Refined by the Fire

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This morning, I’m going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to the book of 1 Peter. Turn with me to the book of 1 Peter, chapter 1. And we’re going to continue on with this series about our living hope that we find in Jesus Christ alone.

And now, I was looking at this today, and it actually comes off a lot easier than it used to. It goes on a lot easier than it used to as well. This is my wedding ring.

It’s a gold ring. Very simple gold band. Many of you have rings like this.

Mine is very special to me, not only because of it symbolizing my marriage to Charla, although I think more about this silver one when I think. . .

This is more associated in my mind with Charla, because we bought it together on our honeymoon. But this gold ring is special to me not only because of my marriage to Charla, and it’s symbolizing that, but this was also my grandfather’s wedding ring. And those of you who are in my family or who go to Trinity here, you know how special my grandfather was to me.

But this was his ring, and I don’t know how old this ring is. I have chosen to tell myself that it’s the ring he had from his wedding to my grandmother in 1949. Is it?

I don’t know for sure, but I do know that the ring is older than I am. And, you know, it’s needed polishing a little bit. It’s needed a little bit of care, but it’s still gold.

It’s still in good condition. You know, one of the reasons we use gold for rings is because it is such a stable metal. it doesn’t corrode it doesn’t rust, it doesn’t react to things and there are reasons down at the very subatomic level with the way the electrons are configured if I remember my 11th grade AP chemistry well enough, I’m sorry Mrs. Marsh if you ever see this I can’t explain the reasons for it but I know it has to do with where the electrons are located, it doesn’t react with other metals And so it’s stable.

It can last in good condition for a long time without rust or corrosion. But the things around it, it doesn’t come out of the ground in this form. It often comes mixed with other things.

It’s not bonded to other things, but it’s mixed with other things. And so to purify it, there’s a process, and it’s usually a long and involved process, pretty forceful process too. And this morning we’re going to look at a passage where the Apostle Paul talks a little bit about this process of refining gold and how gold is refined by the fire.

Yes, the gold is stable and it’s non-reactive and it’s valuable. That’s part of what makes it valuable. But you have to get to a point for the gold to be what it’s supposed to be.

You have to get to a point where there’s just the gold left. And now Peter was writing to a group of people that I explained to you last week were basically refugees. He was writing to Christians who were scattered abroad.

He talks about it in 1 Peter 1 in verse 1. He calls them pilgrims of the dispersion. And he lists all the places where they’ve ended up.

That dispersion means they were scattered to places all throughout Asia Minor, what’s now Turkey. And he calls them pilgrims of the dispersion. That means they were dispersed into places that were not their home.

See, right now, we can’t really call ourselves refugees because even though we’re all dispersed, we’re dispersed to our homes, right? They were pilgrims. They were dispersed to places where they didn’t belong, that weren’t their home. They were scattered.

Many of them were on the run, fearful for their lives because the Roman Empire at that point was cracking down on Christianity. And many of these people had fled in the middle of the night. They fled for their very lives.

but also by calling them pilgrims, he points out that they were traveling for a godly purpose. You know, we see in there this idea of being a pilgrim. They were not scattered, and God said, whoops, didn’t see that coming.

No, they were traveling for God’s purposes. You know, he had scattered them. And so Peter was writing to these people, these refugees.

They had been dispersed throughout what’s now Turkey through this persecution and unrest and violence. And he was writing to them to remind them of the living hope that they had in Jesus Christ. Now, some of this may sound familiar if you were with me last week. There’s a reason for that.

Repeating a little bit of what I told you to set up the context so we can properly understand this morning’s passage. And one of the things that they needed to remember was that faith is one of their most important assets during times of suffering. Let’s look at verses 6 through 9 of this passage.

He says, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. All right, so through this, he was reminding these refugees.

Keep that in mind. Keep that fact in mind as we go throughout this passage, that the people he’s writing to were refugees. Their lives were extraordinarily hard.

