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The Speech of Elihu Part 8 By Andrew Davies

Well, we are in the book of Job, and this evening we turn to the speeches of Elihu from Chapter 32 to 37.
The speeches of Elihu, and his appearance in the story marks a transition and a turning point.
Up to this moment, Job's faith has struggled to survive against almost overwhelming odds.
Not only the sufferings themselves, but the wrong explanations of his friends and the silence of God.
Yet, he continues to trust God and to believe in the goodness of God and to look to his Redeemer.
Still, he has to live with deep perplexity and unanswered questions.
There's no light for him upon the subject of his sufferings, and there's no reason given to him as to why he is suffering.
He's a child of light walking in the darkness.
And it's at this moment in the story that Elihu appears.
And as we were reminded from the reading earlier, he's listened to the three friends and to what they've had to say,
and he realizes that their answer is inadequate.
And so he feels constrained to speak. Though he's a younger man, he can't hold it in any longer,
and he suddenly begins to give his judgment, his verdict, on the subject.
Now, the question that is raised here is whether he is an intruder or a helper,
whether Elihu is one of the three friends or whether he is distinct from them.
Is he an intruder? Is his attitude towards Job harsh and critical as theirs was?
Many people think that that is so, that he's one with them and that what he has to say to them,
or to Job and to them, is of a peace.
There are wise words, we're told, by some of the scholars and the expositors.
There are wise words in what Elihu has to say, but his basic aim is to humiliate Job even further.
So he's an intruder. The other view is that he's a helper.
He actually contributes something, something new and something important, and brings some relief to Job.
Although it's true that some of his words are similar to those of his friends,
and the way in which he speaks sometimes is slightly self-conscious,
according to the second view, his basic position is different from the other three,
and he has something important and valuable to say.
And personally, I think that that is the correct view, and I want to suggest five reasons for saying that.
The first is the fact that in chapter 32 and verse 3, he dissociates himself from the others.
He distances himself from them.
Against his three friends, his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer and yet had condemned Job.
So that's one reason. It's not a compelling reason, but it's part of, I think, a complex of reasons.
The second reason is, although he gives Job the opportunity to reply to him, Job refuses to reply.
But with all the others, he did reply. So there's a difference. Job is silent in response to what Elihu has to say.
Now, that may be because the Lord immediately begins to speak after Elihu,
or it could be that Job has learned something, and he really has nothing to say because he's beginning to see dawning light.
So there's a contrast there between Job replying to the other three friends and his silence in response to Elihu.
The third reason, I think, why he helps rather than hinders is because he is constrained to speak.
He's reluctant to speak. They were not. They seemed ready to speak, though at first they were quiet.
When the moment came, they had a lot to say, but he'd been patient and listened to them, and it's almost as if reluctantly he has to speak.
I am full of words. The spirit within me compels me. So he's been driven to say these things.
The fourth reason is that when the Lord rebukes the three friends at the end of the book, he excludes Elihu from his rebuke.
In Chapter 42, verse seven, we're told after the Lord has spoken these words to Job that the Lord said to Eliphaz,
my wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has.
So these three friends, they're rebuked by the Lord in a way that Elihu is not.
So Elihu is exempt from the Lord's rebuke in Chapter 42. Now that's, I think, significant.
And the fifth reason is that what Elihu has to say prepares Job for the encounter with the Lord, which is the climax to the book.
It enables Job to begin, as I said, to see some light.
He begins to see that there may well be a loving purpose at work in his sufferings, that God is indeed good.
He believes that he's confident about that, but he's not beginning to see it.
There's something here that is changing Job's view of what is happening to him.
God is indeed good. His sovereignty, his justice and his power are formidable truths.
But instead of using those truths to humiliate and discredit Job, Elihu uses them to humble him and to help him.
So he's saying similar things, but he's saying them in a different way and with a different application.
So even though Job was suffering, God was at work in his life, nevertheless, and fulfilling a wise and a beneficial purpose.
All things were in some mysterious way working together for his good, and Job is beginning to realize that.
So there are the five reasons why I think Elihu is a helper rather than a hinderer,
even though some of the things, as I say, he says in rather a self-conscious manner,
and with sometimes a touch of self-righteousness.
And the shaft of light that seems to shine upon Job is that sufferings in the hands of a gracious God have a beneficial effect.
Those sufferings are painful, they are beneficial. They're part of a gracious overarching purpose and providence.
