THRESHING-FLOORS
J. Wright
Luke 3: 15–17; 2 Samuel 6: 6–8; 1 Chronicles 21: 18–27; Jeremiah 15: 19
I have in mind, beloved brethren, to say something about threshing-floors. I realize that it is a very exercising matter because a threshing-floor is a place where there is severity. It has in mind the securing of what is positive. If there was not what was positive in view there would not be a threshing-floor; that is obvious, because it is the separating of the good from the vile, or the good from the worthless. If there was not the good there, there would not be any point in having a threshing-floor.
What I want to speak of in Luke’s gospel is that the Lord Himself has a threshing-floor. It is spoken of as His threshing-floor, and it is something He has today; it is something that relates to this present dispensation; it is not here what is future, it is what is present and it must involve what is judicial. The Lord is going to take up what is judicial in a coming day.
Judgment is committed to Him because He is the Son of man. This is a feature of the Lord’s glory; it is glorious that He acts in this way, He acts in a judicial way, and His glory shines in it. In a day to come when He comes forth judicially His glory will be seen, His majesty. We need to think of the Lord Jesus in the many glories that belong to Him, and this is one of His glories, that He can act judicially in judgment, and His judgment is absolutely fair. No one can act as He acts in that sense, He is absolutely just. He is the Son of man and He has feelings and affections for men.
Well, this is John the baptist speaking and he is referring to what is coming in in Christ. John the baptist in both Matthew’s gospel and in this gospel refers to the Lord’s threshing-floor.
You can understand it perhaps more easily in Matthew, because there is a certain severity marking that gospel. It is not without love, beloved brethren, it is because He loves that He has this threshing-floor. But it also comes in Luke’s gospel which speaks to us of the grace of the Lord Jesus. Paul says to the Corinthians, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he, being rich, became poor, in order that ye by his poverty might be enriched”, 2 Corinthians 8: 9. We see in this gospel the way the Lord Jesus became poor, and His grace; it is because of His grace that He became poor that others might be enriched with the true knowledge of God. So John speaks “I indeed baptise you with water, but the mightier than I is coming”. I am affected by that word, “the mightier than I is coming”. John acted in power, there was power in his ministry. God used him to bring about repentance in persons; there were persons who came to be baptised by John, and they were repentant.
What power there was in his ministry, but he says, “but the mightier than I is coming”. The
“mightier”, the Lord Jesus is that. He is the mighty One; how mighty He is, how strong He is!
Paul says, “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?”, 1 Corinthians 10: 22. Of course, He has power to execute judgment in the day to come, but He has power now, power to effect things in persons. He subdues persons through His grace. He subdued Saul of Tarsus; what power the Lord has! How mighty He is! He has power to bring in salvation, power to bring in blessing. But if that is to be so it is power that brings persons
down; He does it in His grace. So John says, “but the mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not fit to unloose”. Beloved brethren, in any service we need to have the greatness of Christ before us, the One who supersedes everything and everyone else. Then he says, “he shall baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire”. What a blessed thing that is! The Lord Jesus is the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit. How positive that is, how blessed it is; God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. It says in the Acts 2: 33, “he has poured out this”. How liberal God is! Baptism with the Holy Spirit, we know, took place at Pentecost, but every believer as receiving the Holy Spirit is in that sense baptised, baptised by one Spirit into one body. It is not here a question of water baptism, it is a question of what we are brought into—
baptised by one Spirit into one body. How blessed it is to have part in that! to find our place in the one body.
But it is also with fire, involving the conditions, the terms, on which the Holy Spirit has come, “he shall baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire”. There is that element, you see, that judicial element, that separates the precious from the vile; it needs to be maintained in our souls. It is what the Lord has done, He has baptised His own with the Holy Spirit and fire, and that continues, beloved brethren, in the present dispensation. It says, “whose winnowing-fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his threshing-floor”—“his winnowing-fan”; that may not be so severe as threshing, it may be more gentle; it is the way the Lord may speak to us. How gentle He is, how gracious, but how powerful. Let us hear the Lord’s voice, hear Him speak to us. A brother referred to ministry, how we need to be kept in a sense that the Lord is speaking; how we need to make room for Him to speak. His winnowing-fan is in His hand “and he will thoroughly purge his threshing-floor”. He will thoroughly do it.
