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3. The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the LORD trieth the hearts.
The refiner's fining-pot and furnace try his metals. But Jehovah claims to himself the prerogative of trying the hearts. (1 Kings 8:39. Jeremiah 17:10.) His eyes are as a flame of fire. (Revelation 1:14.) Nothing deceives him; nothing escapes his probing search. The gold must be put into the furnace. So mixed is it with dross, that the workman's eye can scarcely discover it. But for the furnace, the dross would cleave inseparably. The refiner's process burns it out, and the pure metal is left behind. No burnishing is of any avail. Till it has undergone the fire, it is unfit for use. And must there not be a furnace for the child of God? (Isaiah 31:9. Jeremiah 9:7.) None of us know ourselves, until “the fire has tried every man's work, of what sort it is.” (1 Corinthians 3:13.) We can but exclaim in witnessing the result — Lord! what is man! the heart of man of the holiest saint thus proved — thus open to view?
But the LORD will have the metal cleansed. We cannot do the work. It is no common power, that can separate the base alloy. No milder remedy will accomplish the purpose. But by this process the hidden evil is brought out for humiliation;† the hidden good for honour.† Deep personal or relative affliction; “the knowledge of the plague of our own hearts;”† the discovery of secret sins; circumstances of daily trial in trifles, known perhaps only to the heart that feels them† — all or any of these are a searching, piercing furnace.
Painful indeed is the purifying process. The flesh trembles at the fire. Yet shall we not let the refiner do his work, though it be by Nebuchadnezzar's furnace?† Shall we not commit ourselves with well-grounded confidence to his wisdom, tenderness and love? — “O LORD, correct me; but with judgment.” (Jeremiah 10:24.) Is not any furnace, that “purges away our dross” (Isaiah 1:25) of earthliness, that brings us to know ourselves, our God, and his dealings with us — a mighty blessing? The best materials for praise are brought out of this consecrated furnace. Yet we must carefully examine, ere we perceive the value of these trying dispensations. When the action of fire upon the metal has brought it into its best state for use, we now look for the results, in the displacing of all worldly idols, in the melting away of the stubbornness of the will, and the entireness of the heart for God. For ‘as gold cast into the furnace receiveth their new lustre, and shineth brighter when it cometh forth than it did before; so are the saints of God more glorious after their great afflictions, and their graces even more resplendent.’† The refiner's process may be slow, but its results are sure. Nothing but dross will perish. The vilest earth will be turned into the finest gold. No refiner ever watched the furnace with such exactness and care. Many glittering particles may be swept away. But the pure residue — the solid particles — comparatively scanty in the amount, but sterling in quality, shall be delivered into the mold. Strange as it may seem to see the gold left in the fire, ‘he that put it there will be loth to lose it. Not one grain, not one drachm, shall be lost.’† He “sits” in patient watchfulness (Malachi 3:2, 3), moderating the heat, and carefully marking the moment, when it “shall be brought through the fire” (Zechariah 13:9), and set out in all the purity of the purifying trial. Every hour of the trial is above gold, and issues in a richer vein of Christian attainment. A suffering Savior is realized and endeared.
Here then in the furnace — child of God — see the seal of thine election (Isaiah 48:10); the ground and establishment of thy confidence (Zechariah 13:9); thy joyous anticipation, that thy faith that is here in the furnace shall, when thy Lord shall appear, be then made up into a crown ‘of pure gold, and be found unto praise and honour, and glory.’†
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