Sifted as Wheat ...

Do you sometimes wonder why people of faith seem to have lives struck by every bit as much tragedy as people who have no faith at all?  Why is that?  In fact, you could argue that people of faith seem to have even harder lives than people who have none. The question follows, if we are loved by God, why are we subjected to such sadness, and so much grief in the lives God gave us to live?  The answer is more compounded when we must bear witness to the grief of loved ones that we are unable to do anything about.  The more we love, the more we hurt when they hurt.  Should it be “we” who are the cause of this pain our loved ones must suffer from, a converted heart can hardly even stand it.  And most believers just right all this off, with catch phrases and sentiments like “this is life” or “what are you going to do” as if all we should even hope to do is bear it all and keep going.

But the paradoxically sad and happy choice is that love itself must always be chosen if it is to be real.  Free-will contains within it the choice to screw up.  And if we are to love God from the purest choice to do so, we must by nature be exposed to the choice not to love God.  Or as so many of us are intimately familiar with, to forget we love God, long enough to embrace some selfish choice that wreaks in its wake waves of pure destruction that reach out and destroy many.  When we remember our love for God, we come crawling back to Him on bended knee, begging for forgiveness, that even though granted, cannot change the truth of what we said or did, or offer healing to those we have wounded by word or deed.  Sometimes the destruction we cause must be born by those we claim most to love.  Wounds that cut deeply into the hearts and lives of others.  Pain that “our truth” is responsible for, for of a truth what we have chosen to say or do echoes on long past our forgiveness.  For it to be different, our truth must be different, or choice a better one.  For the pain we cause not to exist, the choice to avoid temptation itself would be the only pathway that might have been chosen.  But again, that was not the truth we chose.

And much of the suffering of our lives is caused and borne by our own selfish choices.  Whether that pain is known only to us, or whether we have made sure it would be shared by others we claim to love, our choice to love self, winds up coming at the expense of the happiness and joy of the ones we say we love.  And sometimes our choices take a long while to bear fruit.  Take for example the choices we make of how we manage our health.  We ingest things that will do us in.  Smoking, drinking, vaping, drugs whether recreational or even sometimes by prescription, the chemicals we take in do have an effect.  And we think these aggregate choices, even if they go bad, hurt only ourselves.  But tell that to the parent who must watch his or her child contend with the cancer that consumes their baby of any age.  Tell that to the wife who must become full-time caretaker of the husband whose health has collapsed so spectacularly he is now only one tenth the man he used to be.  Tell that to the baby who is born with so many complications that the first few years of their lives will be spent in agony, all for the sake of the “moderation” we thought would be fine to partake of while pregnant.  Small daily choices with our health that bear fruit over time, some of it very ugly fruit.

And we all blame God for the results of these things.  For it is easier to blame God than to take personal accountability for the choices we have made when confronted with temptation of any sort.  Jesus used to call this phenomenon “fall into temptation”.  Those words haunt our experience from Lucifer who fell in heaven along with a third of the angels at that time up to today with you and me.  Now Lucifer is called Satan.  And those “fallen” angels are referred to as demons.  Adam and Eve “fell” in the garden of Eden breaking trust with God, and condemning us to lives of slavery to evil, making evil our first choice instead of our last one.  And even when the most critical moments in the ministry of Jesus come along, he refers again to the sin that becomes our truth back to its earliest incarnation when it was still the temptation Jesus would wish us not to fall into. 

But there is another player in the story of our lives, he too is invisible to our natural sight, but ever since his own fall, he has done nothing but lay out stumbling blocks for each of us.  Satan puts in our path a series of stumbling temptations in order for us to fall so hard, and so often, we stop looking back to God to fix any of it.  We just reach a point where we start throwing out our own catch phrases like “this is life” and “what are you going to do”, having come to a point where we just accept sin in our hearts and lives without the hope of ever seeing it go away forever.  We accept the damage of sin as just being “natural” and start focusing so much on the sin, we begin to completely ignore that it all began in an earlier stage of temptation we might have avoided.  Jesus would have us avoid the temptation altogether.  It is what our prayers to God are all about (or supposed to be).  Jesus would have us pray to avoid temptation itself, rather than have to pray for the forgiveness we will need if confronted by temptation we so often fall into. 

