Part I: Hard
Truths and the Real God
I want to start off this morning with a question. What is your
God like? Hopefully you are here because you have a desire to
know Jesus Christ and an idea of who Jesus is. We've talked
before about how easy it is make gods out of money, or alcohol,
or sex or drugs, or even good things like family relationships
and friendships. Anything in your life that you set above God
is your god. That thing, whatever it is, is your idol. But sometimes
that thing that we set above God is not an addiction or a relationship
but a construction or an understanding of God that is false
and yet so comforting and so familiar that we cannot let it
go and in the end we miss the true God.
There are many people, church people, believers, who have an
understanding of God formed primarily by what they see on television
or in movies or what they hear from their friends, or even from
little snippets of scripture learned in Sunday School taken
out of context. It's possible, for example, to hear the passage
from 1st
John 4 : “God is love” and, ignoring everything else in
scripture, build an image of God in your mind that is utterly
false. God is love but God is also justice. God is also holy.
God is also jealous. God also hates sin.
The best test or to measure your understanding of God, is to
hold up your god next to God as he has revealed himself in the
bible. This is especially true when you come to hard texts like
the one we heard this morning where Jesus says that he's come
to bring fire and division to the earth. How do those words
hit you? Do you come away saying to yourself: “My Jesus wouldn't
say that”?
If so, you're probably right. He wouldn't. And that's the problem.
Imagined gods are a lot like imaginary friends. They only do
what you want them to do and say what you want them to say because
they're yours. But real friends and the real God often make
us uncomfortable. God is who he is ( Exodus
32:14 ). He's not ours to control. He's not bound by your
sense or my sense of what he should do or not do. And that's
a good thing because my sense of what is good and what is bad
is often very wrong. Part of being a follower of Jesus Christ
is surrendering your image of God and learning to follow and
to love God as he reveals himself.
We have a challenge of that sort in this morning's gospel. To
understand the text will require that we set aside the world's
image, possibly your image of God, of Jesus Christ, and let
Jesus reveal himself to you as he is. Jesus is called the Prince
of Peace ( Isaiah
9:6 ). Jesus says in the beatitudes, blessed are the peacemakers
( Matt
5:9 ). He commands, in the Sermon on the Mount, that we
should go to great lengths to remain at peace, even with our
enemies, even when they attack us ( Matt
5:38-48 ). These are all familiar concepts to us. But what
do we do when faced with a passage that seems to directly contradict
the idea that Jesus is the Prince of Peace.
Open your bibles to Luke
12:49-53 , beginning in verse 49:
49"I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it
were already kindled!.
This translation of verse 49 is actually a little too passive.
The Greek reads something like: I came to “cast” fire on the
earth or “throw” fire and I'm distressed or anxious to kindle
it.
Fire is used in two ways in the New Testament. First, it is
used as a metaphor or picture of the Holy Spirit's work in the
heart of believers. When you surrender to Christ the Spirit
enters and begins to purify your heart. The fire of the Spirit
is a cleansing and a refining agent for believers. Over time
it burns away the impurities of your heart.
But when fire is used to refer to those who do not believe,
it almost always refers to eternal punishment.
John the Baptist specifically linked this fire of judgment to
the coming of the messiah, Jesus, when he said the coming messiah:
“will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the
barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." ( Matt
3:12 )
In Revelation
20:11-15 , we're given a picture of the fire Jesus Christ,
the messiah, longs to cast. When Christ returns, he'll judge
everyone who has ever been born “according to what they've done.”
All will be found guilty. If your name is in the book of life;
if you've repented and surrendered your life to Christ, the
righteousness of Christ will be credited to you and his blood
will cleanse you of sin and your guilt will be remitted. But
if your name is not in the book of life then your guilt will
remain and, Revelation
20:15 says, you will be thrown into “the lake of fire”
where you will spend eternity. Fire here, again, is used metaphorically.
It represents the heat of God's wrath.
For some then the fire that Jesus brings to earth will be cleansing,
restorative fire and you can have it now. For others it will
be the fire of wrath and while you will experience it here in
your present life, it will come fully and finally at the end.
