________________________________________________________________________

I have watched with some apprehension and careful interest the fires of California this past month (10/03) because my brother and his family live in the valley that is being threatened by one of the largest fires west of Los Angeles near Bear Lake. For those of you who have not heard or been paying attention to the news lately, there are several large fires burning out of control in California, and they have destroyed many homes and caused many to evacuate the area. The combination of many dry acres and a shifting, warm wind has caused these fires to become one of the worst in the modern history of the United States. Authorities there say that some of the fires were set by arsonists, some by hunter's campfires, and some by cigarettes thrown out of the window. These fires are huge and they have interrupted life in California in many ways. My brother says that when he goes out to his car in the morning, there is so much ash on the hood that it looks like snow. Everybody's breathing is affected. The smoke produced is in such a large volume that if you were standing on the moon looking back at earth, you would be able to see it. People who would have never given fire a second thought when it was small, now continually check on and are suddenly interested in these fires because of their size. Eye witnesses say that the roar of the wind and fire, and the change that they bring to the countryside is amazing.

I cannot help but be reminded about another fire that started small and took off in size around 2,000 years ago. The 120 disciples of Jesus were gathered together in the upper room of a house anxiously awaiting the "promise" of power that Jesus had promised to them. It would be called the "Holy Ghost" He had said, and they were not to go anywhere and do anything else until they had received it. Jesus had told them that "He had been with them, but He would be IN them." This Holy Ghost "fire" as John the Baptist had called it would be what brought on that change. The second chapter of Acts outlines the scene of the first fire-fall very clearly:

We teach from this passage often, and rightfully so, because this is the birthplace of the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. It was Jesus Christ who had commanded this small group together to await the promise and it was Jesus Christ who sent the Holy Ghost upon them. What I would like you to notice tonight is that all the elements of a large natural fire were also there in the Spirit: there was a great noise and wind, fire that fell upon everyone that was there, and a great change brought upon the lives that it swept into! Not only did their language change and their spirits change, but dreams and inhibitions and doubts were consumed and transformed in the fiery path of the Holy Spirit!

There can be no doubt from the scriptures that fire is a type of God's Spirit. Our text in Hebrews plainly states that God is as a "fire." But I want you to notice what type He is: not a small log burning in the fireplace or a smoldering pile of ashes, but He is a "consuming fire." The fire that fell on the Day of Pentecost was not just a spark of inspiration that each person there felt in their mind, but was an all-engulfing, all-encompassing, roaring, spiritual fire that consumed these men and women and changed their languages, lives, and personalities.

Such a fire could not be hid, because in the very next verse we find out about Jews from all over the city coming to see what was going on. Word was spreading fast about the spiritual fire that was burning bright on such and such street. Quickly a crowd formed. Whatever the people were doing lost to the excitement and fervor of a large fire burning in the midst of a city full of dry, dull religiosity. When the crowd got there, the fire had escaped out of the upper room and was now taking to the streets. People were drunk on the Holy Ghost and speaking in tongues on the sidewalks. Any resistance or doubt had been consumed by this engulfing flame of the Spirit. Even Thomas who before had been hesitant to believe anything that was out of the ordinary was having a Holy Ghost fit. Some critics showed up who had never experienced such a spiritual fire and immediately began what they still do today: try to reason away the supernatural power of God. But this fire was so large, even a few wet blankets could not put it out. It began to pull and nibble at the hungry hearts of the crowd. In a few moments, Peter -- not the scared man who had cursed and denied Christ three times exactly 50 days earlier, but a vessel now burning like the bush that appeared to Moses and yet lived -- stepped forward and preached to the people: "this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, in the last days, saith God I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." The consuming fire of God had fallen upon the dry hearts of men, and the world would forever be different!

