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[Music] The Incendiary Christ, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] And the Lord said, "Who then is the faithful and wise steward,

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whom his master will set over his household to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Truly I tell you, he will set him over all his possession. But if that servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed in coming,'

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and begins to beat the men's servants and the maid's servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour he does not know, and will punish him and put him with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master's will, but did not make ready or act according to his will,

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shall receive a severe beating. But he who did not know and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required. And of him to whom men commit much, they will demand the more.

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I came to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished." May the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Will you pray with me?

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I imagine all of you have had occasion at one time or another to watch the coming of a thunderstorm, to see the piling up of the clouds, the oncoming darkness,

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to hear and feel the hurrying winds, and then to notice how those winds die away as the pressure builds. And then there is the clap of thunder, and the blast of lightning, and the clouds open and the rain falls. We call it a cloudburst. So the word of Jesus that I would call to our attention tonight, I would like to describe as a kind of heartburst.

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Jesus is surrounded by angry clouds or crowds of Pharisees and Sadducees. The pressure of opposition of the multitudes is all about him. The winds of discord are blowing. The lightning of anger, the thunder of disagreement is all about. And suddenly in the midst of this, there surges up from the center of Jesus a kind of soliloquy,

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a word which he does not address to God and he does not address to men, a word not sent toward heaven or sent toward earth, a word he almost speaks to himself. Jesus suddenly erupts with this exclamation, "I have come to spread fire on all the earth, and would God it were already ablaze!"

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That's the word of an incendiary Christ. It's that word I want to think about with you for a while this evening. The first thing that's very obvious in that word is this. Jesus sees his mission as spreading fire on the earth.

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Now in the Old Testament, fire is intended to represent the powerful presence of God. You will remember when Moses encounters God, he encounters him where? At a burning bush. When God descends upon Mount Sinai to address all of Israel in the Ten Commandments, he makes his appearance in flames and in smoke.

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In the Old Testament, fire represents the nearness of God, but more than the nearness of God, God is seen as a refining fire, as that who by his warmth and brilliance reveals in those who behold him all of their inadequacies, their sins, their stains, those things in themselves that make them less than they ought to be. Fire not only shows the presence of God, it reveals the need of man, it turns man's pride into ashes.

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Now in the New Testament, fire continues to represent the presence of God. You will remember at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit of God descends upon the disciples, he comes in the form of tongues of fire. But there is more to the New Testament conception,

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for fire in the New Testament not only means the presence of God and the power of God and that which makes man sensitive to his sin, but the fire also means the love of God, the consuming, passionate love of God, especially as it is seen in the cross. Jesus, when he utters this word, utters another word,

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another word not addressed to heaven or to earth, not addressed to God or to the crowds, he says first, "I have come to spread fire on the earth and I wish it were already ablaze," but then he goes on to say, "I have a baptism with which I shall be baptized and I wish that baptism were already accomplished." Now when he says that, he's not referring to a baptism with water,

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for he had already experienced his baptism with water. Now scholars are agreed that Jesus, when he uses that word "baptism," is referring to his cross. He's referring to the baptism of blood, which will be his. And by setting these two sentences in parallel form, which was a very old and very honored Hebraic teaching device,

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by speaking of the fire and the baptism, what Jesus is really saying is this, "I've come to spread fire on all the earth and I wish it were already ablaze, and that fire will be ignited by my death on the cross, so let the cross come." Here you see is not only the power of God, but also the love of God.

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Now if you want to see what happens to a man when he gets into the presence of this kind of fire, look at Saul of Tarsus. Saul of Tarsus was a Jew among Jews. No one ever worked harder at being a Jew than Saul did. He tried so hard to make himself look good, he went around trying to make other people look bad. He sought to persecute the Christians. He was on his way to Damascus, where you heard some of them were hiding out,

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and he meets God, and the scriptures say that God appeared to him as a searing, blinding, flaming light. And it knocks him from his horse. And this man of steel, with a soul like iron, picks himself up out of the dust, blinded by the brilliance, and says, "Lord, what will you have me to do?"

