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ISAIAH 33:14

"GOD'S FIRE"

Intro:  The Assyrian army has just been destroyed by the hand of God. 185,000 corpses
        are lying on the ground.

I. "THE SINNERS IN ZION ARE AFRAID, FEAR HAS GRIPPED THE HYPOCRITES."
        A. The reality of God has come to them.
                1. God so often seems remote.
                2. We believe in God, sort of, but we're not an atheist.
                        a. Hard to conceive something from nothing.
                        b. Impossible to believe in spontaneous generation of life.
                        c. Yet we have never seen Him.
                        d. Our contact with Him is spiritual.
                        e. People live carelessly as though God did not exist.
                3. They have now seen the physical evidence of God's power.
                        a. The prophet had been telling them not to worry, but they were.
                        b. He told them God would destroy their enemies, but they
                           couldn't see how.
        B. An awareness of God's judgment has come.
                1. Yesterday these men were mocking God.
                   Today they are dead.
                2. Yesterday these men were defying God.
                3. But we too were mocking the words of Isaiah.
                4. The reality of God's judgment against the wicked somehow fails
                   to penetrate.
                        a. Men tell us that God will not judge.
                        b. Many think when I die, that's all!
                                1. "It is appointed unto man..."
                                2. "He that despised Moses law..."

II. "WHO AMONG US CAN DWELL WITH THE DEVOURING FIRE?" 
        A. They saw God as fire. "Our God is a consuming fire."
                1. Fire is a combination of light and heat in combustion.
                        a. God is light, God is love, God is fire.
                2. Fire is everywhere in nature. (Eremacasus)
                        a. Put a piece of metal on the ground. What is that brown oxidation?
                        b. That paint on your house is blistering and cracking.
                        c. So the universal presence of God.
                                1. "If I ascend into heaven...''
                        d. Question not who shall dwell in the fire for we all do.
                                1. What is the fire doing to me?
                3. "Our God is a consuming fire."
                        a. Fire has the capacity to consume.
                        b. To the believer, it is consuming the dress in my life; refining.
                        c. Put some things in the fire and they are consumed.
                        d. Put other things in and they are transformed into permanency.
                                1. The same fire.
                                        a. I put in a piece of wood.
                                        b. I put in a pig iron.
                4. You are in the presence of God today.
                        You cannot escape His presence. 
"In Him we live, we move..."
  What is it doing to you?
                        a. That all depends on what you are.
                5. Hebrew word translated dwell, fight, flee.