Wrex Buxton – Nuriootpa SM – Second Part of Second Meeting, 2004

Hymn 289 please. It might be classed as a Gospel hymn, but I have thought of God wanting our heart; and it is our desire in this meeting today that we would give Him our heart. You might like to stand while we sing.
I’m not sure how you feel, but as the meeting has gone on here, those words are what the Lord has been saying to me, and I’m sure He has been saying that to you all. The whole purpose of Him gathering us together today; His desire is that we would give Him our heart; our hearts’ affection; our hearts’ love, so that there wouldn’t be anything else coming between our heart and God which would become an idol as we have already heard, that God would be first in our life. He wants our heart because that is the place He wants to dwell; He wants to take over in our heart even when He has already spoken to us and even when we seek to yield our heart, still He will continue to speak to us to give him our heart. He will take over our whole heart, and He will remove from our heart everything that is there by nature and He will put more of Himself and His Son there in replacement. I don’t know if you have noticed the theme that has been on my mind during these meetings today, that God understands our afflictions and we’ve been hearing about the cost and the dying; that which is necessary in our life, and God understands that. On the other side of that we want to really focus on what God has been showing us how to gain and how to increase and how to grow to be fruitful. To have that effect of the life of Christ on our eternal profit as we’ve been hearing. That’s the whole purpose of the Meetings today, that God would speak to our hearts and that we would give Him our heart; that we would profit, even at the cost to ourselves.
There are some verses that have been mentioned already, and now I will read from the beginning of Malachi 3, “‘Behold I will send My messenger and he shall prepare the way before Me (that was John the Baptist) and the Lord (that is Jesus) whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in: Behold, He shall come,’ saith the Lord of hosts. ‘But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? For His is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers soap: He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.'” I’ve appreciated what we have heard already about these verses and others. I’ve been thinking a little about the gold and a little about the fire as well. I’ll read some verses first in I Corinthians 3:10, “According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall  try ever man’s work of what sort it is.”
I was thinking about building material. In Revelations 21, I think it is. it speaks about the city coming down from God, “… pure gold clear as glass,” and it seems there was just one building material in that city and that was gold. In the foundations of the wall, there were precious stones mentioned. We begin to get a little picture that are going to be certain things in eternity and one thing in particular is gold. It’s not speaking about natural gold; it’s just a parallel. There was that church of the Laodiceans who felt that they were okay because they were beginning to be rich and increased with goods and they didn’t need anything, so God had to speak to them and say that they were poor; they were naked; they were wretched and blind. They were miserable really, spiritually in His sight. He didn’t just cut them off but He said, “I counsel you to buy of me gold; gold tried in the fire,” that which is going to be in eternity; that which is going to last.
There is something particular about gold, silver and precious stones, and that is that they can withstand fire. Fire has no effect on them. Fire melts the gold but it doesn’t change the gold. Another thing that Paul said that people could build with and that was wood, hay, and stubble, but the fire will effect them and not only that, they will feed the fire; add fuel to the fire. God said, “You buy of Me gold tried in the fire,” then they would have something that would be going to last because it had already been tried; already pure; it’s already what you need, and that gold, we know is Jesus. That gold we need in our life; the life and nature and Spirit of Jesus. I’m sure God has been putting before us today gold; encouraging us to buy this gold from Him. Get the gold; take these things to our heart and have the gold there because there is some dross there; something already in our heart by nature that isn’t gold and it’s not going to stand in eternity. It speaks of Jesus as being the refiner of gold and silver, and as we’ve been sitting here, He has been seeking to remove what is in our heart so that only the gold will be there. God wants that the only thing that will be left in our life when we come to the end of life, is the gold; is Jesus. Everything else removed; everything needs to be removed; has to be removed. No impurities, and the gold in that city was as clear glass; pure gold. God was speaking about lives blended together as gold; every impurity removed. Fire does something; it doesn’t change the gold; it melts it but something happens in that process, with natural gold dug out of the earth, there is a certain amount of earth which is not part of the gold but mixed around with it; in amongst it. When it’s heated, a separation goes on; separating, and that which is not of the gold but mixed around with it is separated and comes to the top because it is lighter. The gold is that which is heavier and has substance and it has weight. That which hasn’t got substance and weight comes to the surface.
I appreciated what we have heard already about the sifting, and Satan wants to sift out that which is solid; that’s his work, but God wants to sift out that which is weightless and empty; that which is of this human self; He wants to separate the world out of our life; that which has no weight or substance or glory; to remove that, but there is a process. It is the process which our old human nature doesn’t like and we perhaps like to escape it. One hymn we sing is “Suffering must precede the glory,” and the glory of the gold is the life of Jesus. Don’t think it strange, this trial of your faith as if some strange thing happened to you; don’t think it strange as God wants us to understand the trial; the suffering; the pain that we must go through to manifest Jesus. It’s the suffering of the flesh not the soul and that’s a precious thing, but if we go our own way, the soul will suffer, we suffer in the flesh that we might follow Jesus and have Him as the chief joy that we have been hearing about, but the flesh doesn’t like that. Don’t count it as some strange thing because the trial of your faith is much more precious than gold, though it be tried with fire. We get some experiences in our life, (and we alT have experiences), but those who would be Godly are going to suffer persecution or rejection; mocking. Our old human nature doesn’t like it But that’s the type of thing we must suffer. Other experiences come that effect us one way or another.
