I am posting this message in answer to a brother's question: "Jesus talked about 4 types of soil (heart conditions). If 3 of the 4 types are poor soil, how does one go about plowing?"
I realize its length, but soon I will revise it and post in a different format. For a companion poem "The wounds of my friend Jesus" written just last week, please click here:
LESSONS FROM THE THRESHING FLOOR
O my threshed people and my afflicted (son) of the
threshing floor!
What I have heard from the LORD of hosts,
The God of Israel,
I make known to you. (Isaiah 21:10 NASV)
The seasons in the Christian’s life
(Brokenness)
My intention in choosing the subject of this message was to provide from the Scriptures some understanding into the meaning and purpose of suffering in the Christian life.
Since my adolescence, I have reflected on the origin, the meaning and purpose of suffering in my life and that of my fellow men. Perhaps, each one of us has pondered the same thing in the midst of unexpected adverse circumstances. This search for answers is valid, but could lead to a horrible frustration reaching a deep state of desperation if we do not find an answer that makes sense. As our pastor told us in last week’s sermon the correct question must not be: “Lord, why do we suffer, but what for? I believe that if we can find the answer to the latter, we will be able to accept all circumstances in our lives with a new positive perspective, knowing that we can trust in our God who loves us, who has a plan for our life and who gives us everything we need to grow in Him. King David in Psalm 25: 4,5, asked the LORD:
Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. 5 Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.” Further on, the same Psalm declares in verse 14: “The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.”
Through much study of the Word of God and through personal experience, I have found satisfactory answers to my quest and have concluded that suffering is a normal part of the Christian life and that it is essential for our growth. This is what I would like to share with you today.
BACKGROUND
In the Bible one of the most important places is Mount Moriah. According to Genesis 22:1-2:
“God did prove (or test) Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. 2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah. And offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of”.
On the same Mount Moriah stood the city of Jebus, the Jebusite stronghold renamed Jerusalem by King David who conquered it. It is the same site on which King David offered a sacrifice to avert a plague that God sent upon the Israelites because of David’s disobedience when he ordered his captains to take a military census. The Bible relates the event in 2 Samuel 24: 16-25:
And David built there an altar unto Jehovah, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. So Jehovah was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel”.
Years later, according to 2 Chronicles 3:1, 2:
“Solomon began to build the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem on mount Moriah, where Jehovah appeared unto David his father, which he made ready in the place that David had appointed, in the threshing-floor of Ornan (or Araunah) the Jebusite.
2 And he began to build in the second day of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign”.
Finally, we come to the supreme sacrifice which occurred in the very same place, in Jerusalem, where the unblemished lamb of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus-Christ offered himself to be crucified on the cross as atonement to wash away our sins, obtain forgiveness, salvation and eternal life for those who repent and believe in Him.
INTRODUCTION
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,2).
“Listen and hear my voice; pay attention to what I say. When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin? Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field? His God instructs him in the right way. Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cumin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread; so one doesn’t go on threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it. All this comes from the LORD Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.” (Isaiah 28:23-29).
I. PREPARING THE GROUND
It is important for a farmer to follow a series of successive steps in preparing the ground in order to ensure a plentiful harvest in the end.
Likewise, in our efforts to evangelize, we sow the seed of the Word of God to all who will listen. If we expect to gather a harvest of lasting fruit as a reward of our labor, we have to follow the same plan of action written for us in our instruction manual, the Bible. According to John 15:14-16, Jesus said to his disciples:
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (RSV)
1. Plowing with the Word, prayers and tears
First, the farmer must plow the land. His purpose in doing this is to plant, not to plow continually because his final goal is to harvest an abundant crop. (v.23,24). Can we recognize the infinite wisdom of God in this and learn from it? How many times do we have to plow the ground (the heart) with our prayers and come again and again when we see that the ground (the heart) is still hard and dry until we get discouraged and confused because we think God is not answering our prayers. Are we using the sharp edge of the plowshare (the Word of God) which can keep our line straight, which goes before us and shows us the way, which tells us when to start and stop, how far and how deep to plow? Are we so connected to the plow that we can feel when the sharp edge goes over a stone? Or has the Word of God in us lost its sharpness because of disuse, mishandling, or our lack of trust in what He declares such as:
“ As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11.NIV).
It might be that we have not shed enough tears with our prayers to soften the ground. Remember the tears that our Lord shed over Jerusalem in looking at her during His triumphal entry as He said: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” (Luke 19:42) and the sorrow He felt when He declared later on, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (Matthew 23:37).
