Soul Threshing

Q: What does the Bible say about suffering and trials?

The Bible teaches that suffering and trials are a part of God's providential plan for His people, meant to refine and conform them to the image of Christ. In Isaiah 28, we see the metaphor of threshing, which illustrates how God deals with His people. Just as a farmer separates wheat from chaff with wisdom and care, God threshed His people to remove sin and prepare them for usefulness. Suffering and trials are not meaningless; they are God's tools for purification and growth. The process of being threshed is often painful, yet it is ultimately for our good, as it brings us closer to Christ and enhances our spiritual maturity. God's command is that we endure these challenges, knowing they are thoughtfully orchestrated for our benefit, leading us to greater faith and reliance on Him.

Q: How do we know that God uses trials for our good?

We know from Scripture that God uses trials as a means of discipline and growth, ultimately for our good and His glory. The Bible clearly states in Romans 8:28 that all things work together for good to those who love God, including trials and hardships. Trials serve to purify and test our faith, proving its genuineness as seen in 1 Peter 1:6-7. Just as gold is refined by fire, our faith is refined through trials. God uses these experiences to build character and strengthen our relationship with Him. Moreover, the discipline we experience, as described in Hebrews 12:5-11, is a sign of God's love; He chastens those He accepts as His children. These experiences, though painful at the moment, yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness, confirming God's intention for our good.

Q: Why is sanctification important for Christians?

Sanctification is vital as it transforms believers into the likeness of Christ and prepares them for good works. Sanctification is the ongoing process by which God makes believers holy, conforming them more into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. This process involves the removal of sin from our lives — akin to how wheat is separated from chaff during threshing, as illustrated in Isaiah 28. Every believer must go through this process of being refined and sanctified; without this, one would not be considered a true child of God. This transformative work allows Christians to fulfill their purposes in a way that glorifies God and benefits the Church. Furthermore, it reassures us of our identity in Christ as we assure ourselves that sin does not define us, but rather Christ's righteousness does.

Q: How does God chasten His people?

God chastens His people with wisdom and discretion, ensuring that the trials they face are purposeful and tailored for their growth. God's chastening of His people is not random or harsh; it is done with great discretion and intentionality. Drawing from Isaiah 28:27-28, the preacher illustrates how a wise husbandman uses different methods for different types of seeds. Similarly, God knows each of His children intimately and customizes His discipline to fit their needs. This divine correction may come in many forms — trials, difficulties, or even personal struggles — but it always serves the purpose of refinement and drawing us closer to Him. We must remember that such chastisement is an expression of God's love and care, according to Hebrews 12, as He desires to produce righteousness within us.

Go along carefully with me. If
you can't, then just pay attention very carefully as I read it to
you and explain it to you, because as he said here, it's the Lord's
wonderful counsel, and there's something to be had here, especially
or particularly for those that are suffering right now. I'm
just certain it will be a blessing to those that need it. So, read
with me again here in Isaiah 28. Let's just read it once again,
beginning in verse 23. Now, he says in Isaiah 28, verse
23, Give ear and hear my voice. Everything that God has for us
will come through this word. So it necessitates, it's a necessity
that we listen very carefully and follow along. This is the
reason I'm so, I insist upon us searching the scriptures and
following along and looking at them and carefully and diligently
searching them out. Because this is all God has for
us. This is it. The Word of God.
And we don't pay attention to that. He doesn't speak. He just
doesn't speak except through this book. That's what he says
here. Now give ear, he says, and hear my voice. Hearken and
hear my speech. He says, I'm going to give you
a lesson here in farming. Doth the plowman plow all day
to sow? Yes. Some of you have raised
gardens and you've gone out in early spring to till up the ground,
to plow it up perhaps with your tractor or tiller or whatever.
It's an all-day job. It's a difficult task. It's all
day. And a man spends a long time
doing it. And does he open and break the clods of his ground?