Before the chapter and the day was over, three thousand plus the 120 were ablaze with the Holy Ghost fire and yet it continued to grow. It destroyed traditions and pride and anything that seemed to get in it's way except doubt. Carefully working it's way around those who refused to believe God for it, it leaped around Jerusalem and then began to work it's way throughout the Gentile world. There it still blazes today. People have gathered in mass to try to put out it's fires and contain it, and many have succeeded with obliterating it out of their church or particular organizations but yet it still continues to find hungry souls that want to be consumed by this God whose fire burns bright and Spirit changes lives forever. Peter preached it on that fateful day of Pentecost and it still holds true today: the "promise" is unto "you and to your children and those afar off, even as many as our God shall call." As long as God is calling people to Him, the fire is still there wanting to consume just one more person, to save and change just one more life! It's time the church of the living God get our eyes off the doubters and the critics who have never experienced the fire of Pentecost yet claim to know all about it, and get our eyes on the work that God is wanting to do even this holiday season. I cannot think of a better thing to thank God for or to receive as a Christmas present, than the all-consuming, powerful force called the gift of the Holy Ghost!

Pentecost was a fulfillment of John the Baptist's prophecy that we read in our other text. When John heard some of the people began to call him the Christ, he stopped them and said "oh no. I'm not the Messiah, but I've just come to get you ready for the Messiah. When the real deal comes, He will not just baptize you with water and repentance, but with the Holy Ghost and with FIRE!" We believe that water baptism is essential for salvation and so is repentance, but it is very obvious to stop there is to sell yourself short of everything that God has for you. You cannot serve Jesus Christ very well on a John the Baptist experience. John, himself, said that he was not even worthy to unloose the shoe laces of Jesus Christ. In other words, you may think that water baptism and repentance is a great experience and they are, but they cannot even compare to the experience of being engulfed with the Holy Ghost fire like they did on the Day of Pentecost. I do not remember very many specific days in the past, particularly one that happened before I was a teenager, but I very clearly remember every detail of the revival night in 1985 when the Holy Ghost fire consumed a young, nine-year-old boy's life and forever changed it. I can tell you the final story in the sermon. I can tell you the preacher. I can tell you the song that was being sung at altar call. I can describe to you people that were there and exactly where I knelt at the altar to repent of my sins. I can take you to the place where I was baptized and describe the carpet color and the people who were praying for me. That was a long time ago, but when you come in contact with a fire that big and that consuming, it is very hard to forget!

For many of you this seems basic, but actually I am preaching to the church tonight. I want to point out to you something that we tend to miss in our text and even more often in our life. John said that Jesus would "baptize" us with the Holy Ghost fire. He used the word baptize. It's baptizo in the Greek. I went back and checked the original language, and it is the same word used for "baptized with water" as it is "baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire." If you have been in this church more than one service, chances are you've heard me teach on Jesus' name baptism. We believe that around here. It's the only saving name, and we believe that the method used is important too. That word baptizo means "to fully immerse, to completely submerge, or to bury." There was not anyone sprinkled in the scriptures. In fact, John baptized in the Jordan, because the Bible says that there "was much water there." When you get baptized in the water, you need to go all the way under which symbolizes that your old man is being completely buried and the blood of Jesus is covering every one of your past sins.

But my point tonight is that John used the same term to refer to the "baptism of the Spirit." Jesus came to fully immerse us, completely bury us, totally cover us with the fire of the Holy Ghost. Some people who would never allow themselves to be sprinkled with water, are satisfied with a "little spark" of the Holy Ghost. They are satisfied to go from service to service with just a little blessing and little tinge of heat. They take their little flame and carefully nurse it for all it's worth until next service time. By the time they get back in here on Sunday, it's just a glowing ember, hoping that someone will have prayed and fasted and will be aglow with the power of the Holy Ghost so it can get some help.

Why are some people content to live just as a glowing coal covered with ash? The only time that you see a glimpse of fire, is if the service manages to blow off a little of the white stuff. Then they glow a little bit, for a little while, until they leave the place where the wind was blowing and go back to their contented, little lives. But I'm here to tell you today that it has NEVER been the will of God for you and I to barely get by as a little coal that is on it's last legs of the Holy Ghost. The will of God is for you to be baptized with the fire, immersed in it, consumed by the all-consuming Spirit of God and for you to live in the rip-roaring fire of the Holy Ghost from week to week! You can tell the size of your fire, by the response that you get. If it's burning hot enough, then people cannot resist staring at it. They are drawn to it. You get the fire big enough and people will forget about whatever was important to them before and will become infatuated with it. They'll even catch on fire themselves. You get the fire hot enough and big enough, and the dead wood around it will start combusting into flames.

