Fire Works July 1-2, 2017 Pastor Michael Craft 1 I, like many of you, have an outdoor grill. I m not great at grilling, but man, I love that thing. One of the things I m pretty bad at, is cleaning the grill. When the food is finished, I m usually ready to eat, so I just turn the grill/propane off and leave it be. Then the next time I go to cook, there are little, grisly pieces of whatever we ate last time still clinging to the grill! I ll try to use the wire scrubber to get it off, and it works for some of it, but it doesn t get it all off. Usually, truthfully I just light that bad boy up knowing that the fire will do a great job in cleaning off the gunk. I ve learned that FIRE WORKS for purifying for cleansing for refining. We used to sing a song called Refiner s Fire. The song comes from an OT passage of Scripture Malachi 3:1-3 NKJV 1 Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming, Says the Lord of hosts. 2 But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner s fire and like launderers soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord An offering in righteousness. God says, But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? The obvious answer here is no one. So, He s coming like a refiner and purifier of silver. This is a long process involving fire and intense heat and melting the metals so that the impurities come rising to the top, are scraped off and thrown out, and you are left with a purer metal. God likens this process to what He s planning on doing with the sons of Levi. This is a reference to the priests who were presenting offerings to the Lord, apparently in an unrighteous way. He was going to clean up their act. What s interesting, is that you and I are referred to as priests in God s Kingdom now (1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; ). What if God is saying the same thing today? What if God is basically saying, Listen who is going to be able to endure the day that Jesus returns? Who is going to make it? Who will stand? It s only those who have been purified those who are clean? What exactly were these priests doing so wrong back when Malachi was warning them? Well, the verse immediately before the verses in Malachi 3 is Malachi 2:17, which states:
Malachi 2:17 NKJV You have wearied the Lord with your words; Yet you say, In what way have we wearied Him? In that you say, Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, And He delights in them, Or, Where is the God of justice? 2 When you say, Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and that God is pleased with them. Wow. The priests in Malachi s day were apparently distorting God s Word. You see, while God does indeed love sinners (Romans 5:8), He does not commend or approve of evil. These guys were saying that things that were evil God was totally okay with and over time, things had gotten so corrupt, so decayed and so rotten that God needed to come in and clean house. What if I told you that God may be getting ready to do this again? The truth is, this world and seemingly especially this country has strayed further and further away from the truth of God s Word even distorting it altering it misrepresenting it. It seems everywhere we look, things that were at one time considered evil are being re-defined as good. TRANSITIONAL STATEMENT: Would the Lord, as He did in the days of Malachi, turn the heat up once again, in order to purify and refine us simply because we ve grown accustomed to calling evil things good, and good things evil? This Tuesday is July 4 th, and many of us will celebrate our great nation. Today, I d like to take a step back and a quick glance at just how far we ve fallen I pray it will cause us to take a better look at ourselves, as we take this short peek at how our nation began: On April 26 th, 1607, Captain John Smith sailed into Chessapeak Bay, called Cape Henry. We were all taught that in school, but what you may not know is that with him was the Reverend Robert Hunter. These were men of devout faith and prayer who immediately, when they hit the sand of that beach, fell to their knees and committed the land to God. In the 1570 s and 80 s the writer Richard Hakluyt (pronounced: Hackloot) chronicles the writing of the Virginia Charter by King James, which said: We would vouchsafe unto these colonists our license to make a habitation, plantation, a colony of our people into that part of America called Virginia. We greatly commend so noble a work, which by the providence of Almighty God in propagating a Christian religion to such people who live there in darkness, miserable, ignorant of the true knowledge that they may find God, worship Him and may in due time be established in living in true stability and quiet government. On November 11 th, 1620, the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock the voyage, we know, killed many of them, but their desire to be free to worship God as they wanted drove them on. Five years later, in 1625, in came the Puritans who set up places of higher learning such as Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard and many more. These were highly godly people Check out what part of the application to be accepted into Harvard use to say:
When any scholar is able to write and speak true Latin in verse and prose he may then apply. He must also decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns, verbs in Greek, Latin and Hebrew he may apply. Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly press to consider well the main end of his life and 3 that is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life (John 17:3). And therefore, to lay Christ in the bottom as the foundation of all true knowledge and all true wisdom. And seeing the Lord only gives wisdom, let every student and scholar seriously set himself to prayer and seek it daily. Everyone shall so exercise in reading Scripture twice a day and he shall be ready to give an account of his proficiency therein both in theology and in practical matters. All that profane God s name shall be dismissed. They that studiously redeem the time and observe all general hours shall diligently attend all devotional lectures. None shall frequent the company of such men of society that are unfit or dissolute in life. Every scholar shall arise in the morning hour immediately after sounding of his bell and open the Scripture for prayer, also the fifth hour at night During the next 125 years, 1.5 million people came in and 13 colonies were set up. This brought BIG TIME problems, because all of these people were not coming for the same reasons. In 1741 there was so much discord they experienced the famous Philadelphia riot. Later that year, in the month of March, New York City burned. Religion plummeted, a country once founded on worshipping God, now was seeing dark times. However, much like we read happened over and over again in the Old Testament, the people began to cry out to God again and He heard them! Four months later, on July 8 th, 1741, a man by the name of Jonathan Edwards preached a famous sermon titled, Sinners in the hands of an angry God. This sparked something our history books refer to as, The Great Awakening. The next 20-30 years was a time when preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and James Davenport and others roamed throughout the colonies preaching powerful sermons and seeing many people repent of their sins and turn towards God. This revival set the stage for what would happen on June 11 th, 1776 when a man by the name of Richard Reed called together representatives from the 13 colonies. Exactly 241 years ago today, they all met, on July 2 nd, 1776 with a few others and literally locked the doors of the little building they were meeting in to ensure no one got in or out until their business was finished. Two days later, on July 4 th, 1776 Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and 54 others signed that wonderful document known as the Declaration of Independence. It had 486 words and they had made 68 changes to it, but it was a glorious day.