Sometimes just their daily survival was a struggle. They were in constant fear of what was going to happen at the hands of the Roman government or communities that they had ended up in that were hostile toward Christianity. They worried about their safety.

They worried about their children. They worried about everything. I mean, it’s a life that most of us cannot imagine.

And Peter is writing to them about the value of their faith, and that sends them the message that faith is the most important asset they could possess in a time of suffering like this. Now, God knew their suffering. That’s important for us to remember when we go through difficult times.

It was important for them to remember in a difficult time that God knew they were suffering. Don’t ever get to the place where you think, don’t ever let yourself think, God doesn’t know. It’s like God doesn’t see me.

God doesn’t understand. Our feelings may tell us that God doesn’t know what we’re going through or that God doesn’t understand. But our feelings lie to us.

And they do it pretty regularly. And they do it very well. God knew their suffering.

God, speaking through Peter, acknowledged their suffering right there in verse 6, when he says, you have been grieved by various trials. You know, I believe that 1 Peter was written by Peter under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That means what Peter said was coming from the Holy Spirit of God.

God was acknowledging that they had suffered tremendous grief because of various trials. Now, for God to acknowledge that means he knows they were suffering. He knows every hurt they were experiencing.

and he knew the suffering that they were going through. He understood that it hurt because he said in verse 6, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved. He said, though now for a little while.

He was telling them because of these trials that they were going through, if need be for a little while, it was okay to feel the grief about it. It was okay to mourn. It was okay to acknowledge that you were hurt.

And I think sometimes we think as Christians that when we go through struggles, when we go through times of trial, we feel like we just have to keep this stiff upper lip and we can’t ever acknowledge that we’re hurt. We can’t ever acknowledge that we’re suffering. Sometimes we feel like it’s unspiritual to feel what we’re feeling.

God said here, you’ve been grieved. And if need be for a little while, grieve. But God also said even in that suffering, there was cause for rejoicing.

It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve heard somebody say this recently, and I wish I could remember who.

It’s okay to not be okay. You just can’t stay there. God understood they’d suffered.

God knew how much it hurt. And God sort of gives them permission here to feel that. But even at that, even in the midst of that suffering, God said there was cause for rejoicing if they just look at their circumstances through the lens of faith.

Because he says, in this you greatly rejoice. He says that in verse 6. Skip ahead a little bit because there’s a parenthetical there in the middle, something we could put in parentheses.

the main thrust of what he’s saying here is, in this you greatly rejoice, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by the fire, may be found to the praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So he said, if you look at this suffering through the lens of faith, you’ll realize that there is still cause for rejoicing. Now, this is not just blind optimism. Oh, I’m going to act like it’s all wonderful no matter what happens.

No, that’s not it. You can acknowledge your suffering, and you can feel the suffering, and you can have sorrow over that, and at the same time acknowledge that there is cause for rejoicing. Two things can be true at the same time.

Any believer who’s ever been to the funeral of another believer that they love knows that this is true. We can simultaneously be sad for ourselves and rejoice for them because of what they’re experiencing. Two things can be true at the same time.

There’s no contradiction in realizing my current circumstances hurt, but there’s also cause for rejoicing through those circumstances. And what ultimately is the reason for being able to rejoice in those circumstances is the fact that God is still at work in our circumstances. God uses those circumstances for His purposes, for our good and for His glory.

He’s using those circumstances. And if we look at these circumstances, no matter how much they hurt, through that lens of faith, it doesn’t say, oh, I’ll just pretend it’s all right. But it says, God is working through this.

And even though it hurts, and even though I don’t like it, and it’s not the way I want to get there, I know God is working out His will, and I trust in that. If we can look at our circumstances through that lens of faith, And there’s cause for rejoicing on the other side because we know that God is still at work. And what they were being brought to understand through this, through what Peter was telling them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is that God was using their suffering to refine them.