The three friends had said, haven't they, that God was against Job, which was why he was suffering.
That isn't the case. God is not his enemy, God is for him.
God is at work in his life, God is purifying him, he's strengthening him, he's preparing him.
He's removing droughts, he's refining the gold and the silver.
There's something happening in Job's life through sufferings which is curative, not punitive.
And what his three friends were saying was that God was punishing him, that the sufferings were punitive.
What Elihu is saying is that they are curative. There is a beneficial, wise purpose involved in them.
They prove God's love rather than the opposite.
Now, I think that's something new. It's something that, in a sense, one of the other three friends has already said.
But for him, it was said in the wrong way and with the wrong application.
But for Elihu, I think it is said with a beneficial and a favorable intention.
Do you remember how, if you've read C.S. Lewis's Problem of Pain, he has a number of illustrations
to try to convey this thought about God using sufferings to strengthen us, to purify us,
and to cure us of our sins and to help us along the road to heaven.
He speaks about an artist preparing the canvas for a painting and then actually painting on the canvas.
He speaks of the artist rubbing and scraping the canvas, perhaps beginning again, perhaps not being satisfied,
and all the time wanting the canvas right and the picture right.
And it takes a long time before the picture is to his liking.
And the point of the illustration is obvious that God takes time and care and tension,
and sometimes he has to deal with us in a rather rough way in order that he might create something beautiful
out of our lives.
The other illustration is that of a man training a dog.
And he washes the dog, he rebukes the dog, he trains it, he commands it, he brings it under his authority,
and he does that in order to make the dog more lovable.
The little puppy might wonder what's happening to him.
But when that puppy grows up to be a dog, it will begin to appreciate its owner and its master.
And though the way to being trained might have been hard and painful,
nevertheless, something good was emerging out of that painful training experience.
And similarly, God prepares us and trains us.
And through sometimes rough measures, he makes us more lovable, makes us a better and a happier kind of person.
And the third illustration is that of a father and a son.
The father restrains the son or the daughter, teaches, exercises authority,
not because the father does not like the son or daughter, but quite the opposite,
because he loves the daughter or the son, and he wants that son or that daughter to be useful and joyful.
And in the same way, God, who is the father of our spirits, allows us to be chastened for our good,
as Hebrews chapter 12 so beautifully reminds us.
So it's for that kind of reason that Elihu addresses his remarks to Job.
Now, as I said, Eliphaz had spoken about chastisement, too.
If you go back, for instance, to chapter 5 in verse 17, you have a statement from Eliphaz about chastisement.
Happy is the man whom God corrects, therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty.
But as I said, for Eliphaz, this was a punitive business.
God is punishing you. God is chastening you. It's a punitive thing.
For Elihu, however, it's a creative thing. It's a constructive thing.
The chastisement is not just punishment.
The chastisement is a loving concern by God for the welfare of his servant.
So he's developing fruit in a way that cannot be developed in any other way,
and sufferings prove God's love rather than the opposite.
So he wants Job to become a stronger, more able, more godly, more God-centered man.
Now, that, I think, is what Elihu is fundamentally saying.
And it's a very important biblical principle that God allows his people very often to go through the mill.
He allows them to suffer in order to purify them, in order to prepare them for heaven.
And we need to see the beneficial effects of sufferings in our lives.
We need to be able to discern what God is doing with us when he leads us by a hard way.
We shouldn't be surprised if he leads us this way.
God doesn't want our happiness at all costs.
He wants our happiness to come through our holiness.
So God's love is a consuming fire.
It's persistent.
C.S. Lewis calls it despotic.
It's provident. It's jealous. It's real love.
God is really saying to us, you have immense value to me, and such is the value I attach to you,
that I'm going to give you the privilege of suffering for me,
and suffering as human beings in order that I might prepare you for me and for my glory.
It's a love that is tragic, but deep and inexorable.
It's not the indulging love of a father who spoils his children.
It's the strong, firm, chastening love of a real father.
Now that's the kind of love that God has for his children.
So we shouldn't be surprised if he allows us to go the way of affliction and suffering.
Let me just pick out here then one or two things that Elihu says to us about the curative value of sufferings in the hands of God.
First of all, they are a warning to preserve us.
And in chapter 33, verses 9 to 18, you really have that put to us in a very beautiful way.
Sufferings are a warning from God to preserve us.
I am pure without transgression. I am innocent, and there is no iniquity in me.