Yes, he has to do that. He has to break up that hard
soil to prepare it for planting. Well, that's the way God does
with his people, the hearts of his people that are hard and
unbending and will not receive God's Word except he break it
up, unless he convict up. Now he says, when he has made
plain or opened it up to receive the seed, made it plain, the
face thereof, then he casts abroad the fitches and scatters the
cummin. Now these are two types of seed
we'll see here in a moment. And he casts in wheat and barley
and rye and their respective places or whatever the farmer
has seen fit to sow. He's the farmer, he decides,
he's the one who decides. what gets somewhere and when
and he's the one it's all up to him. And God instructs him
verse twenty six is God is the one who has instructed him to
discretion or taught him in the ways of farming and he does teach
him still. Now you know when when God put
Adam out of the garden when God cast Adam out of the Garden of
Eden. Adam didn't have to do any labor
in the Garden of Eden. All he had to do was reach up
and grab a big old four-pound apple or whatever, probably no
seeds in it, and just eat, just enjoy himself. No sweat, no labor,
no toil, no trouble. But when Adam fell, rebelled
against his God, God sentenced him to a life of hard labor and
toil for that rebellion. But he sent him out of the guard.
But he didn't just God in his kindness and wisdom and say,
OK, have at her. No, he instructee. Adam would
have died if God hadn't taught him how to farm. I'm sure God
told him, and I believe this is what this teaching instructed
him. Adam, what you're going to have to do is make you a hoe.
A what? A hoe, an instrument with something sharp on it, rocks.
It's going to be hard. You're going to have to make
your own tools. It's going to be hard. But you have to go out
there, you have to break up that old, you have to get the stones
out. He distracted him in the lines of gardening. He endowed
him with certain abilities to farm and grow things. Howbeit
thorns and thistles sprung up. Rick and I were talking about
this the other day. Hannah and I came out of the
house the other day, came out of the back door, and it was
kind of dark. And she looked over and says,
Daddy, our plants are doing so well. She was looking at some
weeds, growing up some horseweeds, and they're doing so well. Look
at them. Weeds. I didn't plant those. I don't
want those to do well. But they naturally spring up,
don't they? Because of sin. And our gardens are dying. But
God cast Adam out, and he had to give him this ability to farm
and grow things. Or husbandry is what the scriptures
calls it. Husbandry. or farming, and he
had to teach Adam, or else Adam would have starved to death.
He couldn't have grown a thing. There's some people, perhaps
in here, who don't have what they call green thumbs, who if
it was up to you, if you couldn't go to Mr. Kroger, you'd starve
to death. And over the years, God Almighty
has taught man various methods of farming. He's taught various
methods. Principally, was this right here,
was to till up the ground, to break up the soil in order to
sow grain and so forth. And then after it grew up in
time, and this is what we're getting to, this is what I'm
going to dwell upon. To thresh it out, grain was a staple food,
as it is now in many eastern countries. Rice, wheat, corn,
Mexico, it's about all they have in a minute. About all they have
to eat. And they're so ingenious with the ways that they can use
corn. You wouldn't believe how many things they can do with
just plain old corn. But it's all they've got. And
so they have to work well with it. But in these grains, these
principles, these staple foods that man began to farm in, after
it was harvested, grain has to be what's called threshed out.
That is, the grain removed from the husks and the like we husk
our corn, you know, take it out of the husk and off the stalk
and so forth. And God in his infinite wisdom
and in his Word has likened himself to the husbandman or the farmer. And he shows us here in a moment,
he's going to show us how he deals with his precious seed,
his corn, his grain. Stay with me. He deals with them
much the way the eastern farmer does here in this illustration. Now, the illustration here is
a threshing. Like I said, the removal of good
from bad, of useful from useless. Threshing is what you call it.
And in order, I'll give you just a rundown. Most of you know this,
I know. But in order to remove the kernels
or the grain of wheat or corn or whatever it is, they would
take the stalks, they would take it from the stalks and the stems,
and then they would do this threshing. Sometimes large grains or mass
crops would be threshed in this manner, such as wheat or barley
or rye. They would be ground under by
a large machine of some sort, some kind of instrument, a great
big instrument used to just crush and grind up this grain, and
marvelously, miraculously, in God's wisdom, He made it so that
chaff or useless things would be separated from the wheat.
You ever think about that, how God made one way more than the
other so they'd be separated easily? And then perhaps they
would, you've heard of the millstone, the grinding wheel. They would
use a grinding wheel sometimes to separate them. But smaller
grains, smaller grains would be hand Threshed. Threshed by hand. You've seen
these pictures. I know. On specials on TV or
whatever, you see people threshing wheat or whatever, or corn, or
rye, or whatever. Throwing it up in the air. Threshing
it. Sifting or sifting it. Some manner
of threshing to remove the husks, or to remove the grain from the
husk. And sometimes they'd use a small
broom-like object, or sometimes they'd just simply beat it with
a little stick. or rod or something of the sort. And here's the tie
period. They did that to prevent from
injuring that precious little grain, that little seed that
they were going to use. Now, I've got three basic points
to this message if you're taking notes. First of all, all types
of seed need threshing. All types of seed need threshing.
And secondly, this threshing is done with wisdom. and discretion
by the wise thresher or husbandman. And thirdly, it doesn't last
forever. Nevertheless, it takes place. Now, first of all, all seed needs
threshing. Or, in our language, we all need
a good threshing. Threshing. All seed. Now, some
foolish chaff may think he's got good through and through. pure wheat or whatever. But he's just chaff. He doesn't
realize. He doesn't realize it. But the
seed, when God sows the seed of his Word, the first thing
he teaches us, we need a good threshing. A good threshing. We've got a lot of chaff in us
that needs to be removed. All of us. Every one of us. God's
people know that sin is there. And let me say this. This is what this is talking
about. Sin. sin is being purged from us. Yes, it is. And we're
being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Yes, it is. Spurgeon was asked one time,
he said, if you could have anything, any wish, anything, what would
it be? Ask yourself that. Spurgeon said,
my one wish, and for this life, anything in this life, what would
it be? He said, my one wish would be Never sin again. Never sin again. And people,
at the risk of sounding maybe, I don't know, legalistic, whatever
you want to call it, God's getting rid of sin in us. Yes, He is.
If He's conforming us to Christ, that's what He's got to do, doesn't
He? Got to get rid of me and self and sin and Satan, my natural
father, and mold me and make me more like Christ. Rid me of
the chaff and make me more like wheat. Make me bear real fruit,
or appear to have fruit. And every true child of God is
going to go through this process of threshing. Threshing out of
sin, a removal of sin, and conformity to Christ, in order to be used
by God, and in order to be deemed God's seed. If we don't go through
it, we're bastards. The Scriptures say we're not
his seed. We're not his seed, his grain,
his corn. And from the outset, now let
me say this, let me establish the gospel from the very outset
here. This thing of the removal of sin took place a long time
ago. Really, judicially, it took place
in the Lord Jesus Christ when he was bruised and broken in
our stead. This thing of removal of sin
or sanctifying or separating us as the wheat from the chaff
or changing us from a useless stalk into a corn of wheat. It
took place when that corn of wheat, Christ, was put in the
ground and took our sins with him. That's when that took place.
When we were changed from a child of wrath, even as others, into
a child of God, that took place in the body of the Lord Jesus
Christ a long time ago. Now make no mistake about it,
from the outset here, that was done, that process was really
and truly done completely. This may be confusing to some.
I really believe some of you understand. But that was done
completely in the eyes of God, really, or judicially, in Jesus
Christ. Our sins were put, it was done
in that holy thing, or the holy seed of David. He was threshed,
really threshed by his stripes. We are healed. We're made whole. He was wounded for our transgression. He grew up like a tender plant,
and he bore much fruit or precious seed, which is us, and we come
from Him. We emanate from Him. And He established
that righteousness for us. Then in the fullness of time,
God made Him to be sin for us and ground Him under the wheel
of His wrath against our sin. And do you know what came out?
A people separated unto good works, Ephesians 2. God separated
us And in Christ, by grace you say through faith, and that not
of yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works lest any man
should boast. But where His workmanship created
unto good works, unto good works. Christ was cut down, He was wounded,
He was bruised, He was threshed for us. Make no mistake about
that. I'm not talking about in God's eyes. I'm not talking about
us being made so as he can accept us,
not talking about that at all, talking about him conforming
us to the image of Christ. And that takes a removal of us. It takes a killing or a mortifying
of the members and making us more like Christ, threshing us. And our sins were put away in
Christ. Make no mistake about it. But now God is literally
molding and conforming us to the image of his Son until Finally,
like we saw last week, until finally, as the old man, finally,
just like an old dry stalk, dies in the ground, and that new bud,
that new flower, just springs forth into everlasting life.
When we go in the grave, then, no sins, all gone. We're just
like Him. We bear His image right now.
