10 Minutes
Jesus made a statement that seemingly went against the truth of his coming to us. Peter failed to reason with all that Jesus said. And it was after this that Jesus so compassionately warned Peter of the desire of Satan to sift him. Study it in Luke. This was to remind Peter of his own weakness. Did Peter stand for Christ? Peter swayed. Do we realize that when a trial for standing for truth is presented to us it was first contested in heaven. Satan acquired permission from God. For us, that should be one of the most comforting things that ever was written in scripture. God is saying “try my servant”, see that they will stand”. What a minor test. There was no threat of a vat of boiling oil. There was no furnace heated seven times more. There was no log to be placed in and sawn asunder. Just a time to stand. That is a sifting time. God had made you ready. God thought enough of you to give you the spiritual capacity to stand. Wow! How many of us know that makes the difference! If ever again the opportunity to stand is brought to you, stop, breathe deep, reason and say, “God knows I can handle this. I choose to agree with His belief of me. I can handle this. He will not test me beyond what I can bear! Lord, cause me to stand.” No matter how the test comes...relationally, socially, economically, sexually, politically, or religiously...it’s just a test. Satan wants to shake someone apart, to break a person down. To crush them and to wreck their faith. Count it all joy. God is growing us in maturity, refining our characters. Think about how many stood for Christ while laying down their lives.
There is one thing that really helps someone during the sifting process and that is prayer. We are to pray one for another just as Jesus prayed for us. It helps an individual more to pray for them than to go and talk about them. Think about the lesson learned concerning reasoning with God. If the failure of one to stand for truth was not seen would the wisdom to avoid the same mistake work for your good? One of the greatest mysteries that will be revealed is the powerful love that God’s people possess for others. God uses the sifting as a jumping-off point for a rigorously honest, deeply challenging, yet powerfully comforting exploration of the trials that beat us down, the good God who allows our troubles, and the incredible beauty the process of sifting can reveal in us will settle us for the sealing. We are being made stronger witnesses for God. The sifting is the mercy of God. He is removing the ungodly areas from the life that the righteousness can be vested in Christ. The sifting and settling is that part of the process which determines where you and I will end. This process is very closely tied to the shaking, and its progression is brought about by events. Our choices relating to those events determine our status in the sifting and settling process. How sad it will be for some having come so far up the path to glory to find they have traded in the everlasting kingdom for some sentimental offering to a man. The process of the sifting is one that winnows out the chaff from the pure wheat. We should be very sensitive to and ready for it. It is a continued testing time, which will come to every professor of truth. It will be telling on those who have received the love of the truth, and on those who have not taken the time to study these testing truths for themselves. In this time, which I believe we have already entered, those who have spent precious hours studying to know God’s will, will receive protection and discernment which are vital. Those who receive not of this gift and know not the truth through personal experience will not be protected but will end up on the wrong side, even though they think they are right.
Amos 9:9
God’s people will be shaken, and sifted, yet still in the hands of God, in both His hands, as the sieve in the hands of Him that sifts. Today we find ourselves in unusual circumstances. What we thought we knew yesterday is no longer a given or a definite today. Each day brings new information and changing circumstances, if not for ourselves, for loved ones or people we know. The refinement process of precious metals used in scriptures helps us to grasp what the Spirit of the Lord is doing in this season. The intensity of trial by fire to bring purity to the metals is exacting and uncompromising. There is no way around the process of bringing forth pure gold or silver. Wherever we are shaken and sifted, God will have His eye upon us, and will take care to separate between the rock and the sand, which was the thing He designed in sifting us. Nothing will take us off course in our faith journey. God’s righteous ones, that are as the solid rock, shall none of them perish; we shall be delivered either from or through the common calamities of the world; not one rock shall fall on the earth, so as to be lost and forgotten. Not one of the least stone, so the word is, for the right hand of Christ holds the weight as a stone in comparison with that which is shaken sand. Whatever shakings, siftings there may be in the world, God does and will effectually provide that none who are truly His shall be truly miserable.
There is a theological end to what God is doing. It is to bring instruction in godliness, correction of behavior, encouragement of faith and exaltation of our worship for God. Jesus departed that the Holy Spirit may give us some very heavy doctrine and he’ll give us some more before we get done. In this way God’s people learn that His truth is exclusive...it excludes all opinions. It does not contradict itself. Everybody is not right. Truth will always lead you to the person of Jesus Christ because truth is a person. And truth is the way God made him. To reject truth is to reject Jesus Christ and many do so at their own peril, and they will reap the consequences. Does God find joy when His professed people separate over truth? Yes, for there is this great joy...His people prove perseverance. It’s the last hour. This last hour is an hour of testing and this is the hour you and I live in. We are not just in a test of temptations and trials, but in a doctrinal test as well. God has no hybrid truth blended with what you think. All of God’s truth is the Word. And it sifts.
