Purgation: Seasons of Testing
David Stockton
Series: 2020 Fasting Season
Darkness:
John 1:4 - In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
We’ve been talking about spiritual formation, which is the process of moving from being less Christ-like to more Christ-like. We’ve talked about more Christ-like is expressed in the beautiful heart. We did a whole sermon series on it. You can go back and check it out. We described the beautiful heart—what it means to be formed into the image of Christ, which is the goal of Christianity.
Last week we talked about what our starting point is. Being less Christ-like is having the broken heart: the heart that is fallen. The heart that is restless. The heart that is deceitful. The heart that has all these unwanted longings that we battle with. That’s our starting point.
Jesus has taken it upon himself to take our hearts and form them, if we’ll allow him to, to form them into the beautiful heart. To form them into the heart that’s just like his. Primarily we are made more like Christ by being with Christ. Spending time with him is the best way.
We also talked about how, over church history, there have been people who have basically tried to help us have a roadmap for the journey of spiritual formation. The process. What are some of the things that are consistent for all people, all places, all time in this process of spiritual formation.
And so they describe these times of darkness. Now, obviously, before you know Christ you are someone who is walking in darkness. So that’s the first phase that people, before you know Christ, you are in darkness. But there are also other times in our Christian walk where we find ourself all of a sudden back in this place where we say, “I kind of feel like I’m in darkness again.” But this is part of the refining process, part of the journey, that God has you on.
There are certain things you can practice in each of these stages that will be helpful. Some you can practice and they will be helpful in all the stages, some are specific for those stages. But in darkness, something that is required is a lot of honesty about where you’re at. The Lord can handle your honesty. He’s okay with that.
Then there’s the next phase you can move into: Awakening. Ephesians 5 describes this:
For you were once darkness…
Not that you were in darkness, hey, buddy, you are the darkness.
…but now you are light…
Which is cool. Because now you’re not just in the light, but you have become the light in Christ.
…in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.
What’s so beautiful—Alec and Colleen are not just people who are in the light who are going into the darkness. They are people who are the light. Wherever they show up there is going to be light, even if the go to darkness.
Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
As we walk in darkness, as we experience these times of darkness, whether it be our life before Christ or whether it even be part of our walk with Christ, God can interrupt that darkness at any moment with his light and cause an awakening to happen. An awakening in our soul. An awakening in our spirit. An awakening in our mind. Whatever it might be. And we move into a stage, not so much a stage, but an awakening season.
And an awakening season gives way to a next season called purgation. Uh-oh. That’s a horrible word. Yeah. It describes a season that is not a lot of fun. It’s not purgatory. We’re not Catholic. We’re not talking about afterlife. We’re talking about while you’re still breathing.
Purgation. There are these seasons that Jesus described in Luke 9, where he said:
Then he told all of them, “If anyone wants to come with me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross every day, and follow me continuously, because whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Hebrews describes a similar thing in chapter 12. He says
My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.
Here you have a description of seasons of our lives, of purgation. It’s hard. In those seasons you are trying to figure out, “Did I do something wrong?” “Is God not everything I thought he was?” “I feel lost.” “I feel confused.” “I feel tested.” “I feel refined.” “I feel a burning.” “I feel pain.”
And sometimes this is the Lord saying, “Hey, I need you to go through a season that’s going to test your faith. That’s gong to test your strength. That’s gong to refine your faith.”
And if you can make it through, if you can continue to go through, you’ll come out on the other side better. It’s hard to believe that when you’re in it. But you’ll come out on the other side and your faith will be more pure. Your roots will be deeper. You’ll even see that, maybe you’re stronger than you thought you were. Or you’ll have more strength for the next time you go through a time of testing or challenge. Because you can look back and see God was faithful.
I love that song we sang today about the faithfulness of God. How he carries us through. Your promise still stands. Great is your faithfulness. You can’t say that if you haven’t been through purgation. I mean, you can say it, but it means nothing to you. But t hose of you in this room who have been purgation, and many, many times of purgation, and some of them a lot longer seasons than you thought, you can now stand and say, “Your promise still stands. Great is your faithfulness. Because I’ve tried it. I’ve tested it. It’s shown up when I’ve needed it.” Times of purgation. Seasons of testing.
The next stages that we’re going to get to in the next couple of weeks are illumination and union. We described them a little bit last week. We’ll get into those in more depth. But I want to stop here and I want to go to a story. Stories are great.
Turn with me to Exodus 2. We’ll start in verse 11. We’re going to look at the life of Moses over the next three weeks. We’re going to get a story form of this same spiritual journey that we’re all on. In Exodus 2, we have the birth of a guy named Moses. Many of you are familiar with this story and what he was born into. Let’s jump in and take a look at what’s going on here:
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds.
Interesting, right? He’s called an Egyptian.
