God calls the people of Israel dross. Dross is a term that refers to the impurities removed when you are refining a metal. In the church we talk about refining fire. God puts His people in the fiery furnace of testing in order to remove the dross, to get out the impurities in our lives, the things not of Him.

We want Him to do that. We pray to be more like Jesus. We say like John the Baptist, “Less of me, more of Him.” “I must decrease. He must increase.”

We want self removed and for it to be replaced with the pure gold of the life of Christ by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.

The Lord is putting Israel in the fire and nothing is showing itself pure. It’s all the refuse.

As we read these things, remember that the church, the body of believers are part of Israel today. This could,  in part, be talking about the church today.

We’re given a reason there’s nothing pure to be found within God’s people. They do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of God’s Sabbaths.

We don’t keep the Sabbath today as they did in ancient Israel. Isaiah 58 gives us a good description of what the Sabbath means to God, that we don’t do our own way, speak our own words, or find our own pleasure. We’re to walk in His ways, speak His words (truth), and we’re to find our pleasure in Him and in the things that please Him. That’s how we can honor the Sabbath today. It’s not about keeping the law of do’s and don’ts.

Israel, and the church, mixed the clean and the unclean, the holy and the common.

We are to be holy, set apart from the world and to God. We’re to be clean, blameless in God’s sight, washed in the blood, and living in the righteousness of Christ by His Spirit dwelling in us.