The Lutheran Hour

"As Through Fire"

#93-25
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on February 22, 2026
Speaker: Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler
Copyright 2026 Lutheran Hour Ministries

Text: 1 Corinthians 3:13

It was Yellowstone National Park (specifically its canyon), that Teddy Roosevelt once put on his short list of places of which he claimed, “there can be nothing in the world more beautiful.”ⁱ But in the summer of 1988, the picture wasn’t so pretty, as far as Yellowstone’s forests were concerned. That summer would be the driest summer on record since the park had been founded 116 years earlier.ⁱⁱ And it was becoming clear that, for many of Yellowstone’s old-growth forests, their best years were behind them. The forest floors were so cramped, so crammed with the overgrowth of brambles and thorns tangled in with the dead wood of fallen trees that elk and deer and people mostly stayed out.

The aged lodgepole pines still towered proudly over their defunct forest. But the trees were essentially dead already, their cells no longer putting out new growth, clinging to what they took to be scarce resources, hoarded in their decaying trunks. Barely a beam of sunlight could pass through their contentious old branches. The place was dark and quiet. No sounds of cicada singing or chickadees chirping. No signs of life at all, really.

The all-consuming, cataclysmic wildfire that had helped create this once vibrant, verdant habitat three centuries earlier had long been forgotten. No one knew the day or the hour the next one would come, but those with eyes to see knew that whatever that coming fire would destroy had already died a long time ago.

Do you ever get the sense that we’re living on the brink of a cataclysm, in something like an overmature forest? Minus the quietness, of course. Our world is louder than ever, and more contentious and chaotic and clamoring for what’s taken to be scarce resources. Watch the news. Scroll through social media. Talk to a doctor or a nurse who works in your closest urban hospital emergency room. And you get the sense that we are standing in a dark, twisted bramble—primed for a spark or a lightning strike.

We’ve got nations rising against nations. Wars. Rumors of wars. Earthquakes. Famines. Diseases. And Tik Tok. How can that be good for civilization?

How much longer can we go on like this? No one knows, but it sure feels like a day of reckoning is drawing near. Or maybe I’m just getting a little old and grumpy. But seriously, you don’t have to be an older, religious person to get this sense that time is running out (tick tock!), that humanity’s best years have passed, that we’re no longer on the healthy growth side of the curve, but have turned the corner, on the downward slope.

Just in terms of probability, since we do find ourselves in an exponentially growing species, isn’t it statistically more likely that we’re in the middle or toward the end of the cycle, and humanity won’t last much longer than it already has? You don’t have to be a doomsday theorist to suspect that one day it probably will all go up in flames. Doesn’t nature herself teach as much?

When Yellowstone National Park went up in flames the summer of 1988, compared to all the other fires on record before, this one was apocalyptic. Technically, it wasn’t just one fire. It was 52 that burned in Yellowstone that summer. Nine were started by careless humans; 43 by lightning. The major fires got names, usually associated with the places where they burned. But one especially devastating inferno got the more descriptive title, “The Hellroaring Fire.”ⁱⁱⁱ

I remember watching it on the news as a kid. It looked to me like the whole place was on fire—an area larger than Delaware, by the way—like it was all burning. The blaze was bigger than anyone planned for. But the fact that something like this was coming was not totally unexpected. The forests were in such a state that they needed to burn. Or, just that they would burn as a matter of consequence.^iv And once it started, no human, not even a well-trained team of 25,000 fire-fighting humans and expenditures exceeding 100 million dollars could stop it. The fire made its own rules, and even its own weather system.

The hurricane force firestorm it created engulfed groves of hundred-foot pine trees on contact. It sent burning embers like bowling balls rolling over roads and rivers, and parking lots into areas thought to be safe spots protected by fire breaks.^v Eighty-mile-an-hour winds turned burning limbs into flying missiles igniting supposedly protected spaces miles away.

Nobody could stop it. Firefighters did put forth a heroic effort to save lives and some structures in the park. But they could not control it. And sometimes the best they could do was to fall to the ground and take cover under their foldable aluminum-fiberglass fire shelters, which, incidentally, look like small metal coffins, where you hide and pray as the hell-roaring fire passes over you. In the end, all that could stop the fire was the snowfall in September, a pure gift of God.

