“Yes, I could have been a judge but I never had the
Latin, never had the Latin for the judging. I just never
had sufficient of it to get through the rigorous judging
exams. They’re noted for their rigour. People come
staggering out saying, ‘My goodness, what a rigorous
exam.’ And so I became a miner instead. A coal miner. I
managed to get through the mining exams—they’re not
very rigorous, they only ask you one question, they say
‘Who are you?’ and I got 75% on that.” (Peter Cook in
‘Sitting on a bench’ 1960s)
Oh dear, it’s the exam time of year again. Why do
they have to have them when the weather’s more
summery? Whatever age we are, we’ve all had to go
through the delights of examinations and tests.
And our thoughts are particularly with our young
people with the various exams they have ’on their
plates’ just now. May they truly know the Lord with
them, giving them clarity of thought and mind to
succeed.
There’s a lot of examining in the Bible – though not of
the sitting-at-desks-or-computers-with-calculators-
and-pens type.
Leviticus is full of skin examination (ch 13 alone
mentions the word ‘examine’ 25 times), then there
are clothes tests to check for infectious diseases; in
Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem are given a thor-ough examination. Job gets more personal and
asks God, ‘What is man that you make so much of him,
that you give him so much attention, that you examine
him every morning and test him every moment?
(7:17,18).
In the distressing experience he was going
through, it felt as if God was giving him a more rigorous examination than he could bear, or that he deserved. Life really can seem like that at such extreme times of trial. A few in our Fellowship have
been experiencing it and, like Job, we can’t understand why or what God is doing. Perhaps King David
had a thought in Psalm 11: 4,5 – The LORD is in his
holy temple; the LORD is on his heavenly throne. He
observes everyone on earth; his eyes examine them.
The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked, those
who love violence, he hates with a passion.
Perhaps, if we are Christians, when we imagine that
God is being harder on us – his people made righteous before him through the Lord Jesus Christ – than
on those who reject him, sometimes violently, perhaps we need to remind ourselves that God is on his
throne and he examines us so that by his grace we
will come through with flying colours. Vs12 ‘Those
who do what is right will see his face’. Meanwhile,
the examination of the wicked will end up, like the
miner, with coals—only the fiery coals and burning
sulphur of judgment. V 6.
Believe me, the right exams are good for us.
Steve Piggott
Elder
June 2013
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