As we open The Word, although I shouldn’t be, I am amazed by I AM! I love how He points out nuggets of His Word to make us go hmm? When we open the Word and quiet our hearts (that’s the hard part) it is almost like we can see the finger of God underlining what He wants us to know. Remember the bouncing ball? That happened in 2 Samuel and I now have a new favorite verse:
“No, I insist on buying it from you for a price, for I will not offer to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing. ”2 Samuel 24:24
Let’s look at the context of this verse for a minute. Here we have David who has sinned against the Lord by taking a census. Although warned against taking such action, David was not unlike us, he did it anyway. (This census was not God-ordained as with the census taken by Moses.) Nonetheless, the census revealed that there were 800,000 soldiers in Israel and 500,000 in Judah. David was King, Commander-In-Chief, Head Honcho, The Big Kahuna of 1,300,000 fighting men. The results were staggering for a shepherd boy who had been on the run a lot of his life. His fighting men represented more than the population of many popular cities in the US, and three-quarters of the population of the State of West Virginia. With this many men behind you, it’s easy to see how one who does not guard his heart could get a big head, rely on self and fall into the sin trap. The sole impetus of this census was David’s pride, full stop. Spurgeon tells us:
Pride lies at the root of all sin.
If people were not arrogant, they would not be disobedient.
Ouch.
King David, all on his own took an ill-advised census. After the census (the sin), 2 Samuel 24:10 tells us that “David’s conscience troubled him after…”. Notice that the King’s conscience was not “troubled” until after he had taken the census of the troops, after the sin was committed. Up until then he thought it was a good idea. Unfortunately, that’s often when we’re “troubled” by sin too. But, then the King did what we’re too called to do when we realize our sin, He repented and admitted his foolishness.
Here’s the sticky part, just because we repent and are forgiven doesn’t mean we don’t have to walk through the consequences of our sin, our disobedience. And many times, like King David, our sin has consequences for those around us. Our sin can often create a plague for the people we’re close to as well, can’t it? When David saw the consequences of his sin laid upon his people, David sought forgiveness. Through Gad, a prophet and one of King David’s close advisors, he was directed to set up an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah. The place where God stopped the plague of the “destroying angel.” A threshing floor seems an unlikely place to reconcile sin, or does it?
The threshing floor is a place where harvested wheat is broken down and separated from the useless chaff. It’s a hard flat surface. Sheaves or bundles of wheat are laid out on this surface, and it is repeatedly trampled by cows or oxen. If livestock are not available, humans would beat the sheaves with sticks to break the wheat apart. Then a fork, called a winnowing fork, would be used to throw this trampled mishmash into the air. The wind would catch the chaff, the useless stuff, and it would blow away leaving only the good stuff, the useable stuff on the floor. The threshing floor is a place of separation. The good stuff from the bad. The useful from the useless. The fruitful from the fruitless. The useful wheat is gathered, and the useless chaff is burned. Close your eyes and picture this physical process.
The threshing floor was not just a literal place on top of Mount Moriah, but it is also symbolic of a spiritual process, a spiritual separation. John the Baptist said in Matthew 3:12 that Jesus will come to separate the wheat from the chaff. That separation is done on the threshing floor. The wheat is gathered into the barn, and the chaff will burn with a fire that never goes out. Think on that a bit in light of the physical process that takes place on the threshing floor. The grain is gathered the chaff is charred. This is judgment.
Three thousand years later, the threshing process looks a little different, it has been modernized. We now use fancy farm equipment. Combine harvesters reap, thresh and clean all in one swipe. Although the process has changed, it has the same effect. Separation.
Jesus calls our hearts to the threshing floor. When we surrender to Him, the Holy Spirit begins working in our hearts, separating out the chaff, our sin. This process never stops. Sometimes we may feel like our hearts are being trampled by oxen or we’ve been through a combine harvester, it can be a very painful process, however, the reaping, the threshing and the cleaning are required. The removal of sin from our hearts is necessary in order to glean the good fruit whether by threshing floor or harvester.
Where is your heart in this process? Is the threshing process currently taking place in order to remove some sin, known or unknown to you, to deal with your pride? Is there a particularly difficult stalk of wheat that you’re wrestling with? Is Jesus trying to separate you from that chaff? Will you allow the threshing? Will you surrender to the process?
NOTE: There are so many lessons in 2 Samuel 24, that I never did get to my new favorite verse! Now that you have the context, tune in next week. In the meantime, read, study and meditate on 2 Samuel 24.