Now, beloved brethren, it is where we are today; we are in His threshing-floor; we are in the Lord’s threshing-floor, and He is thoroughly purging it. He is doing it. Oh yes, and He is doing it in love. It is that what is good, what is precious, might be secured and separated from what is worthless. This may apply, of course, to persons, persons who are in the profession but not real, persons who are mere professors. They will not be gathered into the Lord’s garner, but persons who are real will. Soon, beloved brethren, the wheat is going to be gathered into His garner. How precious that is! All that is of Himself in the saints, every one who belongs to Him, and all that is of Himself will be gathered. There will be nothing then which is worthless, nothing at all; how precious that is. All will be like the Lord, all round Him then, no shade of variation. The Lord is going to secure that result, He is going to secure that result for Himself. But in the present time we are in His threshing-floor; He may speak to us; He will speak to us of His discipline. We are conscious, beloved brethren, that the Lord’s hand is upon us in that way, in discipline, but it is love lying behind it. He has the most blessed things, He has the most positive things in His heart and in His mind, that the wheat might be gathered into His garner. So that process is to go on; you know the Lord is doing it; it is to go on in us; the separating of the precious from the vile; the good from the worthless, and the Lord is doing it with us. Let us recognize His hand, recognize His love, that He is doing it in view of the wheat being gathered into His garner.
Now I want to speak of some persons who had threshing-floors. David, in his history, had to
do with these threshing-floors; they were among God’s people; there were some there who had threshing-floors. There were persons who were themselves maintaining this exercise of separating the precious from the vile. One of them is Nachon. Nachon had a threshing-floor. I do not know much about Nachon but at least he had a threshing-floor. It is evident that Abinadab did not have one. The exercise of separating the previous from the vile was not going on in his house although he had the ark there. Think of the privilege, but the responsibility, of having the ark there; it was there a long time in his house; it does not appear that he got any gain from it; there was no exercise about conditions that were suited to the ark. It has been suggested that it might have been left in a corner and got dusty perhaps, just neglected. Well, David has right desires but there are some elements here that are not right.
Of Uzzah, it says, “God smote him there for his error”. God smote him because of his error in reaching out; “Uzzah reached after the ark of God, and took hold of it”; that was his error, and God was severe with him because of it. God was thinking of right conditions for the ark; right conditions among His people. I suppose David’s failures are mentioned more severely in Samuel than they are in Chronicles, but it bears on the state of the people; the book of Samuel bears on the state of the people. God is thinking of that. David is thinking of the ark, he has right desires that it might come into a suitable condition, but David’s methods are not right; he is resorting to the military men; what is military is right in its place, but then there is what is priestly. David was overlooking that; the Levites should carry the ark. This new cart would make things a bit easier perhaps, to carry the ark on a new cart. This was an innovation, it was not according to the due order.
Well, when it comes to the threshing-floor of Nachon, it says, “And when they came to Nachon’s threshing-floor, Uzzah reached after the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen had stumbled”. There seems to be with this threshing-floor of Nachon a check on things, things come to this point where there is a threshing-floor and God says they cannot proceed any further in this line. What is right is not being done, the separating of the precious from the vile was in this household; evidently it was going on, and it could not proceed any further, and there was a check on the wrong line. What a disaster it would have been if this had continued. Would there have been the due order in the service of God? Would there have been what came out under David in the service of God? Would it have proceeded? It could not proceed on this line, on this Philistine line, the mind of man, it can only proceed on a spiritual line, what is spiritual. So there is a check. David is indignant with God to think that God should do it.
Well, we know that David reflected on things, and he comes to God’s thoughts. How good it is to reflect on things. We may at times feel indignant you know, but there is the knowledge that cometh of reflection, the wisdom that comes that way, and David got the gain of it.
Now in Chronicles we get another situation. David had been helped, and God was helping His people. David had been helped earlier on the line of sonship. How great God’s thoughts are for His people on the line of sonship. This point of view here in Chronicles is what the saints are to God, the inheritance He has in the saints. Here it is not so much the state of the people, but what the saints are to God, and Satan will seek to rob God of it; he would seek to rob God of His inheritance
in the saints if he could. So that David is moved by Satan to number the people. There is some pride there you see; you have been helped; and how easily pride comes in if there is help. God was using David, but then Satan moved him to number the people. How solemn that is, how it affected God’s people. You think of the effect it had on God’s people. Think of the plague that came upon God’s people. Satan was behind it to rob God of His inheritance in the saints.
But David is now moving on the line of recovery, and he is recovered. The true David comes to light. He speaks of “these sheep”; what have they done? The true David comes to light and he is on the line of recovery, and “the angel of Jehovah commanded Gad to say to David ...”
How David appreciated the prophet. One thing about David was that he never dismissed the prophets; he never locked them up, or shut their mouths, however much he had to be adjusted by them; he respected the prophets and the prophetic word as it came from God. How much we need it! However much it may adjust us—and we all need adjustment at times; there are none of us that do not need adjustment—these exercises are to help us all; we are all to go through these things. It is not a question of putting the blame on somebody else; David does not do that; he accepts full responsibility for it. As exercises come, as they may be prolonged, God is saying something to us; we are going through the Lord’s threshing-floor in that sense; we are there, beloved brethren, but it is in view of a positive result.