Yet he finds occasions against me, counts me as his enemy.
He puts my feet in the stocks. He watches all my paths.
Look, in this you are not righteous. I will answer you, for God is greater than man.
He's replying now to Job. Why do you contend with him?
For he does not give an accounting of any of his works or words.
For God may speak in one way or in another, yet man does not perceive it in a dream and a vision of the night when deep sleep falls on men while slumbering on their beds.
Then he opens their ears, seals their instruction in order to turn man from his deed and conceal a pride for man.
He keeps back his soul from the pit and his life from perishing by the sword.
So, God often speaks to us when we are on our beds.
He speaks to us in dreams, in visions of the night, in order to prevent us, to hold us back from the pit, from perishing.
God warns us through suffering. He hedges our way. He calls us back to himself.
Job had spoken unwisely, as Elihu points out here. God will not be told what to do.
We are the people who need to be told what to do, so we are the ones who need to be humbled.
And the center of the universe is God, not us.
So sufferings warn us and they remind us of that, that we are in the hands of God.
And he deals with us according to his own way and he speaks in more than one way to people.
So God can speak to people in dreams, in visions of the night, when sleep falls upon them and they're slumbering on their beds.
He can wake people up through pain. He warns people.
So sufferings can be beneficial and curative because they alert us and warn us and wake us up
and make us aware of things which otherwise we wouldn't think about.
And then secondly, sufferings in the hands of God are a sermon to guide us.
And in verses 19 to 30 of chapter 33, I think we see the fact that sufferings are a sermon.
Notice how he puts it.
Man is also chastened with pain on his bed and with strong pain in many of his bones,
so that his life abhors bread and his soul succulent food.
His flesh wastes away from sight, his bones stick out which were not seen.
His soul draws near to the pit, his life to the executionings.
He is a man who appears to be dying.
Is there a messenger for him, a mediator, one among a thousand, to show man his uprightness?
Then he is gracious to him and says, deliver him from going down to the pit.
I have found a ransom.
Man needs somebody to intervene on his behalf.
He needs a messenger, a mediator, somebody who represents him, someone who would be a ransom for him.
And then he has restored his flesh.
He is young again, like a child.
He returns to the day of his youth.
He prays to God.
He will delight in him.
He shall see his face with joy.
He restores to man his righteousness.
In other words, God speaks through pain, and he preaches through pain, and pain is a benefit.
He shows us our need of a mediator, somebody upon whom we must rely and depend.
We need a ransom.
We need somebody who can redeem and liberate us from sin and suffering and the sickness
and the death that is all part of it.
So suffering in the hands of God can be a sermon to guide us, to lead us back to him
and particularly to Christ, driving us to pray, making us aware of the fact that God
may heal us of our illnesses and then we return our praise and thanks to him for his deliverance.
A sermon to guide us as well as a warning to preserve us.
And then, thirdly, in the hands of God, sufferings can be a school to teach us.
And in chapter 34 and 35, Elihu speaks about this school of experience, this university
of life.
Job had spoken foolishly, he says, verse 5 of chapter 34.
Job has said, I am righteous, but God has taken away my justice.
Should I lie concerning my right, my wound is incurable, though I am without transgression
and so on.
What man is like Job, he says, who drinks scorn like water, who goes in company with
the workers of iniquity, walks with wicked men, he has said, it profits a man nothing
that he should delight in God.
Job had spoken foolishly, he shouldn't have said that.
So he needs to go back to school.
He needs to learn lessons from the hands of his divine teacher.
And here is sufferings in the hands of God, teaching Job and us four lessons.
First of all, sufferings teach us that God is good.
And the goodness of God is seen in that he allows us to live.
That's the goodness of God, that he allows us to live.
That's a lesson we need to learn and to learn profoundly.
We think that health is a right, but it's a gift from God.
It's he who allows us to live.
Verses 10 to 15 of chapter 34 really saying that.
Listen to me, you men of understanding, far be it from God to do wickedness and from the
Almighty to commit iniquity.
He who repays man according to his work and makes man to find a reward according to his
way.
Surely God will never do wickedly, nor will the Almighty prefer justice.
Who gave him charge over the earth?
Who appointed him over the whole world?
If he should set his heart on it, if he should gather to himself his spirit and his breath,
all flesh would perish together and man would return to dust.
So we only live because God allows us to live.
That's the goodness of God.
He preserves us, that he enables us to live as long as we do.
