We return again to our basic passage of Scripture, Luke 12:49-53:
I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled?
But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!
Think ye that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
for there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.
They shall be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
I confess to you that that is one of the things that the Lord said which I myself am most unhappy to speak about. But there it is. If anyone else but He had said it, perhaps we should have turned away. I am quite sure that, had it originated with me or with any others here, it would have caused very great offence. But He said it.
And it seems to me to be all of a piece with the beginning of that statement. I think perhaps you have noticed that this is a very abrupt change in the whole course of the narrative. Up to the end of verse 48, He seems to have been on one thing, and then, quite abruptly, comes this change.
I can only think that there was a pause on His part. He said that, and then He was quiet for a moment, and His mind ranged the future—the future of His own influence and effect upon the world. Then He began this part of His utterances in quite a different strain and realm: “I came to cast fire upon the earth.”
That is why I came. That sums up the meaning of My coming: “I came to cast fire upon the earth.” What is the issue? What is the outcome? “And how am I straitened till it be accomplished?” What do I want? Oh, that it were already kindled!
But I have a baptism to be baptized with. I wish that were over. I wish that were accomplished, and then I should be free of this straitness and limitation. That for which I have come could be realised. Oh, that it were already accomplished—this baptism of the passion, of the cross. So He thinks, and so He speaks.
Now, this morning we took one fragmentary implication of this casting, noting, of course, that the meaning of it was the coming of the Holy Spirit—the baptism in the Spirit and in fire. And that fire is a positive thing. There is no mistaking fire: when it touches you, you know.
This afternoon we are taking just one other aspect of this, and I think probably, for the time being, the last. I have said this paragraph, from verse 49 to verse 53, seems to be all of a piece: the effect of the fire.
It is very terrible here. It introduces the element of judgment. There is no need to argue with anybody who knows anything about the Bible: fire in the Bible is very often—so often—the symbol of judgment. And here it is.
But we want to comprehend the meaning of that word judgment. We so often limit it to one of its aspects, and perhaps that is the final one. “Judgment”—we mean by that punishment, perhaps the final punishment. But judgment in the Bible is a more comprehensive word than this.
In the Bible, judgment—and this can be clearly seen in terms of fire, or fire in terms of judgment—is, to begin with, a trying of things, putting them to the test. Our Scriptures will leap to your mind to bear that up. Fire tests.
The fire finds things out. That is the first effect, and that is the first meaning of judgment: put everything to the test; try it.
And having done that, it discriminates. That is, it divides. It shows to which category things belong, and it puts them there. Well, that is of that kind, and it belongs to that category or that realm or that kingdom; this belongs to another.
Fire finds out, it discriminates, and it divides; and then it relegates. Finally, it says, “This has been found to belong to a certain realm. It has been designated; it has been discriminated. We put it there. It belongs there; we put it there.” That is the final effect of the fire.
That is the content of the word judgment. Always keep that full meaning in mind when you use the word. We will not dwell upon it in application more fully at the moment; we must get on with the message.
We are taught in the Word of God that this judgment would come with the coming of the Holy Spirit—mark you, the effect of Christ’s release through the Cross in the coming of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, the effect of Christ’s release would be the coming of the Spirit as the Spirit of fire. And as the Spirit of God, His presence would always be in terms of judgment, in this threefold meaning of the word.
The Holy Spirit’s presence is like this, and it has this effect. We are led by that into the Word to see the realm in which this operates.
Now here, in Luke 12, we have that operating in one realm. We read those terrible words: “Think ye that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.” The old version says, “a sword.” It sounds terrible. We are on very delicate ground; we have got to be very careful.
He goes on to explain what He means by division. Henceforth there shall be five in one household divided, three against two and two against three; then the divisions in the family. Here the fire is at work in the realm of human relationships.
Now let me, here in parenthesis, say in advance and with considerable emphasis that this has nothing to do with divisions within the church—divisions amongst those who are in Christ. That is not what the Lord is speaking about, nor is it hardly a point in view.
He is thinking in a totally different realm. He is speaking in the spiritual realm. This division takes place entirely upon a spiritual basis.
The divisions, as we have them in the First Letter to the Corinthians, are because of other things amongst Christians, but they are not spiritual. This is a spiritual division, essential and basic.
Perhaps the classic illustration, or example, of this is the one that we have way back in the early part of the Old Testament, in the case of the Levites.
You will call to mind that when they had reached the wilderness, Moses was called up into the mount. He was there so long that the people came under a very severe test—I think deliberately placed under a very severe test—as to really where their hearts were.
