Part 2

Do you ever get heartburn? Is it caused by gastric reflux or strong emotion? The Bible compares several emotions to fire, and one the most common is anger. We still use the same comparison: "He was boiling mad." "That really burns me up."

Psalm 79:1-9; Judges 6:36-40, Heartburn (08/20/25)

If you read the advice columns in the paper, you know that jealously burns like fire. The LORD, who makes no secret about being a jealous God (Exodus 20:5, 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:24, 5:9, 5:15, 32:21; Joshua 32:21; Ezekiel 36:6, 39:25; Nahum 1:2) has allowed the nations to come into Judah and Jerusalem because of the unfaithfulness of the Jews. The psalmist Asaph asks, "LORD, how long is your jealously going to keep you angry at us?"

An earlier nation, the Midianites, also oppressed the Israelites. God tells Gideon to lead the people against Midian, but Gideon is a skeptic. "If it's really you, show me a sign." God does. Gideon, who really doesn't want any part of leading an army, then asks for the opposite sign, and God gives him that sign, too! God deals with honest doubt a lot more patiently than with apostasy.

Lamentation 5:7-14; Mark 1:30-31; Luke 24:27-32; 1 Corinthians 7:1-9, Heartburn (08/21/25)

Any doctors out there? I gather that famine doesn't cause starvation directly, but it commonly opens you up to contagious diseases like typhus that do cause fever. I'm not sure why I've got physical fever in with heartburn.

We can also burn with enthusiasm or with desire, and both of those are heartburn.

Deuteronomy 4:23-24, 6:14-15; Psalm 79:1-5; Ezekiel 36:5; Nahum 1:1-6; Song of Solomon 8:1-6, Jealously burns like fire (08/28/25)

Jealousy and anger burn like fire.

As long as we're reading from Song of Solomon, we need to remember that it's a duet between lovers, with a chorus in the background. You usually have to figure out which of the three is singing from what they're saying, although a few translations label the parts. The English Standard Version labels sections "He," "She," and "Others," and the Jerusalem Bible uses "The Bride," "The Bridegroom," and "The Chorus." I looked at those two translations and John Wesley's notes, and just as I suspected, they divide the parts three different ways. It doesn't pay to be too dogmatic about this sort of thing, but it is nice to know that sometimes your opinion is as good as anybody's.

Proverbs 25:21-22; Romans 12:9-21, Burning Coals (09/11/25)

I can get behind overcoming evil with good, but I've always thought it defeats the purpose of overcoming evil if I try to do it by heaping burning coals on my enemy's head. Isn't it a teensy bit evil of me to want even my enemy to be ashamed or humiliated? Love God, love your neighbor, and remember that your enemy is your neighbor, too.

Ezekiel 20:45-49; Luke 23:22-31, Fire burns wood, both green and dry (08/18/25)

Anyone who's ever built a campfire or lit a fireplace knows that dry wood burns, and green wood doesn't. Anyone who's ever seen a forest fire knows that when the forest is dry, even the green wood burns. What I didn't know was that Jesus might have been alluding to the prophet Ezekiel when he said, "If this can happen when the wood is green, what do you think will happen when it is dry?" Ezekiel says the blaze will burn everything in its path.

If you haven't already, get a Bible with cross references; however, I looked at three, and none of them made a connection between Luke 23:31 and Ezekiel 20:47. So I could be all wet, but since all three commentaries gave different interpretations of Luke 23:31, I figure my guess - and your guess! - is as good as anybody's.

2 Kings 25:1-12; Nehemiah 1:1-4, 2:15-18, The Babylonians burned Jerusalem; Nehemiah led the effort to rebuild the walls (08/26/25)

The kingdom of Judah was defeated by the Babylonians in 597 B.C.E., when they razed the city, burned the temple, the city, and the gates, tore down the walls, and took the people (the ones who hadn't starved to death or been killed, that is) into exile. In 539 B.C.E., the Persians conquered the Babylonians. Overall, they seem to have been kinder to the Jewish exiles, and they let any of them who wanted to go back to Judah do so (2 Chronicles 36:23). When Nehemiah, who was a wine-bearer for King Artaxerxes of Persia (Nehemiah 2:1), heard about the sad state of affairs in Judah, Artaxerxes let him go back for a while (Nehemiah 2:6) to straighten things out. Nehemiah rallied the Jews of Jerusalem and led the reconstruction of the city walls.

Ezekiel 15:1-8; John 15:1-6, Unfruitful branches are burned (08/29/25)

The vine is another standard symbol for the children of Israel, and like the adulterous wife, the vine often behaves badly. God takes the vine out of Egypt and plants it in the promised land, tending it carefully (Psalms 80:8-11). God expects to get wholesome fruit, but when the fruit is bad (Isaiah 5:2) or given to false gods (Hosea 10:1-2), the vine is destroyed or the branches are burned. Be fruitful.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Is Israel always unfaithful?" No, but it's mainly the prophets talking about Israel as God's wife or vineyard, and God primarily sends prophets when we're behaving badly.