If you’re wondering where does the gold ring come in, it’s because Peter was explaining that God was using their suffering to refine them. And he talks here, he gives them this object lesson of a refiner’s fire. and many of them would have been familiar with that because they could go through the marketplace and they could see people making jewelry, making things, and one of the things that people would do, you’d have blacksmiths, you’d have goldsmiths, and a goldsmith would get the gold ore.

As I understand it, you mine metal out of the ground and it doesn’t look like the finished product. You’re not seeing rings just pop out of mines. It’s ore that usually has some kind of dust or small chunks or things like that.

comes out of the ground, or you pan it out of a river, and you have to bring a quantity of it, and you have to put it in some kind of furnace with the fuel, the wood or the coal, some kind of source of fire. You have to put all the ore in a crucible and melt it down. And then with gold, with all of them, but gold is what we’re talking about here, you have to get the temperature of that up enough that it’s not just melting the gold, but it’s actually hot enough to burn away all the impurities.

And that’s how a goldsmith would refine. That’s basically, I’m not an expert on the process, but I get it in theory. That’s how a goldsmith would take a collection of ore and make it into something valuable.

Because you’ve got to heat it up, you’ve got to put it under extreme heat in order to melt it down and burn off the impurities. And then what you’re left with is a collection of pure molten gold. All the impurities are gone, and now it’s liquid.

You can pour it into a mold, or you can let it cool enough to hammer it into the shape you want. It’s now pure, and it’s now malleable. It’s something that can be used.

And you and I are a lot like that gold as believers. And so he talks about this refining fire. And what he was telling them is that God was strengthening their faith.

God was strengthening their faith because, you see, gold is made more stable when the impurities are burned away. Any metal is made more usable, more stable when the impurities are burned away. That’s why they have to heat steel to a certain temperature in order for it to be useful.

They have to, I mean, that still has to meet very exact specifications to be useful. Because if you don’t heat it enough, it’s not strong, or you heat it too much, I think it gets brittle. You can leave impurities in the steel that weaken it.

You have buildings collapse, you have bridges collapse. Gold is more stable when the impurities are burned away. You get the impurities in the gold, they’re going to, if they were left in the ring, those parts, those pieces of other metal, those things are going to be, they’re going to rust, They’re going to corrode.

They’re going to detract from the value of the whole thing. So just like gold is made more stable when the impurities are burned away, by His work in their lives, God was giving them a more stable faith that would outlast gold. He told them that their faith was going to be more precious than gold that perishes.

Even gold will eventually degrade. I’m not saying it’s something that happens all around us, but there’s going to come a day when this whole earth is burned up with fire. It’s described in the book of Revelation.

When God brings all things to an end, and even the gold that so many people put their faith in, that so many people trusted in, that so many people sought after, that gold is going to be melted down and it’s going to be burned up. But our faith, once it’s been purified, once it’s been purified in the foundry of our difficult circumstances, that faith will last longer than gold. God will leave us with a strong faith that won’t perish for anything.

So by pointing them to the refiner’s fire, and talking about how he was using these circumstances of their suffering to refine them. He was telling them he was strengthening their faith. He was letting them know that he was making them more useful.

Pure gold is much more useful than a gold alloy. Not only in jewelry, but there are other applications in electronics and all sorts of things. Again, I’m not a chemist. I have a basic enough understanding of this to draw out some illusions for you.

But if any of you are engineers and I get the technical terminology wrong, just please forgive me. I’m going for a larger point here. But there are all sorts of applications, all sorts of uses for gold, and you don’t want gold with chunks of other stuff in it as you’re trying to use it.

The gold becomes useful for electronics, for currency, for jewelry. It becomes useful when it’s pure. And God told them in verse 7 that he was crafting something far more valuable than gold.

He said it was going to be more precious than gold. So you have the emphasis the first time when he’s talking about strengthening their faith. You have the emphasis on the fact that the gold perishes, but the faith in contrast goes on.

Well, here you have the faith being more precious than the gold that perishes. Our faith becomes more useful to us when it’s been tried. It’s easy.

It’s easy. Anybody can have faith in God when circumstances are good. But our faith has to be strong and it has to be valuable to get us through difficult circumstances.

