Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Luke 22.
If you are a football fan, you may already know the answer to this question: which running back holds the record for career rushing yards? Correct. Emmitt Smith. Over the course of fifteen seasons, most of them with the Dallas Cowboys, Emmitt Smith ran for 18,355 yards. That’s 55,065 feet. Nearly ten and a half miles.
Now, in any other context, running ten and a half miles in fifteen years wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment. Back in the day when I was training for marathons, I would run ten miles a day.
But there’s a big difference. When I was training for marathons, I wasn’t getting tackled every four and a half yards. Emmitt Smith was.
Emmitt Smith is in the NFL Hall of Fame because no matter how many times he got knocked down, he got up again. In his career, Smith was tackled hundreds of times. But that didn’t stop him from jumping up, dusting himself off, and running the next play.
And that’s a word that we all need to hear sometimes. How do you respond when you get knocked down? How come God lets you get knocked down in the first place?
Over the course of this next week, we will finish our reading in the gospels and move on to Acts. And for the past few Sundays, we’ve been looking at Jesus, obviously the main character in the gospels. But I don’t want to leave the gospels without talking about the second most prominent character in the gospels, and that’s Simon Peter. Because I see in Simon Peter a guy kind of like Emmitt Smith. He has a pretty impressive highlight reel—getting called to follow Jesus, walking on water, going up on the Mount of Transfiguration and seeing Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Jesus telling him that he had the kind of faith Jesus would build his church on.
At the same time, Peter got knocked down a lot too. The same Peter who walked on water sank when he got overwhelmed by the wind and the waves. The same Simon Peter who was given the nickname “rock” by Jesus was called “Satan” (also by Jesus) just a few verses later, when he contradicted him. And this morning, we are going to look at Peter’s biggest tackle, and the scene that led up to it. So if you are physically able, I would invite you to stand to honor the reading of God’s Word as we look at Luke 22:29-34:
28 “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, 29 and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, 30 that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you,[d] that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” 33 Peter[e] said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus[f] said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.”
[Pray]
What Does it mean to Be Sifted?
Sifting. It was the last step in producing usable wheat that could be ground into flour. After the stalks of wheat were harvested, they were taken to the threshing floor, where they were laid on the ground and trampled. This would loosen the inedible chaff from the grains of wheat. Sometimes, it was done by hand with a tool.
For larger harvest, cows, donkeys, or oxen were used to walk in circles over the stalks (Deuteronomy 25:4). Some farmers even owned a sled-type device that had sharp teeth set into the bottom of it. This device was pulled by an animal across the wheat stalks to speed up the work.
After threshing the wheat, there was the winnowing, where the farmer used a winnowing fork (something akin to our pitchfork) to gather the stalk remains off the ground and throw them up into the air so the wind could blow away the chaff The usable grain fell back to the earth and was collected.
Finally, the wheat is sifted. You took a sieve—which was a shallow basket with a screen bottom, and you shook the basket, making anything that wasn’t wheat fall through the screen.
So that’s the whole process. No big deal, right? But try to imagine it from the wheat’s perspective. There you are in your field, just growing, enjoying the sunshine, when all of the sudden you’re cut down. You and all your stalk friends are gathered up and thrown down on the ground where you’re beaten up, trampled underfoot, and run over. Then you’re stabbed with a pitchfork and tossed around in the air a few times. And after all that, you’re put into a basket and shaken up.
Bad day to be a stalk of wheat! And sometimes we all feel like we’ve had a day like that. Cut down, beaten up, trampled under, run over, tossed around, shaken up.
And so even though Peter was a fisherman and not a farmer, he had probably seen this process. And he’s like, “So Satan asked permission to do that to me? Well, you told him no, right? Right, Jesus?”
But Jesus didn’t tell Satan he couldn’t sift Peter. Just like God didn’t tell Satan no when he wanted to mess with Job in Job 1-2.