Whether they really were after their own interests, after their own ends, or His; whether their hearts were in this matter with the Lord, or whether their hearts were set upon their own gratification. They were put to the severe test of that probationary period of the forty days and forty nights in which Moses was in the mount, and they broke down under the test.
When Moses came down, hearing the noise in the camp, you remember what had happened: the calf and the dancing. “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”
Moses took the tent, moved it right outside of the camp, stood in the door, and cried, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come unto me.” All the sons of Levi went over to him.
He said, “Gird ye every man his sword upon his side, and go in and out, and slay every man his brother, every man his friend.” You see, the sword—the fiery sword—has come into the realm of human relationships.
It is finding out the heart. It is testing the heart. It is discriminating between motives, intents, and purposes of the heart. You know where it is putting them, and it is putting them in the category to which these people belong.
Well, here are the Levites, who have been put to the test and have come through it triumphantly. And forevermore they represent God’s thought concerning His people. They stand as representing the full, pure thought of God for His people.
The point is this: this work of judgment, this fire, this sword, came into the realm of human relationships to find out the heart—the motive of the heart. And you can take that into Luke 12. Well, that is what it means: division, even within the family and the home.
The household will be divided by the Holy Spirit on this matter of the relationship of the heart. We can see, hence, as we read the history of Israel, that that nation in the wilderness—that generation—their hearts, as the Psalmist said, were not right with God. In their hearts they lusted after Egypt.
Their fleshly hearts were in Egypt. Their hearts were back there even while they were in the wilderness, and that generation never did go in because its heart was not with the Lord. It is a matter of inward division, is it not? It is the division in the heart.
Now, the Holy Spirit is always a divider in that way. It is a work of the Holy Spirit to do that—in a sense, not in the wrong sense. Be careful how you take me up.
In a sense, the Holy Spirit is the cause of division. There is a realm in which He is the divider. Now let us take our Bible and go right back to the beginning.
The Spirit of God moved upon the chaos, the darkness, the void. What was the first thing done by and through the Holy Spirit? A dividing between things—a process of division between light and darkness.
God divided the light from the darkness. The light He called day; the darkness He called night. God divided, and God said, “It is good.” There is a division that is good, you know. It is one thing that the Holy Spirit makes: between light and darkness.
And then God divided between the heaven and the earth. He put them asunder; they had got too near. One was right down on top of the other, so that you could not discern or discriminate between the realms of the heavens and the earth.
And He put the firmament between. He divided between the heaven and the earth, and the one He called heaven and the other He called earth. And it is very good. It is good.
Now these are Old Testament things which have, as we know, a New Testament meaning. These are found in their counterpart in the new creation.
When you come to the Book of Acts, it is the book of the Holy Spirit at work in relation to the new creation. And so you will find all the way through this book divisions taking place as the result of the action of the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, you can say that this is the characteristic of the Spirit right through the New Testament: a dividing between light and darkness; a judging of this and saying, “That is darkness; that is one realm. That is light, and that is another realm.”
These two can never, in the right and proper way, obtain together. They cannot coexist. They are separated and belong to two entirely different categories, and the Spirit of God has done that.
Interpret that spiritually and you see what it means. But a tremendous amount is found out within spiritual life. It works out in this way, dear friends: anyone who really has the Spirit—and this is the test, this is the test—anyone who really has the Spirit is very sensitive to light and very sensitive to darkness.
They know that there is a big division that God has made. And when they touch anything that belongs to the darkness, well, they feel the darkness in their own spirit. They know they have touched darkness. They know they have come into another world. That is the work of the Spirit, and a very important work of the Spirit.
On the other hand, anyone who has the Spirit will be equally sensitive to light—and that is true, true light. I will define that in a moment. There is true light, and the spiritual man or woman at once responds to it.
Why? Because this kind of light is not cold light; it is the light of life. It is living light. It has energy in it.
You can have light that is cold. You can have imitation fire that is cold. We have got one of those things at home that you switch on, you know, and there is the imitation fire. But it does not make any difference. Something happens psychologically: you see the thing and perhaps you imagine something, but really it is all an illusion.
You can have a kind of light that is imitation, artificial, false. You can switch it on and equally quickly switch it off. But that is not the light of life, which is energetic.
The light of the Spirit, the light of God, the light of Christ, is always living light—energetic life. And then you and I, who have the Spirit, come into touch with life. It is not that we become mentally and intellectually interested, fascinated, or captivated; something within us leaps up in response.
We meet energy. These are marks of the Spirit: judging what is light and what is darkness, what belongs to this realm and what belongs to that realm. These things are put apart, so that it is something quite abnormal if darkness comes into the day or light into the night. That is not the ordinary course of things at all.
