Sifted as Wheat

SERMON: 2013-01-20--lk2213b--sifted-as-wheat SOURCE DURATION: 00:45:16.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.90 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with personal reflection in segment [1]. The recording concludes with highly repetitive, structured phrases that fall within the authoritative acoustic music interval (00:40:43-00:45:08), marking the end of the main recorded material. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:40:43.820-00:45:08.220 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:00:02.520] [CUT] ( sound [CUT] effect ) [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:00:02.520; resume after this marked segment] Well, last week I shared with you some of my personal journey during these past four years or so. And I have to say this morning that I was incredibly encouraged by your gracious response last week. I was overwhelmed by your love, encouragement, and support. And I cannot thank you enough. My tank went from close to empty. I wouldn't say it's quite full, but it's getting there. And I want to thank you for that. What I want to do this morning, as we pick up on where we left off last week, is to try to put our collective and our individual struggles in the overall biblical and theological context that I believe scripture teaches us. Whenever we go through hardship, and I don't even pretend that my personal hardship even begins to compare to that of some of you. When I hear Alan Gale's journey, if I think of Ben and Roberta and the Parkinson's that they struggle with, when I think of Rhea and the Huntington's disease that took Jake's life and that is still potentially part of the lives of her children, then I must say that my journey is a bit of a cakewalk. But you see, everybody's journey is different. And whenever we go through a journey that is somehow different from what we have anticipated or expected, one of the first questions the Christ follower always ends up asking is the question, "God, where are you? Why do you allow this to happen? Why don't you step in and change it? And are there lessons you want me to learn? And if there are, what are those?" And I don't profess to stand before you this morning and have all the answers to all the collective journey that we've been through for these past numbers of years. I know some of the lessons that I've had to learn and presumably there are some lessons that you've had to learn also. Perspective tends to come with distance and perhaps we're still too close to the events to really ultimately see what the good is that will come out of this long term. But I do believe that the words of our text give us some clue, some insight, as to what is the bigger picture within the context of which we need to learn to understand the events of life. And as we continue to look this morning at Luke chapter 22, the verses 31 and 32, allow me to point out a couple of things that I think will help put things in perspective. The first thing that I want us to note in this particular passage is that there is a spiritual component to the journey of life. There is a spiritual component. And then to the words of Jesus to Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. Satan has asked to sift you." Now we know from scripture that Satan is the arch enemy of God, and he seeks to overthrow God, and to overthrow the purposes of God. And so whenever he sees a Christian, or whenever he sees a Christian community that is trying to walk out love for God and love for his neighbor, of course he rises up in antagonism. And I want to be very clear this morning to point out that that doesn't mean that anybody or everybody who disagrees with us, or who challenges us, or who gives us a hard time is automatically in league with the devil. It's very easy to demonize your opponents. But as Sultan Yetsin said many years ago, good and evil run through all of us. And it's perfectly possible to be committed Christians and to have very different views on who God is or how God wants to fulfill his purposes. So never point your finger at other people. Always start by looking at your own life and asking yourself the question, "What am I putting on the armor of God so that Satan cannot get into my life the way that he got into Judas's life, the way that he's looking to get into Peter's life, and indeed the way that he aims to get into everybody's life?" We need to understand that the more committed we are individually and collectively to being used of God to further his redemptive purposes, the more we will discover the reality of spiritual warfare. Satan hates it when people come to faith. He hates it when people's lives get transformed. He hates it when they passionately begin to serve God. And he hates it when their lives bear a lot of fruit for God. Now, interestingly enough, I was thinking of that just this past week as I reflected on a conversation that I had with Penny and Powell. I don't know how many of you know them. They're sitting right here, wave a hand. They'd been gone down south for three weeks, as we all feel drawn to do, but can't always. And in the past, road trips like that had a tendency to bring out the worst of them. And I tell you this story, obviously, with their permission. So when I ran into Penny in the foyer last week, I said, "Well, how did it go?" And she said, "It went terrific." And then she added these words, and these will be with me for a long time to come. She said, "Every morning when I get up, I say thank you, God, for my godly, wonderful husband and for restoring and blessing our marriage." Now, you have to appreciate where that marriage was at to understand the impact of those words. A year and a half ago, this marriage was heading south literally very fast. I mean, they'd had a fight. Penny had thrown out the ultimatum and told Powell to leave. And he was out in his car heading south when all of a sudden it came to him, "I'm going to fight for this. I'm not just going to bow." In wrong ways. And he came back, they hassled it out, did