When we’re having one of those sifting days, or weeks, or seasons, you’re wondering what’s going on? Why is all this happening to me? Things were going so well. I was growing, I was in the sun, minding my own business when BAM:
• There’s a problem with your kids. Sifting.
• There’s unexpected car trouble and you don’t have the money to fix it. Sifting.
• There’s an argument with your spouse that seems to come out of nowhere. Sifting.
We all have days like this, and being a believer doesn’t shield you from them. In fact, you are actually more likely to have days like this if you are walking with the Lord and trying to live a life that pleases him, because now you are a target. The question is, how are you going to respond to those seasons of sifting?
There are some truths in this passage that I want to bring out that will hopefully encourage you.
The first is that Satan is limited. The devil can’t do anything to you God doesn’t allow. There’s a word in verse 31 that only occurs only here in the entire Bible—it’s the Greek word ex-i-TAY o. The word means to ask or beg for someone or something to be handed over. Some translations have it as asked, desired, requested—which all sound a little too mild. Others have “demanded,” or “demanded permission,” which sound kind of scary. The actual sense of it in this verse is probably somewhere in the middle. Satan wanted Peter. He wanted to shake him up like a farmer shakes up wheat. But he couldn’t do it without God’s permission.
Church, there is a limit to what God will allow. The enemy does not have free reign over your life. The enemy seeks to destroy you completely, because he hates you. But God won’t allow it. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 that we are pressed, but not crushed. We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are struck down, but not destroyed. Satan is limited in what he can do to you.
The second truth that will hopefully bring you comfort is that you aren’t the only one being sifted. Look again at Luke 22:31. When Jesus says, “Satan has demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, in the Greek those two “yous” are plural. If Luke had been writing in Alabama instead of Rome, verse 31 might have read, “Simon, Simon, Satan wants y’all.” He wants to sift all of y’all like wheat. In other words, Peter wasn’t going to be the only one that would be sifted over the next 24 hours. Jesus knew that all the disciples except for Peter and John would be scattered and go into hiding. In Matthew’s version of these events, Jesus told the disciples, “You will all fall away because of me this night. Then he quotes Zechariah: As it is written, written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.”
Sifting isn’t just happening to you. Every child of God gets sifted. Sometimes a whole group of people can be sifted, like the disciples. Sometimes a church can be sifted. I believe sifting is likely to happen whenever an individual or a group is on the verge of being used by God to do a great work. It makes sense that God would want to refine us—to remove the impurities from our lives before he calls us to do something. So imagine Jesus is speaking to our church: “Glynwood, Glynwood, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. And I’m going to let you be shaken up for awhile, because I want to refine you.” Covid did that for us. Man, that was a rough time. It took a long time for us to bounce back, and even two years later now there are still folk that never came back. It was a gut check time for churches.
You might feel like our church is being sifted right now. Lots of business meetings. Lots of hallway talk. Lots of changes. And you know what? I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think it could be an indication that God is refining us for whatever happens. Next. And we aren’t the only ones. There’s a lot of people that are ready to write the obituary for the American church. Membership statistics are declining, whole denominations are splitting, some churches are closing their doors. Sifting can be painful, but it’s necessary. It’s to be expected. And we can come out the other side more refined, more focused than we were before the sifting.
We need to recognize that there is spiritual warfare going on between God’s people and Satan, the enemy of God’s people. It’s amazing to me that Peter himself would write in 1 Peter:
Be sober minded, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of suffering is being experienced by your brothers throughout the world. (1 Peter 5:8-9)
Hang on to that verse, because we will come back to it in a minute.
Now let’s get to the good news. I want you to notice what Jesus says to Peter next in Luke 22: Verse 31: Simon, Simon, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.
Whoa. Let that sink in. Jesus was praying for Peter. In the Greek, it goes back to second person singular here—Jesus says, all yall are gonna be sifted, but Peter, I am praying specifically for you, that your faith will not fail.
