NOT ALWAYS THRESHING

This testimony is here given by the Holy Spirit of the “bread corn.” In connection with that of our text we have a description of agriculture. We find in the Old as well as in the New Testament many symbols which are derived from daily life. Even Christ, who is the Chief Wisdom, has constantly spoken by parables, and many of them have been derived from agriculture. He was willing to condescend so low, in order that we may understand the spiritual matters so much the better.

A farmer is not constantly plowing and harrowing. Every thing has its fixed season. There is a time that the ground lies fallow – a time that the farmer does not get to his field. But the time arrives also that the farmer goes to his field with his implements. He knows the exact time, because God instructs him as to the manner and teaches him. God must give us knowledge for everything, and as soon as the field is ready he begins to sow and plant. Also with respect to the various products of the field, he does all that according to the understanding and insight which God has given him concerning that. Likewise later when the field has yielded its fruits, then that which was harvested is handled in various manners. In the East they often threshed with a threshing sled or cart, drawn by horses or oxen over the corn and which was then threshed either by the operation of sharp stones or iron discs underneath the wagon. But the fitches and cummin would be entirely ruined by such a method, hence they were beaten with a staff and the cummin with a rod out of their pods and also as to the corn, although it was threshed in the prescribed manner, still it had to be done intelligently. The farmer took care not to destroy it, and this would happen if he drove over it with his cart drawn by horses. But he knows exactly when he has to stop it, and that wisdom when threshing, likewise when sowing, must come from the Lord of Hosts. The fountain of wisdom is not with man. God is great in counsel and prudence, and from His fulness He imparts to man. When we consider everything in the world, but especially agriculture, a foolish man surely must be amazed at the Wisdom of God. We are perplexed about every thing. We are incapable to everything and can only say, “Lord I would do everything wrong.” In fall much is put in the ground, and in our foolishness, we would say at times, “Why not wait till spring.” It can be so cold during the winter at times, it rains so much, that puddles are formed in the fields. Yea at times there is such a heavy fall of snow on the field, even for weeks and weeks, besides the frost which covers it. And how long must we wait at times before anything can be seen of that which was sown. In our ignorance we would say to the farmer, “I would start all over again but.” For when we look at the field, we see nothing, but if we get down a little lower, so that we do not scruple to lie flat on the ground, then we are amazed at what we see, and then we say no longer, “nothing will become of it.” And thus it is when corn ripens and the harvesting time is there. If we have no knowledge of agriculture, then we are always at a loss. We constantly think that nothing will become of it. But the farmer waits patiently, God has given him wisdom and experience, and hence he stands over against it differently than one who knows nothing about it. O that also spiritually we may get on our knees more often, and with Ezra lie flat on the ground. But our practical life teaches us that it is a work of God to get to that. And not only at the start, but also continually. What a wonder does it become when it pleases God to grant us that wisdom. We are so blind in the ways of heaven, and we become aware of that only when God opens our eyes by His Spirit. The people that receive a heart of flesh, commence to complain about their heart of stone, and those who are enlightened by God’s Spirit, realize more and more how great their darkness is. But God gives them understanding, enlightened with Divine light, and Christ is also given unto them for wisdom, so that wisdom is justified of her children. Matt. 11:19. And now that God, Who is called, but is also known as the all-wise God, and who gives the farmer counsel and wisdom, He himself acts likewise with prudence toward His people, He prepares the soil of our heart by His Spirit to break that hard heart and to make it amenable for His ministration. His word is as a fire and as a hammer to break the rocks, and makes it as soil under the plow to rip open the field of our heart in order that the seed of the Word may fall in a well prepared ground, in order that it shall bear fruit worthy of repentance.