Pay attention to this distinction, this division, illustrated
by fire, which runs throughout the scriptures between believers
and non-believers. This division is crucial to the rest of the
text.
Now before the fire can come Jesus says in verse 50, that he
must endure a trial. He calls it his baptism. “But I have a
baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!”
He's referring to his crucifixion, his baptism by fire. It may
seem like an odd place to bring that up, but it's not. It's
perfect. The crucifixion belongs here because it is the act
that enables the fire he brings to purify rather than destroy
those who believe because at the crucifixion Jesus himself will
bear the fire, experience the heat of the wrath, that would
otherwise be eternally exhausted on them.
So Jesus came to cast fire on the earth but before he casts
it, he must offer himself to be burned up so that those who
believe, those who obey the call of God to surrender and submit
to his Son, will not be consumed.
In verse 50, Jesus longs to cast his fire on the earth but he
will not until he suffers, in place of his people, the judgment
that fire will bring on everyone else. He's anxious and distressed
about this suffering that lies before but it must come for your
sake and for mine so that we can have the fire of cleansing
rather than the fire of wrath.
Now, finally, he turns to his listeners and asks the rhetorical
question: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?”
He has to ask that because, in fact, many do believe that. The
messiah in Isaiah
9:6 is called the Prince of Peace. Now, likely, if you're
a 1st Century Jew you think that the messiah is the Prince of
Peace because he's going to destroy the enemies of Israel.
If you're a 21st Century American, likely, you think he's the
Prince of Peace because he has taught us the very principles
that, if applied, will lead to peace. And in some sense this
is true. If all sides would just turn the other cheek…if we
would simply beat swords into plowshares there would be peace
on earth. But, and this is the point, that sort peace is presently
impossible because human beings themselves, “we” will never
stand for it. We cannot establish peace on earth through our
own efforts even through the application of the principles of
the gospel because we do not have the collective will to do
it. Moreover, there is a reason for our unwillingness and our
inability and that reason is also the reason that Jesus "longs"
to cast fire and division on the earth.
Both the first century Jew and the 21st century American are
wrong, because both miss the underlying issue, the underlying
problem that must be resolved before the peace of Christ can
be established on earth. And, the point Jesus is making is that
resolving that problem, will not be a peaceful process. I've
not come to bring peace, at least not the sort of peace you
expect and probably want. “No, I tell you, but division.”
We tend, just like first century Jews, to misunderstand the
meaning of the word peace and misunderstand what it means to
call Jesus the Prince of Peace.
Most people would probably say that peace is the absence of
war when we are talking about nations and the absence of conflict
when it comes to human interpersonal relationships. The problem
with this definition is that often, if our goal is just to achieve
that kind of peace, we end up in situations that seem peaceful
when, in fact, there's no real peace. A husband and wife, for
example, can stop fighting, can just agree to end a conflict,
but that doesn't always mean they're at peace does it? I've
known couples who've been coexisting “peacefully” for years
but without real peace.
Have you ever decided to just stop fighting about something
even though it's unresolved? On the outside, it seems like peace,
but because the dividing issue remains, there's no peace. The
same thing can happen on an international scale. Neville Chamberlain's
peace treaty with Adolf Hitler comes to mind. The treaty, the
“peace” accord, won temporary relief from conflict. But because
the underlying problem, Hitler's aggression, was unresolved
it was only a matter of time before war broke out again. There
was a peace treaty, but no real peace. Often this is the kind
of peace we want. We want an end to fighting, but not real lasting
peace because real lasting peace in a sinful world, and this
Jesus' point, will only come after the underlying cause of war
and interpersonal conflict is resolved and resolving it will
require conflict and division and fire on the earth. This is
precisely why the Prince of Peace says, “Do not think I've come
to bring peace.” God is not a God of half-measures. He is not
willing to settle for peace when, in fact, there is no peace.
Jesus' tells his disciples in John
14:27 : “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I
do not give to you as the world gives.” I do not bring you the
sort of peace that the world calls peace. I bring you real peace
but it comes through the fire and through division.
