GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 3:17-18
Although John has been talking about the approach of Jesus’ first coming, he understood that the Old Testament prophesies two comings of Christ: First, for the salvation of man, and second, for the judgment of man. There is a vast gulf of time between these two advents. We who read the New Testament live between them. John, standing at the verge of Christ’s first coming, was nevertheless aware that later, the same Christ would come again for judgment:
17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to completely clear out his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 John appealed to them with many other words, and he kept preaching to gospel to the people.
To understand this fearsome lesson, we need to know the way in which wheat was separated from the shell. After wheat was cut and gathered into bundles, the stalks were removed and thrown into a pile on a flat surface on the top or side of a hill. This was necessary to make use of a breeze. Small farmers might even use their winepress, as Gideon the Judge did to keep his harvest secret from the Midianites (Judges 6:11). The stalks were cracked open and crushed by a sledge. This was a heavy wooden platform (1 Chron. 21:23) with wooden or metal teeth designed to do the job effectively. The threshing sledge is sometimes used by the prophets to paint a mental image of what armies do to a nation (Isaiah 41:14; Amos 1:3). The sledge was normally pulled by an animal, but a very poor man might have to do it himself. After the hulls were broken, he would use a device called a ptyon (πτύον). This was a tool like a slender pitchfork (with five or six wooden tines) or a narrow shovel. Some Egyptian artwork shows farmers using very small winnowing shovels that look no bigger than a garden trowel. The grain was tossed into the air over and over again so that the heavier wheat kernels would fall to the ground and the useless chaff would blow off into a pile downwind. After this, the kernels were placed into a sieve (“as grain is shaken in a sieve,” Amos 9:9) and the last of the unwanted sticks, leaves and dust were removed. Then the chaff was burned. Few things burn so quickly and completely as dry chaff (like dry leaves in the fall).
John’s comparison isn’t exactly a parable. It’s more like an analogy, since many elements of a parable don’t have any comparison with the spiritual truth. This is important to remember. For example, in the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:4-7), the one who finds the sheep is “you,” Jesus says. We apply the parable to God rescuing the lost, but does that mean that God is me? It’s vital to understand that this would be a ridiculous application of that parable, and yet there are whole denominations getting carried away by saying that since the woman in the parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) also represents God, then it could be fitting and natural to talk about God as a woman. This false teaching has penetrated some entire denominations. American Christians are especially susceptible to this kind of useless application of Scripture, because fewer and fewer churches are teaching doctrine to their people or even to their pastors. In this way, American Christianity is becoming more like Medieval Catholicism. The flock and their shepherds don’t know their Bibles, and are content to be biblically illiterate: “A blind man,” as Jesus said, “leading a blind man” (Luke 6:39).
John’s comparison here is not a parable. It is a comparison; an analogy. Everything John mentions here has a spiritual significance, with a one-to-one correspondence.
■ His winnowing fork is in his hand. I suspect that the familiar image of the devil with a pitchfork is a misunderstanding of who it is who does the winnowing. It is Christ whom John is speaking of when he says, “His.” The winnowing fork is the judgment of God, that is, the Law of God. It separates the righteous from the unrighteous; the forgiven from the damned.
■ to completely clear out his threshing floor. The Law exposes every one of our sins. This is made clear with the word diakathairo (διακαθαίρω). The root word kathairo means “to remove, take down,” as when one is removed from a cross (Mark 15:36; Luke 23:53). The addition of the preposition dia- (δια-) in this case makes the verb perfective and intensifies the meaning, so that the Lord does not merely clear out his threshing floor with some of the pieces remaining behind, but he completely, thoroughly clears it out. Nothing remains. No one is excepted from the Last Judgment. No one will be left behind.
■ and to gather the wheat into his barn. One aspect of the final judgment is that we who have faith in Christ will be gathered together as the one Holy Christian Church in heaven. What makes us worthy to be gathered by the Lord into his barn? It is God’s doing, not ours. Because God is merciful, he sent Jesus to atone for our sins and make us his worthy wheat. As Cyril of Alexandria said: “The wheat is stored up in the granary. It is deemed worthy, that is, of safety at God’s hand, that is, his mercy, his protection, and his love” (Sermon X, Cyril’s Commentary on St. Luke’s Gospel, explaining this passage).
■ but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. The other aspect of the final judgment is that those who do not have faith in Christ, those who reject him, will be sent into the fire of hell forever to suffer in the unquenchable fire.
This was one of many appeals John made to the people. He warned them and crushed their hearts with the Law, and then he soothed their aching consciences and offered the forgiveness of their sins in the Gospel. This is the work we still carry on today, right up until the moment when the Son of God will come again with his winnowing fork in his hand.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota