This text stands as the reason that the church of the new day must serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.

The original Greek of this verse includes the word also: for our God also is a consuming fire. He is gracious. He is merciful. He is full of tender compassion. He is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. He is also a consuming fire.

That he is a consuming fire means that he is holy. He is the Holy One, who does all things for his own sake; who seeks his own glory, honor, and praise; and who, therefore, always consumes everything that does not bring to him the honor that is due him. And so the church of the new day, of the new testament and the new covenant, must serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

From this God we have received a kingdom that cannot be moved. We have received it graciously. It is a kingdom that has broken into the world with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And it is the kingdom that will break in at the last day, and the coming of the kingdom will shake the heavens and the earth and all things. God made this world to be shaken. Never did he have the present form of the world as his purpose, but his purpose was always the eternal kingdom in Jesus Christ, his Son. And so God made this world to be shaken. This world must be shaken according to the eternal purpose of God and by the coming of the kingdom that he promised in his Son.

God shook the world in paradise the first and introduced the way in which his kingdom would come—the way of sin and death and of grace and redemption. And did God not shake even the earthly form of this creation in the flood? His kingdom came in typical form when its coming shook Mount Sinai. But the very thing that was shaken—only the ground—signified that Israel looked for an earthly kingdom, an earthly city in an earthly land. That too must be shaken. It was shaken in the destruction of Jerusalem. It was shaken ultimately at the cross, so that form shall never return.

In the resurrection the new day has come. And the church of the new day has received from God in Jesus Christ a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And yet a little while, yet once more, the one whose voice shook merely the ground at Sinai will shake all things, so that those things that cannot be shaken may remain, and the kingdom of Christ will have come in its fullness. And that kingdom we have received: graciously and freely without any of our efforts but through the gift of God, who loved us and gave his Son, Jesus Christ, for us.

And having received that kingdom, let us have thanksgiving! This is the meaning of “let us have grace” (v. 28): let us have thanksgiving and with that thanksgiving to serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. All the thankful service of God must be with reverence and godly fear. Can it be that if you bring to God your works and your repentance and your holiness that you fear him? You have forgotten that he is a consuming fire. He consumed Christ, and you have displaced him.

In all the service of the living God, never may it be forgotten that he is also a consuming fire. And so all of your service of God must be filled with reverence and godly fear: deep humility before God as sinners and a lovely childlike fear of God, who is a consuming fire.