C. H. Spurgeon

This Morning’s Meditation

“For I will give the command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as grain is sifted in a sieve—yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.” Amos 9:9

Every sifting comes by divine command and permission. Satan must ask permission 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 grain; 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 grain of the Lord’s floor—be comforted by the blessed fact that the Lord directs both flail and sieve to His own glory, and to your 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 grain 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 just and effectual work; He sifts them in all places, “among all nations”; He sifts them in the most effectual manner, “like as grain is sifted in a sieve”; and yet for all this, not the smallest, lightest, or most shriveled 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 jeweler 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.