Some of us, some of God's people, all of God's people bear His
image. But not a whole lot like Him. Something like Him. But
someday we'll be like him and we'll see him as he is. But right
now, we go through these trials and afflictions or this threshing
because there's a whole lot of chaff to be removed from us.
Some of us have chaffing personality, chaffing personality. Sinless perfection is not possible. I'm not talking about that at
all. My soul. Sinless perfection is not possible
as long as we remain in this body of death that Paul calls
it. Not possible. But we're being made more like
Christ. I know it's hard to understand. I don't understand it, but I'm
just saying. That's what the Scripture says. That's what the
Scripture says. We're being made more like Christ.
Like I said, not for God to accept us. That's all in Christ. But
somehow for Him to use us and to prove us and for our good
and our happiness. He does these things all wisely,
all wisely. Chaff, husks, sin, sin must be
threshed out of God's seed because we're full of it. We're full
of it. We sin sins of omission. We sin
when we don't know it. We certainly sin sins of commission. We know when we are sinning,
and most of the time we don't know, but we are sinning. Sins
of omission, sins of commission, sins of spirit, sins of motive,
sins of attitude, sins of lack of attitude or lack of zeal or
zeal in the wrong, you name it, we've got it. If there's a problem,
if there's a sin, we've got it. You name it. It's got to be purged. I mean, it's a long process to
it, a long process. And we all need to go through
this threshing because under this first heading. Threshing,
first of all, there's a lot of chaff to be removed in it. Secondly,
threshing is what loosens the connection. It loosens the connection
between the corn and the husks. Now, it'd be nice. Some of you
are growing corn right now, or you hope you've got corn growing.
It may not turn out, but you have grown corn and you've put
it up, you've taken the husks off, and shelled it. Is that
what y'all call it around here? Shelling corn? Take it off the
cob and put it up and canned it and so forth. Now wouldn't
it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice if you'd go out there and just
grab a ear of corn off or gather up all your corn, bring it in
the house and just kind of run it under water or whatever or
just zip, zip, zip and the kernels would come off. Oh, it doesn't.
It doesn't come off very easily, does it? I mean, I used to hate
that. My mom would have me do it every
now and then. Hustle. I hate it. Don't ask me to hustle. If
you give it to me, give it to me, de-hustle. But I would rip
those. And it takes so long to get just
a little bit to it, it seems like. And then you've got to
get a knife and cut and cut and cut and cut and remove it off.
It's hard. Why? Because it's stuck to that
cob for dear life. That's us. We've got hold on
this world with all our holding power. We've got a hold of it.
And it would be nice if God could just say, no, let go of it. Okay. Oh, no. It's a cutting
process. It's a ripping away, a tearing
away process, a difficult, painful process. And somebody said this,
or the Scripture says, that our soul not only lieth in the dust,
but like David said, our soul cleaveth to the dust. We're not
only dust and ashes. Like Abraham said, we cleave
to it. We like it that way, don't we?
God's got to make a miraculous change in us, doesn't He? Old
habits, old desires, old appetites, old lusts that we formed in the
land of Egypt They ain't going to fall off two blocks down the
road in the wilderness, are they? Forty years those people wandered
in the wilderness, and they still said, oh, I'd like to be back
in Egypt, didn't they? Even when they got to the promised
land, got a vision or a sight of the promised land, oh, I'd
like to go back. I'd march another however long
it'd take to get back to Egypt, the fleshy parts and what have
you of Egypt. And that's us. These old habits
and old desires are hard to get rid of, and it's a painful and
long process. We've got to get a long way from
Egypt before we'll ever forget about it, don't we? We've got
to go all the way to the grave, all the way. And we hold on so
tightly to sin and self and the world and worldliness that it
takes a good soul threshing to make us turn loose. And you know,
this is the reason threshing is never over. It's never done
until the corn is completely separated from the husk. Never. And this is why our trials will
last to the end. Because sin is ever before me,
David said. My sin is ever before me. He said that when he was over
50 years old. Still, it's ever before me. Joe,
how about it? Henry, some of you old folks.