a lot of praying, got some help from people in this community, and here they are today. How many husbands wouldn't like their wives to bless them every morning when they get up for being a godly husband? Isn't that true? I see wives are looking at husbands here. But here's the point that I'm making. Now, if I were the devil and I saw that happening, and as you know, we've been privileged by God's grace to see a lot of that happen in this community, I would do everything that I can to try to stop that from happening, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you try to figure out how to create friction between two people? How to breed miscommunication? How to cause offense and hurt to build up in such a way that their hearts could never ever be drawn together? That is Satan's strategy in the world. And again, instead of pointing fingers at other people, our responsibility is to look at our own hearts and in our own lives and recognize that what God calls us to do is to put on the armor of God and to resist Satan. Peter puts it this way. He says, "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of sufferings. He prowls around like a roaring lion. Resist him firm in your faith." And Paul says a very similar thing in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 13, "Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." Let me ask you this morning, if you look back over these last numbers of years and all the things that we've gone through as a congregation, where are the places that you have encountered Satan laying on your heart and on your mind and on your emotions? Isn't it true how easily our thoughts go negative? Isn't it true how easily our feelings get hurt? And isn't it true how easily we draw back into our own little world because life is just too difficult? We have an enemy. And our warfare, says scripture, is never against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in heavenly places. And were it not for Jesus and the armor that he provides and the fact that he sits at the right hand of God, ever to make intercession for us, there isn't a one who would end up standing in the day of testing and in the day of temptation. There is a spiritual component to the Christian life, and we better have open eyes to recognize it so that we can fight it, not with the weapons of flesh and blood, but the weapons of our spiritual warfare. That's the first thing I want us to note in this particular passage. Second thing I want us to note, then, is that Satan wants to sift us. Listen again to the words of Jesus. "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat." And it doesn't show up in the English translation, but the word "you" there is plural, as in "you all," meaning all of the disciples. The devil's already got Judas. He is angling for Peter, but his aim is to get everybody, because he wants to find out what it is that we are made of. Is our faith real? Is our love real? Are we only fair-weather Christians who believe in God when the sun shines? Can we, like Al was saying this morning, walk through the valley of the shadow of death and still know that God places a song in my heart? Because, you see, that's what sifting is, isn't it? Sifting is a separation of the wheat or the grain from anything that doesn't belong there. Here's a picture that shows you one example of what sifting grain looks like in one particular part of the world. I remember as a youngster growing up on the Netherlands in a farm, I remember these big sieves that we had, and maybe they only seemed big because I was little, but they looked huge to me. And I think, I'm not 100% sure of this, I think they were used to sift flax seed. We were heavily into flax growing in those days, and sifting does one of two things, doesn't it? When you sift grain, you're separating not only the grain from the chaff, which is really winnowing, which is what you see in that picture, the wind blows the chaff away, but there's another function, particularly for seed grain, which is even more important, and that is to separate the seeds of weeds, which typically are very much smaller, from the grain. And if you hear, if you've ever bought seed grain or supplied grain for seed, you will know that typically it goes through a cleansing process because who wants to grow a crop that is half weeds? So it's a separation process, and what Satan is asking for here is permission to sift the disciples, to find out what is really inside, he wants to shake out, he wants to determine is your faith, your love, and your hope really real? Now you look at a passage like this, what Old Testament story is the first one that comes to your mind? Somebody, come on, speak up. Job! Of course it's the story of Job. One of the things that I've been able to do during my suspension was complete, pretty much, work on my next two books. The first one, which has actually been in preparation stages for quite a number of years, is one on the story of Joseph. It's called When Dreams Come True, The Story of Joseph, and the second one is on the book of James, and I'm going to call that When Trouble Strikes, How to Handle the Losses in Your Life. Be while before that gets published, my book on Joseph, I'm hoping to have ready for print sometime very soon. But I mention that because as I've been going through the manuscripts for both of those books, I noticed that the story of Job is referenced in both. More in James than in Joseph, because James makes a big deal out of Job. But the point being, of course, that Job is the biblical example of a man who is being sifted by Satan. And without spending a lot of time in that background, you will recall the scene in heaven where the sons of God, which appear to be angelic beings or demonic beings, are parading before God. God says to Satan, "Have you seen my servant Job, how he loves me?" And then we have Satan's response, snotty as get-all, but it starts the events of the book of Job going. James verses Job 1, the verses 9, 10, and 11, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied, "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household, and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." And so there is the challenge. Satan says to God, "Job only serves you because he gets out of it. Take away what you have given him, and you will see that he turns his back on you." And so here's this big cosmic dimension happening in heaven. Satan's saying, challenging God, "You cannot produce a people who are so transformed by your grace and love that they will love you for who you are. Even the best of the best is only in it for what they can get out of it." In other words, they're not pure grain. They are filled with mixed motivations. And God says, "Well, you go ahead." And as you know, the whole point of the story of Job is that for all Job's shortcomings and failures, he comes through shining as gold in the last analysis because God is proud of the fact that by his grace he can transform selfish human hearts and really make us love God and love our neighbor the way that we need to. But here's the point that I'm trying to make. There is a cosmic dimension between the events of life. The troubles you and I go through, whether they're caused by our own sins, by our own circumstances, by other people, or by events outside of our control, are still part and parcel of this big cosmic picture where there is this ongoing conflict between God and Satan. Can God produce people who will love him above all? And you can't understand the process of testing and you can't understand the journey that we walk through unless you understand that God is trying to demonstrate his wisdom. Not only to people, but to the principalities and powers behind the scenes. Listen to this verse. You've heard it many times, Ephesians 3.10, where Paul explains the purposes of God and he says his intent, God's intent, was that now through the church the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms. Notice how that reads. The manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms. God wants the spiritual world to recognize that his wisdom comes to expression in the lives of his people. And you say, well, what is the manifold wisdom of God? And my response to that would be to say, it's the way of the cross. It's the way of faith. It's the way of Jesus. It's the way of not walking in our own strength and in our own wisdom, but trusting God in good times and in bad times. As you know, diagrammatically, I like to picture it this way. You've seen these so many times, you're probably tired of them. I'm not. And I'll tell you why. Because I believe they are such a simple demonstration of what in the book of James is pictured as the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of man. And just really quickly, the wisdom of God means God exists, he calls us to walk in relationship with him and to trust him, and as we do, there is shalom, there is peace. The only one that ever manifested fully through every trial and every test was Jesus. He was obedient, the Bible says, even unto death. You and I, by nature, we live over here, alienated from God under Satan's power. We've bought into the wisdom of the world, and the wisdom of the world says, God looks after those who help themselves. The wisdom of the world says, I must fight for me. The wisdom of the world says, I'm going to clutch, and I'm going to grab, and I'm going to hold onto everything that I know how to hold onto. I understand that when you come to faith in Christ, you've committed yourself to this way of life. And when history ends and you and I are transformed in glory, we will be perfected in love, we will be perfected in faith, we will be perfected in wisdom, and we will have a perfect relationship with God for all eternity. And when by faith we say, Jesus, yes, this is what we're committing ourselves to. But remember, you know as well as I do, that in actual practical living, a lot of us lives over here. We say that we love God, and we do, but part of us really, if we're honest with ourselves, we love ourselves, don't we? We say that we love our neighbor, but really if truth be known, when my neighbor starts costing me my life, then at the end of the day, it's really about me. We say that we want to be obedient to God, and it's easy to be obedient to God when it feels good, and it seems to have a good purpose, but the reality is when it's hurtful and painful and costly and difficult, then everything inside me says, I did not sign up for this, let me out of here. The purpose of sifting, what the devil is after in requesting permission to sift the disciples, is to find out what is it that you and I are made of. And let me ask you this question this morning, as we've gone through the turmoil of the last number of years, what have you discovered about what lives inside you? How filled with love for your enemies are you? How patient are you with the glacial pace of progress sometimes in the kingdom of God? And how does your heart feel when you've been battered and bruised, abandoned, forsaken, or otherwise been in your judgment maltreated? Haven't we all discovered some things living on the inside that we're not terribly proud of? Haven't we all made some speeches in the middle of the night thinking about things we should have said if we could have only thought? Fast enough to get there? Isn't it true that sometimes in the middle of it all we want to throw in the towel and we want to walk away from Jesus? Now I'll tell you very frankly that while I have gone through many low points in this journey, I think one of my lowest points was the week of my birthday, November 11th. And I'll tell you why. Leading up to that, as you know, our Council had, with great diligence, I believe, complied with all the demands made by Synod and the Board of Trustees. I know I had complied with all the demands that had been made of me. And you'll remember the optimism around here when we were thinking, "Hey, we're just about at the end of this journey. They're going to lift the suspension. Life can