…when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. – Isaiah 43:2

“When thou goest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.” When your troubles are all over, you shall still be left, and what is more, “neither the flame shall kindle upon you.” When the winding up time comes, you shall not be any the loser. While you think you have lost substance, you shall find when you read Scripture, that you only lose shadows. Your substance was always safe, being laid up in the keeping of Christ in Heaven. You shall discover in the issue, that these trials of yours were the best things that could happen to you. The day shall come when you will say with David, “I will sing of judgment and mercy.” “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I have kept thy word.”

I pray you take the encouragement of this text to strengthen you for the future battles. You have been going through the fires. But you are not consumed yet, and I bless God, upon your garments the smell of fire has not passed. Hold on, hold on, through all the sorrow thou hast, and all the bitterness which is heavy enough to crush thy spirit; hold on, for thy Master sees thee. He will encourage and strengthen thee and bring thee more than a conqueror through it all in the end. 

If the Lord has called you by His grace, all the men on earth, and all the fiends in hell can not reverse the calling, and you shall find in the end that you have not suffered any loss; the flame has not kindled upon you. You shall go through the fire and bless God for it. From a dying bed, or at least through the gates of Paradise you shall look back upon the dark path of the way and say it was well, it was well for me that I had to carry that cross, and that now I am permitted to wear this crown.

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them. – Daniel 3:27

Christian, if you be truly a child of God, your trials cannot destroy you, and what is better still, you can lose nothing by them. You may seem to lose for today, but when the account comes to be settled, you shall not be found to be a farthing the loser by all the temptations of the world, of all the attacks of Satan which you have endured. Nay, more, you shall be wondrously the gainer. Your trials having worked patience and experience, shall make you rich. Your temptations have taught you your weakness, and shown you where your strength lieth, they shall make you strong.

From your first trouble, till the last enemy shall be destroyed, you shall not lose a fraction, jot, or tittle, by any thing or every thing which God in His providence, or the world in its fury, of Satan in his craftiness, shall ever be able to lay upon you. Upon you, not the smell of fire shall have passed. You shall not be burned, neither shall your hosen, nor your hats, but like the men that you read of in Daniel, you shall be wholly preserved intact from the flame.

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them. – Daniel 3:27

I have said that the Church not only does not lose her existence, but she does not lose anything at all. The Church has never lost her numbers. Persecutions have winnowed her and driven away the chaff; but not one grain of wheat has been taken away from the heap. Nay, not even in visible fellowship has the Church been decreased by persecution. She is like Israel in Egypt; the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied. Was a bishop put to death today? Ten young men came the next morning before the Roman proctor and offered themselves to die, having that very night been baptised for the dead bishop, having made their confession of faith that they might occupy his position. “I fill up the vacancy in the Church and then die as he did.” Was a woman strangled or tortured publicly? Twenty women appeared the next day and craved to suffer as she suffered, that they might honour Christ. Did the Church of Rome in more modern times burn one of our glorious reformers—John Huss—yet did not Martin Luther come forward as if the ashes of Huss had begotten Luther? When Wycliffe had passed away, did not the very feet of Wycliffe being persecuted help to spread his doctrines, and were there not found hundreds of young men who in every market-town in England read the Lollard’s Scriptures and proclaimed the Lollard’s faith? And so depend upon it, it shall ever be. Give a dog a bad name and you hang him, give a Christian a bad name and you honour him. 

Upon the entire Church, at the last, there shall not be even the smell of fire. I see her come out of the furnace. I see her advance up the hill towards her final glory with her Lord and Master, and the angels look at her garments; they are not tattered. Nay, the fangs of her enemies have not been able to make a single rent therein.

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

…when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. – Isaiah 43:2

“Thou shalt not be burned;” and then follows, “neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” It strikes me that in the second clause we have the higher gradation of a climax. “Thou shalt not be burned,” to the destruction of thy life, nor even scorched to give thee the most superficial injury, for “the flames shall not kindle upon thee.” Just as when the three holy children came out of the fiery furnace; it is said, “upon their bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed; neither were their coats changed, nor had the smell of fire passed on them. “So the text seems to me to teach that the Christian Church under all its trials has not been consumed, but more than that—it has not lost anything by its trials. The Lord’s Church has never been destroyed yet by her persecutors and her trials. They have thought they crushed her, but she lives still. They had imagined that they had taken away her life, but she sprang up more vigorous than before. I suppose there is not a nation out of which Christ’s Church has ever been utterly driven. Even Spain, which seemed at last to have accomplished it by the most persevering barbarities, finds still a few believers to be a thorn in the side of her bigotry; and as for our own denomination, in the very country, where by the most frightful massacres, it was believed that the sect of Anabaptists had been utterly extinguished, our good and esteemed brother Mr. Oncken has been the means of reviving it, so that throughout all Germany, and in parts of Denmark, and Prussia, and Poland, and even Russia itself, we have sprung up into a new, vigorous, and even wonderful existence. And in Sweden where, under Lutheran government, the most persecuting edicts had been passed against us, we have been astonished to find within ten years three hundred churches suddenly spring up, for the truth has in it a living seed which is not to be destroyed.

You that are on His side, set up your banners today. He saith, “Fear not, I am with thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” 

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

…when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. – Isaiah 43:2

If you have the common afflictions of the world do not wonder. You must have them. The same thing happeneth both to the evil and to the good. You lose in business, you have reverses and disappointments, do not stagger at these in the way to heaven. You must have these; they are necessary to your spiritual health. Worse than that, you have strange temptations, you are placed in a position where you are constantly exposed to sin. It must be so. This too, is the pathway of God’s people, you must have these fiery temptations, that you, being tried in the fire, may come forth as “gold seven times purified.” You have mental anxieties. Neither let these seem a wonder to you. They fall to the lot of all the saints of the Most High. Moreover, you will have to endure the attacks of Satan, you must go through the valley of the shadow of death, and fight with Apollyon as Christian did (in Pilgrim’s Progress), you are not to be exempted from the hardness of Christian warfare. If you will mount the hill, you must climb; if you are to win the crown, you must win it by sheer might. Think not this a strange thing. And if in doing good you meet with difficulties, let not that stagger you. It is but right and natural. I tell you again, if there be any pathway in which there be not fire, tremble, but if your lot be hard, thank God for it. If your sufferings be great, bless the Lord for them, and if the difficulties in your pathway be many, surmount them by faith, but let them not cast you down. Be of good courage, and wait on the Lord, setting this constantly in your minds that He has not promised to keep you from trouble, but to preserve you in it. It is not, “I will save thee from the fire,” but “I will save thee in the fire,” not “I will quench the coals,” but “they shall not burn thee,” not “I will put out the furnace,” but “the flames shall not kindle upon thee.” Write it down and expect it to come true, that in this world thou shalt have tribulation. Only follow thy glorious Leader, be it through flood or flame.

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon