The Refining Fire and the Winnowing Fork

Aim

To glorify God. To challenge people (emotionally and spiritually rather than intellectually) to present themselves to God for refining. To help people to identify which aspects of their lives have eternal worth and which need to be blown away.

Readings

Luke 3:15–18, Ps 66:1–12

Introduction

As Easter approaches, we become more and more aware of what God has done for us. We recognise the enormity of what Jesus gave up when he chose to become like us. We recognise the trauma of the cross which he took up on our behalf. And we naturally think about our response to such a God. How should we live in the light of Easter? When we consider all that Jesus gave up, are there things which we should give up? As we consider the work which Jesus took up, are there gifts from God or responsibilities of service which we should take up?

Reading through an old spiritual journal of mine I was reminded of how God called me to set aside my desire to be married. It was in 1989, and I’d spent years up to that point wishing that I was married. In fact this desire for a wife had clearly become such a distraction that I was putting off doing other things because of it. Waiting to be married was very limiting. It prevented me from committing myself to any long-term project or ministry because I wouldn’t have wanted such a goal to be interupted by getting married. Rather than set any direction in concrete, I prefered to wait until I was married. Then my wife and I could jointly figure out where God wanted us.

I guess it was inevitable that I eventually felt God prompting me to give up this preoccupation. It felt as though God had some plan for me which necessitated me being not married. I won’t explain the whole struggle I went through, but eventually I made a commitment that went like this — “From now on, I will act as though I am never going to marry. Issues about marriage will not effect any of my other decisions.” That change of attitude released me to get on with life. Giving up the necessity for marriage was a crucial step. Without that step, for instance, I would never have come to South Africa. I could never have taken up the new opportunities from God without first giving up that desire to be married. But then, interestingly, it was only a bit over two years later that I was married!

Its important to weed out those things in our lives which are holding us back from the abundant life God intends for us.

In the reading from Luke 3, John the Baptist announces —

that Christ would baptise with fire;
he will thresh and winnow; and
he will store the wheat but burn the chaff.

These images of fire and winnowing recur many times in both the Old and New Testaments.

The Process of Winnowing

Winnowing is the process of separating grain kernels from the surrounding husk and stems. In fact there are two stages to this process — first the grain is beaten (or threshed), and then tossed in the air so that the wind can blow the unwanted chaff away. John the Baptist takes this image of threshing and winnowing, which would have been a common activity in his agricultural society, and uses it as an analogy of what must happen in the lives of Christians.

Let’s consider the whole process —

The grain is harvested and gathered. We could ask ourselves “What is the grain, or the fruit, which could be harvested from our lives?” What seeds have been sown in our lives? How have the seeds been nurtured? Are we growing the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Or is the growth of these being stunted in our lives by the weeds of jealousy, anger, self-doubt, ambition etc.
The gathered grain is threshed. That is, it is beaten with a stick to separate the grain kernel from the husk and other chaff. Now, in our own lives we will recognise that this process of threshing is a painful one. The wheat kernel and the husk have grown so closely together that they are tightly bound to each other. So it is with the good and the bad in our lives — they dwell side-by-side and have become so intertwined that our very personality is a complex web of both. We may be very kind and gentle to others, never arguing or pushing our own case, but perhaps that is only because we have learnt to hate ourselves. We may be confident and outgoing in our evangelism, but perhaps that is based on personal arrogance or even a fear of punishment. To separate such feelings within us will certainly feel like we are being beaten with a stick. We will question what God is doing to us because it may seem that the very essence of our lives is being called into question. The very things which we have come to call “me” are being pulled apart and challenged.
Then the beaten grain and chaff is tossed into the air with a fork. And it is Jesus who wields the winnowing fork. Have you ever played the card game 52-pickup? You take a nicely arranged pack of cards, throw them all in the air and then pick them up. It’s a silly game really; I don’t know why anyone would play it! But now imagine all the produce of your nicely arranged life thrown up in the air. Your university degree, your sporting achievements, your Bible memory verses, your friendships, your neatly cut hair and polished fingernails, all your hopes and fears, all thrown into the air. Why would anyone want to upset a nicely arranged life by doing that?
And then fourthly, a strong wind blows all the chaff away so that only the heavier grain kernels fall back down. The chaff, which so recently was bound so tightly around the grain that the two seemed inseparable, is now blown away. Which parts of our lives are so light and insubstantial that they would be blown away? Which parts of our lives have enough eternal weight to fall back down?

The Consuming Fire

The second image which John the Baptist uses in his description of the coming Christ, is that of a fire. Once the winnowing has been done, the chaff is thrown into unquenchable fire.

This image of God as a consuming fire also appears in both the Old and New Testaments. In Exodus 15:7 and at least half a dozen other passages, God’s wrath is imagined as a fire which consumes his enemies. God leads the Israelites by a pillar of fire and appears like a consuming fire on top of Mt Sinai. Sacrifices offered to God must be consumed by fire. Isaiah points out that not everyone understands the nature of God’s fire or takes heed of it. Hebrews 12 warns that we should “worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

This is pretty scary stuff! If God is like that, who could survive it? Isaiah and Malachi both ask exactly that question. Who could stand in the midst of God’s fire and endure it? Isaiah 33:14 — “The sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling grips the godless: ‘Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?’”

But notice that it is the sinners and godless who tremble. God’s fire consumes that which is opposed to him. It is the chaff which is thrown to the fire, not the grain.

The Refining Fire

There is another Biblical image of God as a refining fire, and it is this image, rather than that of the consuming fire, which more appropriately applies to God’s children. God’s fire consumes his enemies, but refines his children.

Let’s examine the analogy of a refining process more closely —

Ore is mined. Mining occurs in areas where the proportion of some valuable metal is known to be high — gold, or silver, or aluminium. But the mined ore is impure. Likewise, the ore of our lives is impure. There is gold there, but mixed with dirt and useless rocks.
Then the ore must be processed. The ore is place in a huge vat suspended over a raging fire. Under great heat, the ore melts. The heavier elements sink to the bottom, and the impurities (the dross) rises to the surface. Once again we note the pain of this separation. The gold was so embedded in the ore that nothing short of this intense fire could have separated it. But what can we say to God? If we want to become like pure gold we have to be willing to submit to his fire and ask him to turn up the heat.
Only then can the third step occur. That is, once the dross has been separated, it can be scrapped of the surface, leaving the vat full of pure gold.

Opportunity for Personal Reflection

Do you know that TV ad for Mum deodorant in which the lovely-looking girl coyly lists all the things she could do without. “I could do without my car, I could do without my phone, I could do without my job, I could do without my boyfriend. But I couldn’t do without my Mum.” I wonder if there are parts of your life which it seems as though you couldn’t do without, but which in fact are impurities, obscuring the gold God wants you to be; chaff which is hiding the grain kernel within.

Jesus asks us not to “store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” Don’t build your lives around the ephemeral things of this world. Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. These things are just chaff, destined for the fire. Rather “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust don’t destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matt 6:19–20)

Someone once said “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep in order to gain that which he cannot lose.” God is offering you treasures which cannot be lost or destroyed. There is gold in you of eternal worth. But there is a tendency for us to hold too dearly to the dross and the chaff. In the end you cannot keep those things, for they don’t belong in heaven. Why would we want to stubbornly hold onto them? Nobody could call you a fool if you give up the things which you can’t keep anyway, in order to gain the treasures which you can never lose.

In order to reflect on these things, we will spend several minutes in prayerful silence. Consider these images — threshing and winnowing, the consuming fire, and the refining fire — and think about the produce of your life.