get a little bit back to a normalized state." And then what did we discover? And I don't say this to point fingers, but the reality is that none of our submissions to the Board of Trustees at that point carried the day. And I remember being so incredibly disappointed because hope deferred makes the heart sick, and it's the expectations that we often have that do us in. And I had so hoped that we could celebrate on my birthday my return. And that may be selfish of me, but I kind of was looking forward to that. But there's more to this story than that. You see, that Friday, November the 16th, was the 40th anniversary of my ordination. And I had so wanted to celebrate that with you. And to be denied that opportunity was painful to the extreme. And I know that's only my journey and my example, and you may well have your journey and you may well have your example. But I'll tell you, there will come a time, if there already hasn't in your life, when you're going to be sifted. And in that process of sifting, you're going to discover there are things inside you that you're not very proud of. You discover yourself capable of saying things and doing things that you never ever thought were part of your life. But you see, they're there. They may have been hidden in the pile, but it's the sifting that brings them out. And the purpose of that is not to embarrass or to humiliate or to have God or anybody else make fun of us. The purpose of that is to bring them out into the open so that we can see ourselves the way that we need to see ourselves, so we can bring it to the cross and have Jesus change us and transform us. Isn't that true? There's a spiritual component to life. The devil's desire is to sift us, to find out what it is that we're made of. God allows it so that we can be sanctified in that process. But then, and that's what I want to get to this morning, God has a reason for allowing that to happen. And that is that the purpose of sifting is to make us more fruitful than ever. "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." Notice Jesus does not say, "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and if you turn back, strengthen your brothers." No. Jesus says, "When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." See, scripture says, "No temptation will overtake us except such as common to man. God will not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength, but with his strength will also provide the way of escape." Jesus knows Peter. Notice he calls him Simon, which is his old name. Simon is the conniving Peter, the hoof and mouth disease Peter, the Peter who is way too confident in his own strength. He says later on, "Lord, even if everybody forsakes you, I will go and die with you." Well, until he gets into the courtyard and the little maid says, "Are you one of them?" and he denies the Lord three times. How close to home does that story get? But you see, Jesus knows that for all Peter's immaturity, for all the Simon that is in him, there's really a Peter there. There's a Peter there that God preserves and that God is calling forth and that God is going to establish because Jesus is confident in his own intercessory ability. One of the ongoing things that Jesus does at the right hand of God the Father is pray for you and me. And no matter what kind of situation that we find ourselves in and what it is that we're thrown into, Jesus is standing there with the Father, we're sitting there beside the Father, and he says, "Father, just bring them through this and demonstrate the gold that is in them their heels. Show their ability to bear fruit for me." To change the analogy, and Jesus uses different analogies from the field of agriculture to make the same point, he says in these familiar words in John chapter 15, "I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit." Some of you may recall that my first dollar that I earned in this country after just having stepped off the boat was pruning apple trees. My parents were still trying to get settled in. Us younger kids in the family had been farmed out to other families in the church. My brother and I were staying with a man and his wife. This guy was working for a farmer, it was the middle of April, he was pruning his apple orchard tree, took us along, I think we probably just dragged branches or whatever it was, I don't recall how that went, but I do recall he paid us at the end of the day, and I had my first Canadian dollar in my hand. And for a kid of 10, whose only allowance had ever been 25 cents, a buck was a lot of money. And I remember that so very clearly. But I remember that process of pruning so well because I remember almost feeling sorry for these trees by the time we were done with them. Just a few bare branches sticking out. And you say to yourself, "How in the world is that going to help these trees do better?" And it wasn't until many years later, when we were in Nova Scotia, where we had a number of apple growers in our congregation, Frank Brink would have been one of those, that one of them took me aside and explained to me the science behind pruning fruit trees. He says the first thing you need to understand is that pruning removes three kinds of branches. It first removes the branches that are diseased, dead, or broken. Because they, of course, become avenues for disease into the tree. The second thing, he says, that we remove is live branches that do not contribute to fruit bearing. And he's talking about the suckers that grow in all the wrong places, that take a lot of energy, but bear absolutely no fruit. But then he says we go further than that. Even fruit, or even branches that will bear fruit, we will remove if they are a disadvantage to the life of the tree. And so he says if we have a branch coming off the main trunk on too steep of an angle, that presents a liability for the tree and will cut that branch off right at the very root. If we have two big branches that are crossing and rubbing against each other, if the orchard hasn't been looked after properly