You can have different kingdom realms within your own family, your own household. There can be no fellowship at all because there is the division which is made by the Holy Spirit Himself.
Now many of you know how true that is, and some of you are suffering because of this. But the point is this: that is how it will be if the Holy Spirit comes in, and you cannot avoid it.
The Lord Jesus was faithful and honest enough to let it be known that that is how it would be. You cannot get over that; you cannot bridge that. There it is. It is painful, but it is enough that the Spirit has done something.
We, as the Lord’s people, are to become more and more sensitive to the different realms which are put apart by the Spirit of God. The mark of growth in the light and in the Spirit is to become more and more sensitive to what belongs here and what belongs there.
You know Paul, on two different occasions, used that phrase, “things which differ.” And he said it to believers: once to the Roman believers and once to the Philippian believers. “Things which differ.” He would have Christians know the things that differ.
That was the true kind of division that ought to have existed at Corinth. The other was the false and wrong division. But this is where things had got mixed up: day and night had been all mixed together. Things which belonged to the night were present, and they were not sensitive to them.
And so the First Letter to the Corinthians is so much about the corrective work of the Holy Spirit, is it not? We must leave that for the moment. I think it is perhaps too obvious even to spend all that time upon, but let us recognise that the life of the Spirit is a life of spiritual dividing.
The course of the Spirit-governed life is discernment—being sensitive to the things that differ.
We pass to the next application of this, as it comes to the whole matter of our Christian work. You know, that is given to us in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 3:
According to the grace of God which was given unto me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth thereon.
But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon.
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble;
each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is.
If any man’s work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward.
If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire.
And we place alongside of that passage Hebrews 12:26-28:
Whose voice then shook the earth: but now He hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven.
And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain.
Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace.
Here, you see, you come into the realm of values in life and in life’s work. The discrimination is brought in by the fire. The fire tries what is solid.
And remember, this is addressed to Christians. This is not addressed to people of the world who are doing their work and following their professions. This is addressed to Christians, and it is speaking about Christian work.
Christ is the foundation, and the work that you do on that foundation is Christian work. It says about Christian work that there is one realm which will abide the fire, and in Christian work there is another realm which will go up in smoke.
It will be proved that all that was for nothing, and the worker will just get into heaven, and that is all—saved, yes, so as through fire. Here is a division in the realm of Christian work which the Holy Spirit makes.
If we want to sum this all up and really get to the heart of it, it comes to this: only that which is really done by and through the Holy Spirit Himself will remain, will abide the test, and will be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
There can be a tremendous amount of activity and energy and work—work engaged in for Christ, in relation to Christ, intentionally—which comes into this category of disappearing in the flame, standing for nothing, and leaving the worker at the end with nothing for all his toil.
This is what was happening in the Book of Acts. Look through this book and see the discrimination that is being made. Yes, the discrimination must be made.
Oh, how those Judaizers laboured! How they laboured! How they travelled and compassed sea and land on their long journeys. It must have cost them quite a lot to do it.
And you have to conclude that they were men who not only meant business, but, as far as they understood themselves and their position, they were what we would call sincere men.
I do not see any difference between these Judaizers, who pursued Paul wherever he went and gave their lives—their lives—to this sort of thing, and Saul of Tarsus as he was. That was exactly what he was doing. Exactly what he was doing. He was one of them.
Now then, listen to his whole summarised verdict upon that whole thing: “I verily thought.” I verily—I truly, if you like—I honestly thought within myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus Christ.
That is the utterance of an honest man and the utterance of a sincere man. But, “I thought.” I considered this thing. This was no mere impulse; this was no mere fanaticism. “I thought.” We know Paul was a man who thought.
“I thought, but I ought.” It was a matter of conscientious conviction with me that this was what I ought to do. It was the right thing to do. I was called upon to do it. It was a matter of conscience with me to do it. “I verily thought within myself.”
Yes, but how possible it is to be as utterly sincere as that and as utterly mistaken. The Judaizers were like this. But their work—their work—did not last.
Here is the work of the Spirit going on, and it has gone on, and it is still going on. That work is undisputed. It has stood all the testing and all the trying out. It has proved itself to be the work of the Spirit, and it survives the fire—our judgment, fire of testing.
The key to the whole of this thing is the supreme importance not of being sincere, not of being enthusiastic, not of acting on the basis of conscientious conviction, but of being governed by the Holy Spirit. That is the important thing.
It is just there that this whole thing comes into the realm of Christian works. Perhaps some of you had a little catch just now about the Judaizers, but you have got to appreciate them quite a lot, you know.
The Judaizers were not anti-Christians. What they really wanted was Jewish Christianity—a Christianity with a Jewish complex. That is a fair way of putting it: Christianity, if only Christianity would conform to the Jewish order, the Jewish practice.
I am not going to argue that out, but we could bring in quite a lot to show that that is so. You see, Paul showed by his Letter to the Galatians that that is not the work of the Spirit. It is not the work of the Spirit; it is something quite different.
Let us pass to the next thought here, and that takes us into the realm of our Christian testimony. The fire at work in the realm of Christian testimony.
We turn to a very well-known passage in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 2:
But thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savour of His knowledge in every place.
For we are a sweet savour of Christ unto God, in them that are being saved, and in them that are perishing;
to the one a savour from death unto death; to the other a savour from life unto life.
There is the dividing effect of the fire. You know the picture. I need not relate it all to you again, but Paul is thinking in terms of that background: the Roman procession, the triumphant general leading his prisoners in his train, holding celebrations of his victory from place to place.
But at every such place the fire would be lit. There was an altar erected, the pile was lit, the flame rose up, and the incense filled the air. And that had a double effect.
There were some who were in the way of perishing, and that was the place where they would be sacrificed. There were others who were not in the way of perishing, and they would pass that fire and go on; they would be saved.
The background, you see, is very vivid, very vivid. Fire is discriminating and determining here.
Paul says that this is the dual effect of the Holy Spirit in our life and ministry as we go from place to place. As we go from place to place, something happens everywhere and every time.
One or two things—or both things—happen in every place. One is that those who refuse the light, who persist in fighting against the victorious Lord, who resist the Holy Spirit, are brought to condemnation. They are put into the category into which they belong.
On the other hand, those who believe, those who accept, by the same Holy Spirit who does the one thing are brought into liberty. They pass the testing fire and go on in life: to the one a savour from death unto death; to the other a savour from life unto life.
Now the point is this: the whole passage is saying that this is the effect of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our ministry, in our testimony. In other words, the Holy Spirit never leaves things as they were.
The presence of the Holy Spirit always brings about some kind of crisis and verdict. The Holy Spirit is present and speaking; we cannot remain the same as before. Something has happened. We are either more hardened or more softened; we are either more condemned or more saved.
Something happens in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The fire does this work of judging. This is what the Lord Jesus said: “I came to cast fire upon the earth.” What will it do? It will make this division. It will bring this judgment. It will determine things, and people, and their destinies.
Well, we know how true that is in history. That is the effect of the Holy Spirit. But all I want to underline in that particular connection is this, dear friend: if you and I are men and women who are really governed by the Spirit and filled with the Spirit, the effect of our presence and our passing this way will not be to leave things as they were before.
There will be an eternal verdict by our having gone this way, and that is the object of ministry. “Thanks be unto God, who leadeth us in triumph in Christ,” from place to place, to celebrate His victory. And the effect is this: one thing or the other. Things are not as they were before.
Holy Spirit ministry must be like that. It must produce something. It must affect something. It must make a difference. It does. It does that. It does.
The fire is at work. And we can see, as we go through this Book of Acts, all these things happening. They are happening all the time. All the things that I have said are just happening here; you can see them.
Fire is finding out. Fire is testing. Fire is discriminating. Fire is relegating. The end of the story is that you have two realms set aside, shown to be what they are and what they belong to.
Now there is very much more, of course, that I could say on this matter of spiritual discrimination—things that belong to different categories, that essential spiritual difference. But I think I can sum everything up by saying this: if we really, really are governed by the Holy Spirit, we will all belong to one category. That is the point.
There will not be so many different categories in which we live. There will not be two. There will not be two. There will only be one.
The Holy Spirit seeks to secure one category of people, and that is a people wholly governed by Himself and led by Himself.
If you have to say, “I fundamentally disagree with you on anything,” then either you are right and I am wrong, or I am right and you are wrong, if it is fundamental like that. One of us is not in the Spirit.
It is up to us to find out where the wrong is, because the Holy Spirit is not fundamentally of two different minds. He never can be.
To be really in the Spirit means, may I repeat, to be of one kind, of one category. And so the apostle wrote so much to these churches about this oneness of mind, this oneness of heart, this oneness of spirit, this all speaking the one thing.
Well, he said it again. He asked for it again. He was pleading for it. Therefore it is possible. The solution to all those problems and difficulties is life in the Spirit—life in the Spirit.
And that, of course, as we said this morning, is based upon the Cross, where we have an infinite capacity for letting go to the Lord.
If you forget all the rest, remember that. Shall we pray?