Dirty Gold Part 3

Introduction

Genesis 29:26–30 NKJV

And Laban said, “It must not be done so in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. Fulfill her week, and we will give you this one also for the service which you will serve with me still another seven years.”

Then Jacob did so and fulfilled her week. So he gave him his daughter Rachel as wife also. And Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as a maid. Then Jacob also went in to Rachel, and he also loved Rachel more than Leah. And he served with Laban still another seven years.

•     Welcome back to our series titled “Dirty Gold”

•     This morning we go over our third and final sermon in this series looking at the events of Genesis 29, well the first half of Genesis 29 at least.

•     So let’s just catch up real briefly where we are at, then we will talk about God’s refining fire. But before we do that, let’s pray.

•     So where are we at in the events of Genesis? Jacob an his mother schemed to trick and deceive Isaac, Jacob’s father, into giving him the birthright… instead of having faith that God’s promises WOULD come true, then instead faithlessly used sin and deception to try to advance God’s plan.

•     When Jacob’s brother learned of the deception, he threatened to murder Jacob, so Jacob fled to his uncles house… and that is where this series picks up, at uncle Laban’s well and home.

•     In the first sermon in this series we attempted to describe Jacob’s character… He believed in God and desired to advance the Kingdom of God… Yet, at the same time, he continually acts out of fear and faithlessness… deception and usurping are in his name… he is a cheater, a heel grabber, a trickster… and yet he is chosen by God, focused on the things of God, and striving, though many times sinfully, to serve God and His kingdom… thus in our first sermon in this series we defined Jacob’s character as Dirty gold.

•     Like many of us, if not all of us, we have value in Christ Jesus, we are made in God’s image, we are so valuable that Christ died for us… yet even though we may have value, even though through Christ there is gold in us… we sure do a lot to muck it up… we are saints, yes, but we are not perfect… we are dirty gold.

•     But we are gold none the less… he protects the value of what is His… even when we try to mess it up, God sees through the dirt, He sees the gold… He works it all out for His glory.

•     Jacob sins LIKE crazy with his father… and he runs for his life from the consequences of his sin… but God uses this to bring Jacob to his wife… or wives in this matter.

•     And we talked last week about the spiritual law of “you reap what you sow”… in what pastor Amanda called “The most cringiest moment of any of your sermons” I explained how Jacob was deceived on his wedding night in much the same way that he had 7 years prior deceived his father.

•     In the physical if you plant corn you harvest corn… in the spiritual if you plant deception you harvest deception.

•     So my encouragement last week was two-fold… if you have spent your life planting a field of sin and wickedness, then you are at some point going to have harvest those thorny weeds… but that harvest is INFINITLY easier with Christ by your side… and secondly, start planting a harvest of righteousness now.

•     Now this week we are going to take that concept a step further with another spiritual law… God refines with Fire… that in fact is our first point this morning… God refines with fire.

Point One – God Refines with Fire

Genesis 29:20 NKJV

So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her.

Genesis 29:30 NKJV

Then Jacob also went in to Rachel, and he also loved Rachel more than Leah. And he served with Laban still another seven years.

Genesis 31:41 NKJV

Thus I have been in your house twenty years; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.

•     So the first seven years that Jacob served Laban seems like only a few days to him… they were a breeze…

•     Funny, he doesn’t say that about the second seven years…

•     Then I added a little more context here from Genesis 31, which we will get to as we preach through Genesis, but it applies to this point so well… Jacob ends up serving Laban another 6 years in order to receive some of his flock and so Jacob could build a life for himself and his children… and this time he is frustrated about it, saying “You changed my wages 10 times!”… turns out Laban was just as much of a deceiver as Jacob… and again, you reap what you sow… but there is more going on here then just the law of reaping and sowing…

•     These 20 years of labor are HARD labor…

Genesis 31:38–40 NKJV

These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes.

•     In the day, he says, he was burning up “The drought consumed me” and at night the frost attacked him… he even says he worked so hard that he never got enough sleep.

•     And remember, Jacob was 77 years old when he started this labor… I would bet that any kind of work at 77 is tough, yet alone 20 years of keeping livestock day in and day out.

•     So what is going on here? Is this ONLY a case of “You reap what you sow”? Or is there something else going on as well, something, might I say… good… happening through all of this?

Romans 8:28 NKJV

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

•     Jacob loves God, that much is clear… through all the dirt, there is a good deal of gold. Jacob is also LITERALLY called according to His purpose, to be an ancestor of Christ and a patriarch of the faith… therefore according to Romans 8:28, though Jacob must reap what he has sown, and though that reaping process is hard labor… God is going to work that out for Jacob’s own good…

•     So in what way does God use our pain and our afflictions… even the ones we deserve… for our own good? He uses them to refine us…

Malachi 3:2–3 NKJV

“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 launderers’ soap.

He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, And purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer to the Lord An offering in righteousness.

Zechariah 13:9 NKJV

I will bring the one-third through the fire, Will refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them. I will say, ‘This is My people’; And each one will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’ ”

•     God throughout scripture uses this imagery of being a refiner… someone who purifies gold and silver.

