( 20th April 2024 )
Continuing on the imageries of the Holy Spirit
●Imagery: Fire
●In many places in the Bible, along with God’s glory ,we also see fire being mentioned to represent the glory.
●Water , Cloud, and Fire 🔥 are all used as imageries of God’s glory.
For example, the cloud that protected the children of Israel as they traveled through the desert to the land of Canan , is infact a representation of God’s glory.
●Definition of Glory – Glory is that which inspires or produces or causes honour.
●Psalms 145:10-13
All Your works shall praise You, O Lord,And Your saints shall bless You.
11 They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom,
And talk of Your power,
12 To make known to the sons of men His mighty acts,And the glorious majesty of His kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
And Your dominion endures throughout all generations.
●In Exodus 19, God decends on Mount Sainai
●Exodus 19:18
Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.
●In Acts 2 ,we see that there was rushing mighty wind, and then they were filled with the Holy Spirit .
●Exodus 24 :17
The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel.
●The fire mentioned here represented the glory of God
●Deuteronomy 5:24,25
And you said: ‘Surely the Lord our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire . We have seen this day that God speaks with man; yet he still lives. 25 Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, then we shall die
●Here, we see the relationship between fire and glory.
●When they saw it, they thought it was fire 🔥 but actually, it was the glory of God,
●1 Kings 8:10,11
And it came to pass, when the priests came out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11 so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud ; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord
●Here, the cloud represents the glory of God.
●Psalms 24:7 Lift up your heads, O you gates!
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
●Here, the word ” Kabod ” is used to represent glory
●The Hebrew word Kabod means weight.
● Here ” King of glory ” is used to mean:
The most awesome,
the most powerful, and also that this King should be taken very seriously.
●Kabod in Hebrew means weight (of God’s glory ! )
●Kabod is used in many places in the Bible to mean glory.
●Similarly, the word Shekhinah is also used which too in Hebrew stands for glory.
●Shekhinah represents a divine visitation
Or a divine dwelling of the Lord God on this earth. 🌎
●In the Old Testament, we see that the Shekhinah glory appeared on the Mercy Seat.
●His presence was infact dwelling on the “mercy seat”
●In the Greek language used in the New Testament , Doxa is the word for glory
●Some words that give the meaning of the word glory used the Bible are:
Brightness, majesty, magnificence, splendor , a thing belonging to God.
●Shekhinah is also used to mean “presence dwelling in a place
●Isaiah 6:1
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
Verse 6 : Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
●We see that the burning 🔥 coal cleanses Isaiah’s sin.
●Seraphims are mentioned in the verse
•The Seraphims represent
●Priestly Angels
●Worshipping Angels.
●These Seraphims stand close to the throne of God
Seraphims means burn with fire
●The fire from the throne fall on these angels, so we can say that they are full of fire 🔥 or else they carry the glory of God as the fire falls on them
●●Zachariah 2:5 For I,’ says the Lord, ‘will be a wall of fire all around her, and I will be the glory in her midst.’ ”
•Verse shows the relationship between fire and glory
•As children of God return from Babylon, the people all around are waiting to surround them and wage war from all sides.
●The Lord Acts as a wall of fire to protect them.
●This wall of fire is a group of angels covered in fire 🔥or in other words the glory of God!
●In the case of the New Testament believer Angels covered with fire (glory) will stand around you and protect you like a wall of fire
●Claim this promise today ! Let me be protected by a wall of fire 🔥!
● Ezikiel 1: 27-28
And above the firmament over their heads was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like a sapphire stone; on the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. 27 Also from the appearance of His waist and upward I saw, as it were, the color of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it; and from the appearance of His waist and downward I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around
●Here too its Glory that appeared like fire
●Verse 28
Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.
●When Glory was manifesting it looked like 🔥
●All this shows how Fire is used to depict or portray Glory of God.
God bless