Refiner’s fire produces eternal results

According to sources, gold must undergo testing before it is approved. Several methods are used either to determine the quantity of gold in a sample, or its purity, or both. These methods involve fire and chemical solutions to remove all other base metals. Then the gold is compared to a preset standard that determines its value. This last step requires the opinion of a certified and unbiased third party. 
 

Actually, this classic procedure is being replaced by non-destructive hand held x-ray technology. A booth in a Florida shopping mall offered such a process to anyone who wanted to know the metal content of their jewelry. I had my ring scanned to see if it actually had the gold quantity etched on the inside. The technician held it under a small machine and a gauge approved the gold to be 18 carets as claimed.

The Bible uses a term from this process to describe how I also must be tested. Like precious metal, God wants to separate the pure life of Christ that He put in me from the base products that are part of my sin nature. He uses various ways to remove the dross. Sometimes it is a refiner’s fire, and sometimes the piercing ability of His written Word that x-rays and exposes my sinfulness. 

In this verse, the reference to being “one approved” uses a word that came from this process of testing and approving assayed minerals.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

God has at least two positive results in mind for His testing processes. Besides wanting to purify my life and make it shine for Him, He wants me to have no need of being ashamed. That word implies blameless innocence. Instead of deserving reproof or rebuke, God wants me to be blameworthy, without any feelings of shame or embarrassment about my life. 

Shame usually focuses on the sense of being responsibility for my foolish, improper, or immoral actions, but this sense of disgrace can happen without guilt too. That is, I can be humiliated by how someone treats me, or ashamed of the actions of someone else. God wants me to be without any of that.

As I researched the meanings of “ashamed,” I was surprised that the antonym is pride. This morning, this discovery is a small assay. That is, God reveals that anytime I experience feelings of shame or embarrassment, I might need to deal with a prideful attitude. 

This process of being tested and approved by God is needed. He uses it to remove the stuff from my life that makes me feel shame or guilt before Him. I know from this and other passages that He does not want me to feel humiliated by others either. If there is no reason for shame, then I can have confidence. This is not because I am perfect, but because Christ lives in me and makes Himself known to others through me. My purity is about His purity — it becomes visible when my dross is refined and skimmed from me.

The second result of this assay process is to give me the ability to rightly handle His Word. There is a connection. If my heart is not right, I cannot perceive properly and God will seem different to me than He actually is. David wrote…

With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous. (Psalm 18:25–26)

Paul echoed something similar: To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. (Titus 1:15)

This means that if my life is not cleansed from its base elements, then I cannot see or experience purity. I will not see the mercy and purity of God either, and no one will see the mercy and purity of Jesus Christ who lives in me. Beyond that, I will not be able to “rightly handle” the Word of God for I cannot see it rightly. This is about correct interpretation for my own life and correct interpretation as I share it with others. Going through the assay process is vital if I want to live the new life God gave me.

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Lord, I’m not interesting in finding gold, but I am deeply interested in being like pure gold, in having You shine in my life without any interference from sin and other dross elements. I’m also deeply concerned that I rightly handle Your Word. My own walk with You depends on this, as how what I say and write affects others. I am not thrilled about the assay process even if having You look right through me as an x-ray is more appealing than fire or refining chemicals. Yet, I do know that whatever method You choose to expose and cleanse my sin is vital. For that, I submit to Your will.

Obedience and pure gold

In observing the lives of those who have made a profession of faith, I see a wide spectrum of commitment. Some are deeply dedicated to the Lord. They honor Him in every area of their lives, speak of Him to others, and are the go-to people when I have any needs or problems.

Others not so much. While they claim to know Jesus, they seldom talk about Him. Church attendance is sparse and their philosophy of life is mixed and confusing. They have marginal victory over sin and are often called “hypocrites” by the rest of the world because their actions do not match what they claim to believe.

When God’s people left Egypt (certainly a picture of a life enslaved to sin), they were given a new land and a new way of life. This pictures the new life Christians are given when they begin their walk with Jesus Christ. In those Old Testament days, their leader was Joshua, a Hebrew word that also means Jesus. He gave them a warning that was important to the success of their new life. 

Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Joshua 22:5)

This same warning has value for those who follow Jesus. We must do so with all our heart and soul. My obedience to Jesus cannot be mixed with allegiance to the stuff of the world.

The author of today’s devotional reading uses an illustration about gold and its value. He says that gold cannot be used for currency as long as it is mixed with the quartz and rock in which it lies imbedded. It must be refined and pure.

Last week we were at a large flea market. One of the sales booths was actually buying gold. The clerk had a machine for testing metal. She put it on our rings and told us the caret value in the gold. My ring was actually 14 ct. as I was told when I bought it. However, one person in our family had a platinum ring that was 91%, acceptable as “pure.” Another had what they thought was a 14 ct. gold ring and it was only 11 carets. 

Comparing this to my spiritual life, I can easily see that my life is useless to God if it is polluted with sin, earthliness and selfishness. When God gave me new life in Christ, He purified my heart and separated me from the sin that held me in bondage. He intended that I stay that way. As His gold coin or gold ring, I am stamped with His image and superscription, and made into a divine currency. I am to bear His likeness in this world.

Another thought is added to this illustration. It is the idea that a Christian is, so to speak, the circulating medium of Christ, the coin of the realm by whom the great transactions of mercy and grace to a lost world are carried on. In financial matters, currency stands for gold. In spiritual matters, a Christian stands for Christ, representing His good and acceptable will and presenting what He is like to others, showing them how much He loves them.

I cannot do this if the gold of my life is full of impurities. The muck of sin cancels out even the occasional glitter. The stains of selfishness mar whatever testimony I might have. Worldliness makes me just like everyone else and totally unable to be a picture of the grace and redemptive power of God. 

Aside from this illustration, Joshua’s warning is plain. When I look around me and see those who observe and obey God and those who do not, the importance of what God says needs no explanation. I must obey Him.

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Lord, thank You for the awesome privilege of representing You. I don’t have a special machine where I can look at myself and make an evaluation. Instead, I need to keep my eyes on You, doing what You say and trusting You to keep my life pure, refined by Your power, and useful in accomplishing Your will. My part is simple: I must obey You.

Refining Fire

The Old Testament makes clear that God hates sin and will judge sinners. Certainly He was patient with His people Israel, but when it comes to judging sin, the people of God were not exempt. God loved them, but He hated their sin.

By the end of the Old Testament, God had affirmed over and over that He would send a Messiah and in Malachi 3, He says that He will send a messenger to prepare the way for His coming. This was in line with a custom of Near Eastern kings in which a messenger removed obstacles to the king’s visit. So what was the obstacle that stood between Israel and their King? Certainly it was their sin.

Malachi 3:3 says, “He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi (His priests), and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.”

The Old Testament priests had become spiritually corrupt and led the rest of the nation against the Lord. They would be the first to experience His cleansing fire.

However, this passage is also pointing to another judgment. It indicates that future day when Jesus will return. When He came the first time, His mission was to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). The Second Coming is different; then Jesus will come to judge the earth.

My question as I read this passage in Malachi and its reference to the Second Coming, was how will Christians fare when Jesus returns? If the priests are first up for judgment, who are His priests today?

1 Peter 2:9-10 and 4:17 pop into mind. The first verses say, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.”

God’s people during the Old Testament days were members of the Jewish nation. He called them to do the same thing—proclaim His praises to a dark world. They didn’t do it, and couldn’t do it without obeying God, and by the time Malachi was written, they simply were not living up to that responsibility.

Christians are called to do the same thing, only instead of a select group of priests, or even restricting this task to members of the clergy, every believer belongs to “a royal priesthood” and called to live for the Lord, proclaim His praises and take His message of salvation to others. Are we doing it? And if not, what will happen to us?

I know the Bible teaches that Christians are no longer under condemnation. Our eternal life is secure, but that does not exclude us from judgment. Instead of eternal damnation, our judgment is like that described by Malachi and involves chastening, purging and purifying.