Satan would sift us as wheat, trying to discard any signs of God in our hearts, and harden us only into the chaff that can be blown away by the wind, having little value to anyone else, ultimately even to ourselves.  Satan would not just encourage our selfishness, he will take active measures to make the “selfish choice” the “easy choice”, the “sensible or logical choice”, the “lesser of two evils choice”.  But to avoid falling in to any one of these temptations, our prayers should center on avoiding them altogether.  And while Satan may wish to sift us as wheat, Jesus has other plans for our faith.  For when we believe, we can begin to have trust.  And as our trust grows, we can submit and follow God, even when it makes no sense to us at all.  Follow even when it does not feel warm and fuzzy.  Follow, because we know that our Shepherd leads us to where we should be, a place always better than anything we could have imagined on our own.

Luke gives us a little context of these experiences in his gospel in the 22^nd chapter of his letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  For this section we will focus on Peter’s denial texts and come back to study the others in our next examination.  It begins in verse 31 saying … “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: [verse 32] But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”  There is so much here to unpack.  First Satan wants us all.  Not because we are special to him, or mean anything to him.  He could care less about any of us.  We are however a means to an end.  Because Satan knows that God loves each of us like precious little children, when Satan can hurt or destroy us, ultimately it is God whose heart will suffer the most.  For each of us was created precious and unique for all of time and space, never to be repeated or replaced.  So when God must bear witness to our demise, God loses something that can never be replaced again.  A devastating loss of love rejected, but a choice our free-will demands if love is to ever be a real choice.  Still, the pain of that rejection will forever be keenly felt.  And the witness of our demise, long before the merciful fires of hell that forever put out our suffering will end it all; our torture having preceded all of that.  Torture brought on by the choices we make, the sins we embrace, and the selfishness we choose that spreads our pain around like ripples of water in a pond when you throw a large stone in the still waters.

Satan would sift us as wheat, and what is his first and perhaps only target – our faith.  For this is what Jesus prays for to counter the impact of satanic desires.  Jesus prays that Peter’s faith fails not.  Jesus does not pray for Peter’s perfection, have you ever wondered about that?  Why not just remove any desire Peter has to sin within him?  The answer; because Peter has not asked Him to.  And frankly, Peter does not even understand what a request like that would mean to every aspect of his life.  Peter does not trust enough for something like that.  He is not at that stage of his life or of his faith.  And something like that must be Peter’s choice.  Jesus even identifies all of this as He plainly states that Peter is still not converted.  What does that mean?  It means it is possible to “believe” in Jesus, as being our Savior, our Messiah, as the Son of God, and still remain unconverted as Peter clearly was from the point of view of Jesus.  What was still missing; a heart that understands its need.  Peter did not see himself this way.  Peter saw himself as strong enough to meet any temptation, and ready for anything that would come.  Peter was independent, not fully dependent, and that is how he saw himself, and what prevented him from being fully converted.  Peter still sees sin as a choice we can meet and choose the better of.  Most Christians still believe this is the case in their own lives.

Too many of us modern Christians still think we face sin as some sort of choice we can meet and make the right choice against.  We treat it like picking some sort of vegetables with our dinner.  Pick the potatoes and we have made the right choice, pick the Brussel sprouts and we have fallen into sin again.  Particularly easy choice for me, I hate Brussel sprouts.  But that is not what sin is like, or how it comes.  Sin is about selfishness, and we have 6000 years of selfishness ingrained in our very DNA.  You don’t put a tray of powered cocaine ready for ingestion in front of a cocaine addict and they just tell him to “say no”.  If the addict is going to “say no”, he needs to avoid that scene altogether.  He needs to be 200 miles away from that scene.  Ideally under the control of someone else.  Like say in your car, with you driving through the countryside, where there is no cocaine around for at least 200 miles.  That is avoiding temptation.  Not being there.  But because we see sin as nothing more than a choice between potatoes = good, and Brussel sprouts = bad, we treat it as if we have perfect control over the choice we will make and can avoid sin by shear force of will.  And so we keep God out of the process of sin avoidance, thinking just like Peter we can handle sin on our own, and then failing miserably to prove we could not.