Daniel 3:1-6, 13-30, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace (07/28/25)

Let's hear the story of the fiery furnace from some special guests, Larry Clinton & His Orchestra.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, The fiery furnace wasn't reserved solely for Daniel's friends (07/29/25)

Here's a gloomy parable; you probably know it as The Wheat and the Tares. Wheat and darnel are almost impossible to tell apart when young, and in any case you might uproot some wheat even if you actually have hold of darnel. (Just about anybody who's ever weeded a garden knows how difficult it is to get only the weeds.) So the householder says, "Let them all grow until we can tell them apart, and then we'll throw the weeds into the furnace."

This story is really more of an allegory than a simple parable, because everything stands for something, and it seems to have more than one point. The point we notice right away, of course, is that at the time of judgment, some folks aren't going to make it; that's sad. We should remember two other points, however. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the sinners from the righteous: if God and his angels can't tell, maybe I should withhold judgment. And when I'm inclined to wish evil on some really obvious sinner, I need to worry that a lightning strike on him might very well set his neighbor's house on fire. So leave the sorting to God on Judgment Day, and love all your neighbors in the meantime.

1 Kings 16:1-20, Death in a Fire (09/08/25)

When you read 1 and 2 Kings, you can't tell the players without a program. There are several reasons for this. Judah had good kings, okay kings, and bad kings, and Israel had okay kings and bad kings, so that's no guide. Several pairs of kings in Israel and Judah had the same name, so you can't just memorize the names. The standard formula for introducing a new king in either Judah or Israel is, as we see in vs. 8, "In the x-th year of [name] king of Judah/Israel, [name son of name] began to reign in Israel/Judah, which is really confusing.

One guide is sure, however: if the new king is an assassin, we're talking about Israel! Baasha killed King Nadab (1 Kings 15:25-26), Zimri killed Elah, the son of Baasha; and a few other assassins killed a few other kings of Israel. Omri missed being an assassin only because Zimri died before he could get there. King Zimri of Israel lasted a week and died by fire.

Zimri was a bad guy, I'll grant that; however, it has always seemed a little unfair to me to say that one of his evils was walking in the way of Jeroboam, the first king of Israel. Jeroboam set up idolatrous shrines at Dan and Bethel, and no following king of Israel took them down.

That was bad. But Zimri was only king for a week, and most of the time he was under siege. In what idle moment was he supposed to destroy the shrines? But still, he walked in the way of Jeroboam, making Israel to sin.

And by the way, the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel is not our Chronicles. The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel is lost to us.

Luke 16:19-31; Matthew 25:31-46, Eternal fire (09/09/25)

Today we read two parables in which eternal fire is a destination for those who do no acts of mercy during their lifetimes. It's generally a mistake, however, to get too hung up on the details of parables, because they generally have a single theological point.* I think the single point of both the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man and the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is that you only get one chance to make the best use of your time, and you'd better take it by doing justice and loving mercy while you live (Micah 6:8). There may be eternal fire, but you can't prove it from these parables, because it isn't the point.

* Unless, of course, they are allegories. Sigh.

2 Thessalonians 1:1-12; Psalm 97:1-7, Fire and vengeance (09/10/25)

Paul and the psalmist agree that the LORD and the Lord will appear in fire to inflict vengeance on their adversaries. Although Paul doesn't quote the psalm directly, I wouldn't be surprised if he had it in mind.

Nahum 1:1-2:5, Fire of wrath, fire of war (09/15/25)

Pastor Josh has been preaching a series on Jonah, which is a satirical parable about prophets (and other people of God, like you and me) who get all bent out of shape when God has mercy on our enemies. As you know, Jonah was sent to Nineveh. Maybe you also know that the reason the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel are lost is that the Assyrians, whose capital was Nineveh, invaded Israel, deported everybody that they didn't kill, and brought in other defeated peoples. The Jews were not fans of Nineveh. The real prophet Nahum also prophesied about or to Nineveh. His words would have been more palatable to Jonah (and other people of God, like you and me), because he said that Nineveh was likely to get what was coming to them when God poured out his wrath like fire. Sadly, the real Nineveh did not repent of its arguably evil ways of rapine and conquest, and Nineveh was besieged and sacked in 612 B.C. The Assyrian empire was overthrown, apparently by a coalition of its vassal states, in 605 B.C.

The message of Nahum was that the Assyrians should repent. The message of Jonah is that we should repent.

