The World On Fire
“I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!” Luke 12:49-51 NLT
It all started in the Temple.
Zachariah, the old priest, had been chosen by lot to enter into God's presence – into the Holy of Holies, to offer incense. He stayed inside there for a long time. Too long. Because he was talking to an angel.
The angel told Zechariah that he and his wife Elizabeth – who was well beyond child-bearing years – would be given a son who would be great before the Lord. This son would be filled with God’s Spirit and would turn many hearts to the Lord. He would speak with the power of Elijah. He would prepare the way for the coming of another. The angel’s name was Gabriel. The coming son was to be named John.
Six months later this same angel Gabriel showed up with a similar message to a young virgin girl Mary, who was the young cousin of Elizabeth. She was soon to be married to a carpenter named Joseph. Gabriel told her she had found favor with God. The Holy Spirit of God would come upon her and she would give birth to a holy child. He would be called the Son of the Most High. He would be given the throne of his ancestor David. He would rule over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom would have no end. His name would be Jesus.
Angels would show up again. This time to announce the good news to shepherds in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. They sang a song of good news of great joy that would be for all the people. A great star would announce the birth of Jesus to wise men in a foreign land – Gentiles. They would journey to find him, to bring him precious gifts to honor a king.
And this unusual story of Jesus would begin to unfold. It would be told by ordinary people; an old Jewish priest and his childless wife, a young unmarried girl who found herself pregnant before her wedding night, common shepherds out with their sheep on a night like any other night and non-Jewish astronomers who watched the night sky. These were the first witnesses of God’s glorious signs announcing that the world was going to change.
Fast forward thirty years and John showed up first, just outside Jerusalem, shouting in the wilderness. This John was not shy or soft-spoken. No, he was loud and outrageous and convicting and powerful. He chastised his listeners. He called them snakes and compared them to trees ready to be cut down by an ax. The people were drawn to him and they followed him into the water to repent of their sins; to be washed clean.
“I baptize you with water,” he told them, “But one is coming who will baptize you with the fire of the Holy Spirit.”
When Jesus came to John for baptism, John introduced him to the crowds as the Lamb of God. The heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove as a voice from Heaven declared, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”
From that time on, for three short years, Jesus walked this earth. There is no historical doubt that this is true. There are too many stories from too many different voices of a man who did what had never been done before.
He healed the blind and the deaf, the lame walked, the insane became sane, the skin of the deformed lepers was renewed. The daughter of a Temple official, the only son of a widow, and a man named Lazarus came to life again from the dead. Jesus calmed storms with a word, made wedding wine out of water, fed thousands with a prayer, and walked on water. It seemed there was nothing he could not do.
He wore robes of a Rabbi. He taught the Hebrew scriptures in the Temple, yet he paid no attention to the laws of the Sabbath and he seemed to disagree with the teachers of the Jewish law more than he agreed with them. He challenged the appearance of keeping the law and questioned the motives of the heart.
He wasn’t afraid to touch. He put his hands on the blind and the leprous. He turned to confront a bleeding woman who had touched him in the street. He spent time talking with a scorned woman at a well in Samaria. He received the tears and caresses of a sinful woman at a banquet.
He shared his friendship with common fishermen, tax-collectors, political zealots as well as religious leaders and members of the ruling class, like Nicodemus.
He taught with authority things that no one had ever heard before. He warned of a coming kingdom with a narrow gate. He cautioned to count the cost of following him. He said he was the Bread of Life, Living Water, the Light of the World, the Only Way to the Father.
He said that He had come to do the will of his Father; to die to pay the price of sin and to defeat the darkness of death.
In the short time-span of one week, he made a kingly entrance into Jerusalem and kneeled to wash the dirty feet of his disciples. He insisted the Passover meal consisted of his body broken and his blood shed. He was arrested and found both guilty and not guilty before the Jewish court and the Gentile rulers. He was hung upon a Roman cross and died a violent death. His crime? He acknowledged he was God and declared he was King.
And here is the biggest problem of all with this man named Jesus: he rose after three days of being dead from a guarded, sealed tomb. Just as he said he would. And he walked and talked and ate with his disciples and the angels appeared again to accompany him back to heaven. And too many people saw it. And went to their own death saying they saw it.
But the story didn’t end. It continued. Ordinary people became extraordinary when they told the story of Jesus. Because Jesus sent the fire that had been promised so long before through the prophecy of his cousin John; the fire of the Holy Spirit. The flames of God’s own Spirit would fill each person who said, “Yes. I believe.”
2,000 years later, on literally the other side of the world, ordinary people continue telling the story of Jesus.
These are a few things that are undeniable in this story; God uses ordinary people to tell his story. Apparently, God is not picky – he will use anyone. An old priest, a young Jewish girl, a name-calling wild man like John. God can even use you.
God's plans are extraordinarily bigger than man's plans. The Jews thought God was sending an anointed Messiah to save them from the rule of the Gentiles. Instead, God was sending His Son to save both the Jews and the Gentiles from something much bigger: eternal death.
Jesus walked here for a few short years to show us what God looked like and then put someone else in charge when he left: God’s own Holy Spirit. Nothing in this world can slow it down, can stop it, can defeat it. His Spirit is like a hotly burning wildfire; consuming the dry and fruitless yet refining the silver into a shining sun that reflects his brilliance.
Let your fire burn, Lord Jesus.
Questions: Do you want to rewrite this story to one of peace and unity? Is it surprising to read that Jesus declared he brought division? Do you ever think of the horror Jesus experienced at the hands of his own people? Why do you think there can never be peace in this world?
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.