Refiners' Fire: Your Pain Has Meaning and Purpose

In 2001 our house flooded and since, at the time, my work was a production company that I ran out of my home office, I couldn’t really do anything until I cleaned up the mess and got everything put back together. It took me a long time because I had to do all the work myself with a little help from friends. We didn’t have flood insurance. It was painful. Rip out the sheetrock, treat the frame of the house for mold, remove the stinky carpet, replace the doors. Crawl into the air return and find 1,000 spiders waiting for me. [Shudder]

But since I was doing the work, everything I replaced, I made a little nicer. The ugly tan carpet was replaced with white shag in the living room and purple swirl texture in the hallway and bedrooms. Groovy baby. The formica countertops were upgraded to custom tile. The white walls were painted with elaborate multicolor patterns. We turned our plain little house into a refined work of art. It started in pain but ended in glory.

What’s something you’ve worked hard at refining?

We refine our homes. Renovating, organizing, and cleaning—because they’re important to us, valuable to us, precious even.

Our hobbies and our vocations—we refine our skill and our craft. Because we care about these things. 

Our children—is there anything we spend more time and money and emotional anguish refining than our kids? We discipline them because we love them—let’s face it, following through on a discipline like grounding them or taking away a privilege is a lot more work than just giving up on our kids and letting them become horrible people. Refining our children is a slow, painful process—but it’s also glorious.

We refine what we care about. It’s never easy. It’s always painful. But the more we love the thing we are refining, the more worth it it is. 

Today is the second week in Advent. Advent is a penitential season—meaning we acknowledge that God uses this time when we are waiting for Christ to return to refine us, purify us, sanctify us, into the people He has called us to be. And it’s always going to be painful.

Joy to the world, right? What kind of doomy season’s greeting is going on here? What happened to happy happy joy joy?

People misunderstand the message of Jesus. They hear, “Come as you are” and they think that means “feel free to stay as you are.” As if God doesn’t have any standards. That is definitely not the case.

The good news is God invites you into His family just as you are. The better news is He’s not going to leave you that way. He is going to refine you because you are precious to Him.

Our text this morning is from the last book in the Old Testament, the prophet Malachi. It was written about 400 years before Jesus showed up. The messenger of Malachi has a long list of grievances against the people of God—a bit of a pre-Seinfeld observance of Festivus without the feats of strength. (It’s sad to me that joke is probably wasted on most of you.) Basically, the people of God were unfaithful so He sent the Babylonians to destroy the temple and carry the Israelites into captivity, and they spent 70 years—an entire generation—in exile. Malachi was written about 100 years after they were released. They rebuilt the temple (but didn’t do a great job) they reinstated worship and sacrifices (but didn’t give God their best—everyone was bringing their leftover blind goats and runt of the litter sheep—ripping God off by not paying the full tithe). Malachi paints a picture of the people being half-hearted and pathetic in their worship. The people had returned from Babylon but they never returned to God. 

Malachi says the day is coming when God is going to once again refine them.

Malachi chapter 3…

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.” Malachi 3:1-4

This should sound familiar to us—it’s John the Baptist, prepare ye the way of the Lord language. It’s saying John will call Israel to repentance to prepare for Jesus, the Messiah, to show up. When He arrives, He is going to refine His people. Like silver and gold are refined. With fire. 

I’m sure you know but the way gold and silver and other precious metals are purified is by melting them to liquid form so all the dirt and other impurities are removed.

Remember what John liked to say about Jesus? “I baptize with water but He’s going to baptize you with fire!” John washed the people with water but Jesus is going to refine people with fire.

Sounds unpleasant. To say the least.

Jesus is like a refiner's fire and fullers’ soap. A fuller is a person who processes wool. The sheep are shaved and the dirty, nasty, mite infested piles of wool are cleaned and bleached by very strong lye soap. If you got fuller’s soap on your skin, it would be like acid, it would burn just like fire. So, this image isn’t any more comforting than the other.

God’s people are going to be refined. It’s going to be painful. This is the only way to make things right. So the people can once again offer righteous worship.

Remember what “righteous” means from last week? It means to be in a right relationship. Jesus has to refine us, purify us, so we can worship God in a right relationship.

I say this all the time, “everyone who follows Jesus, follows Him to a cross.” And what I always mean is the life of a Christian is a path to suffering and through suffering. But don’t miss the headline, the reason Jesus went to the cross. He did it for you. He was already pure. Perfectly refined. But He went to the cross—He stepped into the refiner’s fire—He was melted down and washed with fuller’s soap anyway. He didn’t need to be but He did it for you—so you could be refined. You and me, we would have never survived the process.

So, He’s not asking you to do anything He wasn’t willing to do Himself. And your suffering won’t compare to His—He took the entire weight of the sin of the world on Himself in His death. You and me are not going to have to do that. We couldn’t. We’d burn up like a tissue in a bonfire.

What Jesus did for us makes it possible for us to do what He’s asking us to do. He made us righteous so we can worship Him in Spirit and in truth. 