Look closely at Peter’s response to Jesus as Luke continues in verse 33 saying … “And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death.”  Peter is proud.  Proud of his own faith.  Peter thinks he is ready to be the number two leader in this kingdom, superior to all the others, and not ashamed to show it out loud.  Peter makes this declaration fully believing it is true.  How sad.  We all know it is not.  His actions are about to prove that.  But Peter cannot be converted until his heart is completely broken on the anvil of God’s love.  While Peter thinks he can defeat sin with pride, he cannot defeat sin at all.  That is like handing an addict heroin in order to fight the cocaine addiction, wrong tool altogether.  And while distance and lack of opportunity may provide the addict no chance to screw up, they do nothing to free the addict from his base desire to get high.  To accomplish that – only Jesus can, only if we let Him, only if we trust Him to do that very thing recognizing our desperate need.  Even then, it still does not mean once freed we are ready to run right back into the drug house to go witness.  It does mean though that only Jesus can free us, nothing else can, and especially nothing in us in any way, least of all a belief we can simply choose our way out of sin.  While Peter thinks he can choose to be sin free, he is NOT READY to help his brethren.

Notice that Jesus says, only AFTER Peter is converted, for him to help his brethren.  The specific word Jesus uses is for Peter to “strengthen” his brethren.  How is he to do that.  Perhaps the same way Jesus is trying to strengthen Peter, by praying for him, by loving him, by pointing out the folly of self-reliance as it relates to the gospel.  It is the pride of Peter, even pride in his own faith and choices, that keeps Peter from being able to strengthen his brethren, and keeps Peter’s heart an unconverted one.  Still unconverted, even after performing miracles, and spreading the gospel, and being with Jesus every day personally for over three years.  If Peter could be unconverted after all this time, who are we to say we have long since been converted and are ready for anything that comes.  We forget.  Satan wishes to sift us as wheat, and only in our absolute dependence upon Jesus will we find a change in the addict’s heart and desires.  Not in the pride of what we might choose when faced with a temptation to fall into.

Jesus hands Peter a lesson in reality as Luke continues in verse 34 saying … “And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.”  Jesus reveals that the current day will not even end before Peter denies even knowing who Jesus is, not once, but three different times.  Imagine what a blow to Peter’s pride this declaration from Jesus must have been.  How humiliating this must have been to be so public, in front of all the other disciples.  But pride must be broken.  In all its forms pride remains a sin.  It is only a different drug of choice, not the absence of one, and certainly not a tool to use when combating other sins.  So to break it, Peter must suffer a series of crushing blows to it, until there is no pride left in him.

Skipping down to verse 54 (we will cover the other verses in our next examination), Luke tells us how the words of Jesus are fulfilled … “Then took they him, and led him, and brought him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed afar off. [verse 55] And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them. [verse 56] But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him. [verse 57] And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not. [verse 58] And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. [verse 59] And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilaean. [verse 60] And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. [verse 61] And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. [verse 62] And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.”

Did Jesus force Peter into any of this?  No.  Did Jesus want Peter to have to suffer this crushing defeat?  No.  But Peter’s pride had to be broken, and Peter put himself on this path.  When confronted with the least temptation, to be identified as one of the group that was with Jesus, Peter denied that.  Peter denied even knowing Jesus while Jesus was undergoing the worst night of His life here on earth.  When Jesus most needed the love of those who followed Him, Peter was nowhere to be found, or rather, he was 20 yards away denying he even knew his Lord.  Upon realizing Peter had fallen, not once, but three times over a short space of time – Peter left weeping bitterly.  Those were not quiet tears.  That was public wailing.  That is not something men do, at any age.  Men are always trying to hide our pain.  When we reveal our pain, we make ourselves vulnerable, and our pain is usually only increased.  But here was Peter weeping and wailing as he carries himself staggering through the morning dawn over Jerusalem.  People looking upon this broken man, probably figuring him for drunk, or having a wife who left him.  But no wife could bring him comfort now.  In fact, his own wife, may have been already with Jesus following as close as any of the women were allowed to follow.  She may have been steadfast in her own faith, while her husband was broken from what he had done.

