On the sign out front, I put the passage Psalm 84:10, and if you haven’t looked it up, here’s what it says: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”
Even after thousands of years, it still rings true.
And speaking of thousands of years and still ringing true, if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Matthew, and we’re going to look at two chapters out of there today. Chapter 3, verse 12–just one short verse; and Chapter 13, verses 24-30.
As you do, I’ve found myself sort of tying things together these past few weeks. Between Christmas and the New Year, I talked about Faith, Hope and how Love ties them all together. Then, I bounced from how love ties those things together to how love must be included in the way we reach out to others, especially people who may challenge us on issues, and more importantly, those who are asking and seeking genuine answers to tough questions they may have about the Christian faith.
In this day and age, the biggest hindrance to Christianity is Christianity. That may sound odd, but it’s true. We have three strikes against us–people who are poor examples of Christ; ignorance of those who are good examples of Christ; and prejudice that stems from other forms of ignorance. We need to be aware of that, and we need to have the right answers to tough questions, but more importantly, we need to have love. My sermon last week was titled “Courage and Compassion: How to be Lovingly Bold.”
In it, I also talked once again about the great rift, or great divide that is happening, as a result of those strikes against us. Again, I want to emphasize love in every capacity of everything we do, but I also want to point out that there will come a time when we have to make that demarcation–or that line in the sand–as I did in that ‘great divide’ sermon I referenced from years ago, and we have to not care who does or doesn’t come with us.
Scripture: I’m going to focus on that today. But first, let’s take a look at our scripture verses this morning.
Matthew 3:12 This is John the Baptist speaking about the coming Messiah. He says, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Ooh, that’s a great way to start off the sermon, Pastor. Let’s keep going. Okay, let’s go to Matt. 13, and while you’re there, keep your Bibles open to it because we’re going to go back there and read a few more verses at the end of the sermon.
Matthew 13:24-30 24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
So here, we have among us, what Jesus calls, ‘weeds.’ You’ll notice how flippantly Jesus is sometimes. For someone who loves us so much that he would go to the cross and endure excruciating pain to save us all, he still seems somewhat brash at times. You go through the gospels and you’ll find that a lot.
Jesus, having a perfect balance of truth and grace–as we talked about last week–can look at the human race in love and in contempt. Maybe that’s a harsh word, but remember, in a few chapters from here, he did call the shameless, remorseless, and hardened unrepentant ‘swine.’ Ironic because just prior to that, he told his audience to not judge one another. At least that’s how Matthew put this together.
But Jesus, I think, has a right to be a little contemptuous towards his own creation who deliberately rebels against its creator. And because there are swine out there, we have to determine whether or not it’s worth continuing casting our pearls. Jesus said, 6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”
Remember what I said about the ignorant and the prideful? They are the type to tear us to pieces. I won’t quote from any of those YouTube debates, but I’ve seen it in there plenty of times. The atheist debater is usually kind enough to not tear apart the Christian debater, but they instead try to shred us or God himself apart. I think that’s how they can get away with being swine while adhering to the debate rules at the same time.
And it’s unfortunate that the most vicious atheist I have come across passed away more than a decade ago, and unless he repented on his deathbed, there’s no hope for him now. But was there ever hope? The Christian debaters kept casting their pearls and he kept trampling them underfoot–over and over and over, debate after debate, year after year.
But that’s what they did–professionally.
But for us, on the other hand, we don’t debate professionally. So if we decide it’s no longer worth casting our pearls before anyone, then the requirement is still love through our actions and through our prayer. But we have to come to a conclusion, with guidance from The Holy Spirit, that there may come a time to let go of our efforts to communicate the gospel to certain people, answer their questions when all they want to do is scoff and argue, and maybe even let go of some people altogether.
There will come a time when God will bring that separation through His ‘threshing floor.’
So what is a threshing floor? Well, even I got sick of quoting from gotquestions.org all the time, so I tried a different route today. This is from Crosswalk.com, and I have to admit, even though it’s explained pretty simply, it’s still a little hard for me to picture because as many times as I’ve been on a farm of one kind or another, it’s not something I’ve actually seen.
