Spurgeon Meditations

 

For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.

Amo 9 9

Every sifting comes by divine command and permission. Satan must ask leave before he can lay a finger upon Job. Nay more in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven for the text says I will sift the house of Israel. Satan like a drudge may hold the sieve hoping to destroy the corn; but the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing the purity of the grain by the very process which the enemy intended to be destructive. Precious but much sifted corn of the Lord's floor be comforted by the blessed fact that the Lord directeth both flail and sieve to His own glory and to thine eternal profit. The Lord Jesus will surely use the fan which is in His hand and will divide the precious from the vile. All are not Israel that are of Israel; the heap on the barn floor is not clean provender and hence the winnowing process must be performed. In the sieve true weight alone has power. Husks and chaff being devoid of substance must fly before the wind and only solid corn will remain. Observe the complete safety of the Lord's wheat; even the least grain has a promise of preservation. God Himself sifts and therefore it is stern and terrible work; He sifts them in all places among all nations ; He sifts them in the most effectual manner like as corn is sifted in a sieve ; and yet for all this not the smallest lightest or most shrivelled grain is permitted to fall to the ground. Every individual believer is precious in the sight of the Lord a shepherd would not lose one sheep nor a jeweller one diamond nor a mother one child nor a man one limb of his body nor will the Lord lose one of His redeemed people. However little we may be if we are the Lord's we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus.


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