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Tried in the Fire "When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10 RSV). The patriarchs of early times saw in gold an emblem of purity and nobility. Job looked upon the trials which befell him as the equivalent process by which gold receives its bright lustre. To rid man of much that is coarse and gross in his nature, to refine him in spirit, to bring out a latent splendour of being was a Divine purpose which that venerable philosopher understood and appreciated. Without that understanding he could not have said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (Job 13:15) The words were more than a stubborn declaration of faith. They were an acquiescence to the refining forces of suffering and adversity as a necessary element by which the spirit of man is enabled to rise from a state of blind complacency to an exaltation of conquest. To endure pain and disaster, to vanquish sorrow and trouble, to come out of some gruelling bout of affliction feeling a sense of betterness and strength, of greater wisdom and deeper humanity, is to know an affinity with all that is truly heroic. It is to understand more clearly the words that have an old familiar ring, "Whom the Lord loves He chastens." (Heb.12:6 NKJV) It is to have fellowship with the prince of sufferers, the Man of Sorrows who was acquainted with grief, who, though without sin, received through his anguish of mind and body a perfection of spirit not previously his. The radiant Alpha and Omega which the Revelator saw walking among the seven golden candlesticks was that same Jesus Christ who once walked on the earth among men, tested and tried at all points of human nature in the crucible of sorrow, temptation, weakness and pain. The highest and best endured the pangs of Gethsemane, the desertion of his friends, the betrayal of his trust, the mockery of a professional priesthood, and the physical anguish of the cross. If he, the faultless, was not spared the tears, the blows, the pain of this world’s perfidy, his humble followers with all their faults and failures can hardly expect to escape those refining experiences which reduce crude nature to something of a finer quality. Any commodity "worth its weight in gold" or any person known to be "as good as gold" has received highest praise. The words are compliments passed into everyday use which rate the best in terms of gold. The very word has a ring about it of splendour, glory, radiance and richness. When men would give their best they gave gold. After Job’s troubles were over every man brought him an earring of gold. When the work began on Israel’s Tabernacle, apart from all other gifts, every man offered an offering of gold. King David later bequeathed to the temple of God three thousand talents of the gold of Ophir. The chief men of the nation added yet another five thousand talents. Both secular and sacred history record a lavish use of gold. Vessels of solid gold, of pure gold, of fine gold, furniture overlaid with gold, were an essential part of the pomp and pride of life. The image of gold set up by Nebuchadnezzar for all to worship typifies man’s age‑long worship of wealth, as the golden calf made by Aaron portrays the careless, wanton world obsessed by all the things money can buy, but blindly indifferent to those free gifts of God which money cannot buy. The wealth and craftsmanship of bygone Eastern civilisations offered to God’s pen men both illustration and contrast. The gold of palaces began to pall (jade) on men who saw the treachery of princes. Even the splendid vessels of the Temple became baubles in the sight of those who saw a great want of wisdom, justice, mercy and humility on the part of those from whom much was expected, but from whom little was forthcoming. If God wanted gold could he not take it? All the gold was his, laid in the coffers of the earth long before man appeared to find and use it so cleverly and often so selfishly. Job had a first rate knowledge of the treasures of the earth. He knew where they were to be found. But where, he mused, shall wisdom be found or understanding? Gold would buy neither one nor the other, for wisdom is beyond price. Gold has bought many a king’s ransom but it cannot buy the free gifts of God. Man has not been redeemed with gold but with the life of the Lamb of God. Salvation is free. Life is the gift of God. Peter at the gate Beautiful had no gold to give to the lame man asking alms but he gave him a gift gold could not buy. (Acts 3:1‑11) He gave him faith, set him on his feet and sent him away to live a free and independent life. The trial of faith is more precious than gold, for it is the conditioning of human character for a prize worth more than its weight in gold; an eternal glory, not comparable with the transitory treasures of this world. Nor can the testing time be considered, however fiery, as anything but "a light affliction" for so great an end. Poets as well as prophets have put into inspired words the lesson to be drawn from the refiner’s fire. The peculiarity of gold is its necessary subjection to tremendous heat to rid the ore of its gritting impurities. The hotter the furnace, the finer the gold. The hotter the furnace, the brighter the lustre and the better the quality of the precious metal. Once a liquid fire in the veins of the earth, cooled and solidified by time, between stratas of rock, it is not at its shining best when it first sees the light of day. Rough and shapeless, mixed with the dross of its earthly origins, it must undergo great tribulation before it becomes the crown of a king, the sacred vessels of a temple, the banqueting plate of a great house or the currency of nations. Purified of its scum, plunged unto the sizzling water of the cooling trough, hammered and beaten, stretched and pulled, shaped and designed by the goldsmith’s art, at last it emerges a thing of beauty: a treasure for all time. History and biography record that all great, worthwhile people have been born out of the fires of adversity, for "Life is not an idle ore, but iron dug from central gloom and heated hot with burning fears and dipped in baths of hissing tears and battered with the shocks of doom, to shape and use." (Tennyson) The heirs of the future are not called to pleasant dalliance down the primrose paths of easy living. "Changed from glory into glory" is not a state achieved by mere idle contemplation, of past events or future visions. There is little of the mystic about the true practising Christian surrounded by the clamour of the world set on going its own way, utterly regardless of Divine advice. Life is an everyday battle with weakness within and buffetings without, designed and permitted by Divine