Today we continue in our study of the scriptural teaching about fire, which represents in Scripture the dedicated, committed, involved life of God in our soul. The verse that by God's grace I will seek to expound today is admitted by all Bible scholars and commentators as not an easy verse — but exceedingly important. It is Luke chapter 12, verse 49.
Luke 12:49: "I came to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled." What did Jesus come to do? Powerful, striking words. The Lord Jesus does not mince his words. He does not say things which are easy to understand or to swallow. He is not afraid if his words offend people.
Verse 50 continues: "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished." He looks longingly towards his baptism. Now, those of you who study Scripture know that he has already been baptized. The baptism here — as younger Christians need to know — is referring to his death. Baptism represents death in the Bible. When you are baptized into Christ, you died with Christ.
In order to understand this passage, the first step is to compare other similar statements of the Lord Jesus about the purpose of his coming. Before you rush to commentaries, sit down and let God teach you. Be willing to wrestle with the word of God, and say, "Lord, I will not let it go until you bless me with it." In my own experience as a young Christian in China, there were no commentaries to rush to — I had to wrestle with the text on the cold concrete floor until the Lord taught me.
Take Matthew 9:13: "I came to call sinners, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Or Matthew 20:28: "I came not to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many." Luke 19:10: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost." And John 10:10: "I came that you might have life, and have it in all its abundance." When you put all these verses together, you can see what this fire is about.
I came that you might have life — not just survive, but have the fullness of God's life in its completeness and abundance. That is the great pity with so many Christians: they survive barely as Christians, scraping along on hands and knees, with no abundance of life and no deep inner joy. I am struck by how few Christians have that deep inner joy and satisfaction — not a grin from ear to ear, but a joy so deep that you can put them through labour camps and nothing wipes it out.
Now, many commentators have made a mistake in interpreting this passage. Some take the fire to mean dissension or persecution, connecting verse 49 to verse 51 while forgetting the intervening verse 50. But they have confused cause and effect. The fact that Jesus' coming results in division does not mean that division was the purpose of his coming. If I throw a ball and you fail to catch it and it hurts you, that was not the reason I threw the ball. We must be crystal clear and discern between cause and effect.
The early church fathers, almost every one of them, saw this accurately. John Chrysostom's commentary on Matthew, for example, is superb — and yet you cannot buy it at any bookshop today. These great men of God with their fine spiritual understanding saw that when Jesus says, "I came to cast fire upon the earth," he was speaking about God's life brought into us by the Spirit of God. I claim no originality here at all; I am simply telling you what the early church has well understood.
Jesus came to give us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is he who brings God's life into my soul. You cannot become a true Christian, you cannot be born again, except by the Spirit of God. And Jesus said the reason he came into the world was to accomplish this very thing — that you, who are dead in trespasses and sins, might have God's life brought into your soul.
The second thing to notice is that fire can do two things. Fire can hurt you and it can save you; it can give life or it can destroy, depending on your relationship to it. The same fire that protected Israel from the Egyptians in Exodus 14 also separated between them. That same fire of God separates — it will divide even in your family. That is the effect of the fire, not the purpose of Jesus' coming, but what will happen.
Thirdly, notice the Lord Jesus says, "I came to cast fire upon the earth" — upon the whole world. You can see immediately his world mission: to cast this life-giving fire of God, the Holy Spirit, upon the whole world. This is exactly what Peter quoted at Pentecost from Joel chapter 2: "He will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh. Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams, your handmaidens will prophesy." Jesus said that is what I came to do.
Fourthly, notice the connection of fire and baptism. How is this fire going to be kindled? In verse 50 we see exactly the same strong emotion of longing, until it is accomplished. Namely, the fire and the baptism — the fire and his death. In other words, the connection is between the fire and his death. It is the death of Christ which kindles the divine fire in the earth. It is at the cross that God's fire was ignited in the world as it never burned before.
When I studied church history entitled "The Spreading Flame," I understood why it begins at Calvary. Jesus is not a person with some strange, twisted mentality who likes to suffer. He is longing for what will be accomplished by his death — namely the fire of God that is going to come down and begin to ignite the world. There at Calvary a fire was lit that has never ceased to burn through these two thousand years.
Fifthly, notice the strong emotion expressed throughout. It was said of the Lord Jesus that the zeal of God's house had eaten him up. The fire was already burning in Jesus' own heart until it went on to Calvary, where it was ignited like the fire that came down from above on Mount Carmel and consumed the sacrifice. That one fire changed the course of Israel's history. I would to God that there are many prophets like Elijah today — and Elijah was a man with the same weaknesses as we have. What made the difference was the fire.
My prayer for this conference is that God will kindle his fire in many hearts. When you go out of here, find a field of fire burning in your bones until you go on to accomplish the purpose that God has for you. There is a work that will not get done until you do it. As our brother Peter Yen said so beautifully about vectors — what happens to the whole vector force if you are not doing your job? You cannot do your job when there is no fire burning in your heart. You will have no power, no warmth, no love, no joy, no light. Let us pray.
# The Baptism of Fire (Part B) — Dying with Christ: To the World, to Sin, and to the Flesh
"The pioneer and finisher of our faith" — that is the Lord Jesus, as Hebrews 12:2 describes him. He goes first ahead of us and will see us through to the end. Next time you are going through a hard time, remember this: there is nothing you have gone through that he has not gone through before you. And as you go through that fire, you have fellowship in his sufferings, precisely because he went there before you. That fellowship gives quality to the Christian life and purifies it.
