Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1575
“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.
THIS is spoken of as 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 tried the religion, the orthodoxy and the saintship of the period—and because it revealed the hollow-ness 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 take a 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 sort of 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, 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 still more intense. “Who shall abide the day of His coming” when He shall still further be revealed and when His purpose shall be that of judgment rather than of 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! 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 does always choose 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 which will test you and consume much which 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 and, 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.