wisdom for a higher purpose than the temporary satisfaction of the human nature for happiness, honour or wealth in a world which is clearly not God’s world. The life intelligently and unreservedly put into the hands of God is in for a hard time. No doubt the end will be glorious but how few can stand the process. "Are ye able?" Christ asked his ambitious disciples. Kings of the East brought him gold at his birth but they also brought him myrrh to mingle with those bitter experiences which transformed even his faultless nature into the supernal (divine) glory of the King of Kings. Men crowned him not with spun gold but with woven thorns. The curse of Adam drew blood from the brow that had already endured the terrible sweat of Gethsemane. The sting of that circlet, the tormenting fear of failure in that garden, the loneliness, the grief, the desertion by his friends, the denial, the rejection, the consequent suffering, the mockery and the apparent triumph of evil and death were a forecast, a guarantee that those who truly sought to follow in his steps should have also something of his experiences. Only metal that could stand such tests would endure to the end. "Oh, ’tis a pathway hard to choose, a struggle rough to share, (R2163 C T Russell) Not only human pride, loving the adulation of men, but human frailty, shrinking from the heat and the hammer, weak when it should be strong, failing when the pressures of life and the powers of darkness seem in league to crush out hope, assurance and fortitude. "Gold tried in the fire" is not too exaggerated a description of that human metal which God passes through the furnace of affliction that it may come forth a shining product ready for high service. Freed from the dross of intolerance, ignorance, self‑seeking and all those vanities to which flesh is heir, a metal which has stood the test will be found worthy to become the justification of the eternal purpose. "A crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God." (Isa.62:3) Of whom was the prophet speaking? What company of people did he foresee at some distant time occupying such a position of grandeur in relationship to the Lord that he would exhibit them as the crowning splendour of his own supreme universal authority? The crown or cap of gold worn on the head of kings and princes signified honour, glory, dignity and rulership. Gold and jewels have been the prerogative of kings. The crown was rarely a simple circlet but a thing which shone in the eyes of the beholder, riveting an awed attention by its brilliance and beauty upon the wearer as one appointed to reign over lesser mortals. When King David of Israel took the crown from the fallen king of Ammon he "found it to weigh a talent of gold, and there were precious stones in it." (1 Chron.20:2) Yet this age‑long symbol of royalty once lay in the earth, a trapped element of primeval fires, needing the slow, laborious struggle of years to bring it to that perfection which exalts a monarch. The gold had no say in its shape or use. It did not exist for its own ends but for the purpose and design of its creator. It follows then, that the dedicated life is no longer its own. It is chosen and offered for a purpose and place scarcely discerned in a life and a world which resembles the workshop of the Divine craftsman. Daily the old nature perishes while the spirit expands. As the remarkable pliability of gold yields to the fine designs of the smith so the willing obedience of a saint yields to him who fashions a new creation for his own purpose. Without discipline there is no destiny and without destiny there is no future. "There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough‑hew them how we will." (Shakespeare) While some appear to have the superfine quality of fine gold dug from Ophir or Havilah, undergoing in this age those trials of faith which fit them for the next, mankind in general is not overlooked. The human metal is still there awaiting the time, the opportunity and the discipline of a benign reign of justice and love which will bring out the hidden best of all that obscure, neglected, undiscovered mass which has not yet had a chance to shine. For a long time human life has been cheap, grossly undervalued and enormously underestimated. The human race is a massive mine of potential worth, its collective resources still hidden in the moral chaos and dark labyrinths of a world in which evil, ignorance and selfishness have predominated. Individually man is a restless dissatisfied being, craving to be something he is not. "I will make a man more precious that fine gold; even…than the golden wedge of Ophir." (Isa.13:12) Gold is the Divine yardstick, the highest measure of nature. Money and education have produced in some respects civilised man, but God intends to produce regenerated man, man reformed, remade, reshaped after his own image. When the dross of wickedness and arrogance is purged from the earth and from human nature, man will become, by the grace of God, the precious creature he was meant to be, capable of greatness, of moral purity and deep happiness, far more valuable that the literal gold which the covetous have gone to any lengths to obtain. As nations in their descent through time have dropped from the head of gold to the feet of iron and the toes mixed with clay, the kingdom of God must bring them back to the gold standard. "The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." (Rev.21:21) Here the Revelator depicts the future state of society, broad and spacious, full of light and beauty, golden and true in all its relationships. No longer crooked and perverse, violent and impure, in its dealings with others, but clear as glass, its ascendant virtues reflected in the mirror‑like lustre of pure gold. Whatever men and women may think of their present riches and attainments, whether they be saints or sinners, the counsel of Christ to "buy of Me gold tried in the fire" (Rev.3:18) is timely and Divine. The imperfection of human nature, the unsatisfying quality of all earth’s transitory riches and pleasures, grow pale beside that gold of intelligent character, the pure in heart who have passed through the fires, willingly losing their dross, sacrificing self and counting it nothing. That they might win through to the ultimate goal. For "the crown and the glory of life is character." (Samuel Smiles) It is a grand possession, a great influence and a unique power. The kingdom of God belongs to the pure in heart. "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." (Acts 14:22) "If the means are rough and the methods hard, the future will be found infinitely worth them all for those who endure to the end. "When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10) AOH |
