SIFTED AND REFINED
I desire to speak briefly about these two exercises relating to being sifted on the one hand and refined on the other. This is a work that is going on among us now, dear brethren. To endure the sifting is a harsh experience, although refining is perhaps even more challenging in that it penetrates deeply into us.
In the first passage that we have read, Peter and the other disciples were to be sifted. The Lord says: “Satan has demanded to have you, to sift you as wheat”; “to sift you” in the plural, that is to say, all of you. “But I have besought for thee”, the Lord says to Peter, “that thy faith fail not”. Whatever instrument Satan may use, or whether the sifting comes directly from God, there is not much difference in the end. Peter no doubt had plenty of confidence in himself, which required that he should be sifted and that he should judge himself. But what is important in this operation of sifting is the result, the wheat, and God does not want that to be lost. This is the reason why I have read in Amos, because God says that, in a day to come, He will “shake the house of Israel… like as one shaketh corn in a sieve”, and He adds, “yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth”, the wheat must not be lost. It is important to recognise this. In Jeremiah 23, we read, “what is the chaff to the wheat?” It may be that there is a lot of straw mixed in which what God is seeking, that is to say the wheat. What is the wheat unless it is the result of God’s work in us, as having taken on the features of the second Man who is from heaven? The wheat represents what is heavenly in the saints. That is what God is seeking. We can rest assured that God will preserve the wheat and that “not the least grain” will fall to the earth.
If this thought has place in our mind, it will help us much in any exercise we to go through; to be entirely in the hands of God. Moreover, Christ is constantly interceding sympathetically for the saints when they have to go through all sorts of exercises. Indeed, even before Peter had to go through this ordeal, before the sifting had begun, the Lord had already prayed for him, and prayed for him so that his faith might not fail. It is this that matters, not the details of the circumstances that can be produced. God will concern Himself with the circumstances; He says: “I will be to you for a Father, and ye shall be to me for sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty”. But what matters is that faith should not fail, that the work of God goes on, that it deepens further and deeper through exercises that the Lord may put us through, so that wheat comes into evidence as being what God conserves as a result of all this sifting.
Dear brethren, we can rejoice in the thought that God purposes to bring us, each and every one, to be in correspondence with the second Man who is from heaven. “Such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”, 1 Cor 15: 48. Thus, we must take moral character from the second Man who is from heaven before bearing His image. “And as we have borne the image of the one made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly one”. But before we hear the image of the heavenly one, we have to take on the moral features of the heavenly; hence the necessity for sifting. The wheat is in view, and not one grain of it will be lost.
In the passage in the book of Proverbs, the idea is not sifting but refining, what can be more testing, more severe, in that it implies the presence of fire. When one is sifted, one is shaken as long as the work goes on; but the Lord has prayed for us so our faith should not fail. When one comes to refining, it goes on until there comes forth “a vessel for the refiner”. There again, we must always have in our minds the great end pursued, to know “a vessel for the refiner”. That is what is in view in the great exercises through which the assemblies pass, a vessel that pleases the refiner. The assembly is a great vessel of the service of God, the great vessel of God’s glory. She will be such eternally, she will be such in the world to come. It is the masterpiece of all divine work, capable of satisfying the heart of God by the intelligent praise which she will give under the direction of Christ, capable also of expressing the glory of God for the whole universe in the world to come and in eternity. What a marvellous vessel! We can therefore understand that many things disappear in the refining exercises, so that it results in such a vessel, “a vessel for the refiner”. I am assured, dear brethren, that in always having present in our minds the object of sifting on the one hand, and of refining on the other, we will receive support to face exercises, and our souls will receive much profit.
All that relates to sifting is in God’s hands, or in the Lord’s hands, and not the least grain of wheat will fall to the earth. All that belongs to refining is in the hands of the refiner, in the Lord’s hands, but the result will be “a vessel for the refiner”.
CROYDON
27th May 1960
From Paroles d’Édification Mutuelle
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