When God deals with you in this way, he is dealing with you as his own precious sons. I do not smack my neighbour's child — that child is not mine. But when my child does something wrong, I discipline her because she is my child and I love her dearly. Many times when I disciplined my daughter, she embraced me and wept, knowing it hurt me as much as it hurt her. When God disciplines us it hurts him no end, but he does it because he loves us. So we see the conjunction of baptism and fire — it is this baptism of fire that we have to go through.
The Lord Jesus set his face as a flint towards Jerusalem to accomplish his mission. He had a goal. He had purpose. How many Christians, when you ask what they are going to do, reply, "I don't know, I'm waiting on the Lord's leading"? It is excellent to wait on the Lord's leading, but I hope you have some vision and direction. When you have God's fire burning in the heart, you have vision. When you have vision, it is very easy for God to lead you, even if you do not know all the intermediate steps.
Brother Yun was speaking of the fact that one quarter of the world's population is Chinese. The gospel must get to China — it burns in my heart. There are probably few days that pass in which it does not cross my mind: what am I doing, what is my job, how is the gospel going to reach China? I know what the goal is. What I am doing here in Canada is helping to build God's army to accomplish that task. We have a battle to fight, and we cannot fight a battle without an army. Think what God did with twelve dedicated men — he turned the world upside down. He will do it again with as many dedicated people, all building God's army in different parts of the world with the same fire burning in their hearts.
Now, how does the historic fire lit at Calvary affect me? How do I catch the fire? You will never catch this fire until you join with Christ in his baptism. You will never catch this fire until the Holy Spirit enters into your life. The fire is going to burn in the world only through his death. And that fire will not burn in your life until Jesus' death becomes not just a historical fact you believe with your head, but an experiential reality in your life.
A non-Christian historian also believes that Jesus died on the cross two thousand years ago. You say, "But I believe he died for my sins." That is fine — but just because you believe with your head and heart that Jesus died for your sins is not all there is. Consider the finest medicine in the world: that medicine will not heal you simply because you believe with all sincerity that it will. That is only the next step — you must take it and apply it to yourself. Faith in the Bible is much more than intellectual and emotional conviction; it is the application of Christ's death to your heart and your life.
When you were baptized, you were baptized into his death. How can you be baptized without knowing what happened to you? Romans chapter 6 is very clear: "We who have died to sin — how can we still live in it?" If dying with Jesus is purely a legal fiction, then of course you can still live in sin. But for Paul, it cannot be so. If I have truly died with him, that old way of life is past. In Mark 10:39, Jesus says to James and John: "The baptism I am baptized with — you will also be baptized with. My death will be your death." If you are a true Christian, his death will become your death.
Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:11: "If we die with him, we shall also live with him." He did not say, "If you believe that Jesus died for you, you will live with him." He said, "If you die with him." In Philippians 3:10, Paul speaks of "becoming like him in his death," so that the power of his resurrection may be manifested in his life. How many Christians know this in their experience? We need resurrected Christians today, not dead Christians. What can dead Christians do?
What does dying with Christ mean? I divide it into three points: dying to the world, dying to sin, and dying to the flesh.
First, dying to the world. Galatians 6:14: "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world." That is why Paul gloried in the cross — not because it is a nice gold cross on a necklace. Many Christians want to hold on to the world with one hand and to God with the other. Little wonder they do not know what the fire is. The world in the Bible does not mean the trees and the sunshine — it refers to that closed system of man that excludes God. Paul had everything this world could offer: intellect, brilliance, learning, position, status. He said: "I count them all as rubbish that I may win Christ." When the sun of righteousness rises in your soul, the glory of the world fades from your sight. That is what it means to die with Christ regarding the world.
Second, dying to sin. Sin is so attractive and so appealing — that is the real problem. Any of us who have been sinners know how enjoyable sin is. Stolen bread is sweet; the pleasures of sin are real. You cannot win the battle against sin on your own. Every time we fight with sin in our own strength, we will lose. It is only when the Spirit of God takes Christ's death and applies it to my life like medicine — when I receive it into myself and commit myself to it — that I can be delivered from the bondage of sin. The fire that Jesus came to bring into the world burns up the sin in our lives, but only when his death becomes a reality in my experience.
Third, dying to the flesh. Paul says in Romans 8:10: "The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive." Your body will never contribute anything to your spiritual progress. The flesh always lusts against the spirit. Unless you bring the flesh under control, you will never know the spiritual fire in your life.
There is a generation of Christians today that knows very little about fighting with the flesh. We are sloppy, weak, undisciplined. Two practical suggestions: first, learn to fast. Very little is said about fasting today, yet Jesus himself practiced it, and the early church practiced it twice a week. I have seen Christians who made no spiritual progress in fighting against sin until they started fasting — and then they began to win, and only then. Second, discipline yourself through regular physical exercise. Run until you are out of breath. Bring your body under control, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9: "I beat my body and keep it under."
Notice where we have come: we began with the fire that Jesus came to bring, and we end at the practical details of everyday life. That is how the gospel is. Unless you have done these things — unless you have entered into his baptism by dying to the world, to sin, and to the flesh — you will never experience the divine fire. But when you walk this path, the fire of God will begin to burn in your soul. Let us pray.