Every sifting in your life comes by divine command and permission. Satan had to ask permission before he could lay a finger on Job. But hear this! In some sense, our siftings are directly the work of heaven itself. The text declares it: "I will sift the house of Israel."

Satan may hold the sieve like a drudge, hoping to destroy the grain. But the Master's overruling hand accomplishes the purity of the wheat through the very process the enemy intended for destruction. O precious, much-sifted grain of the Lord's threshing floor! Be comforted by this blessed fact: the Lord directs both the flail and the sieve for his own glory and your eternal profit.

The Lord Jesus will surely use the winnowing fan in his hand to divide the precious from the vile. All are not Israel who are of Israel. The heap on the barn floor is not pure grain—hence the winnowing must be performed. In the sieve, only true weight has power. Husks and chaff, being devoid of substance, must fly before the wind. Only solid grain will remain.

Now 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 stern and terrible work. He sifts them in all places, "among all nations." He sifts them in the most effectual manner, "like as corn is sifted in a sieve." And yet for all this—not the smallest, lightest, 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. A jeweler would not lose one diamond. A mother would not lose one child. A man would not lose one limb of his body. And the Lord will not 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.