Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3233
“Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” Zechariah 3:2.
[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon on verses 1 to 5 is Sermon #611, Volume 11—ZECHARIAH’S VISION OF JOSHUA THE HIGH PRIEST.]
IT may be well to explain these words, for simple as they are, a few words of exposition may be useful to open up the metaphor and enforce the thrilling Truth of God that underlies it.
There is mention of a fire. A cry of “FIRE!“has something fearful in it. When a fire begins to get the upper hand with us, it is terrible in its destructiveness. The fire here meant is more awful than any flame that makes havoc of matter, and its devastations are ten thousand times more appalling! It is the fire of sin. It blazed in the heart of an angel and he became a devil. Its sparks fell into the bosom of mother Eve and into the heart father Adam—and Paradise was burned up and the world became a wilderness. Sin is a fire which destroys the comfort of mankind, here, and all the joy of mankind hereafter. It is a flame which yields no comfortable warmth. The sinner may dance in the light of it for a moment, but in sorrow will he have to lie down in it forever! Woe unto those who have to make their bed in this fire—to dwell with these consuming flames for a term that knows no ending!
There is, further, mention of a brand. Nothing can be more suitable to burn in the fire than a brand. It is not a branch just taken from the tree, fresh and full of sap—it is a brand—dry, sere timber, fit for the burning. It is not a mass of stone or iron, but a combustible brand. And what does this indicate but man’s natural heart which is so congenial to the fire of sin? Our heart is like the tinder—Satan has but to strike the spark and how readily does the spark find a nest within our bosom! As the firebrand fits the fire, so does the sinner fit in with sin. When sin and the sinner come in contact, it is, “Hail fellow, well met!” They are bosom companions. The sinner’s heart is the nest well prepared—and sins are the foul birds which come to nestle there! Not to go a step without a particular application, it will be well for us all to understand that weare, ourselves, like the brands—there is a fitness between us and sin. If we burn in the fire of sin, it is no wonder! With our fallen nature, it is no greater marvel that we should be incited by sin than that the firebrand should kindle in the flame!
Beyond the distinct allusion to a fire and a brand, we read of a brand in the fire. Nor is it merely a brand lying upon the heap, to be, by-and-by, put upon the flames—it is “a brand plucked out of the fire.” It has been in the fire! Does not this portray our condition—not only congenial for the fire of sin, but actually burning and blazing in it? We began very early. Disobedience to parents, angry tempers, petty lies, many sorts of childish obstinacies and wrongdoings—all these were like the first catching on fire of the brand. We have blazed away the reverse of merrily since then—some have become charred with sin till their very bodies contain the marks of that tremendous fire, while in every case the soulreceives a charring and blackening from the flame. Not one of us has been able, even with godly training and Christian parentage, to escape from burning to some extent in this fire. Alas! Alas, for those who are even now in it!
There is a fair side to the picture—it is not altogether gloomy. While we have a fire, a brand and a brand in the fire, we also have, blessed be God, a brand plucked out of the fire. Sinners these, who though they have still within them the propensity to sin, are no longer in the fire of sin! They have been taken away from it. They sin through infirmity, but willful sin they do not commit. Their nature has been challenged. They have received the renewing Grace of God. The fire that once burned within them has been quenched. They recollect, to their grief and sorrow, the mischief that sin did to them, but it is not doing them the same mischief now. They are delivered from the body of sin and death!
Still, the force of the passage seems to lie in the words “plucked out off” You may sit down on the bench by the hearth in one of those good old country fireplaces where they still burn the logs and, perhaps, a brand drops out upon the hearth where it flames a little while and then goes out. This is not a picture that we can appropriate, for there never was an instance known of a man, by himself, dropping out of the fire of sin! Alas, we love it too well! “The burnt child dreads the fire,” says the proverb, but we are like the silly moth that flies at the candle and singes its wings, yet still uses those wings to mount up again into the flame! And if it falls— all full of pain and torment, with burnt legs and with almost all its wing gone—it struggles, it pants, it labors to get into the fire again! Such is man. He loves this fire which is his destruction! In youth, we put our finger into the flame. We feel that it is burnt, yet again we put our hand into it. Then, in later years, we persist deliberately till that sin has consumed us from head to foot! And we lie down in our grave with our bones filled with disease—foul fruit of the sins of our youth—our very corpses in their mortality bearing witness to the corruption of our morals!