He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
“And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
So, a very familiar story. Moses as born in Egypt to a Hebrew mother and father. The Hebrews at that time were slaves in Egypt. They were oppressed. There had been a command from Pharaoh to kill all of the Hebrew boys that were born, because he was starting to be afraid of their numbers, that they could revolt. So Moses’ mom, experiencing a major time of challenge, decides instead of allowing the Egyptians to kill her baby, she hides him. She puts him in a basket and sends him down a river. And, by the grace of God, he’s found by one of Pharaoh’s daughters or something (I can’t remember - someone in Pharaoh’s family). And she takes him and raises him.
He’s raised an Egyptian boy; but, at some point as he grows up, maybe because of genetics, maybe because his mother told him, but at some point he comes to the understanding that he’s not Egyptian, he’s not one of Pharaoh’s family, but he’s actually a Hebrew. It’s this moment of awakening to his own reality.
He goes to look—in this part of the story—at what’s happening with his people, with the people that he’s come from. We don’t know anything about the details of what’s transpiring inside of his own soul, but we know he’s interested in what’s going on there. But he sees an Egyptian abuses a man and he kills the Egyptian. So he has this moment of passion and rage, and he does this horrible thing.
The next day he comes out again and sees two Hebrews fighting, and you know the story goes on. And all of a sudden, Pharaoh’s after him, and he realizes he’s done a horrible thing. So he flees. He runs to Midian, which is out in the desert, outside of everything he’s known, away from everyone he’s known.
And he’s there by a well and sees some ladies and he helps them out, and ends up staying now with this Midian priest. And he’s got this uncertainty of who he is. They think he’s an Egyptian, probably because of the way he was dressed, more than anything—maybe the way he spoke.
And this is his situation. And he names his own son “I’m a foreigner living in a foreign land.” He’s lost. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I am.” This is Moses’ situation.
Then, in Exodus 3:
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
The burning bush story is very familiar. In this situation, Moses was totally distraught within his own soul. We know he’s somewhere between 40 and 80. And he’s out caring for his father-in-law’s sheep, and he’s taken them to a far part of the wilderness. All of a sudden he notices there’s a bush that’s burning. It’s not just that it’s burning—it’s burning and it doesn’t burn up. So there’s a time lapse. It could be an hour, it could be a couple of hours, it could be a couple of days. But it’s long enough to where he actually sees, “This bush has been on fire for way too long. This makes no sense that this bush could still be burning.”
So he decides to go check out what’s happening with this bush. You guys know the story. The bush speaks to him and says, “Take your shoes off for this is holy ground.” And the bush starts talking to him about the Hebrew people—the very thing that Moses was interested in before. And he starts talking about the oppression of the Hebrew people—the very thing that Moses experienced, and saw, and killed a man because of it.
He just starts speaking about this. And somehow in this conversation Moses becomes totally intrigued by this bush, this bush God. That’s all he knew at that point. He knew the gods of Egypt, but this was a bush God. And the bush God and he were having a conversation.
I want to pick up what’s happening in Chapter 4 Verse 10:
Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses…
I didn’t read the whole conversation to you, but basically, Moses is saying, “I don’t want to go back to Egypt. I don’t want to deal with what I’ve done. I’ve been kind of putting all of that aside, putting all of that behind me. I haven’t been dealing with that. I’ve got a new life here in Midian. I’ve got a wife. I’ve got a Gersham. I’ve got sheep. I’ve got a flock. Just leave me alone.”
And God keeps kind of breaking in. Because what God is trying to do is awakening, right? God enters into the darkness in order to bring his light. He’s disrupting. He’s coming. It’s very annoying. It’s very disruptive.
God doesn’t come into our lives and just say, “Oh, let me just put a blessing on everything you’ve been doing.” God comes into our lives and he starts to do work—the work that will ultimately make us more into the image of Christ.
As Jude says,
To him who is able to… to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy…
The minute we start encountering Jesus Christ, his goal is to take us and make us beautiful so that when we stand before God forevermore, there is great joy. This is what Jesus wants.
And God is now breaking into the life of Moses to say, “Moses, I want to talk to you about all that stuff that’s deep in your soul, that kind of burst out at one point long ago, but it’s all still there. I want to talk to you about that. I want to teach you about that.” And, what’s beautiful is God’s work in Moses’ individual life actually brought the freedom of a whole nation.
So don’t ever discount what God can do in your life. And if you’re saying, “No, I don’t want God to come and disrupt my life. I don’t want God to awaken me. I don’t want God to have to deal with all of that stuff that I’ve been a part of before.”
Really, what you’re doing is limiting what God can do with everybody else, as well. Right now there are some of you who would, if you were honest, say that you are in darkness. And you feel God interrupting, and knocking, and being annoying a little bit. And you keep trying to keep him at bay. You keep trying to push him off. Because you are afraid.