John 18:18, 25-27, 21:4-14; Acts 28:1-6, The campfire is a wonderful invention. (08/08/25)

One of the greatest inventions of all time is the campfire. Whoever came up with the idea of taming a powerful, scary, natural force and putting it to work for us was a genius on a par with Einstein or Hawking. Peter warmed himself by a campfire when he betrayed Jesus at daybreak, and Jesus invited Peter and the others to breakfast around a campfire when he gave Peter the opportunity to redeem himself at daybreak. It was early morning (Acts 27:33, 39) when Paul and the other survivors of a shipwreck were welcomed to the island of Malta with a campfire.

Isaiah 44:6-20, Prophets can be sarcastic about campfires. (07/30/25)

Isaiah, on behalf of God, ridicules idols and the people who worship them. "You will cut down a tree," he says, "to make an idol out of one end and firewood out of the other end. Yep, the firewood warms you and bakes your bread; the idol does nothing. Get a clue." This is one of my favorite passages, although probably I should make sure I'm not worshiping things I've made.

Lamentations 2:1-22 (09/12/25)

I know you've heard that history is written by the winners. Well, not always. Our scripture is very often written by the losers, as we see in Lamentations. The Babylonians have besieged Jerusalem, the children are starving, the moms are eating their own children, and young men have been killed in the battle. Judah has lost.

But I have to hand it to the Jews: they don't whine, and they don't even blame Babylon for destroying their nation. Instead, they attribute this calamity to God, who has "burned like a flaming fire in Jacob." And, Jeremiah says, it's their own fault: "Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading." God sent a long series of true prophets, who told Judah what they were doing wrong and how to fix it. The true prophetic message for the most part fell on deaf ears, but people welcomed the false message.

When the end comes, Jeremiah says, "Rise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street." Even though Jeremiah is the gloomiest of the prophets, he still holds out hope that repentance will allow the people back into God's grace.

1 Samuel 11:1-11, 31:1-13, The people of Jabesh Gilead cremated Saul and his sons. (09/16/25)

When the city of Jabesh-Gilead was besieged by the Ammonites, the besiegers apparently gave the inhabitants a choice: stay where you are and starve or be overrun, or come out and have your eyes put out, and we'll let you live. The elders said, well, that's a hard choice, so here's our counteroffer: we'll see if we can get some help, and if not, we'll come out. So they sent to King Saul, who was brand new on the job (1 Kings 10). Saul raised an army and saved the Jabesh-Gileadites. They never forgot it.

Fast-forwarding until the end of Saul's reign, we see that he and his sons are killed in battle, and their corpses mutilated and disrespected. The soldiers who had gone to battle with him have run for the hills. When the Jabesh-Gileadites find out, they sneak in and retrieve the bodies, cremate them, and mourn him for seven days.

Cremation is completely forbidden for Jews, and this appears to be the only example in scripture of cremation of godly persons. (A few wicked people were cremated; Joshua 7:15, 25, 2 Kings 23:19-20, and Amos 2:1.)

Amos 1:1-2:5, God: an equal-opportunity smiter (09/17/25)

There was an old comic - I can't find it, but I'm pretty sure that it was a Frank & Ernest, by Thaves - in which one prophet says to another, "Do you ever have one of those days when everything seems like an abomination unto the LORD?" Amos was having one of those days. After calling down fire on Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and Judah, he finally gets to his main message, which is to Israel. That starts in vs. 2:6 and goes on for eight chapters of exhortations and threats that include fire in 5:6 and 7:4.

2 Kings 1:1-16; Luke 9:51-56, Calling down fire from heaven (09/18/25)

People shouldn't be rude to prophets or to Jesus and his disciples, but even so, I'm not sure that calling down fire from heaven is an appropriate response. Apparently, Jesus agreed with that.

That's not what I want to talk about. Read 2 Kings 1:1, and then read vs. 2. What? Verse 1 actually seems to go with the previous chapter, which is 1 Kings 22. I've told you many times that you have to read 10 verses before and after the bit you're interested in, even if that means reading across a chapter break. Now we see that it sometimes means reading across a break in books! Here it's because 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings are really all part of the same work, like Luke and Acts.

Also, note that Ahaziah is the "king of Samaria." Samaria was a city, the capital of Israel, and Ahaziah was king of Israel (see 1 Kings 22:51). Sometimes the whole nation was called Samaria, for example, here in 2 Kings 1:2 and in 1 Kings 13:32. If you get confused when you're reading Kings, it's because it's confusing.

Mark 9:14-29, Demons cause a boy to throw himself into the fire. (09/19/25)

As we saw in an earlier study, demons cause sickness and physical disability, but I think it's an especially evil demon that injures someone by casting them into the fire.