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He's been stopped short by the power of God, but this light doesn't stop there. This light, this love, this fire of God begins to work its way into Saul's life so that he is transformed, he becomes Paul. And as you read the letters that this Paul writes, the majority of which appear in our New Testament, you will discover there that he very rarely mentions this experience of the power of God that knocked him off his horse.

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What he talks about all the time is this fiery love of God, which started at the cross and moves into his life. He says things like this, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "I am persuaded that nothing can separate me from the love of God, which I know in Christ Jesus my Lord." You see, what works most in Paul is not the awesome might of God that burns his pride into the ashes that's there,

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but more powerful even than that is this flaming, incendiary love that burns its way right down to the center of the man. So that later in his life he writes a line like this, "For me to live is Christ." And he doesn't write it out of fear. This isn't the attitude of the one knocked from his horse. He writes it out of love. This is the one who has been captured by God's compassion and faithfulness.

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Or bring the whole experience 1,600 years ahead. We're in the middle of the 17th century in France, and the noted French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal retires to his room early on the night of November the 23rd. He locks the door behind him, sits down, opens his Bible, and begins to read the 17th chapter of John, that great chapter in which Jesus' preparation for the cross is described.

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And here the beginnings of the agonies of the cross are evident. And in meditating upon this and opening himself to this, the fire of God's love leaps off that page and goes into Pascal's heart. And he begins to weep. Now being the scientist and the mathematician and philosopher that he is, he tries to observe what is happening to him.

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He reaches out and he takes a piece of paper, and he begins to write on the paper what he experiences. He writes the date at the top, and then he says, "From about half past ten in the evening until half past twelve." And then one word, big and bold, across the page. What word? "Fire!" After that, a whole post of phrases tumble from his pen as he tries to capture oceans of emotion in just a few atoms of ink.

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But the key word is "fire." "Joy, joy, joy," he says, "tears of joy." "Fire!" The love of God, the power of God, all of this moving in him, transforming him, changing him. A new man, one of the great saints of the Church. But what about tonight?

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As I considered this text and prepared myself to lead us in some thinking about it tonight, I was amazed to discover that I'd never heard a sermon preached on this word of Jesus, this magnificent heartburst of his. Not only that, but I couldn't find any books devoted to this text. Billy Graham wrote a book called "World Aflame."

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Now, you'd think that in a book called "World Aflame" there'd be something about this word of Jesus, not a word. Samuel Shoemaker, the great Episcopalian preacher, wrote a book called "With the Holy Spirit and with Fire." Now, you'd think in a book like that there'd be something about this text, and yet the text is never mentioned. The greatest book on discipleship written in this century is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship,"

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and in it hundreds of citations from Scripture are mentioned, and this text is never once deluded to. And I think that's so, first of all, because this is such a personal word of Jesus. It is something that surges out of the very center of him, a private comment that he makes really to himself. But also because, you see, this word of Jesus about an incendiary God and an incendiary faith and an incendiary passion,

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that word has awesome power when you let it speak to your heart. When I confront the truth that God is fire, that he is the light that looks down into the center of me, I suddenly become awesomely aware of my own ugliness, of my own sin, of all that which stains my own soul. The only word that I can utter of myself in the face of that kind of light is the word "No!"

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I can only say to myself, "No! You are nothing before the blinding power, judging presence of God." But right after that recognition comes the recognition that this fire of God is most perfectly manifest in all the flaming reality of a cross, the baptism of blood. And when I think of that, well, that truth moves with light down into my darkness,

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and it moves with warmth down into my coldness, and it moves with softness down into the midst of my hardness, so that I find myself somehow all light and soft and warm inside. And I want to cry out with others who've sung the song before me,

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"Teach me to love thee as the angels love, one holy passion filling all my frame, the baptism of the heaven-descended dove, my heart an altar, and thy love the flame." That's the first thing Jesus says to us in this word. He says, "I have come to spread fire on the earth, and I will not rest till every heart is an altar,

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and God's love as seen in me becomes the flame." But there's more here. Jesus not only says he comes to bring fire, but he says he comes to bring fire to all the earth. And the more I study the teachings of Jesus, the more impressed I am with his worldview.