And I will tell you that your fear is not unfounded, because, once you awaken to who God is, he really does take you into seasons of purgation. So I’m not telling you, “Don’t be afraid.” I’m telling you to trust him.
And that’s what God was trying to cultivate in Moses. So we get to the end. The Lord’s anger is burning at Moses. He’s given him signs of, like, staffs turning into snakes and then turning back into a staff. He put his hand in his coat, took it out there was leprosy. Put it back in, took it out it was better. God’s doing all these things. He said, “I”ll help you. I’ll send your brother Aaron. He can be your mouthpiece because you don’t like the way you talk. Whatever.” He’s working with him and working with him, and now his anger burns at him. I don’t know what that meant. The bush got a little brighter or whatever.
But in this conversation, Moses eventually says, “Okay. Fine. I’ll go.” And we know the rest of the story. We know all the good that’s happened. But I just want to stop in this moment and h help us see that, when Moses awakened to what God was doing, when he finally surrendered to God, God led him straight back into the thing he was most afraid of: Pharaoh. Egypt. The Hebrew oppression. Slavery. His past.
God said, “Come and follow me.” And Moses was like, “Well, this is interesting. You’re a burning bush…”
God said, “Follow me.”
Moses said, “I’m not going over there! No way! Let’s just keep burning out here.” Or whatever.
But God took him back there. And do you know why God took him back there? God took him back there so he could overcome every single one of those things. So God could put his fingerprints on all of the pain of his past, all of the confusion of his past, and now, all of those things were no longer ruling over him or causing any kind of disturbance in his soul.
That’s why God wants to lead you back into those things. That’s why God wants to take you through seasons of purgation and testing. So that he can prove to you his strength and faithfulness and the love. But you’ve got to trust him.
All of the stages require humility and surrender. But in the darkness stage you need honesty. In the awakening stage you need repentance and surrender. In the purgation stage you need courage.
It’s funny. Jay asked me, “How are we going to conclude the message this time so we know what song to pick and how to go about the end of the service.”
I started writing, “We’re going to be talking about seasons of testing, so we’re probably going to want to minister a lot comfort.” And I was just about to send it and I thought, “Hold on. That’s just not right.” When we’re talking about times of testing, talking about seasons of purgation, what God wants to minister to you is not comfort. What you need is courage.
The hope is that this message will help you have courage when you go into these times of testing. You see, it’s true that, when we surrender to Jesus and take his hand, he leads us into scary things. He knows what is best for us in the world. He knows we need seasons of purgation, seasons of testing, trying and challenge.
As the Psalmist says, “He leads me through the valley of the shadow of death.” He does not do this to be cruel. He does this so you will know how close he is and how powerful he is, and that we can trust him more. As we go through this, the fear that we have will give way to the freedom that comes from faith in God.
Once you’ve been through a few valleys of the shadow of death, you’re just not afraid like you used to be. I love that Alec and Colleen are going to step out into something unknown and scary because God is leading them. And the truth is, they are going to go through times of testing. There are going to be some hard things, but they are not afraid of that because they know God is with them.
Jesus said to Peter one time, “Satan desires to sift you like wheat.” What that means is, basically, you take a little filter and you take all of the stuff you’ve gathered, and you put it on there and shake it and only the good stuff remains. All the bad stuff falls through the filter. And Jesus looked at Peter and said, “Satan is wanting to shake you.” And God says, “I’m going to allow it. Because Satan’s purpose is to shake you and try to break you. But I’m allowing it because I know that when he shakes you, you’re going to lose all of that impure faith. And what will be left is something pure.”
The way Peter describes it is that your faith can be refined like pure gold, better than pure gold. What Jesus says to him is, “Satan desires to sift you like wheat. But take courage because I’m praying for you. After you have come through, strengthen the brethren.”
Jesus isn’t going to keep you from purgation. He’s going to pray for you, and he promises you can make it through, because he has plans for you after you’ve made it through to go and help those who are about to go into a season of purgation.
So my message is, if you feel like you’re in a season of purgation, it’s a time to face your fears, to take God’s hand and say, “Okay, let’s do this.”
To go through the refiner’s fire. You’ll come out better on the other side. As the pope says (Pap Francesco), he says, “We need to ask Jesus what he wants us to do and then we need to be brave.”
Let’s pray:
Jesus, we do thank you so much that you are praying for us. It’s kind of a strange thing to think about, but you’re interceding for us. And that means a couple of things. First, it means that you are paying attention to us. But it also means that you are allowing what we’re going through to be there because you know it’s doing a good work in us. Lord, I pray for everyone in this room, that you’d give them courage this morning. That they would really be able to trust you and your promises, and that, after they go through these seasons of testing, Lord, that their fears would melt away, and they would experience more freedom and a stronger faith in you.
©️2020 Living Streams Church
7000 N Central Avenue ∙ Phoenix AZ 85020 ∙ 602-957-7500 ∙ https://www.livingstreams.org
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.