May we understand the purpose of God in breaking us and pray that the tears that come from the afflictions we suffer (“That we may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” [Phillipians 3:10]) may be used to soften the hard ground to make it receptive to His Word (the seed).
Are we crying for our family, our friends, our enemies, our city, our country and the world? If not, let us ask the Father to reveal to us the inclination of His heart toward His wayward children and the world that He created and that He loves.
2. Healing the bitter waters and the unproductive land
In 2 Kings 2:19-22, there is an interesting story about the way God chose to heal a town water supply and the surrounding unproductive land.
“ And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the LORD, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.”
Without wrenching these words out of their context, may we find a parallel with our present situation and spiritual condition. Have we blocked the flow of the water of life in us which is supposed to overflow to others, by quenching the Holy Spirit, thus allowing our inner life to become stagnant and polluted while at the same time keeping the trappings and external appearances of religion? Have we like the people at the time of the prophet Isaiah “ stored up water in the Lower Pool, counted the buildings in Jerusalem (our city?) and torn down houses (households, families?), and built a reservoir (church buiildings ?) between the two walls for the water of the Old Pool, not looking to the One who made it or have regard for the one who planned it long ago. The Lord, the Lord almighty called on that day to weep and to wail…, ” (Isaiah 22:9-12 NIV). (Look up the whole chapter and compare verse 22 with Matthew 16:19, 18:18, John 20:23 and Revelation 3:7-13 for a better understanding of who has and delegates true spiritual authority, to whom and what happens when the leaders become corrupt.
3. New bowl, sacrifice and salt
Back to Kings and the prophet Elisha, let’s consider the Lord’s remedy if we have eyes to see our present situation and are willing to apply God’s Word in order to receive healing. In 2 Kings 2:20 the prophet says: “Bring me a new bowl and put salt in it.” Note that the bowl is new. The old bowl will not do. Jesus said in Matthew 9:17 “Neither do men pour new wine into old wine skins”. If the individual Christian is unproductive, the Church is unproductive in the sense that it is not working at full capacity. Remember the sin of Achan that caused the temporary defeat of the children of Israel, but also in contrast remember the love of the Good Shepherd who went to seek the lost sheep. Our Lord is interested in the condition of His flock as a whole, but also in the condition of His individual sheep.
We need to be purified, dedicated to and consecrated by the Lord. We need to present ourselves to the Lord to be cleansed that we may be fit for His service. The new bowl must contain salt. What kind of salt? Jesus in Luke 14:34,35 declares that: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil, nor for the manure pile; it is to be thrown out.” Look at verse 33 just above what Jesus is saying about the cost of discipleship: “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he cannot be my disciple.”
“Lord Jesus, surely you do not mean relinquishing the right to nurse my own pain and the suffering from the affliction that I have to endure; to know for a season the bitterness and resentment that I feel because of the hurtful actions and words of others, causing my bones to be a source of agony, my heart to burst because of the pain and my mind to know no peace; do I have to give that up also in order to be your disciple?
(A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
Proverbs 17:22)
“Yes, answers the gentle Savior, that too; in front of sinful men, they bruised my flesh, they beat up my face beyond recognition, they jeered at me, the perfect, sinless Son of God, I could not even see their faces because the blood from my forehead was mixed with the tears that I cried for them, but the Father would not allow their anger, their contempt, their envy, their blind ignorance to break my bones. In the garden when “my soul was overwhelmed to the point of death” and I carried that bitterness for you, the Father did not allow it to break my bones. On the cross even though they mocked me, I drank the bitter cup to the end and finally when they pierced my heart, my Father did not allow them to break my bones. Yes, my son, my daughter, I want you to lay this on the altar, as well as your personal aspirations, your dreams, your goals, your skills and everything else, just as I did in loving, willing submission to my Father, so that you will know my perfect, good and acceptable will for your life”.
(These things happened so that the scriptures would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken” John 19:36)
In Romans 12:1, Paul exhorts us to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, holy and pleasing to God, as our spiritual act of worship.” Our bodies contain a lot of salt.
But you may ask, what does that have to do with plowing, sowing, sacrifice and harvest? In Leviticus 2:13, the LORD told Moses “Season all your grain offering with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offering; add salt to your offering”. Salt so valuable for its preserving and antiseptic qualities was a symbol of constancy, fidelity and purity and as such was used to typify the eternal nature of the covenant between God and Israel.