It's ever before you. You any better now? You feel
like you're worse probably, don't you? Ever before me. And it's
going to be there until the day that God removes you from this
planet. And so will trials and afflictions. Abraham had his
worst. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself
here. But this is why trials will last to the end, because
sin is ever in us and on us and through us. And thirdly, threshing
Threshing proves the worth of wheat. Now listen to this. They
sound real formal, but threshing proves the worth of wheat. Now listen. God sacrificed his
son. God had his son put through the
grindstone. He had his son just brutally
beaten and tortured. Why did he do that? For our sake? Well, in a sense, yes, but He
did it really to exalt His Son to the stars, to glorify His
Son in a way He'd never been glorified before, to give to
Him so that He would have now a name which is above every name. Why? Because He poured out His
soul unto death, the Scripture says. And God sacrificed his
son in order to exalt him to the stars. It was a brutal, ignominious,
terrible, painful, excruciatingly painful death. Horrible death. We can't even enter into it.
Can't even picture it that we see of Christ on the cross. Ain't
even close to it. His visage, the scripture says,
was marred more than any man. He was unrecognizable as a man. a bloody mass and a pulp hanging
on a rough-hewn piece of timber, like a bloody piece of meat. Why would God do such a thing?
To exalt Him to the stars in His wisdom. He did this to exalt
Christ and give Him a name which is above every name. And the
same thing goes for His people now. He chastens us, and though
they're painful, Uh, it's a painful process. He does it in order
to exalt us as sons. And we'll get into this just
in a little bit, a little bit more in a moment. But the father,
you say the father, why did he do that? This is what I was saying
here. Threshing proves the worth of wheat. Why did he do that
to his son? Because he loved him. He wanted to honor him and
extol and praise and honor and glorify his son. So he did this
to his son. I would have done it that way.
And my thoughts are not your thoughts, God said. My way is
not your way. I would have had Christ coming out on a white
horse and, you know, with a crown on His head and all the people
bowing at His feet. He wouldn't have redeemed our
souls that way, would He? Without shedding of blood, there's
no remission of sin. Right? It's the only way. It's
the wise way. And it shows, oh, it just... If He had come in on a white
horse, He wouldn't have shown us mercy. and grace, and his justice,
and all of his holy character. He wouldn't have shown us these
things. But in his wisdom, he showed it all to us on the cross
of Christ. And he proved the worth of his
son for everybody by killing him. That doesn't make sense
to the natural man, does it? And if you know this God, and
you know the gospel, you know what I'm saying is true. He proves
the worth of Christ by making his soul a sacrifice, an offering
for sin. And he does the same to us. He
proves the worth. Now, don't, listen, don't think
that God is necessarily angry with you because you're going
through something. That's not the case at all. That's
not the case at all. Your trials, Spurgeon said this,
these trials are strokes of love. Strokes of love from the Father's
hand to accomplish His loving and all-wise purpose for you.
He said that if you don't chasten your son, you hate him. That's
what the Proverbs said, doesn't it? If you didn't care anything
about your kids, you'd just let them run wild, don't you? I think that's about the way
people are nowadays. They care more about their careers
than kids that just run wild. But the Scripture says you love
them. Well, you'll try to mold them and make them for their
good, right? You're not doing it because you
get pleasure out of it. No, you're doing it for their
good because you love them. You want to see them grow up
in wisdom and stature and so forth. And you see, farmers along
these lines of farming, they don't... Farmers don't dehusk feed corn,
do they? Anybody have any cattle or anything?
You don't, you know, sit around peeling the corn off for those
cattle, do you? No, you go ears and stops and
everything out to the swine. But I tell you what, if you're
going to bring something in on your table, if you're going to
make you some nice cornbread, And you're going to take some
time with it. Some good corn, aren't you? You'll grow some
good corn and you're going to go through a careful and a painful process
of getting all that corn off for your personal usage. For
table food. And we're God's table food. Do
you know that? Yeah, we are. Here's table food. Look over
with me at Amos chapter 3. Amos chapter 3. Daniel, Hosea,
Joel, Amos. Amos chapter 3. Look at this.
