Bible Studies

We encountered a threshing floor again in Scripture today as a group of us studied the burial process of the patriarch Jacob who was mourned by not only the Hebrews but also by the Egyptians who accompanied Joseph and his brothers to Canaan and by a threshing floor where a great mourning occurred in remembrance of Jacob. (Genesis 50) We had seen earlier in Genesis that Issac had been offered up by his father Abraham in a location that would later become a threshing floor and then a temple. (Mount Moriah).  It was also close to this location where Christ the Messiah would later be crucified.   Abraham had told his servants in faith that he and the lad were going there to worship and that they would return.  (Genesis 22) Incidentally it was Genesis 22 where the words "love" and "worship" first appear in the Bible.  First mentions always set the tone significantly for later appearances throughout Scripture.

   Certainly worship can be an experience of sifting and separating the pure from the impure like would occur at a threshing floor.  Our motives in doing good for example can be less pure than we suppose.  Perhaps we unconsciously want or seek some of the honor and attention that rightfully belongs to God.  Perhaps we want to do God's work more because we think we're good at it than because God wants it done.  Perhaps we are more interested in pleasing ourselves that way under the guise of spirituality than we are devoted to  pleasing God.  Perhaps we want the right things for the wrong kinds of reasons, and God needs to address our wanting something too much for ourselves and too little for Him and His honor.  So he sifts our motives and intentions until we can say from our hearts, "Ok, God, whatever You want and whenever You want it, and if You don't want it at all I'm ok with that too, because it only means that You have something better in store.  In fact I'm more than ok with it, I rejoice in it!  When you have your way it's always more of a blessing!"

  It was also at a threshing floor where Gideon, arguably the greatest of the judges,  would be called to deliver his people from the Midianites, (one of the meanings of the name Midian is "contention') one of the few times in the Old Testament where the Angel of the LORD, whom some scholars believe to be a pre-incarnate manifestation of Jesus Christ,  makes a physical appearance. (Judges Chapter 6)  Gideon's attitudes and opinions, even in regard to himself and his own supposed unimportance, were indeed being threshed and overhauled by the living God in preparation for a sacred mission on behalf of his people and his nation.  Gideon was descended from Manasseh whose tribe was to be the one that established itself on both sides of the Jordan, half in and half out of the Promised Land.  He went so low that his so-called threshing floor had become a hole in the earth used for a wine press, instead of the usual hilltop where wind blew off chaff separating it from grain.   Perhaps that gives a clue as to the divided state of Gideon's heart (and ours) and his need (and ours) for multiple reassurances from God.  Yet he went on boldly to cut down the idolatrous images of the false worship around him and to defeat the Midianites with a mere 300 men.  Indeed, Gideon's very name means "one who hacks or cuts down." 

  Consider the greatest of all threshing floors, the garden of Gethsemane (the olive press) where Jesus sifted his own most intense desires and longings and progressively arrived at what for him was the bottom line,  "not my will but Yours be done."  (Matthew 26, v.36-46) There in that garden He came prayer by  fervent honest prayer to an acceptance that the cross in all its brutality was the only way that his bride the Church could be purchased and that humanity could be saved.  The threshing process with wheat is very similar in nature to the way that oil (the color of human blood) is extracted from olives, involving beating of branches, spreading,  mashing and crushing to obtain the pure result.  He who is the bread of life and the light of the world is doing a purifying separating work also in our thoughts, attitudes and motives.  He is aiming at that same bottom line for us to be able to declare in all of our ways and with all of our hearts, "Father, not my will but Yours be done!"