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He confronted the Sadducees every day, and the Sadducees kind of thought that the kingdom of God was limited to the city of Jerusalem. He confronted the Pharisees every day, and they were willing to admit that the kingdom of God was a little larger than that.

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It included all of Israel except the Samaritans, of course. But Christ has a view of the kingdom of God which is a whole world wide. Look how often the word "world" comes to his lips. "I am the light of the world.

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Go ye into all the world. The kingdoms of this world. Woe be to the world. I speak of the end of the world."

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There was no puny parochialism in Jesus. He had a divine intention to change all of humanity. Theologians across the years have tried to decipher all of the meaning and the implication of the cross. And they've developed various theories of the atonement.

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Some talk about the vicarious theory of the atonement. Some talk about the substitutionary theory of the atonement. Some talk about the moral influence theory of the atonement. Some talk about the victorious theory of the atonement.

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It seems to me that Jesus talks about the incendiary reality of the atonement. And that is that when that cross is seen in all of its wonder and all of its power, it has a way of reaching out and will be satisfied with nothing less than the possession of the whole world. You know, I'm convinced in my own heart that there has never been a time in the history of the world

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when the world has been as anxious to experience the flame of Christian faith as it is today. Look around you. Look at the Muslim world. Given over to the worship of a book, the Koran,

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a book which they understand to be so holy that they wash their hands before they open it. Christian scholars have now begun searching out that book. And they have shown by applying to it the most rigorous literary tests, the same kind of tests, the same kind of theological and philosophical and literary examination

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which we give to our own Bible, they have found that it is really a crude and rather eclectic thing. And they have discovered in it nothing that is adequate for the social and the individual, the demands of this time.

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And many Muslims are coming to recognize that. There is a crisis within Islam today that has never been there before, an opportunity for the gospel that is new and exciting. Look at the religions of the Far East,

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at Hinduism and at Buddhism and at Jainism. They have a cyclical view of history. And that cyclical view that says that history repeats itself has led to an individual fatalism and to a deterministic view of society.

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But there has come to be a growing recognition within those faiths that these caste systems that look to yesterday and this denial of the reality of that which is about us, this indifference to the needs of men,

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all of this springs out of their faiths and it's inadequate for the needs of this time. And so they are open to a new conception of history, to a linear mode. And that linear mode has been basic to Christianity from its very beginning,

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part of its Hebrew heritage. The world of the Far East is open to a new understanding of truth, and Christianity has that understanding. Or more specifically, look at Taoism and Confucianism.

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Taoism and Confucianism are basically traditional faiths. They look back to your ancestors and things of that kind. They are isolating, they are stagnating. When Mao Zedong took over in China,

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he eliminated Confucianism but put in its place Marxism. And Marxism has the same characteristics. It isolates, it stagnates. He did away with the old emperors and made himself emperor.

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Now he's dead. His corpse hardly cold in his ornate tomb in Peking, and already the Chinese are turning against what he taught. There is a recognition, you see, that you cannot be isolated.

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You cannot be separated. You must move into the future. And the faith of the future, the faith of "win the world," is the faith called Christianity.

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There is a new opening to the gospel there, beyond anything we've known in 500 years. Look at Africa, South America, still caught in demon worship,

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caught up in cruel rituals and orgies of faith, the boot of superstition so heavy upon the necks of those continents that many people writhe under it still. Yet there's a reformation going on in those places.

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Sociologists of religion say that the Christian faith is growing so rapidly in Africa and in South America that before the year 2000, the majority of the people who live there will be disciples of Jesus Christ.

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Many say that the reformation occurring on those continents now will, in the total history of the Church, be more important than the Protestant reformation of 400 years ago. What an exciting time to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

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If you want to be an incendiary agent of the incendiary Christ, I challenge you to think about the world mission field. There has never been an opportunity for the servants of Christ

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in the name of Christ all over the world as there is today. You want a life of adventure? Think about that. Of course, when Jesus talks about taking the faith into all of the world,

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he not only means across the sea, he also means across the street. To have the world means to have here as well as there. And so we are called in this word of his about the fire of faith to think about the way we witness to those who are with us in the dormitory,

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on the campus, in our homes and neighborhoods. And of course, as soon as I bring that subject up, some people become very uncomfortable. They don't like to go about talking to other people about the Lord Jesus Christ.

