Rejected Silver Text: Jeremiah 6:27-30
Introduction: The Great Pretenders
We live in an age that despises judgment, and as a direct consequence, it is an age that cannot distinguish between gold and gilded lead. It is an age of rampant hypocrisy, not because our generation is uniquely skilled at deception, but because it has thrown away the tools God uses to expose it. When a culture rejects the very idea of a final exam, it should not be surprising when all the students claim to have straight A's. Our modern world, and tragically, much of the modern church, wants a God who affirms but never assays, a God who welcomes but never weighs, a Savior who loves sinners but who never bothers to separate them from their sin.
But the God of the Bible is a holy God. He is a consuming fire. And a consuming fire does one of two things: it either purifies or it destroys. There is no third option. The fire does not negotiate. When it comes to God's covenant people, this is a truth we must never forget. The visible church is a mixed multitude. It has always been so. There is wheat and there are tares, there are sheep and there are goats, and there is silver and there is dross. God, in His mercy, often sends seasons of intense heat, not to destroy His people, but to purify them. He turns up the furnace of affliction, persecution, and judgment so that the impurities might be burned away and the true metal might shine forth.
The problem in Jeremiah's day was not that the people of Judah lacked the outward forms of religion. They had the temple, they had the sacrifices, they had the covenant signs. They looked like silver. They were in the crucible where silver was supposed to be. But when God, the divine metallurgist, turned up the heat, the refining process was an utter failure. The bellows blew, the fire raged, the lead used for refining was consumed, but no purity resulted. Why? Because you cannot purify what is not there. The entire enterprise was a fraud. They were not impure silver; they were counterfeit silver. And when the test is over, there is only one thing to do with metal that fails the test: you reject it.
This passage is a grim and solemn warning. It is a warning against the kind of religious pretense that apes the form of covenant life while denying its power. It is a warning to every generation of the church that God is not mocked. He knows what we are made of. He will test the metal of our faith, and that test reveals all.
The Text
"I have made you a tester of metals and an assayer among My people, That you may know and test their way. All of them are rebelliously stubborn, Going about as a slanderer. 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 evil ones are not separated. They call them rejected silver Because Yahweh has rejected them."
(Jeremiah 6:27-30 LSB)
The Prophet's Commission (v. 27)
We begin with God's charge to His prophet, Jeremiah.
"I have made you a tester of metals and an assayer among My people, That you may know and test their way." (Jeremiah 6:27)
God gives Jeremiah a job description, and it is a hard one. He is to be a metallurgist. His task is not to invent the standard of purity, but to apply it. He is to assay the people, to test their "way," which is to say, their character, their conduct, their entire mode of living. Notice the possessive pronoun: "My people." This is an in-house job. This is not a judgment on Babylon or Egypt; it is a test conducted within the visible covenant community.
This is the task of every faithful minister of the Word. The preaching of the Word is God's primary instrument for assaying the church. The Word is the fire and the hammer (Jer. 23:29). It probes, it tests, it exposes. A church that cannot endure strong, confrontational preaching is a church that is afraid of the assayer's fire. They want to be told they are silver without ever having to endure the heat. But God insists on the test. He wants to know, and He wants His people to know, what they are truly made of.
The Assayer's Report (v. 28)
Jeremiah gets to work, and his findings are not encouraging. The initial report on the quality of the metal is grim.
"All of them are rebelliously stubborn, Going about as a slanderer. They are bronze and iron; They, all of them, are corrupt." (Jeremiah 6:28 LSB)
The first characteristic identified is that they are "rebelliously stubborn." This is the root of the issue. The Hebrew speaks of the most obstinate, hardened rebels. Their problem is not one of ignorance, but of defiance. They have heard the Word of the Lord, and they have set their jaws against it. This is the essence of a hard heart. It is not a soft material that needs shaping, but a hard one that resists the hammer.
Out of this rebellious heart flows corrupt behavior. They are "going about as a slanderer." Slander is not just an accidental sin of the tongue; it is the overflow of a malicious and proud heart. A slanderer is one who seeks to tear down the reputation of another to build up his own. It is a work of profound selfishness and envy. In a community that is supposed to be bound by covenant love, slander is a dissolving acid. It shows that the bonds of fellowship are a sham.
