consuming fire

There’s something really bad in store for bad people.

It seems like they have their way now, but listen to what God says in Isaiah 30:30-33. “The Lord will cause people to hear his majestic voice and will make them see his arm coming down with raging anger and consuming fire, with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail. The voice of the Lord will shatter Assyria; with his rod he will strike them down. Every stroke the Lord lays on them with his punishing club will be to the music of timbrels and harps, as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm. Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its fire pit has been made deep and wide, with an abundance of fire and wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.”

I don’t like passages like this. It seems too much; the violence and ongoing, torturous suffering seem out of place. Even for my worst enemies, I wouldn’t want this.

But this is how much God hates sin. And this is what all of us in this sinful world deserve. God in his perfect holiness cannot abide the affront of all our deliberate wrongdoing. He will not; just because he is patient now, to give us a chance to repent, that doesn’t mean the world gets a free pass.

One day, the Lord will lay into them with his punishing club, as this passage describes, to the sound of music. This cleansing will almost be an act of worship, a thing accompanied by the harps of heaven. It will be right and good, even though it seems so bad.

It’s scary, but it fills me again with gratitude that Jesus took all that anger for me. Jesus died the torturous death so I don’t have to. When God comes in judgment, I’ll be spared for Jesus’ sake.

I’m not grateful enough for that, because I don’t think about it as much as I should. And I don’t take the business of winning souls seriously enough because I don’t keep in mind what will happen to the ones who aren’t saved.

It’s so easy to live life, and in the process forget that all my business isn’t what life is about. My eternity is at stake, and so is everyone else’s. I can’t be the Nero who fiddles while the whole world burns.