This was the sifting time.  All Satan need do is break the faith of Peter, instead of seeing God break the pride of Peter.  For in the mind of Peter they were one in the same.  But in the mind of God, they were not.  Faith was about not only the knowing of Jesus, or believing in Jesus, but in trusting Jesus with our salvation.  Allowing Jesus to remake us.  And following the very prayers of Jesus to see our faith strengthened and to avoid temptation altogether.  Satan wanted to blend pride into all of that.  Satan wanted Peter to see his own faith as one in the same as his pride as a Christian and a Jew.  Chosen people, chosen disciple, and proud to be both.  Proud to have gone to Temple.  Proud to have been so close to Christ.  So if pride were to be broken, Satan tempts Peter to just go ahead and throw faith right in there with it.  Is it any different today?  How many Christians who hold to conquering sin by choice finally one day reach a point where they see that just does not work.  No matter how hard they try, they still want things they should not want.  Pride and choice and self-reliance have done nothing to damper appetite for sin they cannot even explain.

And so upon reaching the realization that sin is still with us, the modern Christian just gives up on ever getting rid of sin.  We change our doctrine to allow for sin as if it just OK.  God forgives it, so why bother trying to get rid of it, we know that does not work anyway.  Since sin is impossible to get rid of, and God forgives, let’s just not worry about sin, go ahead and live our lives, and know God will forgive us in the end.  All of this might be true, except for the fact, that we are doing it wrong.  We, like Peter, are relying upon our pride, and our self-reliance, and our own choices to defeat sin.  We are like the addict staring at the tray of cocaine attempting to just say no.  That is not how sin gets defeated.  We must have our pride broken.  We must come to see sin as the addict/slavery relationship it is.  And we must learn to fully rely upon Jesus to remove the sin from us, as we trust Him, and allow Him to do so.  Our role is not a passive one.  We must actively choose to depend upon Jesus crying unto Him as a dying man might do in times of peril.  For it is deadly times of peril we are in.  We must separate our faith from our pride.  Having a fully dependent faith upon Jesus does not make faith weak, it makes it stronger than steel.  Having faith in ourselves is what is no stronger than rice paper.  We were not meant to defeat sin.  We were meant to cling to Jesus, following behind the only One who can defeat sin within us.

Jesus could have made that night go a completely different way for Peter.  But the pride of Peter would not allow Jesus to change what was bound to happen.  Pre-converted Peter still clung to his own pride.  Post-converted Peter was not too embarrassed to weep in the streets openly.  No pride was left in Peter post this horrible trauma of crisis of faith and pride.  Pride had to be killed.  But the prayers of Jesus prevailed in that the faith of Peter was preserved in spite of all of it.  Faith preserved in spite of the worst spiritual failure in the life of Peter.  Peter died upside down on the cross at his own request long after this knowing full well, the pain of a martyr’s death had nothing on the denial of his own Lord in Jesus’ greatest moment of need.  Nothing was worse than that.  And so the faith of Peter survived, while the pride of Peter was crushed.  Peter would still suffer from bouts of it later in life.  But every time pride reared its ugly head, Jesus was faithful to show Peter the error in his thinking, or in his loving of others.  That is how sin is meant to be defeated or avoided – in trusting to see Jesus work that transformation in us.

Satan may still desire to sift you as wheat.  Your life may have great pain in it, from choices you embraced, or from the choices of others.  But the prayers of Christ were not just for Peter, they remain for you.  To preserve your faith, to grow your trust, to crush your pride, to see you learn how to really love others.  This transformation of who you are, can only be done by Jesus.  And Jesus longs to bring it to you.  Will you let Him?  Will you place your life at Jesus’ feet, and give Him the “all” of who you are?  For it will never be your choice that defeats sin, but His transformation in you that sees the sin in you disappear, now and forever, until choosing Jesus, and choosing right, become simply natural to who you are, both here and in the world to come.