That he hasn't wiped us off, that he hasn't finished with us, that he hasn't, as it were,
struck the universe out of his reckoning and just destroyed it because of the rebellion
and the sin of angels and men.
The miracle is that God allows us to live.
Now, Job, you need to learn that lesson.
We all need to learn that lesson from the divine teaching.
God allows peace.
That's a miracle.
God restrains wickedness.
He allows governments to exist to restrain wickedness.
That's a miracle.
The fact that we are at peace to the degree we are is the gift of God.
It has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with man's wisdom.
Indeed, if it was up to men, there'd be no peace at all in the world.
The little peace that exists is entirely due to God's restraining common grace.
So we need to learn that lesson.
That God allows us to live and he is good, that he even preserves conditions of peace
in the world.
And then there's a second lesson that Job needed to learn from his divine teacher.
The God who is good is also the judge.
He's the judge.
Chapter 34, 16 to 30, speak about the judgment of God.
If you have understanding and hear this, listen to the sound of my words.
Should one who hates justice govern?
Will you condemn him who is most just?
Is it fitting to say to a king, you are worthless and to nobles, you are wicked, yet he is not
partial to princes, nor does he regard the rich more than the poor, for they are all
the work of his hands.
In a moment they die in the middle of the night.
The people are shaken and pass away.
The mighty are taken away without a hand, and his eyes are on the ways of man.
He sees all his steps.
There's no shadow, no darkness, no shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may
hide themselves.
He need not further consider a man that he should go before God in judgment.
He breaks in pieces mighty men.
Without inquiry, he sets others in their places.
He knows their works.
He overthrows them in the night.
They are crushed.
God is the judge.
He's not only good, but he's the judge of all mankind.
Nobody is going to escape from God and from the judgment of God, nobody.
God sees it all, all the evil of the world, all the hidden evil.
He sees it all, and he will bring everything to account, and everybody will stand accountable
to him as the great judge.
So we need to learn that.
We need to learn that sufferings are a little picture reminding us of the great day when
we're going to stand before God the judge, and everything will be ironed out and made
clear.
Job, you need to go back to school to learn about the goodness of God and to learn about
the fact that he is judge.
And then you need, thirdly, to learn that God is wise, the God who is good and just
is also wise.
And the last verses, 31 to 37 of chapter 34, are really speaking about God's wisdom.
Has anybody said to God, I have borne chastening, I will offend no more.
Teach me what I do not see.
If I have done iniquity, I will do it no more.
Should he repay it according to your terms, just because you disavow it, you must choose
or not I, therefore speak what you know.
Men of understanding say to me, wise men who listen to me, Job speaks without knowledge,
his words are without wisdom.
Oh, that Job would try to the utmost, because his answers are like those of wicked men,
for he had rebellion to his sin, he claps his hand among us and multiplies his words
against God.
But who is the wise person?
Who is the wise person?
Well, wisdom comes from God, and therefore we need to respond with wisdom to what is
happening to us, not as if we somehow are right, but that God is wise and God is good.
We need to learn about the wisdom of God as well as his justice and well as his goodness.
And then the fourth thing that we need to learn in the school of suffering from our
heavenly teacher is that God is self-sufficient.
And in a sense, that is really what Elihu goes on to say in the remaining chapters,
but in chapter 35 particularly.
We have no rights when it comes to God.
Job thought he did.
Elihu asks the question in verse 2 of chapter 35, do you think this is right?
Do you say my righteousness is more than God's?
Do you say, what advantage will it be to you?
What profit shall I have more than if I had sinned?
He thinks he's got rights before God, but God is self-sufficient.
We have no rights with God.
He doesn't need us.
Verse 4, I will answer you and your companions with you.
Look to the heavens and see and behold the clouds which are higher than you if you sin.
What do you accomplish against him?
Or if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him, to God?
What is the difference does it make?
As it were, he's self-sufficient.
You have no rights with God.
We need him.
He doesn't need us.
We not only need his help, we need him.
Verses 9 to 16 tell us that.
We need him because of the multitude of oppressions.
They cry out.
They cry out for help because of the arm of the mighty.
No one says, where is God my maker who gives songs in the night, who teaches us more than
the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of heaven?
They cry out.
He doesn't answer because of the pride of evil men.
Surely God will not listen to empty talk, nor will the Almighty regard it.
Although you say you don't see him, yet justice is before him and you must wait for him.
