Sermon Recap
Tested by Fire
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Brian Hunter · January 12, 2025
“Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.”
Scripture Referenced
Recap
Opening the new year, Brian used a ski-lift analogy to move through several passages in a single message, starting in Isaiah 43 with God’s promise to be present in the fire and the flood. The image landed with unusual weight given the wildfires that had just devastated communities in Southern California in the prior days, destroying homes, keepsakes, and even church buildings. Brian asked the church to sit with the real grief of that loss while also considering what it reveals: fire has no respect for sentimental value, and whatever survives it says something true about what was actually built to last.
That image became the bridge into 1 Corinthians 3, where Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for behaving like spiritual infants, dividing into factions over which teacher they preferred rather than growing in Christ. Paul’s warning that every believer’s work will one day be “revealed by fire” (testing not salvation itself, but the quality and substance of a life’s work) became the message’s central thread. Brian connected this to Revelation’s picture of Jesus with eyes like blazing fire, describing a coming evaluation that sees straight through any carefully curated image a person presents to the world.
Rather than leaving that as a frightening, far-off judgment, Brian framed it as an invitation to a different, present-tense kind of evaluation: inviting God’s fire into daily life now, sorting out what’s superficial from what’s genuinely built on Christ, before the final accounting ever comes.
Touch Points
- Brian said fire reveals what was actually built to last. If your life were tested by fire today, what do you sense would survive and what wouldn’t?
- Paul rebuked the Corinthians for dividing over which teacher they preferred rather than growing in Christ. Where do you see similar surface-level loyalties distracting from real spiritual growth, in the church or in yourself?
- Revelation describes Jesus with eyes like fire, seeing past every curated image. Does that thought feel more frightening or more freeing to you, and why?
- Brian invited the church to welcome a present, ongoing evaluation rather than wait for a final one. What’s one area you could invite God to test and refine in you this year?