Who Jesus is addressing in vs. 19 has been widely debated. The spectrum runs from his disciples alone (who can't cast out the demon) to the whole crowd (which probably just wants to see a miracle). Jesus is pretty exasperated, that's clear, about somebody's lack of faith. I tend to go with the disciples, both because they were given authority to cast out demons way back in Mark 3:14-15, and because Jesus is patient with the father and son. But if you disagree, that's fine.

Deuteronomy 28:15-22; Matthew 8:14-17; John 4:46-54; Acts 28:7-9, Fever is related to fire. (09/22/25)

When someone has a high fever, we say, "He's burning up." We associate fevers with fire, and in fact our English word "fever" ultimately derives from "burning" or "heat," and the same is true in Hebrew and Greek. That hasn't got a lot to do with the scripture we're reading today, but I thought it was interesting.

Matthew 3:1-12; Acts 2:1-8, Fire for destruction; fire for baptism (09/23/25)

When I was a kid in Oregon, fire was a terrible threat to ripe wheat fields, but fire was used to rid the grass-seed fields of weeds after the harvest. Fire can cook your food or burn your house down. We see a similar dichotomy when we consider fire in scripture. The same Jesus who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Jeremiah 36:1-6, 19-25; Acts 19:11-20, Book burning has a long history. (09/24/25)

There are books I'll never read because I don't know about them, and books I'll never read because I do know about them, but books I'd burn? None that I know of. Jehoiakim was one of the late, bad kings of Judah, who "did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his fathers had done" (2 Kings 23:37). Apparently, he would receive neither the prophet Jeremiah nor his delegate Baruch. After Baruch went to the temple and read the scroll of prophecy to the people, a number of palace and temple officials were alarmed and decided that the king needed to hear it (36:16). The king wasn't alarmed and burned the scroll.

When Paul preached and worked miracles in Ephesus, some other folks tried to copy him, but it went badly for them. The people of Ephesus were alarmed, and they gathered up their books of "magic arts" and burned them, at considerable expense to themselves. Notice that they were using these books to practice magic, not to pretend about magic. We don't need to burn children's novels.

Malachi 4:1-6; 2 Peter 3:1-18, The Day of the LORD will make the West look like a single match. (09/25/25)

Oooo - if you're reading this on September 25 (some of you read the evening before), then either the Rapture didn't happen on schedule, or you and I got left behind. In fact, we need to remember three things:

There's just about zero biblical support for the idea of the Rapture. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 says, "We will be taken up in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air," but N. T. Wright says the Greek doesn't mean, "meet and be taken away." It can mean either "meet and escort in" or "meet and escort down the road a ways."
Jesus says nobody other than the Father, not even Jesus himself, knows when that will happen, so you just need to be ready all the time (Mark 13:32-33).
The context of 1 Thessalonians 4 shows that it isn't even really about Rapture. It's telling the Thessalonians not to worry about fellow Christians who have died before Christ's return. They're going to be fine (1 Thessalonians 4:13-15).

The Rapture shouldn't be confused with the Day of the Lord. Although both are concerned with end times, that's about all they have in common. There's a lot of scripture devoted to the Day of the Lord, and it's not going to be a meet-and-greet. It's going to be fire and destruction. Sorry.

Reader Comment: This just in from fellow-reader Daryl L.: "Very few people know just what will happen at the end of time, and they all disagree."

Zechariah 3:1-10; Jude 1:20-25, John Wesley was a brand plucked from the fire, and so are we all. Love God, and be safe (09/26/25)

When John Wesley was five years old, the family home caught fire. His parents and seven siblings escaped, but he was trapped in a bedroom. With no ladder, one neighbor stood on another's shoulders and pulled him through a window just as the roof collapsed into the room. His mother called him "a brand plucked from the burning," saved by God for a purpose. So are we all; make the most of it by having mercy on those who doubt, and saving others by snatching them out of the fire.

More of Fire! Fire!
Fire! Fire! - Part 1

Opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the author, Regina Hunter, and may or may not be shared by the sponsors or the Bible-study participants. Thanks to the Holy Spirit for any useful ideas presented here, and thanks to all the readers for their support and enthusiasm. All errors are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

Our Sponsors:

St. John's United Methodist Church, "Transforming Lives Through Christ."
2626 Arizona NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110

St. John's Music Ministries now has a YouTube channel, bringing you free concerts and choral music. Check it out!

Traditional worship services are held Sundays at 8:15 and 11:00 a.m. in the sanctuary. Casual worship services are held Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in the Family Life Center. Jazz Vespers are held monthly on the second Saturday at 5:00 p.m. in the sanctuary. St. John's feels especially called to the worship of God and to the service of our neighbors through our music program.

This website is supported in part by the generosity of Mrs. J. Jordan.