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They think that the watchword of a real Christian should be tolerance. The thing to do is to tolerate other faiths. That's the cardinal virtue of our time, is that you can commit any sin that you want as long as you're not intolerant.

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As long as you let other people commit their sins, you may have a good time with your own. And I submit to you that that kind of tolerance is utterly without virtue, utterly without love, and utterly without passion.

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If we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and if we believe that what he says is true, that no man comes to the Father but by him, then captured by those two realities,

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we must go and sell and tell the good news of Christ to all who will hear. D.T. Niles, the great Indian Christian, was giving a series of lectures at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He was speaking all to Christians.

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And he said one night, "How many of you have non-Christian friends?" And almost everybody in the room raised their hand. Some very proudly. They were rather boastful of the fact that they had some atheists and agnostics

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in their circle of friends. And then he said, "Fine. I'd like to ask a second question. About these non-Christian friends of yours, how many of you feel very sad when you think of them?"

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That's the question. That's the real question. If there are your friends, how really concerned for them are you? If you were in a cancer ward as a patient,

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and your doctor discovered the cure to cancer and began to work that cure in your body so that you began to feel new strength and new health surging into you, what would you do about it?

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Would you keep it a secret? Would you be tolerant of other people's dying and let them live as they live and die as they want to die? Would you in the name of humility draw back from sharing what you knew to be true,

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lest you offend them and their doctors? Or would you perhaps get up and walk about the ward, flexing your muscles and pushing a few beds around, hoping that they will see the new strength which is yours,

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and seeing it be led to ask you why you feel this way and what your secret is? No, you wouldn't do any of these things. You would tell everyone in that room in every way you could what you had discovered. Cancer can only end their earthly lives,

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while evil can end their eternal lives. Cancer can only stop the body, while evil defeats the soul. If we would tell the one what holds us back

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from announcing with everything we've got the other. Christianity is not a club which we join on the basis of some past religious experience, where we sign in to exalt and protect some memory out of yesterday. Christianity is the passionate igniting of the world

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with the incendiary truth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that the warmth and the light and the softening power of his cross is available to whosoever would have it. To do that takes passion.

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And that's the last thing which I discover in this heartburst of Jesus. Passion. You notice what he says? "I have come to spread fire on all the earth, and I wish it were already ablaze." We're dealing with a divine pyromaniac here.

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Remember, remember that when he speaks of that fire, he understands it to be the baptism, and that baptism to him is a baptism of blood. When he cries out that the whole earth might be aflame, he is crying out for his cross.

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And I think that's what awes me the most about these words of his. Oh, I feel very awkward when I intrude into a word of Jesus which is a heartburst, a very personal word of his, that I'm not even sure I should be looking at or hear.

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And something gets very soft down inside of me when in this word I confront the reality of a present God who looks at me and is not pleased with what he sees. And I'm convicted and challenged by the evangelistic implications of this verse

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that call me to go into all the world, beginning right here. But the thing in the verse that gets me the most is the fact that Jesus, with great passion, longs to die in order that I might live.

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[bell rings] Please turn your cassette to the other side. I did find two scholars who have studied this verse at length. Elton Trueblood, the great Quaker scholar,

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writes many pages concerning it, but there's not much depth to them, surprisingly. And Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, considers them in a very, very profound way. And from the midst of all of his deep understanding,

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I draw just this single sentence. He says that when he confronts all of the implications of the fire of faith ignited by Christ on the cross, he looks at his own life and all he sees is smoke.

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And I can identify with that. If it's sacrificial love that ignites faith, then my life is smoke. If it's the blazing reality of the cross that wins men,

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then my life is smoke. If it's fiery faithfulness that's going to change the world, then my life is smoke. Every time I look at this passage,

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I remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego back in the Old Testament. Do you remember? They witnessed faithfully to God, and because of their faithfulness they were given a cross.

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They were thrown into a fiery furnace. The three of them bound up and thrown into that furnace. And after they were in there for a while, the king goes to the door to see what has happened.