•     You see when you mine gold from the ground it comes out dirty… and we talked about how if you had gold covered in filth you wouldn’t get rid of it, you would wash it… just like Christ washes us clean with His blood…

•     But there is another aspect to dirty gold that goes deeper than the filth on the outside… You see, when you mine pure Gold it comes out of the ground full of impurities, called dross… dirt, and sand, and debris mixed inside the gold.

•     A refiner takes gold and works out all of the dross that is in it… the way he does this is with fire… a lot of it… very very hot fire, in a special oven that get’s to about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit… this melts the gold and all the impurities float to the top. The refiner can then remove the impurities. This process is repeated over and over until the gold is pure… or as close to pure as the refiner can get it.

•     So in order to purify gold you got to put the gold through the fire…

•     We are dirty gold saints… we are washed by the blood, yes, but we still need to be refined… so God takes our afflictions, our pains, and our sufferings… many of which are our own dumb faults… but He doesn’t allow them to go to waste… God works out ALL things for our good, if love God and are called according to His purpose… He works out all things for our good… and the way He works out our afflictions is by using them as the fire needed to refine us… dirty gold… getting more and more pure as our Lord refines us.

Isaiah 48:10 NKJV

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

•     Listen church… I am one of these preachers that thinks God want’s good things for you. I believe that His perfect will for you life is a life free of pain, a life free of sorrow, a life abundantly prosperous, never having to worry about things like money, or food, or lodging… I believe these things because that is how heaven is described… and if God didn’t want us to live this way then why create an eternity for us like that? I believe these things because Jesus taught us to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. So if God’s will is for us to be healthy and prosperous in heaven, then that is His perfect will for us on earth, that is how we are told to pray.

•     HOWEVER… I also know that there are many things working contrary to the will of God. Our sin being chief amongst them… the sins of others… the fallen and corrupt nature of the world… the cursed ground… the devil and his minions…

•     So I am NOT one of these preachers that suggests that life is going to be easy and perfect as a Christian… I don’t mean to suggest, as some prosperity gospel preachers do, that if you are not wealthy and healthy that you are somehow outside of the will of God and you just need to have more faith…

•     Sometimes affliction happens because of our own faithlessness, yes… but it rains on the just and the unjust alike… sometimes life isn’t fair… sometimes we are given a bum hand… Paul was not living in mansions and traveling by private jets… in fact he gave up his wealth and authority to suffer for Christ, to be locked in prisons and shipwrecked and beaten time and time again, and then eventually martyred…

•     Life probably won’t be all roses as a Christian… not until eternity… there is going to be affliction… but that is okay, because God is going to use that affliction for our good… because He uses ALL things for our good… God is going to use that affliction to refine us.

Romans 5:3–4 NKJV

And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

James 1:2–4 NKJV

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

•     I think this James passage perfectly transitions us into the final point of this Dirty Gold series… Point two this morning: Until We Reflect Christ.

Point Two – Until We Reflect Christ

Genesis 31:38–41 NKJV

These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house twenty years; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.

Proverbs 17:3 NKJV

The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, But the Lord tests the hearts.

•     For 20 years Jacob suffered… well, for 13 at least, the first 7 he said went by as if only a few days… God was refining Jacob… Not his physical being… he was old and only getting older… but his heart… God was fixing Jacob’s heart by refining him with fire… yes Jacob was reaping what he had sown… but God used that fire to refine Jacob’s heart…

•     And as I close this series, I ask this question “When is God done refining us”… “What is God’s end goal”. And as I was studying this sermon I came to an AMAZING revelation… something I learned that really depend my understanding of God’s refining process…

•     Do you remember how when we started this sermon I spent some time talking about how there is gold in each of us, even before we are saved?

•     Why do I preach that, when there are many famous theologians who say we are “completly and utterly depraved”? I preach that because we are made in the image of God. And though our sin mucks the image up… though our iniquity runs that image through the mud… we still, even as sinners, bear the image of God in one way or another… In fact, it is explicitly why God says murder is wrong… you are not allowed to destroy the image of God.

Genesis 9:6 NKJV

“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.

•     If man was completely and totally evil and corrupt it would not be wrong to murder him… you would just be ridding the world of evil… But God says “No! That is my image and you can not destroy it”.  So there must be some good in man, enough of the image of God left… that God finds it valuable enough to protect and valuable enough to send His son to die for.

•     *Side note* this is talking about murder, not justifiable use of force such as self defense or just wars… but that is a sermon for another day… the gist of it is this: We are made in the image of God, even as sinners we bear that image in one way or another… we are dirty filthy gold… but God bought us with a price and cleansed us with His blood… now we are God’s gold… and He is refining us…

•     But here is the thing… God inspired me to write about us having value because we are made in His image… and it felt a little forced to me… maybe it felt forced to you when I was preaching it.

•     When I wrote that first sermon I even highlighted that whole section about the image of God, and I reached over to the backspace key to delete it, because I didn’t like it and felt like it didn’t really fit.

•     But God stopped me. God said “Leave it” so I did… God knew something that I didn’t yet know… Oh, guys this is so good, are you ready?

