i

November 5 Daily Devotional

Morning and Evening

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“For I will give the command, and I will shake the people of Israel among all the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve, and not a kernel will reach the ground” (Amos 9:9).

Bible Reading

Amos 9:7–10

Devotional

Every sifting comes by God’s command and permission. Satan actually needed to get God’s consent before he could lay a finger upon Job.

No, even more, in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven, for the text says, “I will shake the people of Israel.” Like a lackey, Satan may hold the sieve, hoping to destroy the grain. But the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing the purifying of the grain by the very process that the enemy intends to be destructive. Precious, but much sifted grain of the Lord’s floor, be comforted by the blessed fact that the Lord directs both the shaking and the sieve to his own glory, and to your eternal profit.

The Lord Jesus will surely use the winnowing fork that is in his hand and will divide the precious from the vile. “Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (Rom. 9:6); not all who are in the visible church are born again. The pile on the barn floor is not clean food. This is why 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 while only solid grain will remain.

Note well the complete safety of the Lord’s wheat. Even the least grain has a promise of preservation. God himself sifts, and therefore it is stern and terrible work. He sifts them in all places, “among all the nations.” He sifts them in the most effectual manner, “as grain is shaken in a sieve.” And yet for all this, he does not permit the smallest, lightest, or most shrivelled kernel 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 jeweller one diamond, nor a mother one child, nor a man one limb of his body, nor will the Lord lose a single one of his redeemed people. However little we may be, if we are the Lord’s, then we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus.

[June 20, morning]

Extracted from C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (public domain), language modernized by Larry E. Wilson.

 

CONTACT US

+1 215 830 0900

Contact Form

Find a Church