a very few, who will lift their hands, close their eyes and try to get into real worship.
But where is their heart in it all?
Matthew 15:8, "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me."
I don’t want you to raise your hand if you are guilty, but how many of us right now are thinking about where we are going to eat lunch? How many are thinking of things at home, on the job or what’s going on in the family? How many of us are thinking more of the ball game, or who’s going to win the wrestling championship on TV, or what driver is going to win at Talladega? We have such a short attention span that if I take more than 10 seconds to try to make a point from the Word of God, most of us will miss it. If you don’t think that’s true, then think of how many times I have to repeat the scripture reference before all of us can find it.
Everything in life vies for your time and attention. Life has a way of throwing things at you that will get you focused on so many little details that the important things are forgotten.
Pretty soon, the things of this life can become idols to us, not because we don’t love God, or don’t want to serve Him, but because they simply take His place in our hearts.
In effect, we become just like Israel was in the days of Elijah, Ahab and Jezebel. We fall into the trap of worldly cares, thinking only of the things of this life, and we just don’t have time for God anymore. We have grieved the Holy Spirit so many times that He has left us to our own. Our hearts, our minds, our spirits and our whole life becomes nothing more than a mass of confusion. We don’t know how it happens. We can’t understand why it happens most of the time. But it happens. We are caught in a web of sin and disobedience and it has separated us from the Fire of God.
That’s where Israel was when Elijah said those famous words in 1 Kings 18:21, "… How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word."
Why didn’t the people speak up? Why didn’t they just shout it out, “We want the Lord God of Israel! We want only to serve Him!”
Let me tell you why. 1st they didn’t want to rile Jezebel and Ahab, because they could make life miserable. They didn’t want to face up to those who had led them into sin because it would mean the end of a loose friendship. They knew that the king and queen wouldn’t serve God and that would leave them as enemies.
Who is the “king and queen” in your life? Is there someone, or someone’s, out there who you don’t want to give up, or you fear losing their friendship if you truly serve the Lord? Is their friendship worth your eternal soul? If they won’t serve the Lord, then they can’t be your friends if you choose to serve God because to be a friend of God is to be the enemy of this world and all of those who serve the devil. Make up your mind what you want and quit jumping the fence every time you turn around.
2nd, the people wouldn’t answer because they feared true commitment. They knew it would mean giving up everything else to follow God and they weren’t ready yet for that kind of commitment.
Doesn’t that sound like most of the church? Commitment, dedication, integrity, and selling out to God, are all concepts that are lost to most of the church world now.
We don’t want to seem too fanatic about serving the Lord, but we will go “Ape” over a bunch of grown men knocking a pigskin around a cow pasture. Sometimes I wonder if Darwin isn’t right because we act more like Apes than people.
I want to be a fanatic for Jesus! He has the greatest message of Love. He has the Words of Life. He is the power of the resurrection. He is the great God of Heaven. He is my Lord, my Savior, my King and my Everything! Why shouldn’t I be a fanatic for Him?
Elijah knew what it would take to get the people to turn back to him. He told them to pour water on the altar, on the sacrifice and to fill the trenches with water.
That means that we need to be completely inundated with the Word of God. We must also allow the Blood of Christ to cleanse us from all sin. We must allow the water of the Word to wash us, cleanse us, drown us in its purifying power and fill our hearts with God’s promises and His law so that we can walk in the way that He wants us to.
Only after we have been cleansed by the blood, washed in the Word, built an altar and place ourselves upon that altar as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, can the fire fall again!
1 Kings 18:37-39, "Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God."
How will you know when God is satisfied with your life? How will you know that God is moving in you once again?
You will know it because the Fire of the Holy Ghost will fall on you and consume your life in service to God. He will baptize you again in the Holy Ghost and fire. New life will spring up from that life of complacency. The Fire of God will consume your body as a living sacrifice and call you to do a work for the Lord in reaching souls, supply the needs of people and giving of your time, your finances and your talents in His service.
The fire of the Holy Ghost will consume the Wood – everything around you that pertains to this world and this life. It will all be willingly spent and given to God’s Work.
The fire of God will consume the Stones – not only will the Fire of the Holy Ghost break up that stubbornness, and hard-heartedness, but it will burn away any other foundation in your life other than the Rock, Jesus Christ. Nothing will be worth more than your relationship to Jesus Christ when the Fire is burning in your heart.
The fire of God will burn the dust away – every little besetting sin, anything that keeps you from being consumed by God, will be burned away. The cares of life will fade into insignificance. The material things of life will become nothing more than just “things”. Instead of things having the power to control you, God will help you to control them.
The Fire of God will even lick up the water - Even the Word of God will seem to be more alive to you than every before. God’s Fire doesn’t burn away the water, it just fires it up even more. The water became like gasoline to fuel the flames even higher.
When the Fire of God falls, and the Holy Ghost and fire fills your heart and soul, there will be no doubt that God is God and that you are His.
That’s when our hearts can shout – “The Lord, He is God!” “Jesus, He is Lord!” Jesus, you are my King!”
We need that Fire of God to fall on us this morning. We need a fresh anointing of power from on High. Let’s pray that the fire will fall right now!