This is a blessed passage of Scripture. It won't be a blessing
if you don't look at it, though. Amos chapter 3. Look at this. This is great. Amos chapter 3. Have you found it yet? Amos 3. Look at verse 1. Hear this word
that the Lord has spoken against you. Now, sometimes when we hear
the gospel, people like to say, steps on
their toes. Sometimes it really pricks our hearts, breaks our
hearts. Sometimes it cuts us to the bone, right? Just like that old stalk of corn,
you got to cut her to the cob, don't you? And sometimes it seems
like the Word of God is against us, doesn't it? It's not ever
against us, ever, ever. It's for us. Hear the Word. Listen, this is, look at this,
this is great. Hear the word that the Lord has
spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole
family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You
only have I known of all the families of the earth. Therefore,
I will punish you for all your iniquity." Amen. Now, you chose us and set us
apart, set your love and affection on us out of all the nations
of the world, and you're going to afflict us? And make us go
through a wilderness, and your enemies are fat and sassy? I
don't understand it." David said that, didn't he? I don't understand
it until I went into the temple, and I heard the gospel, and I
understood, and I saw their end. God fattening them up for the
slaughter. He's making us lean. Lean on Him. By cutting these
things away from us. Oh my, you only have I chosen
out of all the people, therefore I'm going to punish you, have
adopted you. If you don't receive this chastening
now, you're not a child. You're a bastard, you don't belong
in the family. Well, you know, I gave this illustration
before, I'm going to give it again. I don't know many, I don't
know much. So I give what I got. Scott said,
I generally tell you all I know in one message. That's about
the way I am. Because I don't know much. But
you've heard this before. Brother Walter Gruber, and some
of you may have not heard this. Brother Walter Gruber, when he
first went down to Mexico, they took four children with him. Five? Five children with him. Jenna, Lisa, Cody, Kevin. Yeah,
five children with them. Five of their own children. And
in mercy and goodness and grace, Walter and Betty, they took care
of a little Mexican girl while they were there who was without
any parents. And they finally, eventually,
they took that child into their home as their child. I don't
know if they adopted it legally or not, but at any rate. And
they loved that child. Oh, she was I saw her. She was just beautiful. Just
a sweet, little, timid, neat, mild, sensitive little Mexican
girl. Just beautiful. Just absolutely
gorgeous. And they took this little girl
into their home and they cherished her. Oh, they cherished her and
nurtured her and nursed her along. And you know, but their children,
and they probably got resentful of it, but their children were
just rotten old American children. And they got thrashed. They needed
a good thrashing. And they got punished and so
forth when they rebelled. And this little girl, Walter
and Betty, said she was just, humanly speaking, just a good
girl. She never needed punishing. Just never really needed it.
Never did anything to deserve it. But one day, one day, It
said, they said that she just did something that was just totally
unlike her. I don't know what it was, broke
something or just pitched it fit or did something. Wild, it
was unlike her. And I think they tried to overlook
it at first, but then she went right on, did something else
and walked and said, well, I'm going to have to whip her. I'm
going to have to deal with her, I don't understand. So he got
whatever he used and he gave her a good sound thrashing, like
he did one of his children. And she cried, it hurt. And you
ain't giving no thrashing. You ain't afflicting parents
any punishment. You're not making them learn
any lesson unless it hurts. But she cried. She cried. Walter said that in a couple
of moments, through those big old tears running down that little
brown face, big smile, big white teeth showing, she starts smiling. He asked her in Spanish, ¿Qué
pasa? What is it, Chela? Why are you
smiling? She said, Now I know I'm one
of the family. Now I know. And you see, we need
a lot of correction and chastening. And as God sees, as God's children,
he's going to thresh us. He's going to thresh us to remove
all these old husks, to remove our hold on these husks. We all
need it. We need it. And this is the consolation
that we sung a while ago, that when you get through it and you
look back and you see God's good providence and His good hand
in all of this, He will thank you for it. Not at the time. No, chasing Him for the moment
is pleasant. Not only do we need a good threshing,
but secondly, God's threshing is done with great discretion,
or that is, wisdom and prudence. Look at verse 27. Now, he says,
the fetches are not threshed with threshing instruments. Now,
these fetches, fetch is a very small seed over in the far eastern
countries that was used for flavoring. foods with. He said, we're the
salt of the earth. But anyway, pitches were a very
small seed used for flavoring cakes and breads and this and
that. Very, very small, very small. And if you crushed it
under a heavy piece of machinery or a mechanism, it would tear
it all to pieces. It couldn't stand up under a
big machine. Look at it, he says, and coming,
neither is A cartwheel or a big heavy grinding stone turned about
on cummin. Cummin's even smaller than a
pitch. It's still a smaller seed. Now, it's not ground under a
big heavy wheel. But you see, this wise husbandman,
he uses wise means and methods according to the seed. He uses
the manner and the method that's appropriate to the seed that
he's threshing. You see that? The wise husbandman
uses wiser and gentler means of threshing according to his
wisdom. So take comfort in this. Here's the application. We are
in our all-wise father's hands, and he knows exactly how to deal
with every one of his precious seed. He knows how to deal with
Nancy Parks as opposed to Barbara Ross. He knows how to deal with
Stephen as opposed to Rick. He knows our constitutions. He knows all about it. He knows
us better than we know ourselves. He's all-wise, and he knows what
to do accordingly that will effectually accomplish his purpose. He knows
what to do. And he doesn't... We need to
take comfort in this, that we're not left in a man's hands. You're
not in my hands. And sorry to say, sad to say
this, There have been some men, and
I've probably already done it, that have misused and abused
God's people out of ignorance or out of malice or whatever.