Now Christ has said in John 12:24, “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 brings forth much fruit.” Christ was like unto the corn of wheat, He was sent from heaven not to reign, but to die. The coming of Christ in the world was an offence to the Jews. He even told His disciples, “Ye shall all be offended in Me.” O how blind were they for the discharge of the ministration of His Mediatorship. They all forsook Him, and even after His resurrection, on the morning when they go with Christ to the Mount of Olives, they still ask Him, “Lord wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel.” The justice and truth of God demanded the death of that Mediator of the Covenant, else no payment could be made for our sins. There was no other way to satisfy God’s justice and to redeem the elect. But He must also be bruised as that “bread corn.” “But it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.” Isaiah 53:10. To that end the Father has chosen Him from eternity. To that end He has made a covenant with Him from eternity, in order that the Man who was God’s Fellow would in the fulness of time become the Man of Sorrows “Who did not spare His own Son,” and that out of love for His virtues, and out of love for His people. It is an eternal, unfathomable wonder, that that Son Who thought it no robbery to be equal to God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, has humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The will of the Father was also the will of the Son.

No, He was not forced to give Himself, but He has done it freely, yea out of love, with His whole heart. “The zeal of Thy house has eaten me up.” I delight to do Thy will O my God, yea Thy law is within my heart.” Christ has known from eternity what it required to glorify the violated virtues of God, but also to save His people. He knew everything what would come over Him. Christ as the only eterna’ and natural Son of God had to come to the threshing floor and as that great Bread corn to be bruised, bruised the virtues of God, and which we had tarnished sins and which demanded satisfaction. Christ has never beven an object of God’s wrath like we are. He was and remained the Son of God. However He has borne the entire load of God’s eternal wrath against the sins of mankind. He came beneath the full weight of that wrath, that undivid d wrath. The full weight of our sin and guilt, and the curse of the law came upon Him. Christ was holy, harmless, undefiled and separated from sinners. He himself has never known nor committed any sin. He was the spotless, Holy and Righteous One, but He was willing to place Himself in the room of His people, for them who are nothing else but sin and unrighteousness. O what an unfathomable love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Eternity will be necessary to adore the value of it.

In the state of His deep humiliation He was made a curse and sin. That also caused Him to cry out “How am I straightened till it all be accomplished,” His sweat became as great drops of blood, which fell upon the earth, and like one of our departed preachers expressed it, “That Holy Divine Christ came between the millstones of God’s vengeance demanding justice, in order that He Who is the noblest of all grains, would be food for His people.”

That Christ has been bruised and threshed only once. “With one offering He has perfected forever all those that are sanctified.” Being fully conscious, He has assumed His suffering, and because of the joy which was set before Him, He has borne the cross and despised the shame. Christ suffered in His human nature according to soul and body.

Never spoke a man like Him, but neither any man suffered like that surety of the covenant. No suffering upon earth is to be compared with His. It was vicarious and substitutionary. Christ drank the bitter cup of God’s indignation to the last drop, but when that cup was empty, He cried out after He had been bruised in that three hour darkness, “It is finished.” God was satisfied, the debt was paid, and full salvation had been obtained. And there came an end to it.

“Thou sawest Thy strife rewarded.” The Father cried out from heaven “I have glorified Him, and I will glorify Him again.” And in connection with this Paul writes, Romans 6:9-10 ’Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him. For in the He died, He died unto sin once, but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.”

Christ as the servant of the Father has finshed the work which the Father had given Him to do. For that reason the Father has highly exalted Him, and has given Him a name above every name. Christ has removed the unrighteousness of the land in one day and on the resurrection morning the Surety has received the receipt from the hand of His Father, showing that everything was paid, so that there was nothing more to demand. Hell was closed and heaven was opened and Christ has said, “I have the keys of hell and of death,” and because of the ascension of Christ heaven which was locked has been opened again.

The Father has placed Him at His right hand and has given Him honor and glory. Here upon earth Christ has worn a crown of thorns, but now there is one of fine gold upon His head. “He asked life of Thee and Thou gavest it Him, even length of days, even forever more.” Christ must never again return to this state of humiliation because He has brought about a perfect satisfaction.

After His bruising He has received the reward which the Father had sworn to Him with an oath, and now He shall dash to pieces all His enemies with an iron Scepter. “Thou shalt dash them to pieces like a potters vessel.” Psalm 2:9.