for many years, then we'll take that branch off there. And he says the whole object of pruning is twofold. It is to shape the tree so that as much of the tree as possible can be exposed to the sunlight so that the fruit can color. And secondly, we prune the tree to stimulate fruit bearing. And he said many small cuts are much more effective in stimulating the tree than one large cut. And so when you see these naked trees in the spring after the orchardists, which is what they're called, have gone through their orchard to prune, then you see tons and tons of branches, some of which were dead, some of which were diseased, some of which were perfectly normal healthy-looking branches, but the whole object is to stimulate that tree, not just to bear fruit, but to bear quality fruit. And what an example of what Jesus does by allowing Satan to sift us. Satan can never touch the real thing. He can never touch the fire, can only make the gold shine. It can reveal the dross and the dross can be skimmed off, but the gold will always be there. And the sifting done properly will not get rid of the grain, it'll get rid of the weeds, and it'll get rid of the chaff. And the pruning will just stimulate the tree to bear good fruit. And so Jesus has prayed for you, Peter, and all the other disciples, so that when you're done, you can go and strengthen your brethren. When you've come through this fire, when you know better who you are, and how much you need my grace as opposed to your own strength, you will be in much better shape to be able to help other people, because only those who have suffered, only those who have truly seen the core of their own being, and who have been cast upon my mercy, will know the reality of loving other people with compassion and with care. And so is it any wonder that in both the story of Job and in the story of Peter, after they come through their trial, they shine like gold. Job gets used of God in intercessory ministry for his three friends, who had given him such miserable comfort during the difficult part of his journey. And he could love them and pray for them despite it. And Peter, of course, once he gets reinstated by Jesus in that John chapter, "Feed my sheep, feed my lambs, Peter, do you love me?" Peter goes on to be the spokesman for the early church on the day of Pentecost. And by his preaching of Jesus, there are thousands who are swept into the kingdom. And that's God's promise for his people. Our pruning, our pain, does not have to be wasted. We can learn the lessons that we can learn and need to learn. And as Jesus intercedes and enables us to hold on to faith, he will also bring us to a point where our fruit bearing will be increased because we will know better both our strengths and our weaknesses, but we will also know better the amazing grace and the power of God. Because we can now testify to God in whole new ways that previously we might not have been able to testify of. And so by God's grace, I look forward together to see what God will do. As I said last week, I think in Christ our best years are still to come. And I pray that you, having gone through your own fires of testing, will rise forth to lay hold of God's grace for healing and for restoration and for strengthening, and that God's grace will be so prevalent upon us and among us and in us that his glory shining through us can bring life and light and healing. Because you see, if God's grace flows through us, that grace needs to be as pure as it can possibly be because it doesn't take a lot of pollution to defile everybody downstream. And one of the reasons we have, painful as it has been, submitted to the disciplines of the denomination and have put in place the safeguards that they've been looking for is because we want to do the work of God in this community as best as we know how to do it. And we want God's grace to flow through us in a way that brings life and liberty and healing. And I am so proud of our Council, as I said last week, and I'm so proud of you for sticking it out through this process. And as I said, I look forward to how God will work in the days and in the years to come. Amen? Amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:40:43.820; remove through 00:45:16.000] The rain of God is time for your light to shine It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for authority It's time for your majesty It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for the rain of God It's time for your light to shine It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for authority It's time for your majesty It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed These days of wars and battles And these days when hearts grow cold And these days of growing darkness There's a story to be told So we gather in the steely In the prayer of faith We proclaim the mighty word of God Power in your name It's time for the rain of God It's time for your light to shine It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for authority It's time for your majesty It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed For the captives of rebellion Addicted and deceived For those who wander far from home Far from the sea So we gather in the steely In the prayer of faith We proclaim the mighty word of God Power in your name Power in your name It's time for the rain of God It's time for your light to shine For the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for authority It's time for your majesty It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for the rain of God It's time for your light to shine It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for authority It's time for your majesty It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for the kingdom of our God to be revealed It's time for your majesty It's time for your majesty It's time for your majesty It's time for your majesty It's time for your majesty It's time for your majesty [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:45:16.000; resume after this marked segment]