Judg 2:21+22, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not." 
	We are continuing our time together with the plan and the purpose of the Lord in the manner in which He tests His people with regard to their complete dedication unto Him. As we have seen in the first books of the Bible, this was a matter of focusing the people’s heart unto the Lord. He would put before them the choice of fully following Him or following their own self interests and motivations as becoming as gods unto themselves. He was using the Canaanite people, whom the nation had failed to remove from the land, to cause the Children of Israel to call out to God in their earnest desire to be delivered from their oppressors. 
	We spent some time with the various avenues in which the Lord works to bring His people face to face with themselves. This is to plum the deepest motivations in the examination of the core essence of their desire to know Jehovah in the fullness of His Being. 
	How much do we, as the Bride of Christ, yearn to know Him in ever greater measure? Or, are we much more interested in putting ourselves into the center of attention? Do we envision ourselves with the image of having a wealthy, young suitor as arm dressing to show how great and how wonderful we can be in our own eyes? This is a most graphic representation of what the Lord is seeking to show when we are put to the test of our love and our devotion and our commitment and our dedication unto Him as His Chosen People.
	King David knew this reality of the testing of the heart. He did not withhold it from his son, Solomon. He made sure that this future king of the Children of Israel was fully apprized as to what the Lord would do. God would make certain that Solomon was committed to the One from Whom he would be given charge over this Chosen people. We find this spelled out so clearly in 1 Chron 28:9.
	1 Chron 28:9, "As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever. 
	This is a reality that we need to understand with every fiber of our mind and being. God searches our thoughts and our intentions. He knows what is hidden in the deepest recesses of our hearts. As well, He knows exactly what it takes to bring it all to our attention. This is in order that we would ask Him to deal with any of those elements that separate and cause anger and frustration and evil intent on our part. He designs those very specific and personal testings which will bring about the earnestness of our longing to be more and more perfectly attuned to His will and His pleasure in us.
	Job, in Job 23:8-12, brings us succinctly to the very target of what the Lord does in us. Oft times it is during those episodes of our walk on this earth when everything seems to be completely upside down. We find ourselves floundering here and there and everywhere, looking for the answers to what is happening in our lives. We finally reach the point of utter exhaustion at which we just stop and discover our rest in the fact that He is at work to do His perfect will in us. It is that refining execution of His fire which analyzes the every fiber of who we are. All that is not of Him in us is burned away with each successive billows blast until we are purified as finest gold.
	Job 23:8-12, "Behold, I go forward but He is not there, And backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him. "But He knows the way I take; When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. "My foot has held fast to His path; I have kept His way and not turned aside. "I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. 
    	The Psalmist, then, in Ps 66:8-12, brings exactly this same process to the forefront of our hearts and minds with the added encouragement that we are to bless the Lord for that work. No matter how fiery the trial, no matter how heated by the super intense billows of God’s breath, we are to bless the Lord for what He does and how He does it! God will use every means to cause us to seek Him with all our hearts. And, with all thanksgiving, no matter what the means, He will always see us through!
Ps 66:8-12, Bless our God, O peoples, And sound His praise abroad, Who keeps us in life, And does not allow our feet to slip. For Thou hast tried us, O God; Thou hast refined us as silver is refined. Thou didst bring us into the net; Thou didst lay an oppressive burden upon our loins. Thou didst make men ride over our heads; We went through fire and through water; Yet Thou didst bring us out into a place of abundance. 
 	Again, through the Psalmist, as in Ps 139:23+24, not only are we to bless the Lord for those times of even the most intense testing, but we are to ask Him to do so in our lives. We are to be in such agreement with the Lord acknowledging that His work is so necessary in us that we ask Him to try the depth of our hearts. We beseech Him to test just how earnestly we desire to know Him, to test how fully we need Him, to test how much He really and absolutely means to us, to test, with the hottest and most fierce flames of His perfecting work, the core essence of how much we love and trust Him as the only focus of our lives.       
Ps 139:23+24, Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way. 
	In Prov 17:3, we have the same emphasis put before us as to how the work of the Lord is compared to the refining fire of a smelter of precious metal. All the impurities and the dross needs to be brought to the surface and blasted away as the metal is made purer and more uncontaminated in its composition of essence. The more tried and fired it is - the purer and more valuable it becomes.
That is exactly what the Lord does with our hearts before Him. He makes certain, that through the trials and fiery tribulations, we are made more and more precious. We become a people who more and more perfectly show forth the ever increasing essence of His indwelling Holy Spirit.
	Prov 17:3, The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, But the Lord tests hearts. 
      	Prov 27:21+22, reinforces the fact that we are refined for the very purpose of showing the beauty and the love and the character of the One Who lives forth from us unto this world. Everyone with whom we are brought into contact should see the clarity of Christ emanating from the testimony of our walk with the Lord. They may give us compliments and praise, but we turn it all to the Lord for His glory and His praise to well up in greater measure. It is all to His Honor and none of our own.
	Prov 27:21+22, The crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold, And a man is tested by the praise accorded him. Though you pound a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, Yet his folly will not depart from him. 
      	The Prophets throughout the Old Testament knew this working power of the Lord to try and to test the precious essence of those who belong to Him. We will begin with the Prophet Isaiah, in Isa 48:8-11, where we have the very voice of God proclaiming how we are put through those times of fiery intensity. This is never for our undoing, but in order to show forth the fact that we belong to God. Accordingly, our lives give greater and more perfect reflection of Him and His grace to His glory as we are polished and purified by His work of refinement. He takes us, those who were once at enmity with Him, and He brings forth, through the midst of all the flames and billowing intensity of His Holy heat, the fact that He will have His glory evidenced in our lives. We will be the proof that He is the Lord God Almighty! It will all be to His glory and to His praise!