But Christ, by the Holy Spirit, has also merited that the hearts of the chosen ones are broken, because of our sins we ought to be broken forever by the sword of vengeance of the Divine justice David confessed in Psalm 51:2.

“Hence Lord I am twice worthy of Thy wrath.” And the thief on the cross, when in the last hour of his life he was savingly converted did not ask the Lord Jesus to be saved from the cross, but acknowledged before God and men, “And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man has done nothing amiss.” Luke 23:41.

When by the light of the Spirit and by the discovery of the spirituality of the law we see and know our guilt and sin as having been done against the all Highest Majesty of God, then we will not contradict it, that we have merited hell. On the contrary we accept that with our whole heart, and it becomes a wonder that we have not been broken long ago. That people acknowledges that God is just, and that He cannot relinquish His justice. No, their salvation is not a case of indifference and it is not with them as it was with Gallio, who cared for none of these things, but that people takes God’s side, and to that they are enabled because the love of God has been shed abroad in their heart, and by that love they get to love God, but also His virtues, and the glorification of God’s virtues supercedes their salvation. But now it becomes so great to that people, when it is revealed in their soul that can be saved not with offending, but with glorification of God’s justice. Christ has become Surety with His heart to enable us to draw nigh unto God, and He has trodden the press alone, and there were none of the people with Him. But all those words must become actions. When we have it only in our head, and we have nothing else than a contemplating knowledge then that shall be too short for eternity, our heart has to be broken.

It is necessary that we are broken — judicially — by, under and before the Judge, Who vindicates His justice, because we have sinned against Him. Christ came under that justice as Mediator in an altogether unique relationship, but we must come under it as transgressors of all of God’s commandments in order that we may receive and accept the sentence, having become dejected and stricken by our guilt. Only in that way it shall be learned, that Zion must be delivered with judgement and all that is ours shall fall away and disappear like snow before the sun, and there it becomes a perishing in self, but then also because of the righteousness which has been brought in by that broken Christ, to be acquitted of guilt and punishment, and to receive a right to eternal life.

Alas, how many people acquit and assure themselves. So many save themselves but, consider themselves happy with texts which they have appropriated unto themselves, but how sad shall the end be. They are the people who place the mercy of God before the righteousness of God, but have never been truly broken before and by God, and hence they never get in contact with a broken Christ.

God’s people go lost righteously but is also saved righteously, and based upon that acquittal that people will be enabled to say with Paul, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?” God is in Christ satisfied with His people and He will never again be angry with them, nor rebuke them. The anguish which was their portion at the Divine Tribunal shall not rise again the second time. The law can no more condemn them unto condemnation. God is now reconciled in Christ with the elect sinner, and in Christ they are with God. Thus the two broken ones come together, Christ comes to the child of God and that child to Christ. And there the conscious union of the Mediator and a broken people is effected. Christ was bruised only once and in that way that will never be repeated for all those who have forever been delivered from the punishment. Also paternally, while melting away beneath the sentence of love that people is broken during their life beneath the eternal love. They are broken by justice as well as by love. All the revelations from heaven in the hearts of God’s favorites are full of love. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” John 4:9. That causes the heart to melt, but also whenever the life and passion of that Mediator is discovered and that people may behold Him by faith and learn to understand that with those wounds He was wounded in the house of His friends, and that various comforts for their soul flow to them out of those wounds of the Lord Jesus, and that then they experience that by His stripes they are healed. And then for who? They learn to know themselves to be nothing else but sin and misery, loathsome, rejectible and condemnable, leprous from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. O, whenever that people is led into those innerchambers, then there remains no spirit in them, then as broken ones they sink away. Then there are no more words but within their hearts it resounds “I will love Thee O Lord my Strength.” John, while on the island of Patmos, and who was favored with the revelation of the glorified Christ fell as dead at His feet. But the Lord Jesus put His right hand upon him and spoke encouragingly and comfortably to him. Indeed there is nothing that humbles a soul more and breaks a soul more than to behold by faith the blessed Mediator. That people becomes aware that He is God Who is to be praised above all, to all eternity.

(To Be Continued)

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