Jesus. Prays for you. Jesus singles you out of a whole crowd of saints being sifted, and he says, I have prayed for you? How do we know Jesus wasn’t just talking to Peter? Because Hebrews 7:25 says that
Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those that draw near to Him, because He always lives to make intercession for them.
What has Jesus been doing ever since He rose from the grave and ascended back into Heaven? He has been praying for us, that our faith will not fail.
Notice Jesus didn’t pray that Peter would be spared from the sifting, but that his faith would not fail as a result of the sifting.
Now if you are familiar with the Bible, you may be thinking, well, hold up—Peter’s faith did fail, didn’t it? Does that mean that not even Jesus prayers were enough to keep Peter from denying Jesus? Let’s look at what happens after this. Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter (John tells us it was Peter) grabs a sword and cuts off a dude’s ear. And the last miracle Jesus performed on earth was to put it back on. Then everyone scattered. Mark’s gospel adds the detail that one young man was so scared he ran right out of his clothes.
In the next scene, Jesus is being led away. Pick up in verse 54:
54 Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance. 55 And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. 56 Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” 57 But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” 58 And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” 59 And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.” 60 But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went out and wept bitterly.
That one line gets to me every time. Luke is the only gospel that says “the Lord turned and looked at Peter.” Can you imagine everything that was communicated in that look? I think there was sadness in that look. I think there was love in that look. I think there was grief. The one thing I don’t believe was in the look Jesus gave Peter was surprise. Peter’s denial didn’t come as a shock to Jesus. You can go back up to verse 32 and see that when Peter said, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and death,” Jesus responded, “I tell you the truth, before this night is over, you will deny three times that you even know me.”
Jesus knew Peter was going to deny him that night. I think Jesus knew it even when He called Peter the rock on which He would build his church. In fact, I think Jesus knew it when He first met Peter. Way back in Luke 5, after the miraculous catch of fish, Peter falls to his knees and says, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
And Jesus is like, “I know. But don’t be afraid, Peter, because from now on you will be catching men.”
Jesus knew what Peter would do, and he called him to follow him anyway. And it is the same for us. Jesus began working His plan for redemption for us before we even committed our first sin. And so when Jesus said, “Simon, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you,” He didn’t say, “I’ve prayed that you won’t mess up. I’ve prayed that you will stand strong and won’t deny me.” He didn’t say I have prayed for you that you will not fail.
He says, I have prayed for you, that your faith will not fail. There’s a difference. When someone’s faith fails, they stop believing they are worth saving. They stop believing that Jesus could save them in the first place. And that isn’t what is happening here. Look closely at verse 32: I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, And when you return again, strengthen your brothers.
Jesus didn’t just predict Peter’s denial, He also predicted his restoration. He could see ahead to that scene in John 21, where Jesus sits down with Peter and gives him three chances to confess his love for Jesus. He could see ahead to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy spirit came upon Peter and the rest of the disciples, and Peter jumped up and preached the Pentecost sermon.
See, I don’t think Jesus was able to use Peter in spite of his weakness; I think he could use Him because of his weakness and failure. AW Tozer—I’ve used this quote many times so you may already know where I am going with this—AW Tozer said, “It is doubtful that God can use a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
Peter left the courtyard and wept bitterly. The sifting was painful. He was brought face to face with his own fear. But his failure was not final. And neither is yours.
I pointed out 1 Peter 5 to you earlier, where Peter said, “Resist him [Satan], firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of sufferings are being experienced by your brothers throughout the world.” You aren’t the only one being sifted.
But now look at the second part of that verse:
10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
After the sifting, Jesus restored Peter. He confirmed Him in John 21 when He said to him, “Follow me.” He strengthened him. And He established him as the leader of the Jerusalem church. He spent the rest of his life strengthening others, until sometime around AD 64, the Roman emperor Nero sentenced him to be crucified. And his last request was that he be crucified upside down, because he didn’t consider himself worthy to die the same way Jesus did.
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