	Isa 48:8-11, "You have not heard, you have not known. Even from long ago your ear has not been open, Because I knew that you would deal very treacherously; And you have been called a rebel from birth. "For the sake of My name I delay My wrath, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. "Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. "For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another. 
    	The Prophet Jeremiah picks up this theme of the refining power of God upon those who truly and absolutely belong to Him as in Jer 6:22-30. He will move nations and peoples and events to make us prove whether we will honor Him and seek Him and obey Him and call out to Him. Or will we try to survive through the failing efforts of our own means of hopeless abandonment unto misery and complaining and rebellion. Will we stand for the Lord when everything around us is crumbling and surrendering in utmost despondency and despair and depression?
	Jer 6:22-30, Thus says the Lord, "Behold, a people is coming from the north land, And a great nation will be aroused from the remote parts of the earth. "They seize bow and spear; They are cruel and have no mercy; Their voice roars like the sea, And they ride on horses, Arrayed as a man for the battle Against you, O daughter of Zion!" We have heard the report of it; Our hands are limp. Anguish has seized us, Pain as of a woman in childbirth. Do not go out into the field, And do not walk on the road, For the enemy has a sword, Terror is on every side. O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth And roll in ashes; Mourn as for an only son, A lamentation most bitter. For suddenly the destroyer Will come upon us. "I have made you an assayer and a tester among My people, That you may know and assay their way." All of them are stubbornly rebellious, Going about as a talebearer. They are bronze and iron; They, all of them, are corrupt. The bellows blow fiercely, The lead is consumed by the fire; In vain the refining goes on, But the wicked are not separated. They call them rejected silver, Because the Lord has rejected them. 
    	Jeremiah then, in Chapter 17, verses 7-14, describes those who come through the fiercest trials and tribulations with their hearts fully set upon the Lord as their every hope and desire. This is fully in spite of the horror of the events and the circumstances which surround them. They are blessed by the Lord because their roots are firmly planted in the solid grounding of God. Nothing will sway them nor will it uproot their trust in Him!
	Jer 17:7-14, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord And whose trust is the Lord. "For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit. "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it? "I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds. "As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid, So is he who makes a fortune, but unjustly; In the midst of his days it will forsake him, And in the end he will be a fool." A glorious throne on high from the beginning Is the place of our sanctuary. O Lord, the hope of Israel, All who forsake Thee will be put to shame. Those who turn away on earth will be written down, Because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even the Lord. Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; Save me and I will be saved, For Thou art my praise. 
    	Next listen to the Prophet Ezekiel, in Ezek 22:17-22, as the Lord makes known the fact that as He tries the hearts and minds, as with the melting of metal, He will remove the dross and purify His people. There will be that work which causes the ones who are called by His name to be proven as they truly honor the Lord no matter what the intensity of the flames of His breath upon them. It will be clearly shown those who fully belong to Him as separated from those who are but socially and ritualistically called Christians for their own glory and well-being. Every selfish and self-centered motive will be utterly consumed at the intensive blast of His refining fire!
	Ezek 22:17-22, And the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me; all of them are bronze and tin and iron and lead in the furnace; they are the dross of silver. "Therefore, thus says the Lord God, 'Because all of you have become dross, therefore, behold, I am going to gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. 'As they gather silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into the furnace to blow fire on it in order to melt it, so I shall gather you in My anger and in My wrath, and I shall lay you there and melt you. 'And I shall gather you and blow on you with the fire of My wrath, and you will be melted in the midst of it. 'As silver is melted in the furnace, so you will be melted in the midst of it; and you will know that I, the Lord, have poured out My wrath on you.'" 
	The prophet Zechariah, in Zech 13:7-9, makes known what will take place in order for the refining work of the Lord to be absolutely and fully accomplished in those whom He has chosen to make His own, purified and glorified people. This requires that their hope and their trust and their every motive be put through the course of death on the suffering side of the cross and resurrection in newness of being on the glorified and refined side in the life of Jesus. This is a process that completely establishes those whose entire emphasis of life belongs to Him, Alone.
	Zech 13:7-9, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, And against the man, My Associate," Declares the Lord of hosts. "Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; And I will turn My hand against the little ones. "And it will come about in all the land," Declares the Lord, "That two parts in it will be cut off and perish; But the third will be left in it. "And I will bring the third part through the fire, 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, 'They are My people,' And they will say, 'The Lord is my God.'" 
	The prophet Malachi closes out our morning with the reality of what is at hand in the trials of our undergoing. Many are those who claim to know the Lord and who nominally declare that they are Christians, but truly have no relationship with the very source of life and being. The fact is that the Day of the Lord will be one of complete disclosure as to what the Work of the Cross of Jesus Christ truly means in the hearts and in the minds of those who call themselves His Church on this earth! 
It will show the true essence of what we have done in representing Him to those with whom we have associated and interacted. There will be no hiding behind titles and activities and the accolades given by man. All will be put through the fires of purification until the only thing that remains is the work of God in Jesus Christ!
	Mal 3:1-4, "Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear 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. "And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. "Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years. 
    	How will we be accounted in the manner in which the Lord has tried and tested our hearts and our minds and our actions on this earth? That is the question that we need to ponder in the deepest core of our beings? How much of what we have done will stand as proof of unto whom we have lived our lives? Will the essential essence, after the fiery breath of God has melted away all the dross and impurities be much; or little; or anything at all? Let us seek after the Lord, individually and corporately, to be completely and absolutely pleasing and glorifying unto God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. No matter what the road traveled, no matter what the cost, only God and God, Alone! So be it!
I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not." Amen.

This morning’s benediction is 1 John 5:12. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. Amen.