And our worship is going to be a life responding to His grace. A life of being refined because He loves us and we are precious to Him. He is making us into the people He wants us to be. He is sanctifying us—making us holy. Purifying us.

It’s going to be painful.

Because we don’t want to let go of our impurities. We love our impurities—our sin. We want to hold onto all kinds of nasty things. God pries our favorite sins out of our fingers with a crowbar—He’ll break our fingers if He has to. Better to lose a finger than to lose our soul.

People these days get so offended when they find their favorite sins listed in the Bible as sin. They read the Bible with a big Sharpie redactor marker ready to cross out anything they don’t like. We don’t do that here. We let God’s word stand above all things. God defines reality, not culture. Not us. 

My sins are in those lists, too. I don’t have any easier time with my pet sins than you do with yours. Doesn’t mean I want God to rewrite the Bible to make me more comfortable. Less offended. Good grief!

We all struggle with pride. We all struggle with sexual sin. We all struggle with greed and envy and selfishness. Might be different flavors but they’re the same poison.

So, God refines us. Turns up the heat. Bring those nasty bits to the surface. Shows us who He wants us to be—without them.

And it will be painful.

Here’s another thing I don’t get. People who don’t believe—who reject faith in Jesus because the world is full of pain. They think, “If God is real then why is there all this suffering?”

Well, the way we look at it through eyes of faith, God is redeeming the world through pain. He’s making us who He wants us to be through suffering. Which means all our pain has meaning and purpose. It’s going somewhere good. We believe God loves us and has promised us a future without pain, suffering, and death. That He’ll wipe away every tear.

But for the unbeliever—what does their unbelief get them? Because they still have all the pain, all the suffering, all the death. It’s just that for them it’s meaningless. Purposeless. Random. Empty. A nihilistic vacuum of despair. Everything came from nothing, is going nowhere, and has no point. The end. 

No thanks. I’ll take Jesus for hope and the promise of a life filled with meaning, please.

So, yeah, like the Man in Black said to Buttercup, “Life is pain Highness, anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”

But for followers of Jesus, pain is how God is shaping us into who He created us to be. The pain is temporary. Momentary light afflictions are the worst this life can do to us. 

And it points to something beautiful. God only refines what He loves. He only refines what is precious and valuable to Him. It might be hard to hear, but your pain is proof that God loves you.

Not all pain is harm. Ever been to the dentist? 

Not all suffering is cruel—a parent disciplines their child because they love their child. God promises to love us—He also promises to discipline us. He’s not going to give up on you.

Philippians 1:6 says,

“He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.”

He’s going to continue to refine you until you realize that your impurities are not actually part of you. Your impurities are not you. Your sin is not you. He called you to Himself, He began a good work in you. He’s going to finish it. 

Have you ever had to give up something that was hard to give up? A bad habit? Something for your health? Whatever God is working on in you, whatever He’s refining, it’s going to be just as difficult—but it’s going to be for your soul. For your ultimate good. Beyond your ability to even comprehend. 

God is always calling us away from our sin but we just keep going back.

The image I always think of is a dog that likes to eat cat poop. So gross. 

God’s like, “Here, why don’t leave the litter box alone and eat this steak instead.” And in this metaphor, we’re the stupid dog—and the devil is the cat.

Okay, need to get that image out of my head. Honestly, it’s the reason I don’t think I’ll ever have a dog and a cat again. I just can’t look at the dog the same way after that. I certainly don’t want it to lick me. 

I need to wash my mind with fuller’s soap. Purge my imagination with fire!

This message is the antidote to the faith-killing stupidity of the prosperity Gospel. All that name it and claim it, shiny happy Jesus utopia nonsense that causes people to doubt God’s character because they don’t always get what they want.

We need to trust that God is good and He knows what He’s doing. He doesn’t usually explain Himself. Ask Job about that. But the way He refines you is not random. You are being shaped by His hand, and it’s always for your good.

Don’t resist. If you do, it will just take longer. 

You know, Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? And then He tells us that love is patient.

Maybe one of the main ways we can love God is by being patient with how He’s refining us—how He’s disciplining us. Kind of a heavy thought.

And you know, God uses all of us to refine each other, too. Iron sharpens iron. So that same idea of being patient applies to the second commandment—to love our neighbor as ourselves. God will send people into your life that their primary purpose is to refine you in one way or another. This too will be painful. I’m sure you can all think of someone God has put in your life that fits this description. Don’t look at them right now. Ha.

So, this Advent season, as we continue to wait for Jesus to come back. As we’re knee deep into our preparations for celebrating when He came the first time. As we’re dealing with all the troubles and sorrows of this world. I just want to remind all of us that God only refines what He loves. He’s working on you, in your life because you’re precious to Him. It’s all going somewhere good. He will finish what He has begun. His discipline is not punishment, it’s proof of His deep love and commitment to you.  We are refined in pain but it will end in glory.