When it was over, some national headlines reported that the whole park had been destroyed. In hindsight, it wasn’t as bad as they made it sound. Only 36 percent of the land burned. And, as one park official put it—in some ways, a forest fire is superficial. Most of what would be destroyed by it, died out long ago.^vi

Nature teaches us that one day it will burn. It’s inevitable. But nature doesn’t tell us how we humans should fit into this scenario. Should we find ways to be more clever, to bring nature under our control? Or should we stand back and let it burn? Or hatch escape plans—and every man for himself for whatever comes next? Nature doesn’t give us answers to these questions. You have to look elsewhere. So, where have you looked?

I wish I could tell you that I’ve searched and found the answer, but the truth isn’t so heroic. What happened was, some people baptized me. I was doomed, and they pulled me under the coffin-shaped fire shelter that is Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ. They pulled me in with them because they believed—and 60 or 70 generations before them believed—the word-of-mouth testimony that had been passed down from the first followers of Jesus, and from Jesus Himself, the testimony that you can still read today, word for word, recorded in the Bible. It’s the testimony that Jesus claimed to be God’s Messiah, even God in the flesh, the King who would renew and raise the world out of its ashes. Because of these claims, Jesus was crucified, killed.

Now if the story stopped there, with Jesus’ death, we wouldn’t be talking about Him today. We wouldn’t even know the Name, Jesus of Nazareth. His Name would have been buried under the ash heap of history along with the names of all the other young Jewish men in that time period who ended up crucified or killed in some other manner because of their messianic aspirations.

But the fact is, we know Jesus’ Name, and His is the most name-dropped Name in history. And about a billion people call themselves His followers and worship His Name today.

How is this the case? One simple explanation is that God truly raised Him from the dead, because Jesus is who He said He is, and what the Bible says about Him is true. And I believe it’s true, that Jesus, by undergoing this trial by fire, this death and resurrection, that He has, in the most profound sense, already passed through the final judgment that is coming.

He did it for us. To save us. And for me, for you, to be baptized into Him. To trust Him, is to die with Him, to be raised by Him, to be covered by Him, to pass through the fire under His shelter. Or, to use another image, to trust in Jesus is to be grafted into His root system. And for root systems, like those of aspen trees, fire is only a superficial affair.

During the Yellowstone fire of 1988, about one-third of the aspen trees of Yellowstone’s northern range burned to ashes, on the surface. But under the surface, aspens grow as an interconnected colony, an “aspen stand,” as it’s called—a large, single organism with a single root system. And through the fire, that root system remained sound, strong as ever. The fire, in fact, stimulated new growth from the roots and the ashes from the old growth enriched the soil in which the young saplings would come to thrive. The fire didn’t destroy the aspen stand. It refined it.

So also, a life following Jesus is not just hiding under His shelter to escape the fire. As Christ-followers, we also pass through the fire. We have our old nature burned off and regrown in Christ. His Spirit living in us unites us to Him so that we can take our stand in Him, in the world.

There’s a place in that testimony about Jesus, the New Testament of the Bible, where Paul, one of the first-generation messengers of Jesus, invokes similar images to the Christ-followers of that time and place. It’s in the third chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Paul says his goal is to build them up. He wants to strengthen them, so they can take their stand in the world. But first he has to clear out the dead wood in their hearts, in their souls. Because they’ve been following the wisdom of this world, the sort of wisdom which is always getting more and more impressed with its own cleverness.

And as they’ve become more impressed with themselves, they’ve also gotten more contentious. Factions have grown up between them—rivalries over who’s the most trending Christian influencer to follow. “I follow Paul,” says one. Someone else boasts, “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas.” And the jealousy between them has become so overgrown that it’s choking the life out of their community.