When we’ve gone through those difficult circumstances, the faith that emerges on the other side is far more useful to us even in our daily life. And here’s the ultimate thing. Here’s the ultimate use of this refiner’s fire.

I love this. He was not just strengthening their faith. He was not just making them more useful to Him, but He was also making them more like Jesus.

He was making them more like Jesus. Because being tested by the fire, as it says in verse 7, would get rid of anything that didn’t belong there. If you had bits of dirt, if you had bits of dust, if you had bits of other metal in the gold ore, they were going to be burned off as impurities when it was put into the crucible and heated up.

You’re going to burn off any of the bad stuff that didn’t belong there. And only the good stuff was going to be left. Now, Peter told them that when they went through these things, when they went through this refiner’s fire, What would be left, according to verse 7, after it was tested by the fire, what would be left would be that which was found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The things that will be left when they went through this fire, when they went through this refining, when they went through these times of difficulty, what would be left would be those things that would glorify Jesus Christ. It would be those Christ-like things that would be left in their lives.

And sometimes when we go through difficult circumstances, God uses that fire to refine us and to shape us, to make us more like Jesus Christ, because he burns away all the things that don’t belong there. Brother Greg and I were talking from a safe distance before all this started, before we started today, about things that have gone on in the last couple weeks, things we’ve noticed. And we were talking about my kids being out flying kites, And I was telling him how other kids had been flying kites in the neighborhood.

He said he hadn’t seen kids fly kites in a long time. I’m sure they’re out there, but not like they used to do. And we were talking about how our interests and our list of priorities change in times of difficulty.

And people that used to be busy, busy, busy, go, go, go, never had time for family, are suddenly out doing things with their families, and that’s a great thing. See, we get through times of difficulty, and sometimes the things that don’t belong there get burned off. Well, God can do that to us spiritually.

And God uses these circumstances to make us more like Jesus Christ. Because spiritually, if I go through struggles that force me to rely on Him and struggles that make me consider spiritual things more, I can see Him at work in my life getting rid of the things in my life, maybe pride, maybe anger, maybe that hidden sin. Whatever it is, He can burn those things off through the furnace, through the fire. in that refining crucible.

Get rid of all those impurities to make me more like Jesus. That’s what he was doing with them. And so for us, the lesson here, he’s writing to a specific group of people at a specific time, but there’s a lesson here for us as well that God uses our difficult circumstances to draw us closer to Christ. In addition to using those difficult circumstances to make us more like Jesus, God strengthens the faith that draws us closer to him.

And he told him that. He talks in verse 8 about how they had not seen Jesus. Even though they hadn’t seen Jesus, by faith they loved Him.

And the same is true of us. These believers who were led to faith in Christ after the ascension, they had never laid eyes on Jesus, but by faith they loved Him. And the same is true of us.

We have not seen Jesus in physical form, but by faith we love Him. By faith we long to see Him. They were ready to see Him.

By faith, we know we will see Him. Because verse 9 tells us that we will receive the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls. We will see Him, and by faith, we will receive the salvation that He promised.

God uses these difficult circumstances to grow us closer to Christ, to make us more like Him, and to draw us closer to Him. Where we can get into difficult circumstances where we recognize the only hope we have is Jesus. I can’t fix it.

My wife can’t fix it. My mama can’t fix it. The government can’t fix it.

I’m stuck in this situation, and Jesus is the only one who can make it any better. And it draws us closer to Him. It draws us closer to Him, and it makes us love Him even more, and it makes us long to see Him even more, and it makes us ready to experience heaven with Him even more.

It makes us far less earthly minded. And many of you who are watching can attest to the fact that we tend to grow more spiritually in difficult times. We tend to grow closer to Christ more in difficult times than we do in the good times.

I’ve told many of you before, it’s been in times of loss, bereavement. It’s been in times of marital distress, financial distress, job loss, things like that. It’s been those times in the fire where I have grown closer to God more than at other times.

