Have you been Assayed?
I was listening to a Sermon the other day and this wee little bit of new information/concept stuck. Everybody knows full well about “Temptation” as we all get it on an Hourly/Daily basis, so we call it “our cross to bear,” but here is a wonderful new field of concept to explore. It appears from the Greek that “Temptation” and mineral Assaying, are in essence the same basic principle. Temptation in Greek; is Strong’s 3989, which refers to Strong’s 3986, but that refers to Strong’s 3985; and this is scrutinizing, examining, testing, assaying.
Say you are down the creek fooling around and spy and unusual pattern on the opposite bank, so you up with a decent sized rock and throw it and it hits, dead centre, and the dirty discoloured front layer falls off onto the bank, and the afternoon sunlight just blazes off the golden flecks, just masses of them. Old timers had talked about gold in them their hills, but it was never found, enough hints, but no real success, well until now.
You quickly cross over, scoop up some material, do a lousy job of panning with your hand, and it sinks to the bottom. Fool’s Gold floats, but this stuff sinks, you are certain that you have the real deal. But how can you be doubly sure? You scoop up more into your hat; you must take an acceptable sample back home, walking very quickly – Slowly.
Down to old Harry, that old time miner, and there he is in his shed, so you dump the hat on his bench and ask him to give you an opinion. His reply is that he must assay it first, so he weighs out a sample, grinds it up, puts it in his furnace and turns up the heat. The Gold melts and flows and the rock sinks to the bottom, then he pours out the metal, and when cool weighs it. Now he knows what the yield is, how much Gold per ton of ore, to make sure that it is worth mining? Then he tests the gold for purity and it is right up there at the top, you have the good stuff and a very high yield.
In a “Spiritual Plain,” the Gold in the Ore was “Tempted and Tried” under the heat of a very difficult situation, and the gold separated itself from the worthless rock, which you happily spread on the driveway as gravel, but the Gold, well that is highly treasured and kept close. From the Greek concept we get that if you put a person under pressure, turn up the heat and then you’ll find their true metal, as the oldies used to say. You gain fantastic value, when you only started with just gravel and rock, or driveway type material.
Now to mine you need a “Mining Licence,” but how do you get one? Old Harry quietly turns and digs around under some stuff to extract a beaten old wooden box, opens it and digs about in the documents and extracts a letter in an envelope and hands it to you. It is addressed to Harry, old style hand writing, you open it and there are a few pages and as you scan it you finally realize that you are actually holding a “Mining Licence,” and the map shows that your spot is right there in the middle.
Harry announces that as he is dying, and his parting wish was to find this mother lode before he died, and you have answered an old man’s prayer, so he signs the Licence over to you. Your whole life is transformed by quantum leaps and the past and future are beyond reconciliation.
How is it with your spiritual life? Have you left your old sinful ways and are getting closer and closer to Jesus Christ? Gold in Hebrew and God are pretty much the same thing, Godliness is often represented with Gold, hence the gold in the Holy and Most Holy place in the Sanctuary, is in the apartments that God resides in. With Jesus Christ in your earthen vessel of your life, you now have gold in you, the more of Jesus, the more gold you have and the more valuable you are.
Paul talks at length about “Christ in you,” “In Christ,” so how much gold do you have? If you were panned out do you have just a few flecks of colour, none whatsoever, or are there copious quantities there in the pan, and numerous nuggets to show a “high yield.” We should aim to be all gold, all for Jesus Christ, and nothing of self or me. We used to sing a song with this line, “Not I but Christ..” so how much gold/God/Jesus Christ do we reflect, or if God tempted/Assayed us, do we have lots of God and Gold or are we representing Satan/Sin/Self and are just worthless gravel?
A text comes to mind and it goes like this; Matthew 5:13 “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” If we exchange the element of salt for gold, and then read it once more, we get the point that if there is no gold, we are just fit for driveway gravel. The streets of the New Jerusalem are paved in pure gold, it is the city of God, of gold, of golden people.
Let us not dread temptation, as God sees worth in you, your metal/gold/Jesus Christ within, are being revealed through this. It is so easy to act like an unbeliever when tested and tried, to lash out, use bad language, when we need to have those things purged from us and the gold of Christ’s Righteousness glows out in patience, kindness, compassion, praying for those who are giving you grief, Jesus did this at the trial and at Calvary, so let us commit to being golden Christians reflecting and acting just as if Jesus Christ was in our shoes.