And now because he is not punished in his anger, nor taken much notice of folly, therefore
Job opens his mouth and vainly multiplies words without knowledge.
Now, just a moment.
We need divine help.
That's what's true about us and we need to be taught to be God-centered.
He is the all-sufficient, one and only God.
We have no rights at all with God, absolutely none.
And the sooner we realize it, the better.
That's the lesson that we all need to learn.
So God is good, God is just, God is wise, and God is all-sufficient and self-sufficient.
Now Job, your sufferings in the hands of the Almighty are God teaching you these great
truths about himself and about yourself and you need to learn them and so does every other
human being.
So we can see the curative, the instructional value of sufferings in the hands of the Almighty.
They're a warning to preserve us, that's the first thing.
They're a sermon to guide us, that's the second.
And they're a school to teach us and instruct us, that's the third.
And then there's a fourth thing, too, about the curative value of sufferings.
They're a rod and a staff to comfort us.
Chapter 36 is really saying that to us in a way.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Great statement from the 23rd Psalm.
That really is what chapter 36 of Job is about.
God uses a rod and he uses a staff in order to comfort us.
And our sufferings therefore prove his love, verse 7 to 9.
He does not withdraw his eyes from the righteous, but they are on throne with kings.
He has seated them forever.
They're exalted and if they're bound in fetters, held in the courts of affliction.
And he tells them their work and their transgressions, that they have acted defiantly.
Yes, God will deal with people righteously and he will deal with them as they require
to be dealt with for their good and for their benefit.
Verses 15 and 16, he delivers the poor in their affliction and opens their ears in oppression.
Indeed, he would have brought you out of dire distress into a broad place where there is
no restraint and what is set on your table would be full of richness.
Here is God as we're dealing with people with love and the rod is necessary so that
people can be dealt with in love.
And the godless will not prosper.
They will not get away with it.
Verse 6, he does not preserve the life of the wicked, but gives justice to the oppressed.
That is what God will do.
And again in verse 12, if they don't obey, they will perish by the sword.
That's God's way of dealing with people.
Verse 13, the hypocrites in heart store a broth, they do not cry for help when he binds
them.
God is dealing with them.
They die in youth.
Their life ends among the perverted persons.
So they will not prosper.
The rod, the rod, the divine rod is necessary and it's necessary for us.
And so is the divine staff because this god who is firm and severe, in verse 15, delivers
the poor in their affliction and opens their ears in oppression.
So his rod and his staff, they comfort us.
They're necessary.
They're good, even though they're not pleasant.
The rod and the staff to comfort us.
That's the fourth curative value of sufferings and the fifth, the final one, is that in the
hands of God, sufferings are a rebuke to humbleness.
And again, chapter 36 and 37 are really saying that, a rebuke to humble us.
So don't fret, Job, Elihu is saying, don't fret, verses 17 to 23 are really saying that.
Don't get too anxious in chapter 36.
Don't fret.
Don't get too worried.
Our business is to fear God, verse 24 of 36.
Remember to magnify his work of which men have sung.
Not only that, but to praise God as well, verse 24 of chapter 37.
Men fear him.
He shows no partiality to any who are wise of heart.
And verses 14 to 20 in chapter 37, we can't look at them all in detail, but they're all,
as it were, descriptions there of the fact that God rebukes people in order to humble
them.
In order to bring man down to the level that he really ought to be at, he is so high and
mighty.
He is so heady and haughty.
He needs to be just brought down to the level upon which he stands so that he is rebuked
in order that he might be humbled.
Now that really, in a summary of chapters 32 to 37 is what Elihu is saying.
God is at work, Job, in your life.
He's curing you.
He's healing you.
He's making something out of you.
He's preparing you for what is to come.
He's allowed you to go a hard way.
He prospered you for many years.
Now you're having to receive affliction from his hands, having received prosperity from
his hands.
You were glad to receive the prosperity from his hands.
Are you glad to receive the affliction?
Are you able to thank God for the affliction as you thanked him for the prosperity?
Is God as good to you now as he was then?
Can you see that he's doing something with you, that he's teaching you, that he's preparing
you, he's molding you, he's the artist, he's the father?
No chastening for the present seems to be pleasant but grievous.
Nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are trained
by it.
We were fathers of our flesh who disciplined us and we gave them reverence.
How much more should we be in subjection to the father of our spirits and live?