1 Peter 4:17 says, “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? Now ‘If the righteous one is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?’”

Just as Malachi said, God will begin His purifying work with the priests, but in our case, this means the entire church! If the people of God are not living according to the will of God, He will refine all of us. He wants every Christian pure and our lives wholly submitted to Him.

It is easier for me to point fingers at those outside the church and announce doom and gloom. I know that “the ungodly and the sinner” stand in a dangerous place. Without repentance, they cannot see God. Without that new life that only Jesus can give, they cannot see or enter His kingdom (John 3).

However, God uses His people to reach people with the good news of salvation. He uses His people to “proclaim the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.” If I am not walking in that light, I also stand in a shaky place. Can I expect God to bypass me before He judges those who are not saved? I don’t think so.

I’ve said it before, but need to remember this myself: a refiner heats gold or silver until it melts and the impurities begin floating to the top. As he skims off the dross, he watches the metal. As soon as he can see his own reflection in the surface, he knows it is pure.

If life gets too hot, I tend to run for a cooler climate instead of responding to what He is doing with the heat. It would help to remember (and be thankful) that His judgment is not a condemnation that destroys, but a refining process designed to make me more like Him.

Pure gold — who, me?

I used to think patience was a stoic endurance made without complaint. In my mind, patient people were those who put up with things and smiled. They never said anything and their disposition remained sweet and constant. I thought this until I read in God’s Word that Job was an example of patient endurance.

Job was a godly man who was also wealthy and had a large family. He loved the Lord and obeyed Him. One day, Satan approached God and suggested that Job would not be so loyal if God had not built a hedge around him and if he didn’t have so much, he would curse God.

I don’t know why God accepted the challenge, or why He didn’t ignore this, like we would swat away a buzzing fly, but He didn’t. He told Satan that he could do what he wanted with Job, except kill him.

The story begins then with the destruction of all Job owned and then the death of each child. At this, Job sat down and said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The Bible says, “In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.”

Then Job’s health was taken. At that, his wife told him to curse God and die. His friends were first struck silent by Job’s suffering and should have stayed that way, but they began accusing him. They told him he must have sinned or this would not have happened. Their accusations continue for chapters and chapters of this story.

I try to imagine myself in this man’s position. His children were dead. His wife was no help. His wealth was gone. He was covered with boils from head to foot. Still he said, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” Again, “Job did not sin with his lips.”

Later, when the friends hit their high notes, Job began to strike back. He told them they were “miserable comforters” and cursed the day he was born. He complained about his situation and the lack of comfort he received. He expressed his deep bitterness. In modern terminology, Job did a lot of whining.

Oh, he had some high moments. His faith in God came out in declarations such as, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” and “I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.”

Seeming to intuitively understand what was going on, Job also said, “He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” but for the most of the Old Testament book in his name, he complains and expresses deep frustration.

The New Testament hold up Job has an example of patience and perseverance. James 5 says, “Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.”

Job blows away my ideas about patience. In the mind of God, the person who holds fast to their faith under the greatest trials is a patient person, not necessarily the one who has nothing to say, no protest to make.

Patience allows free expression. In fact, when Job’s wife said, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity?’ I get the clue to what made Job a great man. He never faked how he felt. Patience is not faking it. Also, even though Job expressed his great dismay, he never tried to “fix” it. Patience hangs in, stays with the suffering, endures the pain, refuses the accusations because they are not right, and trusts that God, who knows all things, has some reason for allowing all this to happen.

When I compare myself to Job, I see myself trusting God will “fix” it, but telling Him to hurry up about it. I’m not sure if Job did that, so I’ve a ways to go. However, I’ve learned one thing from this man; that suffering is a refining process. The goldsmith turns up the heat on a pot of melted metal. The impurities rise as dross to the surface where the master can skim them from the gold. The metal is pure when the goldsmith can see his face in its surface.

Job teaches me that when the heat is on, I must be willing to let go of those impurities. This test is no fun, but through it, the Lord is looking for pure gold, and if I cooperate, He will find it.