What God is waiting on is for someone to get the revelation that God did not intend for the Holy Ghost to be a one time occurrence that was the best day of your life and a pleasant memory, but rather the start of a lifetime of being "baptized with the fire." He is looking for someone who will catch fire and get so full of the Holy Spirit that it will begin to consume them. That your worship gets a little beyond your control and norm. That the doubt and fears and inhibitions of your personality get consumed and devoured by the Holy Ghost flame that is burning so strongly! If we try to do it our way, then building a church the size that should be here will be a struggle for the next 25 years or so. But if God could get just a handful of people to get so ablaze with the fire of the Holy Ghost, that they allow God to consume all of them, then we would have no problem seeing 120 or a thousand for that matter filled with the Holy Ghost. If you get the blaze hot enough and big enough, then people will be drawn in for miles around. There will not be any need for advertising.

Don't tell me the God that fills the universe desires to be a little spark or flame in your life. He is a consuming fire. He is waiting on someone to catch fire, burning, immersed, baptized with the Holy Ghost! We need an good old-fashioned revival of people ablaze with the Holy Ghost. I've began to pray daily for the last few weeks to God "it's been too long since we've seen people easily get the Holy Ghost." It bothers me, and I apologize that some of you think the norm is someone getting the Holy Ghost every few months after a time of struggling. That is not the norm with God. God wants to consume everything in sight. He wants to do what He did on the Day of Pentecost when He filled ALL the house where they were sitting and the fire sat upon EACH of them. Don't tell me that God cannot do that today in this place in this county. There were all walks of life and personalities and ages in that room on the Day of Pentecost. Don't tell me that God could not start a spark that could set everyone in this place so ablaze that the town of Castroville would come up here tonight to see what's happening. God has not changed. But I told Him, it's been too long since I've seen people just get the Holy Ghost sitting in service or during the worship, and do you know what God told me? "If you get the fire hot enough, then everything around it that is dry will begin to burn!" We can put off a lack of Apostolic Revival on whatever excuse that we want, but when it comes down to it, God is waiting for me and you to get ablaze and totally consumed with the Holy Ghost fire.

________________________________________________________________________

Some of you may be familiar with the story in Genesis when God commanded Abraham to take his only, promised son and offer him as a sacrifice. There have many sermons preached from this passage of scripture, and there will be many more. We don't have time tonight to get into all the lessons and truths that can be learned from this story, but let me just point out a couple of things that you probably already knew and point out something a little different. First of all, Abraham did not balk at God's request to give up the thing most precious to him, neither did he disobey because God had never requested human sacrifice of anyone else. Abraham began to gather up the stuff needed for the sacrifice, except the normal sacrificial lamb this time, and took off for the mountain. When he go to the foot of the mountain, Abraham commanded his servants to stay at the base and wait for them. His exact words were "we go yonder to worship." I find it profound that what others might call sacrifice, and even the greatest sacrifice of his life, Abraham called worship! The worship and praise that means the most to God, is the part that costs you the most! It may be a sacrifice to you to come twice to the house of God on a Sunday, but I call it worship! It may seem a great sacrifice to you the way we live and things that we refrain from to avoid temptation and sin, but I call my lifestyle worship! We need to learn to view the things of God like Abraham: not as sacrifice -- even though they well be -- but as worship!

The interesting point about the story in Genesis 22, is found in verse 6:

"He took the fire in his hand." I want you to realize that Abraham did not leave anything to chance. He was going to worship and he made sure that everything was ready. And Abraham did not wait to get on the mountainside and try to find some flint and some dry brush. He didn't try to get a little bow -- like they tried to teach me in Boy Scouts and that I NEVER got to work -- and a little stick and try to cause a little spark that could somehow grab hold of the straw and cause a slight flame. The scriptures clearly declare that Abraham brought the fire with Him. He placed the burning embers and portions of the campfire in a censer or metal carrying pan and he went to worship.

How many of us walk into the worship service with our fire already going!? Or should I ask, how many of us come in with a little dead wood and maybe just a slight smoking coal and it takes 4 praise songs, lots of exhortation, and several blasts of the Holy Ghost before the flame of the Spirit springs up a little in our lives and we feel "a spark." And sometimes it just never springs up. And by the time worship service is over, we've gotten our Holy Ghost flame to a few inches and we've clapped our hands until it doesn't feel awkward anymore and we've raised our hands and maybe even jumped up and down a little bit until we stopped thinking of what someone might think about us. And as the preacher begins to deliver the Word, we've finally warmed up, that if he's preaching "a good one" maybe will warm up a few more degrees, but if he's teaching, then we will just suffer through it until the next time when we can get just a little more spark. And by next service, we've piled so much doubt and carnality on it that we stagger back into worship service, maybe even a few songs late, and we struggle to get it back to a glow before we leave again.

But what would happen if someone would decide to burn up for Jesus? If you would prioritize your free time so that God has a good dose. That you would approach your Bible reading with excitement and not dread at having read a love letter from a God who loved you enough to die for you. If you would allow the Holy Ghost to give you the victory over sin and that you would show up to a service early enough to get your mind on Jesus and your flesh in submission. What would happen if, like Abraham, you would come to worship with your fire ready to go!? With everything ready to burn completely and total surrender to Jesus Christ! It wouldn't take long for you to be baptized again with the Spirit. It wouldn't be long until your worship took you to places in the spirit that were always a little beyond you. It wouldn't be long until somebody next to you caught on fire and began to be consumed. It wouldn't be long until the preaching and teaching suddenly seemed fresh and powerful. It wouldn't be long before someone in your family and day to day life noticed the difference and soon combusted in the power of the Holy Ghost! It wouldn't take much to trigger you telling somebody about the power of the Holy Ghost and offering to pray for them. Somebody needs to catch on fire again with the consuming Spirit of God!

________________________________________________________________________

I asked myself this week, "why would someone NOT want to live in a burning inferno of the Holy Ghost?" I came up with four possible answers from scripture. Unfortunately, there is probably more, but these are the ones that stood out to me:

1. A large fire brings heat.

Some people are just happy being lukewarm. They don't want service too loud or too soft. They want to feel the Holy Ghost, but "let's make sure everything stays under control." They want enough of God so that people in the world say that they are religious but enough of the world so that God doesn't require anything radical. They'll catch ablaze every now and then -- several times a year -- just to convince themselves that they are alright, but really don't ever go beyond a certain point. They are just faithful enough to think that they are faithful.

It is possibly to be scripturally right and spiritually cold. That how the church in Laodicea was. Jesus told John in the book of Revelation that it wasn't their doctrine that He had a problem with, but their lukewarmness:

It's time to get the lukewarmness out of our system. Do you know what lukewarmness is? It's cold that has got just enough heat to say that it's not hot, or hot that has just enough cold in it to be comfortable. When a person is completely, totally immersed and baptized with the raging fire of the Holy Ghost, they are not normal nor "mellow!" And God HATES lukewarmness more than He does spiritual coldness!

2. Large fires bring light.

Get a large fire blazing in a dark night, and you can see things that you would never have noticed before. Get the Holy Ghost really burning in your life, then you are going to notice some things that need changing and brought into subjection to God's Word. To some people, a great move of the Holy Ghost would make them very uncomfortable because of some things in secret that they would rather not admit to.

3. In a similar way, fires expose vipers.

The story is found at the end of the Book of Acts. Paul's ship has wrecked and they have all been tossed in the cold sea and beached upon a cold island. Everybody began to pitch in and gather wood for the fire that was the only thing that could save them. Paul was carrying some wood that he had found and as he got near the fire, a viper -- a very poisonous snake -- came out and bit him (Acts 28). I want you to realize that Paul did not know that he was carrying a snake until he got close enough to the fire. It was at that moment that the snake realized that it was time to come out and show itself.

