THE SITTING OF THE REFINER – Charles Spurgeon
The Sitting of the Refiner
“And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” – Malachi 3:3.
I. The Refining Process and the Coming of the Lord
This verse speaks of one of the results of the coming of the Lord—He would test and try all things, destroy the false and the evil, and make those pure whom He permitted to remain. Behold, the Promised One has come! He whom Israel sought suddenly appeared in His Temple as the Messenger of the Covenant. Glad were the eyes of Simeon, Anna, and all those who waited for Him—and glad, this day, are our voices as we proclaim that the Messiah has appeared! The glorious Son of God, the Anointed of the Most High, has been among men, and faithful witnesses have testified concerning Him, “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
That coming, heralded by songs of angels and prophetic of countless blessings, should have been a day of unmingled light to men, but because of hypocrisy, pride, and self, it was not so. On the contrary, it was to many a day of darkness and not of light. We have abundant historical evidence that our Lord’s first Advent was a day of great trial to the Jewish people, and when we remember the siege of Jerusalem and kindred events, we do not marvel that the Prophet asked, “But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap.” His ministry tested the religion, orthodoxy, and saintliness of the period—and because it revealed the hollowness of the whole of the profession of the day, it awakened all the enmity of the religious classes. Those who were the leaders of the so-called religious thought of the age were awakened to hate the Lord Jesus and to delight in nailing Him to the Cross, for His teaching was so true and good that their word-chopping and ceremony-making could not endure it!
Our Lord, when He came, sat as a refiner and assayed the age then present—and ever since then, His Gospel in the world, His Spirit, His teaching, yes, the very fact of His life—these all together have been a test, a trial, a standard of weights and measures among men. All things are on trial. You are constantly hearing of this time and that time as being “crises,” and the saying is true. There is always a crisis of something or other during these days of the Lord’s sitting as a refiner. All things are being thrust into the furnace, and the fire is kept burning at a white heat—and nothing evil can abide the flame. Everything that is good shall be conserved, purified, and made brilliant—but all that is evil, be it what it may, the whole world over—since Christ has come—shall be tried and dissolved as by fire.
When our Lord comes the second time, the trial will be even more intense. “Who shall abide the day of His coming?” when He shall be further revealed, and when His purpose shall be that of judgment rather than mercy? It is well for us to know that whenever Jesus Christ draws near to a soul, He comes in utmost mercy to make it clean. Because He is, in Himself, the Incarnation of ineffable love, His coming always means that He is about to purify the soul, for the highest mercy is to rid us of sin. The grandest thing that God Himself can do in the purpose of His love is to purify us into His own glorious holiness!
II. Christ’s Refining Love and His Purpose
Christ loved His Church, and this is how He showed it: “He gave Himself for it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” The Well-Beloved seeks to purify His chosen by the washing of water through the Word of God. It is the way His love takes, for true love always chooses the way of holiness. That love which would lead its beloved into sin is lust—it deserves not the name of love! But true love will always seek the highest health and wholeness (which is holiness) of its object. Pure affection will grieve to see a fault, mourn over a folly, and seek to remove a blot. Perfect love seeks the perfection of the thing it loves.
Such is the perfect love of Christ—whenever He comes to a soul in love, He comes as a refiner. He comes with this objective—to take away the dross from the silver and to make the fine gold still purer. In His sharpest dispensations, He means no ill to us, but the most good, seeking not to grieve, but to lead us to the eternal blessedness of which the root and flower are both found in absolute perfection.
If any of you, my hearers, are seeking the Lord at this time, I want you to understand what it means—you are seeking a fire that will test you and consume much that has been dear to you. We are not to expect Christ to come and save us in our sins! He will come and save us from our sins. Therefore, if you are enabled by faith to take Christ as a Savior, remember that you take Him as the Purger and the Purifier, for it is from sin that He saves us. “They shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” This is the particular salvation which He aims at. Though He does deliver men from Hell, it is by delivering them from the sin which is the fuel of Tophet’s flame. Though He does give us Heaven, yet His way of bringing us to Heaven is by giving us a heavenly mind—a heart obedient to the holy and loving Father. The refinement of our nature and character is the way in which His infinite love most wisely displays itself.
III. The Means of Refining: Word, Fellowship, and Providence
The refining process is carried out in part by the Word of God. “Is not My Word like a fire?” Wherever the Gospel is preached thoroughly, it is a wonderful consumer of dross! I have known certain congregations that have been dead in worldliness—the haunts of wealthy professors whose love to Christ was a mere pretense. Close to them, I have seen another church which has been lively in spirit and full of zeal for the Lord. What was the difference? The reason has usually been this—that in the one case there was man’s ministry and in the other there was the Word of the Lord! Ministries of the Spirit, worldly people cannot bear. They are displeased with a plain testimony. It rasps their conscience. There is no need to turn them out of the Church—they drop away of themselves. It is not the place for them; it is too hot for them, I mean too holy, too spiritual, too devout. By-and-by, they are offended and murmuring, they prepare to emigrate. There are so many things they do not approve of—they see so much that is dreadfully orthodox, narrow-minded, and bigoted—that they trot off among their own cattle. Yes, and so they should. That is God’s way of keeping His flock to itself. Those that are rooted up by the Word of God are best rooted up. We may always be practicing this kind of separating the tares from the wheat, for it leaves the testing with God and a man’s own conscience, and therefore, no injustice will be done. It would be ill by excommunications to seek to root up the tares from among the wheat, lest we root up the wheat with them, but by the Word of God, if it is preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, the process will always be going on.
God’s furnace stands in Zion. If any of you are ever displeased by the Word, I pray you are displeased—we shall certainly never alter the Word for you! If the Truth of God comes too closely home to your consciences and angers you, be angry, not only with him that speaks it, but with Him from whom it comes—and then you will see the folly of such anger and humble yourselves before God, accept His Truth—which will live and your sin shall die. God grant it may be so!
IV. The Role of Fellowship and Affliction in Refining
Another purging operation is by causing His chosen to have more fellowship with His own blessed and glorious Self. Of all the means of purging the heart, none surpasses this. For when the Lord, in great mercy, draws His child near to Him and makes Him feel His love and know it beyond a doubt, then the favored heart longs to be holy in all things. When the Lord fills His servant full of His love and makes him to be overjoyed with the sweet consciousness that he is the Beloved’s and that the Beloved is his, then a holy jealousy burns within the soul, and the heart cries, “Is there anything that can grieve the Beloved? Let it be slain! Is there anything that I think, or wish, or say, or do, that might break the sacred spell of communion and cause Him to be gone? Let it be driven out at once!”
The heart institutes a diligent search that, if possible, it may put away the accursed thing so that Christ may not be grieved. Of all fires that ever burned, this is one of the fiercest. Jealousy is cruel as the grave, and a holy jealousy does stern work in our hearts with sin! It hangs up the darling sin before the face of the sun and calls upon the fowls of Heaven to come and feast upon the slain! Oh, that we knew Christ better and lived more in the Light of His Countenance, for then we would be purged as with the spirit of burning! After all, the Holy Spirit is the great fire that burns in Zion to purge Believers from the love of sin. It is He that makes use of the Word, makes use of fellowship, and makes use of everything else to sever sin from the saint and take away the dross from the silver.
He is the immediate Agent of our sanctification—all else we must regard as only the means in His skillful hands. To Him be our love and our praise evermore! As a subsidiary means, the Lord uses Providence. I have no doubt that He very frequently uses gracious Providences, as we call them—that is, Providences which please us by gratifying our natural wishes. Some people have been sanctified by prosperity, but I do not think very many have. Few good medicines are pleasant to the palate. If we were as we ought to be, every joy that comes to us would tend to make us grateful and so it would make us love God—and what is that but to be more like God and more holy? But alas, in that we are weak through the flesh, the gentler modes of love more often fail than her rougher processes. It remains then, that if we cannot be preserved in honey, we must be salted with fire lest corruption should take hold upon us.
