The Hammer File and the Furnace

One of the most profound writings about trials was done by a person known as Samuel Rutherford. He was a Scottish Minister and Theologian born in 1620 during one of the most tumultuous times in the UK. Not willing to bend the truth he often was in trouble. He was famous for his book Lex Rex (The law, The King), which detailed through the bible that the king was not above the law. Because of this the King ordered his book burned. This took place towards the end of his life, terminally ill, he was accused of treason and likely was going to be executed. He died before that sentence could be carried out.

One of the most famous writings he had that carried through the centuries was the Hammer, File, and Furnace. It was one of the best ways to see in all its glory how our creator God shapes us into the sons and daughters he wants us to be. Oftentimes Rutherford would shout out in trials It was the enraptured Samuel Rutherford who could shout in the midst of serious and painful trials, “Praise God for the hammer, the file, and the furnace.”

These are his words on the subject:

The hammer is a useful tool, but the nail, if it had feeling and intelligence, could present another side of the story. For the nail knows the hammer only as an opponent, a brutal, merciless enemy who lives to pound it into submission. To beat it down out of sight and clinch it into place.

That is the nail’s view of the hammer, and it is accurate except for one thing: The nail forgets that both it and the hammer are servants of the same workman. Let the nail but remember that the hammer is held by the workman and all resentment toward it will disappear.

The carpenter decides whose head shall be beaten next and what hammer shall be used in the beating. That is his sovereign right. When the nail has surrendered to the will of the workman and has gotten a little glimpse of his benign plans for its future, it will yield to the hammer without complaint.

The file is more painful still, for its business is to bite into the soft metal, scraping and eating away the edges till it has shaped the metal to its will. Yet the file has, in truth, no real will in the matter, but serves another master as the metal also does.

It is the master and not the file that decides how much shall be eaten away, what shape the metal shall take, and how long the painful filing shall continue. Let the metal accept the will of the master and it will not try to dictate when or how it shall be filed.

As for the furnace, it is the worst of all. Ruthless and savage, it leaps at every combustible thing that enters it and never relaxes its fury till it has reduced it all to shapeless ashes.

All that refuses to burn is melted to a mass of helpless matter, without will or purpose of its own. When everything is melted that will melt and all is burned that will burn, then, and not till then, the furnace calms down and rests from its destructive fury.

Why did Rutherford praise those destructive devices wielded against him? It all comes from a love of the workman who is working with those tools. For Ruttherford he was so accustomed to trials that he felt at home in them. Even to the point of learning to love them.

Oftentimes in creating something beautiful the things that stop it from being beautiful must be taken away. To the world this idea would be horrible because it wants comfort and ease. It became comfortable with the sins and behaviors that are literally destroying it.

The workman, God the Father does not want his children that way. Like a hard working diligent craftsman he is executing his skillful labor of love for us to create in us the image of His Son.

While we may not recognize His work right away in our lives, over time we will start to recognize that indeed we are part of the great work He has for his people that he loves so much.

When we finally embrace the full picture we will then appreciate what He is trying to do.

Your Brother in Christ,

Steve Koenig

Lakeshore Fellowship