What a positive result came out of this exercise! So Gad tells David to “go up and rear an altar to Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite”. This man had four sons and they were threshing wheat. What a good occupation! They
may have been timid, but they were doing right work and useful work in threshing the wheat.
Ornan was prepared to give the threshing-floor and the oxen and everything to David. What a man he was! David says, No; he was going to pay for it, pay the full price. You see there is what comes to us in the gospel which is without money, without price. How free, beloved brethren, God is, how liberal He is, how rich He is. All that has come to us without cost; it has cost Christ much, of course; what it has cost Christ! What has come to us in the gospel reaches us so freely, but what it has cost Christ! What it has cost God that it has come to us freely. Then if we are to make progress in divine things it will cost us something. “Buy the truth, and sell it not”, Proverbs 23: 23. It will cost us something. It cost David something, but he is moving here on the line of recovery. So he pays the full price for this threshing-floor; what a valuable thing it was, this threshing-floor; how God valued it. God saw it was there and He knew the value of it; it was there among God’s people. Perhaps David would not have known about it unless God had drawn attention to it, but it was there in this household, and Ornan’s sons were employed in it.
Well, the positive result is that David is able to speak of this as being the house of Jehovah.
You say there is no building there yet. No, there is no building, but there it was. And, beloved brethren, the saints are God’s house, and where this feature is seen, the feature of separating the precious from the vile, the good from the worthless, the features that are proper to God’s house are seen, they come out. Well, it was to be the altar of burnt-offering. God’s acceptance of His people is in Christ, it is in the burnt-offering. So David is rising now, you see, he is rising in his soul, he does not go back to
Gibeon which may represent the old system, he does not go back there, but he is rising in his soul, and God is being enriched. God has in mind in these exercises, in the severity of them, that there might be a great knowledge of Himself, that He might thus be enriched. If God is not being enriched, if we have not got a greater knowledge of God, a greater appreciation of God, what have we got as a result of these severe exercises? But there is a positive result; you see in the following chapter the wealth there was, the wealth for the service of God and for the house of God. O, beloved brethren, God has in mind, and the Lord has in mind, that the saints might be enriched through these things. But it does mean that this process is to go on.
Enrichment will not come without the feature of a threshing-floor. I do not think it will come unless we have it, and maintain it and secure it for ourselves at cost. So God’s thoughts go on in regard of His people; there is progress here and God is enriched.
Well, I just want to refer to Jeremiah. We may say the Lord is to do things, and He does do things. The Lord is to have control of His threshing-floor and He will have, but then, beloved brethren, we are not just to leave things to the Lord. The Lord is looking for this feature in us, in each one of us. Jeremiah was a great prophet, a prophet whom God used, but he was not up to things in this chapter as he should have been; he was saying things about God and you wonder why he said them. It shows how we can droop, the way we can get away and say things. But he is recovered. “Thus saith Jehovah; If thou return, then will I bring thee again”.
“If thou return”—what a thing it is to be recovered! I think the most effective persons, the most effective servants, are those who know what it is to be recovered, truly recovered. “Thus saith Jehovah; If thou return,
then will I bring thee again, thou shalt stand before me”. O, beloved brethren, the solemnity of this, but the preciousness of it, standing before God. You would stand before God; Jeremiah would be available to be sent as standing before God; he would know what God’s presence was. We cannot attempt to go unless we know what it is to stand before God. He was to stand before God; no doubt he would serve God, but he was available.
It says, “thou shalt stand before me; and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth”. If Jeremiah did that, then he would be as God’s mouth. What a thing that is; I feel the exercise of that, to be as God’s mouth. Can I be that? It is as this exercise is taken on, the separating, “if thou take forth the precious from the vile”. What is in mind is the precious, it is to be taken from the vile. O, beloved brethren, this separation is to go on inwardly with us. The exercise of Romans 7 has that in mind, but then we are also to keep separate, we are to be persons marked by separation, inwardly and outwardly. Separate from the world and separate from vessels to dishonour. If we mix with persons socially, vessels to dishonour, we are not doing what God says to Jeremiah here—“if thou take forth the precious from the vile”—the precious! O, beloved brethren, there is what is precious in God’s sight.
The saints are precious in His sight. The work of God in His own is precious to Him; how He values it—“If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them”. Well, that is all I have to say. We can see that the Lord has this threshing-floor, but then this feature is to be found among us, beloved brethren, that things might move according to God. May it be so, in His name.
Address at Croydon
30 May 1987