V. The Attitude and Patience of the Refiner
Such is the stubbornness of our flesh, that the Lord uses for fuel in His furnace sharp and heavy trials of different kinds. Adversity assumes many forms, and in each and all of its shapes, the Lord knows how to use it for His people’s benefit. Christ sits as a Refiner when He takes away prosperity and brings the wealthy down to poverty. He often refines men by the losses which they sustain of beloved friends. Bereavement burns like a furnace blast and, oh, how much of carnal love has been consumed by it! We have known persons greatly purified by the Holy Spirit by passing through depression of spirit, inward grief, and soul sorrow. Spiritual pain has been blessed to some and physical pain to more.
In itself, pain will sanctify no man—it may even tend to wrap him up within himself and make him morose, peevish, selfish. But when God blesses it, then it will have a most salutary effect—a softening influence. Sorrow is made to act as a kind of flux upon the hard metal to make the dross separate from the precious ore. Yes, affliction is what most Believers think of when they read such a passage as this, but I warn them not to think too much of it, for that is not the Refiner’s only fire, nor is it even His best fire. Affliction is but one part of the machinery of the Royal Refinery—one of the fluxes by which the great Lord separates the precious from the vile.
VI. The Immediate Result of Refining
The immediate result of Christ’s refining work is that they “may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” First, these Levites shall attend to their business. They ought to have been working at the Temple, but they had forgotten their high calling. The sons of Levi had taken up their portion in the world, though their God had never given them any, for He gave no portion to Levi when the land was divided among the tribes. “The Lord’s portion is His people” and the Lord is the portion of their inheritance.
The Levites had gotten away from their spiritual calling and had given themselves up to mind this and that—but it is pleasant to observe that when God purifies them, they begin to do their own business—“That they may offer unto the Lord.” Oh, Beloved, if you have been refined by the Word of God; if you have been refined by the Spirit; if you have been refined by heavenly joys; if you have been refined by sanctified sorrows, you wish to serve God much more than ever you did before. You now pray that if you have lived to self in any degree, you may be forgiven, for you wish to live to Christ and to Him alone!
VII. The Final Outcome: Acceptance and Holiness
Brothers and Sisters, thank God for every trial you have suffered if it leads you to offer your sacrifice! I will bless God for all I have endured, myself, if I am enabled to fulfill my priesthood, for are we not a nation of priests, a peculiar people, set apart to offer sacrifice to God? And this is to be the result of refinement—that we do good work and service unto God. Some of you need a little pushing on in this direction, for I know a great many Christians who live as if the main point in religion was to enjoy yourself. “I enjoyed that sermon. I enjoyed that Prayer Meeting.” Yes, that is quite right. But have you done anything? Have you served the Master? Have you offered anything to Jesus? Have you brought forth fruit to His Glory?
VIII. The Eternal Outcome: Purification for Glory
God grant that the blessed processes of His Providence and Grace which are being carried on in His people may be carried on in you and me that we may serve God with perfect hearts all our days! I think I heard somebody say, “I do not want putting through that process. I do not wish for such purifying.” Have you seen the great masses of slag that they throw out from the furnace? They lie in great heaps at the pit’s mouth. Will these be a picture of you and your eternal condition? Reprobate silver shall men call them because God has rejected them! Will you be the slag cast away? The dross left forever? Oh, Eternity! Eternity! What must it be to be shipwrecked on your shoreless sea and drifted forever as a waif and stray from God and hope! Eternity! Eternity! What must it be to be rejected and cast away from the Presence of God and from the Glory of His power—thrown out upon the waste heap of the universe, forever given up!
God save any man from that! Oh, it were worth wading through a thousand Hells to obtain that which makes existence worth having—namely, rightness with God! But, oh, if there were nothing else to lose but God’s love; nothing else to earn by neglect of Divine things but to be rejected of God, I would plead with you with my whole soul that you would seek the Lord now! Cry mightily to the Divine Savior that He may now purge you with His precious blood from all the guilt of sin! Cry to Him that He may then go on with the second process by which He shall purge you from the power and habit and defilement of sin—and make you, like Himself—immaculate before the Omniscient!
God grant it, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.