I John 2:19
God is doing the sifting with His hands. No mistake is made in the separation. This is not about someone leaving a church. It is those professing faith in Christ but who are not genuine. Jesus sifts the disingenuous from the genuine and he does this by fire. By trials and by demonic spirits. Yes, God uses demonic spirits to deceive those who would not stand for truth believing a lie. God is serious about His people. Every doctrine of God is essential. The 144000 may be all found in Philadelphia or they may be drawn as overcomers from each of the churches. Have that disagreement if you like. But when we’re dealing with the very person of Christ, what salvation really is, that’s something to divide over. We are to have no hesitation about truth. When it comes to Christ, when it comes to the authority of the Book, when it comes to how one is born again by the Spirit of God, we cannot tolerate compromise. There can be none. Perseverance in the sifting is a test that you are a genuine believer. You have given evidence that you are truly a child of God. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. There it is. Perseverance, staying with it. However, perseverance is not only confessing for doctrine that is truth, it is also practicing that truth. We all are sifted and we must remain faithful in doctrine and in practice if we are one of God’s elect, one of His redeemed, one of His children. It’s part and parcel of salvation if we endure to the end.
And so, God sifts His own people. He puts us through fire and floods; He takes us through deserts, dark valleys, and through illnesses. He takes us through relationships gone shipwreck, He takes us through rebellious children. He takes us through financial upheaval and stormy seas of dreams unfulfilled, of hopes and aspirations dashed on the rocks of reality. God takes His people through almost every conceivable hardship. He throws us in lion’s dens and fiery furnaces, but if we are God’s people we always endure. Why? Because endurance is a gift of grace from God. God appoints suffering for the messengers of His grace.
Remember, the enemy pulled down Judas, then he went after Peter. He knew God had better things for Peter based upon Jesus renaming him from Simon. Perhaps we are in the sieve right now because God has some better thing for us. The enemy never asks God’s permission to sift us unless we are staunch in the line of obedience. God is doing a new thing once again in this last generation, and we have been set apart by Him to be a powerful witness to many. He has set us free, and is preparing us for His eternal purposes. And the greater our gifts, the greater our potential, the greater our surrender to the will of God and the more severe our sifting will be. For those who are sifted we do as did Jesus...we pray. For the sifting also teaches us how to love those who fall. When we see brothers and sisters compromising let us love them enough to warn them as firmly as did Jesus.
Our sifting is a source of joy and assurance as we face trials and temptations as we run with endurance the race set before us. It teaches that true believers, whom God has effectually called and chosen and brought into union with Christ, will certainly persevere unto final salvation, obtaining our heavenly inheritance, and will not fall away. We learn that perseverance does not depend decisively upon our own free will, but upon the purpose, grace, and preserving power of God. It is the continuous operation of the Spirit in our lives that brings the divine work of sovereign grace, that began in the heart, to completion. We have been effectually called and continue to hold fast because God has purposed to never abandon the work He began. From beginning to end, our preservation is grounded in the grace of God and His immutable, eternal, steadfast, covenant love. All faithful believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, who have been effectually called have been “sealed for the day of redemption” and are being guarded through faith by God’s power.
The assurance that we have is not that we won’t undergo much temptation, many trials, but that God will protect our faith that it fails not. With His divine seal we will remain faithful to Christ. We are chosen before the foundation of the world. God secures our perseverance through the influence of the Spirit and by various means, including warnings and exhortations. Take heed. The warnings aren’t negligible because true believers will not fall away. Rather, they are the God-appointed means by which we persevere in the sifting. Let us admonish one another, exhort one another that we be kept for the sake of being the elect of God. Some have swerved from the faith and upset the faith of others. It is in this that those who have been truly sincere will by no means remain in a shaken state and will be brought back to perseverance until the end. Let none dissuade you from the precept of God’s word. His truths never change. Our God is full of power, wisdom and knowledge. He knows when a person turns to Him with love, and when a person has put their trust in Him. To such people, God is a fortress. And here is the strong warning...the Lord knows those that are His.
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