Sabbath Threshing

Solomon built the temple on the threshing floor that David bought from Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24; 2 Chronicles 3). What might that mean?

Grain is threshed when an animal walks over it, sometimes dragging a threshing sledge, to separate the grain from the chaff. Threshed grain is winnowed, thrown into the air in an open place, so that the wind can carry the chaff away.

Worship is like that?

Yes. We are God’s field, God’s planting. We are God’s grain, created to be ground to flour, heated in the fire, baked into bread. We are what we eat, and we eat the bread of God to become living bread, offered to God for His delight and to the world for its nourishment.

To become God’s bread, our chaff has to be beaten and blown away. Our flesh needs to be stripped so that we may walk by the Spirit.

And so on the threshing floor of worship, God speaks to us with the threshing rod of His Word, calls us to repentance, convicts and renews us. He beats us to remove the chaff, so that we may finally sit at His table to eat the bread that, in Christ, we become.