But here’s what they said: For most of its history, the threshing floor was an outside space. The grain was spread out over a stone or hard-packed dirt. Then an animal (an ox, donkey, or horse) would walk across the grain to break the kernels. So the outside shell of the grain would then need to be separated from the good part of the grain.
This is where the farmer would use the natural wind to help separate the grain from what was called “chaff.” The word “chaff” means “rubbish.” So this was just the other parts of the grain that wouldn’t be used. The farmer would use what is called a “winnowing fork” to throw the chaff and the grain that was mixed together. The wind would blow away the chaff and the heavy grains would fall back onto the threshing floor. The process then was repeated until only the grain was left.
Even though we probably haven’t seen this in our lifetime, this was such a common practice in millennia past that Matthew is not the only place in the Bible where believers and unbelievers were compared to grain and chaff.
Psalm 1 says: “That person (who meditates on God’s word) is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.”
Isaiah called the enemies of God, ‘chaff’ more than once; and Joel used the threshing floor in a more positive way: Joel 2:24 says that if the people repent, “The threshing floors will be filled with grain. The vats will overflow with new wine and olive oil.”
Again from Crosswalk.com, it says that, “God’s purpose for His people has always been that we be set apart. (Leviticus 19:2, John 17:15-18) So it is easy to see why God would use this imagery of threshing to show us the importance of being separate from the world. We cannot let worldly thinking invade our mindsets. (Romans 12:1-2).”
Speaking a little bit about that last part–about being separate from the world. I’ve talked so far about others, but we have to remember that we, too, have chaff that we need to get rid of. Remember when I said that Jesus called mockers ‘swine’ after having just said not to judge?
Here are the verses in Matthew Chapter 7 leading up to that, beginning with verse 1.
Jesus said: 7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Again, whether we see it or not, Jesus is perfectly balanced between truth and grace. In our eyes, he might be a little more truthful than graceful, but we are not perfectly balanced. We look at things like we just went over a series of potholes on a dirt road uphill and then back down again in mid-April. We’re not perfectly balanced.
So, Jesus is saying that we have to be careful and see that we need change too. There might be sawdust in our brother’s eye while we need to get rid of that log in our own eye. We need the separation from the wheat and the chaff in our own lives as well. It’s a process we need to welcome, and it’s a process that we need to admit before others.
I think that may be a greater cause for someone to listen and respect us than anything–to be humble and admit that we, too, are sinners in need of the same grace. If you’re open to it, go ahead and admit which sins you struggle with. Find common ground, and admit that there’s stuff you need to work out too. I think there’s strength in humility. And I think there comes a greater understanding of what Christianity is and isn’t when we explain what it means to struggle with sin, too, and that our righteousness comes from God, not from ourselves.
I find that so profound. God requires righteousness from us, so how is it accomplished? By God being our righteousness. That’s so amazing.
And no matter how amazing it is, and no matter how well we tell others about this amazing grace, there still will be scoffers. There will still be those swine (Jesus’ words, not mine) who balk at our weakness.
Let them go.
There will be those who say they’re fine living the life they want without repentance or a need for redemption. Let them go. If they want, they can find a church that doesn’t preach repentance or redemption. They’re out there if they look hard enough.
Whether it’s for their sake or our sake, we need to stop and recognize that we, too, are sinners who need an internal threshing floor when it comes to sin in our lives. We need to let God take care of that chaff and let the good remain. It’s another analogy of the pruning process that Jesus uses, and I often use it because of the grapevines all along the Finger Lakes, here.
This is another example of that process where we need to let God take care of the bad stuff, the weeds that need to be taken care of, the weeds that will choke us if we’re not careful.
As we allow God to take us to the threshing floor and tear our tares, prune our overgrowth and weeds that choke us, we’ll find that we become even more separated from the things and people of this world and from worldly wisdom, which we will see more and more as God does–as foolishness.
Going back to YouTube for the umpteenth time in the past month, I come across some prophetic voices quite regularly–and again prophetic meaning those who have an ear for hearing God in a clear and concise way and speak through the Spirit. There’s a pastor in Florida named Kynan Bridges whom I believe speaks prophetically, and here’s what he had to say. This is changed a little because he was speaking very conversationally, so I had to edit it some, but here’s the gist.