I appreciated what we heard at Kingscote, as I was thinking again of the experiences that cross our pathway. It was spoken about experiences that it is like the difference between an egg or a potato when it is boiled. Some people go hard and others get soft in the experience. Human nature often reacts to things that are said or done, and the dross comes up to the surface and we are sorry and ashamed about it afterwards, because we didn’t mean to say or do that. This leads us to want to do better next time, and because the dross is on the surface, God can now take it away, and we can be more like Jesus next time we are in that experience. Some in the scriptures faced heat that wasn’t their fault. If everything went smoothly in life, the gold might never be seen. When we fail and feel sorry for our failure because we really do want to do the right thing, then there will be true repentance. God proved Abraham when He asked him to offer up Isaac. The fire of experiences prove to God and to others, what is in our hearts; whether the gold is there or only dross. Abraham went early, but this time the lamb was missing, and Abraham said to Isaac, “God will provide a lamb,” when they came to the place, Isaac submitted without a struggle, but God stayed his hand. That was quite a test. As Abraham was asked to offer up his only son; his son gotten in old age, but he proved his love for God; the gold was in his heart, when God asks something of us it will be at a cost. Surrender in our heart; our will to His will, just do it willingly.
I was reading of Job, and in that experience that Satan brought about, it seemed to him that it was God that was doing it. Job had everything:  a large family, goods, cattle, wealth, and he hated evil and he loved righteousness. He hated that which was of the world and the flesh. Satan began to destroy that which he had and he lost his children and his animals; everything except his wife. He lost so much in that experience but he wasn’t living for those things. The world has a lot at their fingertips and they live for the things that they have; the pleasures and the treasures and so on, but if the world ever had those things taken away from them there would be a lot of angry people around. There is the need for us not to have that type of reaction. Jesus taught us that if someone asks of us, we need to give it to them; if they ask for our coat, give them our cloak also. Because we are living for the gold of the Kingdom we don’t want to be selfish and say, “No, I’ve paid for it; I’ve worked hard for that, nobody has any right to it.” Job said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” and he never charged God foolishly. If the Lord desires to take it all away, we should give it all up graciously because God is our only hope, and we need Him when things happen in our life; in the crisis of our life. Satan went a little further because he knew he hadn’t won yet, so he asked God to let him touch his flesh. Satan wanted Job to give up on God in his crisis; but that is when we need God the most. God allowed him to touch his flesh but said, “Do what you like, but don’t take his life.” God allows things to happen to remove the dross so that the gold will be seen. Satan struck him with boils from the sole of his feet to the top of his head, and we can hardly imagine the pain and his wife was no encouragement to him either. Also his friends came and said things that were not nice. Job hadn’t done anything to deserve it, and sometimes our experiences are like that too. He knew that when the experience was finished, he would come forth as gold. When we suffer the affliction of poor health, we may not have done anything to deserve that either, but God allows it, so as to work the gold into our lives and bring the dross to the surface that He might be glorified in us.
We could fuel the fire by our words, but whatever people said about Jesus never affected His Spirit, because whatever is of God’s nature will not be effected by fire but whatever is of the human will be consumed. David at first had Saul against him, and it was said of him, “He was a man after God’s own heart.” We read of his attitude towards Saul, even though he may have felt he had reason to be against Saul. Saul speaks of authority and David was under him and this could be in our experience too; being afflicted by someone in authority and over us; maybe a boss or somebody older than us. We may not agree, but we can’t do anything about it. David had a right spirit and he wouldn’t do anything against the Lord’s anointed.
 
We are told to pray for those in authority. Later when David came up against Nabal, there had been a little change; there was in his heart a feeling that now here was somebody he could deal with. It was an evidence that his heart was not quite right at the time, because David expected that Nabal should feed him; felt, “Nabal owes me something,” but Nabal had rebuffed him and treated him as a nobody. How different to Jesus who felt the world didn’t owe Him anything. David may have felt that he was a somebody at this time, but Nabal didn’t know who he was or what he had done, and he said, “Who’s David?” David intended to kill them all, and we see another heart in him, that wasn’t after the heart of God. David was building with wood and the heat was on, it just got worse, and David intended to attack. Nabal was a selfish man, but we read of Abigail that she had a different heart, we read of Nabal that he was a churlish man yet Abigail though she lived in that atmosphere was not affected by his spirit and attitude. She saw that the fire was being fuelled and the situation was becoming worse. Abigail had the remedy, she had the gold in her life, “I’ll take the blame.” She appeased David with words of wise counsel and encouragement and saved him from doing foolishly that day because he was touched by her advice. She had golden advice and golden counsel, and it put out the fire. We’ve heard today that water is the enemy of fire, and Abigail’s words were like the water, we are told, “A soft answer turneth away wrath,” and Abigail’s words just took away the dross.