Even if God allows our bodies to be afflicted, he's doing something with our spirits and
sometimes the only way he can deal with our spirits is through our bodies.
It's as if God has to bring us to the end of our tether so that we trust him, we cast
ourselves upon him, we depend upon him in ways that we otherwise wouldn't.
Now have you seen that, John?
Have you seen that your afflictions in the hands of your faithful creator are actually
a blessing in disguise?
Hard though they are, nevertheless there is a wise and a loving purpose behind them.
And we know that too.
We know that our Lord wants us to be like himself.
We know that the Heavenly Father, who is the father of our spirits, takes infinite care
about producing something good out of our lives.
And like a piece of redundant driftwood, he takes us, he begins to fashion us, he molds
us, he makes something beautiful out of us.
And like a gardener with a pair of secateurs, he prunes.
And sometimes he prunes the plant vigorously.
And there is a blade to the secateurs that we call instruction, but there's another blade
that we call affliction.
And both blades, equally sharp in the hands of the divine gardener, prune away what is
sinful, that God might produce more fruit from our lives.
But if we are asking God for more of himself, then we must be prepared for God to deal with
us in this way, so that through it all he is making us more like Christ our Savior.
He takes time and attention and care to do it, making us ready for eternity.
We don't think like that today.
This is not the way human beings think.
We are so earthbound, so materialistic, so health-conscious.
We just don't think in these times.
But thank God for the book of Job, thank God for this divine instructor, this divine Father
who loves us so much that he's even prepared to allow us to go through hardship.
You must have read in one of the C.S. Lewis books, the Narnia Chronicles, you must have
read about one of the children running away from Aslan, the lion, and they're frightened
of this strange, terrifying figure, Aslan the lion, and as one of the children runs
away from Aslan, suddenly Aslan catches the child with his claws, and there's a rip right
down the back of the child, and then the child escapes.
Now, that seems to be a very hard and an uncomfortable experience for the child, but you remember
how C.S. Lewis so beautifully in the story makes it quite clear that through that experience,
that child became a whole, balanced individual, and that the lion's claw was actually the
means of dealing with that child in a way that nothing else would.
It's his way of saying that God's love is sometimes tough, firm.
We might even think hard, but not hard, because he's a father who really loves us, and no
earthly father is worth his salt if he just allows his children to run riot, to run amok.
That's not the way to bring up children.
We need the discipline of a father's love, and we need the discipline of our Heavenly
Father's love.
It's gracious, of course, it's good, it's loving discipline, but it's good for us.
And God will produce gold out of your life and mine, even though sometimes we may feel
as if we're in a crucible, but that's what we are.
We are gold in a crucible, and God sits as the refiner and the purifier of the sons of
Levi.
And if you know anything at all about gold refining, when we lived in Chessington in
London there was a big Engelhard gold refining factory just behind us, and one of the men
in the church worked there, and he used to tell me how the temperature of the flame would
reach a certain level, and when the temperature reached that level the gold would be purified
from the slag, and then they'd throw the slag away, the ore would be kept, the gold would
be kept, and they would make something out of the gold that remained.
And the person who sat there had to give all his attention to what he was doing.
The temperature needed to be just right, not too hot, not too cold, just right for the
gold to be melted and for the slag to be removed.
And we're told in the book of Malachi that he sits as the purifier of the sons of Levi.
We may think that he's not concerned about us, he doesn't care about us.
He's the exact opposite.
He sits, he controls the temperature of the flame, he knows exactly what the temperature
should be, so that there might be pure gold refined out of my life and yours, and the
slag and the rubbish should be thrown away.
Well, it's wonderful to know that God deals with us like that, and that his love is so
remorseless, so firm, so strong, so true, that he makes something out of us even though
we are such naturally worthless human beings.
But then to him we are precious, otherwise Christ would never have come to save us.
To him we are precious, otherwise the Holy Spirit would never have come to indwell us.
To him we are precious, otherwise he'd never have given us his word and he wouldn't deal
with us in the way that he does.
So if God does afflict us, may we trust him, may we see that behind it all there is a wise
providence and that in the end he is going to make something beautiful out of a life
that otherwise would be ugly.
Well, our last hymn really says this to us, and particularly verses 4 and 5, let's sing
it together, 5 7 4, 5 7 4, verse 5 picks up that point about the refining of God's fire.
When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace or sufficient shall be thy supply.
But the flame shall not hurt thee, I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to
refine.
5 7 4.
May the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and always, Amen.