He said: “Oftentimes… tears were poisonous. If you ate a tear that looks like wheat you could actually get sick or even die. In other words the enemy sowed poisonous vegetation among something that’s meant to be consumed, and that’s where we are today. Beloved there’s a separation between the wheat and the tears; there’s a separation between those who really know God and those who don’t; who really hear his voice and those who don’t; who really desire a relationship with him and those who don’t.
“Don’t be offended by the separation. Don’t don’t get your feelings hurt when certain relationships seem to disconnect. Don’t get upset because there is an inevitable separation if you’re in a harvest season. There’s a separation which is good news. It means that God is separating things.”
He quoted Isaiah 5:2 which says: “Woe be unto them who call good evil and evil good who mistake light for darkness and darkness for light who call bitter sweet and Sweet Bitter.”
And then he went on to say: “God is threshing his children and he’s not doing it to destroy you; he’s not doing it to hurt you; he’s not doing it to offend you, he’s doing it for your deliverance; he’s doing it for your healing; he’s doing it to bring you into the Harvest.”
He said that he believes the Lord is going to separate things not only internally but also externally, and I agree. I believe that we may have to let go of–and allow God to thresh out from us–not only sin but also some people, places, and things in order for God to bring about the Harvest in us and through us.
What do I mean by harvest?
I said I wasn’t going to go to gotquestions.org–but I caved in.
Here’s what they had to say: Throughout the Bible, the harvest carries spiritual significance. It is used in parables (Luke 8:4–8) and as a metaphor for spiritual growth and health (2 Corinthians 9:10; James 3:18). The harvest has always been a beautiful and important part of life on earth, the time when the year’s work bears fruit and the people are fed.
Do you see the connection? Bearing fruit and people being fed. Like Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” People need to be fed the Word of God, and we can’t be very good at it if we’re not producing fruit–the fruit of the Spirit.
If we go between today’s two scripture verses, to Matthew 9, we read that As Jesus traveled, “he saw the crowds, [and] he had compassion for them, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’” (Matthew 9:36–38). Here, Jesus referred to the many souls needing to be brought to repentance and faith as a harvest waiting to be realized.
Jesus used the same metaphor of a spiritual harvest in Samaria. After talking to the woman at the well, Jesus told His disciples, “Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35). In the days following this statement, many of the Samaritans became believers in Christ (verse 41). Jesus saw the spiritual harvest of souls awaiting in that village.
We are at a strange yet wonderful time when it’s both time for harvest and the threshing. Remember, you can’t thresh the grain until you’ve harvested the grain. If you have your Bibles, turn with me back to Matthew 13, and we’ll read verses 36-43. There, you’ll see that the threshing will be when the time is right. The threshing will come when the harvest is ready.
There will be a separation that comes. There will be those ready to be harvested, and those ready for the fire. We are at a time when I believe there is going to be a greater harvest and separation–at the same time–than ever before. Some will wake up to what’s going on (or as I like to say, woke to wokeness), and others will continue to fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
Matthew 13: 36-43 says: 36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Truth and grace, folks. Truth and grace. Jesus spoke very plainly here about the meaning of that parable–in truth, but the grace is that there is always an invitation to be harvested among the wheat. Our job, as I stated earlier in this sermon, also as in last week’s, is that we have to–as best as we can, speak the truth in love, be the catalyst for that invitation to a lost and dying world.
As Jesus said, “Whoever has ears let him hear.” But how can they hear when the laborers are so few? Even in no-good, rotten Samaria, Jesus said, “ I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest”
Well, the laborers here in this church are few, but don’t let that stop anyone. Billy Graham was just one, and he answered the call. Look what God did through each of his apostles, one by one. How about the Old Testament prophets?
None of them were perfect. God was their righteousness.
Speaking of Old Testament prophets, listen to the call of Isaiah:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
[See, God was his righteousness, even in the Old Testament]
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
All it takes is one faithful servant to say yes to the Lord’s call and therefore, with God, make a great and impactful change however and wherever He may lead through the gifts, talents, and personal connections he has given each of us.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Polina Rytova on Unsplash
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