Title: Like Refining Silver
Contents
You have tested us, O God, and refined us as silver is refined (Psalm 66:10).
1. The Refining God
- In this text, the poet praises God's salvation for Israel. However, the poet who sings about God's great power to part the Red Sea and save the people of Israel confesses that God tests and refines Israel through it. God loves us so much because He has a life plan for us, but He doesn't always make us go the easy way.
- There is a method God uses to help us become strong believers, and that is refinement. Solidity requires a moment-by-moment determination, but our determination alone does not make us strong. What we need to become strong is the refinement of God. God is not satisfied with just being His children, He wants us to live as His children. That is why he wants us to be the ones who show who God is with our personality and life. For that work, God is refining us.
2. The reason for refinement: To expose sin and corruption
- There are still many corrupted natures in us that we are not aware of. However, God wants not only our outward appearance, but also our whole personality and life, to be shaped as people who serve God. However, because our daily church life cannot reveal our corruption and inherent sins, God reveals them through the refinement. The text speaks of it as “refining silver”. God gives us powerful trials and hardships, who are weary and lose strength because of sin, and shakes the frame of our hearts so that we can discover evil and corruption that could not be found in ordinary life of faith. The poet speaks of this as God's "testing" and "refining".
3. ‘Test’: to find out the identity by testing
- Temptation is the Hebrew word 'bahan', which means 'to test to see whether it is right or wrong' or 'to test and find out'. In order to find out what impurities are in the silver, the silver must be put into a crucible and melted with a strong fire. In the liquid silver, we find separate silver and other minerals. This is what the poet calls a test.
- The corruption that dwells in our souls is not revealed unless we become one with God and test us. But the true nature of this corruption is the tendency to live in disobedience to God. That is why God sometimes allows us to experience the trials and tribulations that we cannot bear, and the loneliness of being alone in the wilderness, so that we can see the true nature of the corruption within us. At that time, we blame God for the unfairness of God's way of dealing with us, and sometimes we doubt God's goodness. However, because God wants us to become the best grape-bearing beings, we must sanctify our nature through such trials.
- There are many people in the Bible who brought joy to God's heart. However, the reason they brought joy and satisfaction to God's heart was not because of their position or authority, but because they resembled God's image and lived a life of obedience with a deep love for God. We may be satisfied with our present life serving God, but God wants us to reveal His image in a more pure and splendid way by purifying our corrupt nature. So while you hear your children cry, sometimes you treat us harshly. It is a lie and hypocrisy that we love God and have a corrupt nature together. A person who loves God and desires to be holy always suffers and suffers from this condition.
4. Forging: Melting and casting
- The word 'train' is the Hebrew word 'zaraf', which refers to melting and casting something. No matter how beautiful a work made of silver is, if the silver contains impurities, it will soon rust. So, God separates the corruption within us through temptation, and after countless refinements to remove impurities, He molds us into a beautiful figure. Just as a beautiful work of art is made from silver that has been tempered by fire, God melts us by giving us trials and tribulations that are sometimes too harsh to bear, and transforms us, who have become so pure, into beautiful works of art.
- The most unfortunate and wretched form of a believer in life is a person whose hands from God have stopped training him. We shed painful tears in the process of God training us, but God builds us up in a pure and beautiful image. *