Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2035
DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, July 22, 1888.
“When you are converted, strengthen your Brethren.” Luke 22:32.
PETER was to be sifted, so our Lord warned him. And Satan was to operate with the sieve. Satan had an intense desire to destroy Peter—indeed, he would like to destroy all the chosen of God—and therefore he desired to sift him as wheat, in the hope that he would be blown away with the husks and the chaff. To see a child of God perish would bring to the Evil One a malicious joy, for he would have wounded the heart of God. If ever the fallen spirit can be happy, he would derive happiness from defeating the Grace of God and robbing the Lord Jesus of those whom He bought with His blood.
“Satan has desired to have you”—it would be a satisfaction to him to have a Believer in his power. He was anxious to get Peter into his clutches, to give him as tremendous a shaking as he could manage. If Satan knows, as he no doubt does, concerning any one Believer that he cannot quite destroy him, then he is especially anxious to worry him. If he cannot devour the chosen, he would at least defile them—if he cannot ruin their souls, he would break their quiet. As the Revised Version puts it, Satan even asks God to have them that he may sift them as wheat. This is a curious statement, for it seems from it that the devil can pray. And that his petition may be granted him.
The margin has it, “Satan has obtained you by asking.” The Lord may grant the request of the devil, himself, and yet he would not prove thereby that he had any love towards him. The Lord’s wisdom may grant Satan’s desire and in the very act overthrow his evil power. Let us not, then, stake our faith in the Lord’s love upon His giving us the precise answer we desire, for what He gives to Satan He may see fit to deny to those whom He loves and He may do so because He loves them. It is a fact that the Evil One is permitted to test the precious metal of God’s treasury.
The story in the Book of Job is no fiction or piece of imagination. It is even so that Satan desires to have choice ones of God put into his power that he may test them—that he may torment them, that he may, if possible, destroy them. The Lord may permit this as He did in the case of Job and as He did in the case of the Apostles and especially in the case of Peter. He may grant the Tempter’s request and allow him to touch our bone and our flesh and see whether we will hold to our God in mortal agony.
We are not bound to know God’s reasons for what He does or permits. It is sometimes sinful to enquire into those reasons. What the Lord does is right. Let that be enough for us who are His children. But we can see, sometimes, a reason why the saints should be sifted as wheat. For it appertains unto wheat to be sifted, because it is wheat. Sifting brings a desirable result with it—it is for the saints’ good that they should be tried. Satan doubtless wishes that God may let the good seed fall to the ground and be destroyed. But He overrules it to separate the chaff from the wheat, and to make the wheat into clean grain, fit for storage in the King’s granary.
Satan has often done us a good turn when he has meant to do us a bad one. After all, he is only a dishwasher in God’s kitchen to clean His vessels. And some of them have received special scouring by means of his harsh temptations. God also may find a reason for allowing His saints to be tempted of Satan and that reason may have more relation to others than to themselves. They may have to be tested for other people’s good. The testing of their faith is “more precious than that of gold that perishes, though it is tried with fire,” and part of its preciousness is its usefulness.
The child of God under temptation, behaving himself grandly, will become a standing example to those who are around him. “You have heard of the patience of Job.” But you never would have heard of the patience of Job if Satan had not sifted him. This great treasury of instruction, the Book of Job, and all the Truth of God taught us by Job’s example comes to us through God’s having permitted Satan to put forth his hand and to press the Patriarch so sorely. We also
may be afflicted—not so much for ourselves—as for others. And this may be remarkably the case in the instances of those of you whom God makes useful to a large circle of friends.
You live for others and therefore suffer for others. The whole of your lives will not be accounted for by yourselves but by your surroundings. As a minister I may have to be tempted because temptation is one of the best books in a minister’s library. As a parent you may need affliction, because a father without a trial can give no counsel to a tempted child. Public workers may have to be tried in ways which, to a private Christian, are unnecessary. Let us accept remarkable discipline if thereby we are qualified for remarkable service. If by the roughness of our own road we are trained to conduct the Lord’s sheep along their difficult pathway to the pastures on the hilltops of Glory, let us rejoice in every difficulty of the way. If Apostles and men like Peter had to be put into Satan’s sieve while they were being trained for their lifework, we may not hope to escape.