As we get further away from the sources of our food, it becomes more difficult to understand the processes involved. For example, who among us has ever handled wheat? Who has actually seen chaff?
One of the key actions which the Messiah would bring, according to John the Baptist, was to separate the wheat from the chaff:
His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Luke 3:17, cf Mat 3:12
Few people today would know what ‘winnowing’ is. It would be hard to find a threshing floor, except possibly for a remote village in a far off rural place. The process however, is something that the Messiah does, so it is something we should be clear about.
Together and Separated
The fact is that humanity, considered as a whole is like so many stalks of wheat. The pristine fields that stand golden in the sunlight have an apparent beauty to the naked eye. Yet the purpose of the field is to yield wheat. To gather or harvest this yield requires a great separation. The stalk, leaves and outer coverings that are attached together with the wheat must be separated. That which is not wheat is chaff. Although together for a time, and even standing quite proudly the chaff will be separated from the wheat. Separation is the essence of judgement.
The Suddenness of Threshing
If you drive past a farmer’s field on your commute, or you travel out of town by the same route, you may notice a big change. One day you will see the tall crop like a vast brush of velcro, or like a golden carpet stretching to the horizon. Another day, you will see it gone. Sheared off. Cut down and scraped. It is a dramatic change that can be surprisingly sudden.
The closest analogy most people have for this is the difference between their untamed grass on Friday and their neatly trimmed lawn on Saturday. The contrast with the farmer’s field is the threshing. There is not just a change in the field from being uncut to cut. It is a change from being unthreshed to being separated. But the analogies are the same in seeing that it is sudden. Threshing, mowing and the final judgement are all sudden. For the Day of the Lord, “will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thess 5:12).
The World Chaff
It can be hard to think that the lustre of our world is only temporary. Our shiny media and popular heroes can appear eternal, for a time. But all of it changes from being green and growing, to be chaff. David said famously in Psalm 1:
The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 1:4-6
The chaff is separated from the wheat, so the analogy points to the reality of unbelievers being separated from believers. This separation is the most offensive part of God’s harvest when viewed by sinful man. All people assume that if there is a harvest, they will all be among the lasting, cherished wheat. In other words, all people are closet universalists.
But the reality is that there will be a separation. And the separation will be all the more dramatic because the chaff had at one point looked so green. God in his common grace permits even the chaff of this world to have a growth, an order and a beauty. Yet even for all of that common grace, the chaff remains chaff. The wicked remain the wicked (Rev 22:11).
The Privilege of the Kept
The flip side of the chaff being threshed and discarded is that the wheat is kept and “gathered into this barn” (Matt 3:12,13:30; Luke 3:17). What a privilege to be kept for the Lord’s use and pleasure. When you look at a wheat field, you cannot actually see the wheat. It is completely obscured by all that will become chaff. So it is with this world. Paul said that “natural” people don’t accept spiritual realities because they are “not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14). Chaff cannot discern what is wheat. The world cannot discern the true chosen of God, because it is discerned only by spiritual eyes, and it is only revealed ultimately after the harvest of the last day.
When we despair of our apparent hiddenness as Christians in this world. When we think about how small and unseen is our place in the tall towers of society. Then we should remember that everything will be chaff, apart from God’s own precious people. That harvest yield will be all that matters on the last day.
