Between Glory and Ashes 4: Refined, Not Consumed - Episode 156

In this episode, Carey continues the fire in Scripture series by following the holy fire of God into the furnace—where His presence purifies without consuming. We trace how Isaiah and Daniel picture God’s burning holiness as both judgment and safety, a place where the faithful can actually live inside the fire without being destroyed.

Using frame semantics and the idea of sensus plenior (“fuller sense”), we explore how Scripture’s meaning develops without contradiction, moving from Torah’s guarded nearness to God, through exile and restoration, into the incarnation, resurrection, Pentecost, and the church’s baptism “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

We look at key passages in Isaiah 4, 6, 30, and 63 alongside Daniel 3, 7, and 12 to show how God’s jealous love guards, guides, evaluates, and refines His people. Trials are not signs of abandonment but a refining furnace that exposes and burns away what cannot live in God’s presence—while preserving and beautifying what can.

We then bring this all the way to the New Testament: Hebrews, 1 Corinthians 3, 1 Peter, and Matthew 3’s promise that Jesus will baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” What does it mean to be baptized into the One who dwells in the fire? How can the church live near the consuming fire of Hebrews 12 without being consumed? And how do suffering, repentance, and our everyday choices fit into that larger frame of glory, presence, and purification?

If you’ve wrestled with judgment, suffering, or the fear of “not doing enough” in repentance, this episode will help reframe those fears inside the story of God’s refining love—and why baptism belongs inside the fire-and-glory framework rather than outside of it.

In this episode, we explore:

• How frame semantics helps us see “fire” as a family of frames: boundary, guarding, purification/furnace, guidance, glory, and judgment
  
  
• Isaiah 6 as a divine council scene where holy fire purifies Isaiah’s lips and commissions him rather than destroying him
  
  
• Isaiah 4, 30, and 63 as pictures of in-house purification, guidance, and God’s breath/Spirit as burning, judging, and leading presence
  
  
• Daniel 3 and the fiery furnace: why Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego can live in the flames with the “one like a son of the gods”
  
  
• Daniel 7 & 12: the Son of Man, rivers of fire, judgment of the beasts, and the shining resurrection hope of the wise
  
  
• How sensus plenior works: later Scripture doesn’t contradict earlier Scripture, but fills out seeds already planted
  
  
• Why trials and suffering in the New Testament function as a refining furnace rather than a sign that God has abandoned us
  
  
• 1 Corinthians 3 and 1 Peter 4: judgment beginning with the household of God, and works tested “as through fire”
  
  
• Matthew 3:11–12 and what it means that Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire
  
  
• Baptism as participation in Christ’s indwelling fire—where the person is not consumed, but the unfit things are burned away

On This Rock Biblical Theology Community:  https://on-this-rock.com/  

Website: genesismarksthespot.com   

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Music credit: "Marble Machine" by Wintergatan

Link to Wintergatan’s website: https://wintergatan.net/  

Link to the original Marble Machine video by Wintergatan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q&ab_channel=Wintergatan