“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed earnestly for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, once you have returned, strengthen your brothers.” But he said to Him, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!” And He said, “I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me.”
Luke 22:31-34
Introduction
I often find myself comparing the failure of Peter to the failure of Judas when discussing repentance. While their infractions are not the same in severity, they are the same in kind: both denying the Lord Jesus for the sake of earthly vanities. And how they respond to the recognition of their sin ultimately bears out differently: Peter repents, and Judas kills himself.
Both men experienced the bitter taste of their own betrayals, and both were tested in this by Satan (Luke 22:3). But there is another lesson we can learn here regarding the trials that come before us. When Jesus gives this prophecy to Peter, He tells him that Satan has demanded to sift him, “like wheat.” This sifting is something that will eventually reach every believer, and we ought to prepare ourselves.
Sifted like wheat
The phrase, “sifted like wheat” directly references a warning John the Baptist gave to the Pharisees and Sadducees during his own ministry. They came in opposition to him, and his response was humbling. He told them that he was not even the greatest who would come in that generation, and that this greater One, who is Jesus, “will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:12)
To sift wheat is the process beginning to end of separating the edible grain from the inedible chaff. It begins with the threshing where the wheat would be tossed, beaten, and even trampled on to loosen the grain before separation. After threshing was the winnowing where the grain was ultimately removed by tossing it into the air with a winnowing fork. The lighter chaff would blow away in the breeze while the heavier grain would drop to the threshing floor. It was a laborious process that involved significant effort on the part of the farmer, during which the wheat endured substantial abuse.
Sifting offers a vivid picture of the means God has chosen to separate His people from the world. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this threshing and winnowing occurs in one of the oldest books of the Bible: Job. In it we see that familiar figure, Satan, standing in opposition to God’s people to accuse them. He believes Job’s apparent righteousness is due only to the comfortable life God had given him rather than genuine faith (Job 1:9-10).
The rest of that book unfolds into a series of trials and then speeches about the nature of God, justice, and suffering that culminates in the Lord asserting His sovereignty over all creation and restoring Job. Job was proven to have genuine faith and was welcomed by God as an upright man.
A promise of trials
There are numerous examples from the New Testament of promised suffering. John 16:33 is one where Jesus Himself promises the disciples would be scattered and suffer. Then Colossians 1:24 shows Paul suffering on behalf of the Church, Christ’s body. But the passage that I find myself coming back to time and time again is the one written by the subject of today’s word. Peter, in his first letter, opens with a beautiful picture of what suffering really is:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:3-7
In this passage we see the true outcome of Peter’s failure in the courtyard. The trials that test us burn away everything that is not the precious and unperishable faith that binds us to Christ. For those who are without that genuine faith, everything they are is merely chaff. But for those with faith, what a blessing that trial is! In the painful threshing of our souls, God kindly reveals to us where the bounds of our true faith lies, and the blessed assurance that by that faith we are made right before Him. By that faith, we may receive the incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance that is ours according to Christ. And that faith, at the culmination of all things, will “result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
So if you have endured trial, rejoice. If you are enduring a trial, rejoice. And if you have not yet endured a trial, pray for that trial so that your faith might be proven genuine as you are joined ever more deeply to the Savior.
May the Lord bless you and conform you into the image of His Son.
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