We have seen above that salt fit for the soil is salt that has retained its saltiness. In Israel, salt was used in a mixture with gypsum, a rock with a bitter taste that served to make plaster to cover the house roofs. That may be what Jesus had in mind when Matthew added to the verse about the salt of the earth, “and be trampled of men” in Matthew 5:13 since a great part of the Israelites’ life was spent on the roof of their houses.
4. Purification through the fire of affliction
However, salt before it can be used, has to go through the process of being made pure. As soon as salt gets in contact with humidity, its inherent absorbing quality, just like a sponge sucking in water, causes it to be polluted by whatever impurity is in the water.
Talking about salt again, but this time in the context of people causing believers to sin, Jesus clarifies the issue of purity when He says:
“For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltiness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. ”(Mark 9:49-50).
How is the Lord going to make the salt in us pure?
Through the fire of affliction. Malachi 3:3 states:
“And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.”
Do we have peace with one another? Peace in the body of Christ does not just happen. Paul in Ephesians exhorts us to make every effort to keep unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. We already have unity if we are in Christ, the hard part is to keep it. Isaiah 48:17-18 states:
“Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea”.
Our Lord Jesus gave us a new commandment, “That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” (John 15:12). I believe that a great deal of what is hindering the work of God in our communities stems from the lack of the bond of peace in the Christians’ relationships, between spouses, parents and children, Christian brothers and sisters and churches of different or same denomination. (Here I am not talking ecumenical unity, but of the unity of the Spirit between true followers of Christ) Is the water of our city brackish? Is the relationship among Christians in our city one of love, peace and unity or are we trying to cover up the lack of reality in our lives, the hurts, discord, bitterness and resentment with our Sunday smiles?
Following the example of the prophet Elisha, how could we make the city water that came from the spring (the inner spiritual flow) sweet and the land (our lives) productive again?
By letting the Lord cleanse us (the bowl or vessel), and purify the salt in us as we gladly accept the purifying fire of affliction and trials without bitterness. The quickest way for salt to penetrate hard, unproductive soil is to be diluted and poured out on it and that is just what we Christians can do with our tears.
Father, according to your Word in Psalm 56:8 your servant David asked you to put his tears in a bottle. May we see your hand in our affliction and accept its purifying purpose for our lives. We, your church, ask you through the power of your Holy Spirit to create in us a pure heart, release our tears that you have collected in these broken vessels and pour them on the dry and hard hearts that they might be softened just as your rain falls on the just and the unjust to soften the earth and causes things to grow.
5. The level ground at the cross
Then, the farmer must level the surface of the ground (v.25), so the seeds will
all start germinating at the same level to make sure that the final crop will be as
even as possible. We all have to start at Ground Zero,
“at the cross where we first saw the light
and the burden of our hearts rolled away
it was there by faith
we received our sight…”
(“Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water” John 19:34)
II. PLANTING
After the ground is ready, the farmer planted wheat in its place (there is a particular soil and a different planting pattern that is best for certain seeds): wheat seeds were planted in lined furrows, apart to insure larger and fuller ears. (v.25) All this knowledge must come from God, the only one capable of teaching men to properly understand the world which He created and the ways in which His creation must work together to bring about His desired purpose. (v.26).
Taken from the Christian perspective, it is our Lord who plants us where He wants us. We must grow (toward God) and die (to ourselves) wherever He plants us to produce in the end a fruitful harvest for His purpose and His glory.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” (John 12:24,25).
III. THRESHING (The natural self)
Threshing occurs to separate the wheat from the chaff. The grain has already been planted, harvested, and now is being prepared in this separation process for yet another necessary step in the life of the grain of wheat. It must be threshed in order to, later on, be ground into flour so that the baker can use it to bake the loaf of bread. The threshing requires a specific instrument for a specific type of grain. Not all grains are threshed in the same manner. “For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cumin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cumin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised”. (King James). Wheat used to be beaten manually to separate it from the chaff and then tossed up in the air so that the wind would carry it away. Nowadays we use mechanical or electric threshers.
Oswald Chambers insightfully perceives that “Individuality is the husk of the personal life… It separates and isolates. The shell of individuality is God’s created natural covering for the protection of the personal life; but individuality must go in order that the personal life may come out and be brought into fellowship with God. The characteristics of individuality are independence and self-assertiveness. The thing in you that will not be reconciled to your brother is your individuality. God wants to bring you into union with Himself, but unless you are willing to give up your right to yourself He cannot.” (See Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec. 11th. On individuality.)