Not all of these men were perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, however, they signed a document that has within it s second paragraph this line: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 4 These truths are self-evident, in other words they re CLEAR, they re glaringly DISTINCT, and they re OBVIOUS. Anyone with half a brain should see that what we re about to say is a given! ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL Men are CREATED Not evolved. Where did they get that self-evident, obvious truth? By looking around. Romans 1:20 (NLT) For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, There is no God. But how did they get the idea that all men are EQUAL? By being trained in Scripture. Galatians 3:28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. John 3:16 God so loved the world ALL the world every race, person He has no favorites! Man Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. These rights were previously unheard of in the old country, but because of the history of these men, because of the their Biblical training, because of the their heritage from the Puritans and the Pilgrims, and because of the influence of the traveling evangelists of their day men like Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield because of all that: These men wrote that every person has the right to: LIFE Genesis 1 God breathed into man and man became a living soul Life is given by God and must not be taken away from him in the womb or out of the womb LIFE itself is a right given by God. LIBERTY John 8:32 You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Pursuit of Happiness Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God... Okay what are you suggesting, Michael? I mean, this is a nice history lesson, but what s it all about? The point I m attempting to make is that, much like in Old Testament times, much like in the days when Jesus first came history has a way of repeating itself
5 It seems that each time God stirs up people and they return to Him after a while they begin to do whatever THEY want to do. They begin to turn away from His ways, they begin to distort His Word, they begin to call things that are evil good they begin to think and teach that He s actually okay with sin. He s not. I m not trying to re-preach Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the hands of an angry God today, but I do think that, as we are thinking about 4 th of July celebrating our great country and even watching fireworks that we take a moment to think about where we are as a culture as a country as a Christian and from where we ve come. Perhaps the Lord, like He did in Malachi chapter 3, is turning up the heat a little, in order to purify the Levites the priests our country perhaps God has allowed the heat to be turned up in your life in order to work the purification process in you and me? Maybe that s okay? Maybe allowing the Refiner to heat things up will cause some of the garbage we ve had hidden deep within us to surface and then the Refiner can skim that stuff off the top. (Numbers 31:22-23) Do you know how the Refiner of fine metals would know when his job was done? He d keep heating it up, over and over, and keep skimming the crud off the top, over and over until he could see his own reflection in it. Perhaps this is what God is doing? Perhaps the heat is being turned up, because He knows that the fire works and that what it will produce in each of us is a clear reflection of Him to this world. 1 Peter 1:6-9 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith the salvation of your souls. When you and I go through various trials when we go through the fire the result is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Isn t that what we truly want? John the Baptist said of Jesus: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. - Matthew 3:11 Why would Jesus baptize us with fire? Because He knows the fire works it cleanses us and we need it desperately! Remember what the prophet Isaiah said when he had that radical vision?
Isaiah 6:5-7 So I said: Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips (America); For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged. 6 Fire works. Gang we need it. May we not fight it. Refiner's Fire Lyrics by Brian Doerksen [Intro] Let me be as gold and precious silver Let me be as gold, pure gold [Chorus] Refiner's fire My heart's one desire Is to be holy Set apart for You, Lord I choose to be holy Set apart for You, my Master Ready to do Your will [Pre-Chorus] Cleanse me from within And make me holy Cleanse me from my sin Deep within Communion: 1 Corinthians 11:23-31 23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me. 25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord s death till He comes. 27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord s body. 30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. 31 For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. Let s pray