There are spirits and devils that are set upon bringing confusion in your life, that will never show themselves and attack you unless you get close to a large fire of the Holy Ghost. The devil isn't worried about a lukewarm Christian and sometimes people avoid really letting go and giving God's Spirit freedom because they know that they will have to endure some persecution and the bites of the viper that are laying low for the time being. But I'm here today to remind you, that Jesus said in Mark 16:

That phrase doesn't mean that we should all go join a snake-handling church in Kentucky to prove our "faith." But it does mean that when the devil gets a little worried because you let the Holy Ghost fire blaze up into an inferno in your life, that you don't have to worry about the bite of the viper. Do what Paul did: he shook it off in the fire, and kept on bringing the wood! Before it was over the entire island was ablaze with the supernatural fire of the Holy Ghost! Don't let the devil worry you or affect what you do or don't do. Don't let what somebody might say with their mouth deter you. God wants to baptize you with the fire of the Holy Ghost, and if you get it hot enough, it will more than consume the little vipers that might arise!

4. Fire changes something from one form to a purer form, and a large fire does more quickly.

Some people don't want any sudden changes in their life. They don't mind allowing the Holy Ghost to work and nibble here and there, but they don't want to have to change anything suddenly. And so they grieve the fire of the Holy Ghost, which brings us to my last thought:

________________________________________________________________________

There are three things in scripture that we are commanded to NOT do to the Holy Ghost and all three have to do with fire.

1. Resist the Holy Ghost - Resist means that you don't yield to the flames. Stephen used the term before he was stoned to death:

We resist the Holy Ghost when we don't allow it to move in our lives and we will not surrender our pride and lives to the work of the Spirit of God. If something is flame-resistant, then it doesn't burn well. Unfortunately some people allow some things in their heart which causes it to be resistant to the things of God. There are some things which just don't burn well in the Spirit: doubt doesn't burn at all, neither does pride, tradition is a hard one to get ignited, and so is unforgiveness or lust.

2. Quench the Holy Ghost - You quench a fire by ceasing to add fuel. Paul told the church in Thessalonica:

We quench the Holy Ghost when we only allow God to change certain areas of our lives. We will let Him do whatever He wants here, but don't touch that... You are quenching the Holy Ghost fire. God is a "consuming fire." That means that if you let Him have His way, then He will change everything about your life: your talk, your marriage, your appearance, your actions, your thoughts, your habits, your beliefs, your traditions, your friends, EVERYTHING! If you want to really be "baptized with the Holy Ghost," then you must allow God to consume everything. He is either Lord of all or NOT at all.

3. Grieve the Holy Ghost - You grieve a fire by placing things upon it that put out the flame. In Boy Scouts, they taught us to dump sand upon the fire before we left the campsite. The first couple of trips just caused the fire to diminish, but if you kept dumping more and more, grieving the fire, it would eventually go out. Paul used the term in the book of Ephesians:

God's fire is hot enough to burn up sin, but when He does it will be in the day of judgment. You don't want to experience God's fire that consumes sin, because that means that you will have been some place besides heaven. Right now, God will not bless sin. In fact if you keep dumping willful sin onto the fire of the Holy Ghost, then the flame will lessen and lessen. If you keep dumping enough upon it -- continue grieving the Holy Ghost -- the flame will eventually go completely out. If you want to be ablaze and baptized with the Holy Ghost, then you've got to the do the opposite: remove the grievances from your life. Stop returning to them. Truly repent of them. Allow the Holy Ghost to spring up hot enough that your desires are changed. It can be that hot. Don't tell me that there is something in life that God can't work out in your life. If you get the fire of the Holy Ghost hot enough, ANYTHING can change.

The same God who baptized the 120 on the Day of Pentecost is here today. You can leave this place ablaze with the fire of the Holy Ghost. Our God is a consuming fire. Allow Him to consume all of you.