•     DO YOU KNOW HOW A REFINER KNOWS WHEN THE GOLD IS PURIFIED? When He can stop putting it through the fire, when he can stop scooping out the dross?

•     This is true, every time the refiner goes through the process of putting the gold through the fire, melting it, and scooping off the dross… every time he does this the gold gets a little shinier… it gets a little more reflective… and ancient refiners, such in the Bible times, would know the gold was pure when… get this… they would know the gold was pure when they could see their own face reflected in it… COME ON SOMEBODY THAT WILL PREACH!

•     It’s called the reflection tests, ancient historical writings talk about it… when the refiner can see his reflection in the gold, the gold is considered pure.

•     Even metal workers today use the reflection test!

•     How does God know when He is done refining you? Well it is when God looks at you and He sees Himself in you. You ready for some rapid fire verses? Here we go:

Genesis 1:27 NKJV

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Romans 8:29 NKJV

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son

2 Corinthians 3:18 NKJV

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Galatians 4:19 NKJV

My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you,

Ephesians 5:1 NKJV

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

1 Corinthians 11:1 NKJV

Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.

Colossians 3:9–10 NKJV

Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,

1 Peter 1:15–16 NKJV

but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”

Galatians 2:20 NKJV

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;

Matthew 5:48 NKJV

Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

•     God calls us to be perfect as He is perfect… to imitate Christ… to look like Christ… to REFLECT CHRIST.

•     Therefore, God as a refiner knows when He is done refining us when we reflect Christ.

•     Now I want to conclude this series by talking once more about Jacob, and then giving you a little bit of encouragement as you face the Refiner’s fire.

•     If someone wants to come up and play we will close this Dirty Gold series down.

Conclusion

Turn On Children’s Class Lamps

Genesis 31:38–41 NKJV

These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house twenty years; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.

Hosea 12:12 NKJV

Jacob fled to the country of Syria; Israel served for a spouse, And for a wife he tended sheep.

•     “I love this verse in Hosea. God is reminding the prophet of Jacob’s story — how Jacob fled to Syria, how he served seven years for a spouse, and another seven for a wife. That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about these last three weeks. But there’s something else beautiful in this verse… Hosea uses BOTH of Jacob’s names. He calls him Jacob, and He calls him Israel.

•     Why? Because this trickster, this heel-grabber, he went into Laban’s house as Jacob. He spent twenty years in the Refiner’s fire. He reaped what he had sown. He was humbled, tested, stretched, and purified. And when he left Laban, he didn’t leave the same man.

•     And what do we see immediately after he leaves Laban? One of the greatest moments of faith in the entire Old Testament. Jacob wrestles with the Lord and refuses to let go until he receives a blessing. His character has changed. He is no longer the man who looks for the easy way, the trickster way, the cheating way. He has learned to do hard work. He has learned not to give up. Twenty years of honest labor… followed by a holy wrestling match… and the man who went into the fire as Jacob comes out as Israel.”

•     This is Jacob’s story of refinement… and saints, this can be your story too. But the choice is yours.

•     Because we have one key difference from a lump of dirty gold… we have free will… unlike physical Gold we can decide that we don’t want to be in the refiners fire… we can reject the purification process…

•     But, as has been a theme for this series… my biggest encouragement to you is DON’T DO THAT! Don’t give up! Don’t leave the refiners fire… don’t resort back to your old ways… don’t run away… don’t give up…

•     If you are in afflection, yes, pray that God would deliver you from the affliction… there is nothing wrong with praying for deliverance from affliction… but also understand, if God does not deliver you, the He will MOST CERTAINLY use that affliction for your good. Therefore don’t run from the thing God is using for your good.

•     Some of my afflictions that weren’t even my fault have helped shaped me to be a much better man.

•     I learned patience and perseverance going through my sons medical problems when he was a newborn.

•     All those sleepless nights, thanking God “God thank you for using this to grow me and refine me”. I came out more of a man than I came in.

•     I learned forgives after being more hurt by a brother in Christ then I ever thought possible… it took years of pain to learn that lesson… it wasn’t even my fault… but I learned to forgive as Christ forgave me… because my sin certainly wasn’t Christ’s fault, yet He chose to die to forgive it anyway.

•     And truthfully church, there was some things where I was really reaping what I sowed… years of pain and broken relationships and hardship that were my OWN dumb fault… but God even used those instances to grow me and refine me… because He uses all things for the good of those who love Him…

•     So to conclude… the teaching of this series is as follows…

1) You are Gold by no work of your own, but because God made you of value (Made in His Image).
2) Life is going to suck and it’s mostly your fault (you reap what you sow).
3) God is still going to use you for His glory if you don’t give up (God protects HIs gold).
4) God is going to refine you and make you more like Him if you don’t give up.
5) DON’T GIVE UP.

•     I know life might be hard right now… I know many of you are going through pain and struggles… I know that for some of you it is your own fault… and for others it is of no fault of your own at all… but either way, this I know… God is going to use it for your good and His glory… DON’T give up.

1 Peter 1:6–7 NKJV

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,

Gospel Call