It’s happened more in those times because I’ve had no option but to rely on Him. There’s been no other help but Him. And I was thinking about this last night.

Paul prayed about a thorn in his flesh, and God wouldn’t get rid of it. And I think we all have those. I know I do.

There’s a difficult situation that I find myself dealing with, and I’ve been praying about it for years. And I think, God, I see how He’s been faithful to help me in the situation, but He just won’t fix it once and for all. There’s actually a few circumstances like that in my life.

God, why won’t you do something here? And I realized last night, thinking about this, that I spend more time on my knees. I spend more time in prayer, talking to Him and dealing with Him, not only about those circumstances, but about everything when those circumstances are flaring up.

I’m embarrassed to say I’m not quite as earnest in prayer when everything is going well. I think that’s human nature. Oh, I still pray, but it’s not down on my knees with tears pouring my heart out to God day in and day out when things are going well.

During those times of difficulty, I grow a lot closer to Him. And I thought last night, it very well could be that God, I know God could fix any circumstance like that if He chose to. But it very well could be the reason He hasn’t yanked me out of the fire.

It very well could be the reason God hasn’t yanked you out of the fire this morning is because God knows that’s when we grow closer to Him. God knows that’s when we draw closer to Jesus Christ. God uses. Don’t lose hope in your difficult circumstances.

God uses those circumstances to make you more like Jesus and to draw you closer to Him. And you and I have to realize that we have hope in our struggles when we see them as opportunities to grow closer to Him. As I’ve said before, we tend to look at our circumstances and think our hope comes from, oh, this will all be over soon.

No, it may not. It very well could get worse, whatever it is we’re dealing with. Whether it’s coronavirus, whether it’s financial stuff, it doesn’t matter.

It could always be worse. I sound like a great pessimist this morning, don’t I? It could always be worse.

Our hope is not that our circumstances might get better because they might or they might not. Our hope is not sitting there saying, these circumstances will get better. Our hope is looking at those circumstances as an opportunity to grow closer to Him.

Again, this is not just naive optimism of just pretending we have no problems and even the bad things that happen are wonderful to us. We can, at the same time, grieve our circumstances, but also rejoice in what God is going to do through them as He refines us like gold in the fire. We need to see these struggles as opportunities to grow closer to Him.

As believers, we need to learn to look for the work of God in the struggles. Don’t focus on the fire. Focus on what God is doing to the gold in the fire.

Ask yourself in your circumstances, how is God using this to make me more like Jesus and to draw me closer to Him? And this morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, you need to realize that your circumstances are still an opportunity for God to draw you closer to Him. You see, all of our circumstances remind us, all of the suffering we go through reminds us that there is suffering in world because of the presence of sin.

It may be your sin, it may not be. I’m not saying everything bad that happens to you is a result of your sin, but it is the result of sin in the world. And it reminds us that suffering and sickness and death and pain, all these things entered into the world because of sin.

We are separated from God because of sin. And Jesus is the only remedy. He’s the only one who can draw us closer to God in the first place.

He’s the only one who can give us a relationship with God in the first place. Our sin has separated us, and that’s all we can do is hold God at arm’s length. That’s all we can do is stand separated from God on the other side of this great big gulf of sin, where God in His holiness is beyond our reach.

You and I can’t do enough good to reconcile ourselves to God. That’s why Jesus came and took responsibility for our sins, and He was punished in our place. He was nailed to the cross where He shed His blood, and He died as the payment for our sins.

And this morning, there’s hope for you in your struggles, in your suffering, but there’s hope for you in eternity to avoid eternal separation from God in hell because of what Jesus Christ did. And this morning, if you need to trust Christ as your Savior, I’d invite you to do so. If you realize that you’ve sinned against God, you’ve disobeyed Him, and you’re separated from Him as a result, and you believe there’s no amount of good you can do to make things right with God, If you believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins in full, He did absolutely everything, and then He rose again from the dead, this morning you can ask God’s forgiveness and be saved.