It’s Gold, Baby | From refining to wisdom (Job 22-28)…
Who wouldn’t love to be handed a nugget of gold? Or what about a huge gold bar? After all, it’s gold, baby! The refining process from raw gold to 99.9% pure gold mimics the refining process for us as Christians. While it represents a beautiful end result, it simultaneously reminds us that even the finest precious metals cannot compare or buy the wisdom of God. From refining to wisdom, dig down to see the symbolic imagery here of gold in these chapters.
The book of Job sometimes is mind-boggling with the depth of lessons it provides. This book stands alone with respect to man’s understanding of sovereignty and provides a guide for us in this life.
Our feeble understanding of the breadth of God’s wisdom and might is limited, and we end up like raw ore (gold), fool’s gold, or 99.9% refined gold.
It’s never too late to start….
Refining raw gold…
What is gold? It is made up of raw ore in the earth. Most often, it has to be mined. And there are steps to process it in order to turn it into ‘pure’ gold.
- Find where gold deposits are beneath the surface
- Perform tests to ensure it’s real and not a fake (fool’s gold)
- Take samples, to really solidify it is real and to know the quality if it is worthwhile to mine
- If high quality, prep work is completed (construction for access and processing)
- More samples to see how much metallic elements are involved (raw gold is not just gold but mixed and considered raw ore)
- The raw ore is crushed
- Then undergoes a series of processes varying on the different elements and minerals naturally mixed in with the gold ore
- This separates the gold from the surrounding elements
- It undergoes further refining to remove any remaining impurities
- The gold is melted
- Next, it’s treated with chloride which wicks away all remaining elements and minerals
- The final step is essentially electric shock, passing an electric current through it
Then you have 99.9 percent pure gold, baby!
Refining our hearts…
Similarly, this also represents the process we can go through as Christians to refine our hearts. Christians often endure a series of testing and trials… the book of Job lays out the purpose for us to plainly see.
But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
Job 23:10
A Christian walk is not typically a breezy walk through a flower garden. Often, it is described as a battlefield. It’s a battle for holiness, a true battle for your heart.
The battlefield of refining…
If you have not yet entered this battlefield, knowing ahead of time which side you want to end up on can greatly aide you as you fight your way through it. Will you fight for everlasting life or be content with the world and accept an eternity of deep anguish.
- Do you have any gold deposits in you, maybe beneath the surface still?
- Is that real gold or fool’s gold? Do you flake at the first sign of trials?
- Is the quality of your gold real, or even of worth? You cannot fool God, He knows!
- Is your heart prepared for potential trials? Sometimes, years pass before your trials come to fruition.
- Hold on though, is the gold real gold? Ensure your foundation is secure! It needs to not be mixed up with the love of this world!
- The blows that come can crush you. Job had his livelihood, wealth, health, and family stripped away.
- Who stands beside you? A series of events for Job transpired where he had the opportunity to witness whether his friends were true friends or not.
- Removing the dross includes removing the wicked people among you. The metals mixed in with your gold need to be stripped away and sometimes this can be extreme.
- The separations will keep coming; your love for your job, money, fitness level, or family cannot compete against your true love for God. They need to take a backseat.
- The life you knew may melt away in front of your eyes.
- In fact, it may all be taken away to continue the refining process.
- Even worse, is the jolt of reality as you recognize you need to look Heavenward and anything standing in the way needs to be put in it’s rightful order or taken completely out of your life.
Refining can produce or confirm assurance…
Throughout this all, Job maintained and confirmed the assurance of his faith and future salvation.
But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
Job 23:10
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
Job 19:25-27
Before, Job had nuggets of gold that had pushed past the surface and were visible to those around him. At the beginning of the book, we learned that Satan was of the same limited mindset that we found Job’s 3 friends were… that blessings were tied to one’s allegiance to God.
Job’s trials led him on a journey of refining out the impurities to purify the gold within him. Among it all, it is understood that he knew of the sovereignty of God, but could not grasp it.
Refining confirms sovereignty…
The rightful order of everything in this world falls into place in the book of Job. While Job was not living his life in sin at the beginning of the book, we are reminded still of how the world order ought to be.
God is to be number one, and His wisdom, might, sovereignty, and power are so vast that we will never 100% understand. THIS is the God we serve! Anything else that takes the place of our allegiance is a false idol and impurifies our gold. Do you treat a gold ring with honor or do you drop it in the dirt and grind it in with your heel?
How much more so should we cherish something that is worth far more than gold? Not even God’s wisdom can be bought with all the gold in the world.
From refining to wisdom…
It’s gold, baby! Solomon adorned the temple and his palace with gold. It is the backing to most national currencies, traded as money, and holds it’s value over time.
But it FAILS in comparison to the God of the universe. Not even one aspect of God can be bought or understood with it.
Not to mention, the streets of Heaven are lined with gold! Think about that, a place so glorious that even the streets are lined with gold. Solomon’s temple, take a backseat because you are only a snippet of what Heaven is like!
It serves as a great reminder, that one of the most treasured possessions on this earth doesn’t even hold a candle to the God we serve.
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I am working right now to cement the truth from 1 Peter 1 into my heart and brain, that our trials refine us, and the hot fires are God at work, creating an imperishable faith, to the praise of his glory!