God uses circumstances and people to show us what needs to be taken out of our lives as chaff, so He can blow it off and use the kernel of wheat, the good nutritious part to be food for others. But according to Isaiah 28:28, God who is as gracious as He is practical says that “one does not go on threshing it forever”. Thank God, “his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor last a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning”. (Psalm 30:5).
However, the next step in the process of being broken is also painful, though different. There is an increase in the intensity of the breaking. As an example, compare the two stages in the sorrow of Abraham, first when he had to let go of his son Ishmael with his mother Hagar, and later on when God asked him to sacrifice the son of the promise, Isaac. Anyway, nothing in this world can compare to the grief the Father felt when He had to abandon His beloved son Jesus as He offered Himself as a sacrifice to take our place on the cross as a ransom for our salvation.
IV. GRINDING (Lord, It hurts)
Up until now, we had individual grains of wheat from individual stalks that require still a further process before there can be any bread making as such. Verse 28 of Isaiah 28 tells us that: “grain must be ground to make bread”. It is impossible to make bread that stays in one piece with individual kernels. The gluten, sticky substance that holds the loaf together is inherent to the wheat, but the individual grains of wheat have to be ground in order to provide the right consistency and the (glue-like), binding quality that causes the bread to hold together. The flour, ground product, still has everything that was contained in the individual separate grains of wheat, now unrecognizable as kernels because of the transformation process into a workable substance. In the same way, the loaf of bread baked from the flour contains every grain of wheat (minus the chaff) that has been submitted to the processes of grinding, mixing, kneading, rising and finally baking.
Another insight from Oswald Chambers is that “Personality is the characteristic of the spiritual man as individuality is the characteristic of the natural man. Our Lord can never be defined in terms of individuality and independence, but only in terms of personality. “I and my Father are one”. Personality merges and you only reach your identity when you are merged with another person”. (See Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest. Dec. 12th. On Personality).
As Christians we are called to deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily and follow our Lord Jesus and be the servant of all. As out of His great love for us, He laid down His life we, in turn lay our lives down as an expression of love for the benefit of the body of Christ, so that individually and corporately, we will reflect the life and the glory of Christ for the praise of the Father.
Paul in I Corinthians 10:16 speaks of the loaf of bread as a symbol for the body of Christ that was broken for us, but also of the Church, His body on earth in these terms, “the bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread”.
In all three examples of breaking, plowing the ground, threshing the wheat and grinding the flour, the farmer doing the breaking is using the help of an implement like the sharp edge of the plowshare, or an instrument such as a rod or a grinding wheel. In like manner God, in order to break us will bring into our lives a specific tool of His own choosing, a particular circumstance or person fit for the job.
When it happens we have a tendency to look at the instrument and not beyond at our Master-Teacher who is using the instrument for our benefit. Are we able to say at this point, “ not my will, but thine be done”?
Check what Peter says in I Peter 1:7; I Peter 2:21; and what James says in James 1:2 about trials and testing as they relate to faith, perseverance and maturity.
V. CONCLUSION
Acceptance, willingness and obedience
What is most important is the spirit with which we receive the trials the Lord gives us, and our reaction to the suffering they bring. Let us have the same attitude as David who said in Psalm 16:5,6 “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”.
We want to live in the blessed presence of our Lord, don’t we? David poses a pertinent question when he asks in Psalm 15: “LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? (v.1), He who keeps his oath even when it hurts”(v.4b).
We, as disciples, have promised to follow Jesus no matter what happens, no matter where He takes us. Well, in John 12:26 Jesus says: “Whoever serves me must follow me and wherever I am, my servant will be also”.
Is our Lord grieving over the condition of His church and that of the lost people in the world He so dearly loves and died for? If so, we will be grieving with Him and be moved to obedient action directed by the Holy Spirit.
However, my brothers and sisters rejoice, for He also said to His disciples: “I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve but your grief will turn to joy”. And then, we can say like David:
“You turned my wailing into dancing, you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever”. (Psalm 30:11,12).
Remember also that Psalm 126: 3 declares:
“The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him” . Amen
“The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him” . Amen
“All this also comes from the LORD Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom”. (Isaiah 28:29).
Brother Jean-Louis. Thanksgiving day 1998.
Revised and corrected June 2007.