Portions of Paul’s fiery letter to them feel something like a controlled burn, like a prescribed fire to clear out the old growth. He speaks into their unique situation, but by extension, by God’s Spirit, he speaks to you, to me, to us, today. Listen to what he says:

“Brothers and sisters, I could not talk to you as people who are led by God’s Spirit, but as those still following your corrupted desires, as infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, because you were not ready for it. Even now you’re not ready for it, because you’re still following your old desires. Because while there is jealousy and strife among you, how are you not centered on yourselves and acting like any other merely human person? Because when one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another says, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human? What is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants, through whom you believed—through whom you trusted in Christ, each as the Lord assigned a role. I planted. Apollos watered. But God is the One who continually gave the growth. So, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters counts for anything, but only the One who gives the growth—God. The one who plants and the one who waters are one and the same, and each will receive his reward according to his labor, because we are fellow workers who belong to God. And you are the field that belongs to God. You’re the building that belongs to God. And I, according to the grace of God given to me, like an expert builder, I laid a foundation. And now others are building upon it. Let each person take care how he builds, because no one can lay a foundation other than what was already put in place—which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, or straw, the work of each will be made plain, because the Day [the Day when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead] that Day will make it plain. Because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If the work that someone has built [on the foundation, on Christ] survives, that person will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burnt up, that person will suffer loss. Though he himself will be saved—but as through fire. Do you not know that you all are God’s temple and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him, because God’s temple is holy, and you all are that temple. Don’t let anyone among you deceive himself. If anyone thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool so as to become truly wise. Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, as it is written, ‘God catches the wise in their cleverness,’ and again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’ So, no more boasting in men, because all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life or death, or the present or the future, everything already belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 3).

There is a rising feeling that our world is on the brink of something cataclysmic. The apostle Paul, repeating the warnings of the Lord Jesus before him, confirms that the Day is coming. God, who is a consuming fire will judge the world with justice by His Son, Jesus. God revealed His plan to everyone when He raised Jesus from the dead.

The world, like an overmature forest, will burn. It will burn as a matter of consequence. It must burn. God has decided it. Not because God hates the world and wants only to see it burn. Not because He’s jealous of humans, but because He pities us. He has mercy on us. He sent His Son, Jesus, because He loves us. We broke faith with God. We fell in love with our own cleverness. What we’re doing isn’t sustainable. Left to ourselves, we’ll burn it all down. So that’s what God is letting us do. That’s His loving judgment on us, because letting it burn is the only way for us to be reborn. And God gives you His shelter in Jesus to endure it, a way to die to yourself, a way to be grafted into a deeper root system that won’t be harmed by the flames, a place to stand forever with His people to inherit everything as a pure gift.

The world’s wisdom cannot save you. But Jesus has and will. And He stands you up with His people today, so you can stop living for yourself, by your old desires, and live instead for the love of God and the love of your neighbor. That’s how we build works that will last. That’s how we sow seeds that pass through the fire.

The lodgepole pines of Yellowstone have two types of pine cones. The ordinary type opens by itself and contains seeds that sprout during years when there are no fires. The other type is held shut by a sticky resin and is fire-resistant. During an ordinary year, these fire-resistant pine cones don’t open. They don’t produce anything. To the untrained eye, they seem useless. But when the cataclysmic hell-roaring fire passes over, consuming everything in its path, the heat from the fire melts the resin and opens them, releasing the seeds that will grow the new forest after the fire has passed.^vii

The Kingdom work of the Christian church is to live and share the Good News of Jesus in everything we do, in word and action. This work, though, doesn’t produce results in the ordinary way. And the wisdom of this age cannot see what we are working for—for the eternal kingdom of Christ, for the reward freely given, for the Kingdom that will be born through the fire.

Shortly after Yellowstone burned in 1988, Park Ranger Carol Shively said that the fires had left them standing at a turning point, the birth of a new Yellowstone. Although, looking at the scorched earth that following spring, she knew that some visitors would say, “But it’s not pretty.” And she wouldn’t try to convince them otherwise. “Birth never is,” she said. “But from what I understand, the rewards are well worth the cost.”^viii In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

i Theodore Roosevelt, Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, New York: Scribner (1908), 317. He also included Yosemite, the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, and the Three Tetons.
ii Dorothy Patent, Yellowstone Fires: Flames and Rebirth. New York: Holiday House (1990), 8.
iii See https://www.npshistory.com/publications/yell/newspaper/fires-2008.pdf.
iv Rocky Barker, Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America. Washington: Island Press (2005), 242.
v Ibid., 6.
vi Ibid., 241.
vii Dorothy Patent, Fire: Friend of Foe. New York: Clarion (1998), 27.
viii Carol Shively, “Wildland Fire History—Under the Orange Sky,” Interpretation, Spring, 1989. Accessed on January 15, 2026 at https://www.nps.gov/articles/wildland-fire-orange-sky-yell.htm

Reflections for February 22 2026
Title: As Through Fire

Mark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. You’ll find FREE online resources and archived audio from previous broadcasts at lutheranhour.org. Now back to our Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.

Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I get to visit with a good friend, Dr. Jeff Gibbs. He’s an emeritus professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Thanks for being here with us today, Jeff.

Jeff Gibbs: Thank you, Mike, very much. It’s a pleasure to be back.

Mike Zeigler: So, in 1 Corinthians 3, which we heard about today in the message, we have this warning of the final judgment, and this is going to be by fire, Paul says, when Jesus returns in glory. And then you have other places, like in 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, it sounds like Christians are going to go through this fire, as well. We’re all going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. As a Christian, should I be afraid of this day, in some sense?

Jeff Gibbs: Well, I would say, carefully, yes—but let me explain what I mean by carefully. And I think it’s difficult for us because of the culture in which we live. These two things tend to be [regarded as] opposites. So, joy and sobriety, or happiness and solemnity, or confidence and fear. Now, should I as a Christian be afraid of the Judgment Day, in the sense that I don’t know ultimately what’s going to happen to me? The answer is no. As Paul says, he used this beautiful picture in chapter 3 of building on a foundation. Look, he says, there’s only one foundation. I planted the church, Apollos followed up, but the one foundation is Jesus Christ, right? So if I am standing or maybe better, if I have been put, planted on the one foundation, then, as he says, I’ll be saved. So it’s not fear in the sense of “Oh, I’m not sure if I’m going to be saved or not.”

But as a matter of fact, the living God hates injustice and He cannot abide sin. And anything that fails to honor His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ will be destroyed. That’s the way it works with the living God. All of us have things in our lives that we have done that have been empowered by the Spirit, which are things of great beauty, love, and compassion. And again, it’s because the Holy Spirit has been given to us, and we believe the Gospel and because we believe those things, we look at someone in need and we say, “How can I help?” Or we detect a pair of open ears and we say, “What can I say?” And so, this is all thanks to God. All glory goes to God because of these beautiful things that we have done in the Lord. He gets the credit, He gets the glory, but we did them, empowered by His Spirit. And so those things are going to last forever.

Mike Zeigler: I read somewhere once that the New Testament doesn’t teach a judgment by works, but it does teach a judgment of good works, or of works in general, good and evil.

Jeff Gibbs: Our works are assessed. Yeah. You mentioned the verse in 2 Corinthians 5, where the same apostle [says], every one of us stands before the judgment seat of Christ and gives an account. It’s hard to imagine because if we give an account to someone who’s overseeing us in this life, and we acknowledge our failures, at that point, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We fear that we might be rejected or despised or looked down on. In the parable of the talents, the guy who gets five and earns five more, the guy who gets two and earns two more—this is in Matthew 25—they say exactly the same thing to the master, and he says exactly the same thing to them: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

So I like to imagine that scene going like this. One of Christ’s servants, you or me or somebody else, says, “Master, you entrusted four and a half talents to me, and I gained another four and a half, but there’s so much more I could have done. I’m so sorry.” And the Master will say, “I know that. Well done, good and faithful servant.” See? So Jesus operates with different rules. So even as He knows and acknowledges that we’re still flawed and sinful as we serve Him in this life, that doesn’t affect His final verdict upon us: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Mike Zeigler: You talk about rewards in the new life and the new creation, it seems like, in that case, the reward for good work is more work.

Jeff Gibbs: I know it is. And which means we will be utterly transformed, right? So much of our work is driven in some sense by what? Fear or selfishness? But it’s hard to imagine working out of sheer joy of serving the Master and seeing beauty come forth for His honor and the good of my neighbor.

Mike Zeigler: We’ll have to wait for the day.

Jeff Gibbs: We will wait. I think we should do that. Let us wait longingly for that great day.

Mike Zeigler: Amen.

Music Selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Praise the One Who Breaks the Darkness” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.