And so, the assayer's verdict is delivered. They are not precious metal at all. "They are bronze and iron." In the ancient world, these were base metals, common and cheap. They might be useful for pots or weapons, but they were not fit for the treasury. They were pretending to be silver, but a close examination revealed their true, inferior nature. The conclusion is comprehensive: "They, all of them, are corrupt." The corruption is total. It is not a spot of rust on the surface; the very nature of the material is debased.
The Failed Refining (v. 29)
Despite the poor quality of the material, the Lord subjects them to the process of refining. He gives them every chance to be purified.
"The bellows blow fiercely; The lead is consumed by the fire; In vain the refining goes on, But the evil ones are not separated." (Jeremiah 6:29 LSB)
The imagery here is vivid. The bellows are pumped with great effort to make the fire intensely hot. In ancient metallurgy, lead was often added to the crucible because as it oxidized, it would separate the dross, the impurities, from the silver. Here, the fire is hot enough, the bellows are working overtime, and the lead is completely consumed in the process. Everything that is supposed to make refining work is happening.
But the result is failure. "In vain the refining goes on." The word "vain" means it is all for nothing. It is a wasted effort. Why? "But the evil ones are not separated." The process fails because there is nothing to refine. If you put a lump of iron into the crucible and try to refine it into silver, you can melt it, but you will only ever get molten iron. The problem is not with the process, but with the material itself. The dross is not in them; the dross is them.
This is a terrifying picture of what happens when God brings judgment, trial, and affliction upon a people who are fundamentally unregenerate. He turns up the heat of historical circumstances, political turmoil, or persecution. The faithful are purified by such fires, their faith strengthened and their impurities burned away. But the hypocrites, the unregenerate covenant members, are simply exposed. The fire does not purify them; it hardens them further in their rebellion and reveals their base nature for all to see.
The Final Verdict (v. 30)
Since the material is worthless and the refining process has failed, there is only one verdict left to render.
"They call them rejected silver Because Yahweh has rejected them." (Jeremiah 6:30 LSB)
The final name given to them is "rejected silver." This is a profound insult. They are not even called what they are, bronze and iron. They are called by the name of what they pretended to be, with the adjective "rejected" permanently affixed. They are fake silver, fraudulent silver, disqualified silver. They are the kind of thing you throw on the slag heap.
And notice the basis for this designation. It is not because the people finally decided they were no good. It is not because Jeremiah's opinion carried the day. "They call them rejected silver because Yahweh has rejected them." God's verdict is ultimate. His rejection is the ground of all other rejections. When God stamps "REJECTED" on a soul, or on a nation, or on a church, that is the final word. Human opinion is irrelevant. All the religious machinery, all the external covenant markers, all the pious talk becomes meaningless noise in the face of God's sovereign evaluation.
This is the doctrine of apostasy. It is possible to be "among" the people of God, to have the name of silver, to be in the crucible of the covenant community, and yet to be fundamentally rejected by God because of a rebelliously stubborn heart that will not repent. The new covenant is not immune to this. The book of Hebrews warns repeatedly of the "sorer punishment" that awaits those who trample underfoot the Son of God and count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing (Heb. 10:29). The fire of the new covenant is hotter, and the judgment for hypocrisy is therefore greater.
Conclusion: True Metal and the Consuming Fire
So what is the application for us? This passage forces us to ask a fundamental question: what are we made of? Not what do we look like on Sunday morning, not what do our external papers say, but what is the actual substance of our faith?
The good news of the gospel is not that God has lowered His standards, deciding that bronze and iron are now acceptable. The good news is that God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, actually transforms us. He does not just polish our cheap exterior; by His Spirit, He gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh where there was a heart of stone. He makes us into genuine silver and gold.
And because we are His precious metal, purchased by the blood of Christ, He is committed to our purification. The trials and afflictions we face are not the vain refining of Jeremiah's day. For the true believer, they are the loving heat applied by our Father to burn away our remaining sin, our dross. As Peter says, our faith, which is "more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire," will be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:7).
Therefore, let us not fear the fire. Let us instead fear being found to be fraudulent metal. Let us flee from hypocrisy and stubborn rebellion. Let us run to Christ, who is both the refiner's fire and the pure silver that passed the ultimate test on our behalf. Let us submit to the Word, welcome the assayer's examination, and pray that God would make us pure, all the way through. For the day is coming when all that is fake will be consumed, and only that which is genuine will remain for the praise of His glory.