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And he turns to the guard and he says, "Did we not throw in three bound?" And the guard says, "That's true, O king." And then these words are recorded in the third chapter of Daniel. The king says, "I see four men,

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and they're walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the appearance of the fourth is like the Son of God." That's what I call a close encounter of the fourth kind.

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Where do you experience the presence of the Son of God? In the fire. He says to us, this divine Prometheus of ours, "Take up your cross daily and follow me."

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He longed for his cross to win the world. And he says to us, "Take up your cross daily and follow me." And I look at my life, and I see no fire, but only smoke. In the last days of the Roman Empire,

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before Christianity became the official religion of the state, the Romans sent their legions for the last time up into Europe to defeat the tribes that came down so often to battle against them. One Roman legion marched up into Switzerland.

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It was winter. Word was received from the emperor at that time that all Roman soldiers were required to take an oath of allegiance to Caesar as God.

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And if they did not take the oath, they were to be put to death. Now, the Roman general who was in command of this legion that had gone up into Switzerland knew that in his company he had a troop of Christian soldiers, 40 of them.

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They were particular favorites amongst the men in his legion because they were outstanding wrestlers. This was the principal intramural sport of the Roman army, and these men were esteemed as wrestlers,

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these 40 Christian wrestlers. And the general knew that when he went to them and told them that they would have to bow down before Caesar, that they would not do so, and that he would then be

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in a position where he had to put them to death, and he did not want to do that. So he went to them to try to strike a proposition. He said, "Look, I know what your faith requires of you,

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and so rather than requiring you to bow down to Caesar, I will be satisfied if you will just pour out a small offering of wine, a libation indicating that you acknowledge him as your lord. That will be sufficient.

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If you will do that, we'll forget about the rest of it." But the 40 Christian wrestlers would not do it, and they would not yield to the entreaties of the general. And so the general ordered them to be put to death,

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not, however, instantaneous death. He thought if they had opportunity to think about their dying, they might be led to bow down before Caesar. So he had them stripped of their clothes

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and driven out onto the surface of a frozen lake, there to die in the cold, hoping that some of them before they died would be led to return to the shore to pour the libation and to live.

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And the general sat in his tent, and all the legions sat at their fires in bivouac around that lake. And out in the center of that frozen place, the 40 Christian wrestlers began to sing.

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"40 Christian wrestlers wrestling for thee, O Christ. For thee we claim the victory. From thee we claim the crown." As the night went on, the song became weaker and weaker,

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until just before the dawn it died completely away. And then suddenly out of the darkness, one of the Christians came crawling on his knees to the very tent of the general.

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And looking up at the sentry standing there, he said, "I will pour out the libation. I will accept Caesar as my lord." And the sentry looking at him said,

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"Since thou hast proved the coward, I will take thy place." And stripping off his clothes, he went out onto the lake, and when the sun rose, you could still hear one voice singing. "One Christian wrestler wrestling for thee, O Christ.

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For thee I claim the victory. From thee I claim the crown." Twice, at the fire of faith, frozen, but the flame of belief cold,

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but the warm passion of one committed heart leaped to the waiting openness of another heart. Jesus said, "I have come to spread fire on all the earth, and I wish it were already ablaze.

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And I hear that, and I am ashamed. For I know in my heart that only those who win for him the victory will receive from him the crown."

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Let us pray. Lord, I know that if I try to live a little like you, I shall be condemned, and I don't want to be condemned.

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There are some who already single me out. They laugh or sneer or drop me from their circle of interest and friendship. I'm afraid to stop and listen to what they call wisdom.

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They whisper to me, "Go just a step at a time." They say to me, "Don't take things so literally." They cry out to me, "Be more tolerant." They plead, "What good can one man do anyway?"

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They warn, "Beware fanaticism." Jesus, I hear your fiery words about our fiery faith, and they burn their way into my heart. Somehow the world's whispers

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become smoke and drift away, because I know you are right. Lord, help me to fight. Help me to speak.

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Help me to live the gospel. Set me on fire to the end, to the falling of the cross, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

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the love of God the Father, the communion of the Holy Spirit, be and abide with you both now and forevermore. [BLANK_AUDIO]