Men are men. They're going to do it. And they're
going to—sometimes they'll grind fitches and thresh husks, not
knowing—ignorance. But we're not left in a man's
hands. He'll not leave us to a man. No, he won't. Neither will we
be left in Satan's hands. Satan. You remember, he told
Peter, he said, Peter, Satan has desired to sift you. He wants at you. He came up and
asked me, let me have him. I ain't gonna let him do it.
Uh-uh, Peter. He wants to sift you. And this
scripture says he walks about this earth like a roaring lion,
seeking whom he may devour. You reckon there's any chance
that we'll be turned over in his hand? No. No, forget it. Forget it. Not his precious seed. He's not going to grind them
until they break. No, we'd break. Sometimes we feel like we do,
don't we? Sometimes we feel like we're being sifted by Satan.
Oh, now, he might blow a little ill air in our direction. He might do a little something.
Oh, but he ain't assisting us like he could in terror assault
cases. We're no match for him. Angels
didn't even want to deal with him, did they? Michael the archangel
didn't want to deal with Satan. He's a powerful and cunning adversary. But we've got an all-powerful
Heavenly Father whose hands we're in, and he's not going to turn
us over to the adversary. No. No, he's a good shepherd.
And that shepherd will never leave his sheep to the wolves,
will he? He'll never leave them to the
wolves unprotected. No, he says, I'll never leave you nor forsake
you. No man will pluck you out of
my hand. Never. Never. Well, consider this, believer. Every stroke of providence is
not left to chance, not left to Satan, not left to self, but
it's ordained by God Almighty and it's arranged as the time
as to force or the severity of it, and as to the place of it.
Now listen. Threshing, the threshing instruments,
the instruments that the man used, he chose them personally. In his wisdom, he chose what
to use. And no form of threshing is pleasant. See? No form of
threshing is pleasant. In fact, every one Every manner
is a painful and bruising and hurtful process. And to us, everybody
in here, I don't care what trial you have gone through or will
go through or going through right now, you think yours is the worst,
don't you? So anything but this. Anything
but this. OK, what will it be then? How
could a child possibly know what punishment he needs? What if
you, uh, did you ever, when you were a child, did your mother
or father ever say, uh, let you go out and pick a switch to be
whipped with? Go out and get me a switch. I
want to beat you with it. Now, let me ask you this. When
you went out there looking for a switch, what'd you look for? Is there any good switches? If
you've got a big stick, you say, oh, that'll beat my brains out.
If you got a little thin one, you say, oh, it'll sting like
fire. What's it going to be a good one? So God doesn't ask us to
go get a switch, does he? He knows. And it's all painful. It's all going to hurt regardless.
It must hurt to get the point across. This is what I was saying
about not to tear right in the child raising here. We need it
so badly. so badly, if it doesn't hurt
now, that little brat is going to do it again. Why is it, Paris,
older folks? Now, listen, you grew up under
the old school, they call it, Henry, the old school. When Dad
said something, he meant it, didn't he? What would happen
if you didn't do what Dad said? He didn't have to prove his point
too often, did he? You got, he got the point across.
And generally, it came across in a big whelp. My dad used a
belt. Now, today he would be hauled
off to jail, probably. But you better believe I got
the point. I got the lesson. The lesson was learned. And it's
the same thing. All real medicine. Generally,
do they make a good flavor of medicine? It just doesn't work
that way, does it? It all tastes bad. It all tastes
bad. And surgery? No surgery is pleasant. None of it is. And God doesn't
leave it up to us, but He chooses, and according to His wisdom,
He chooses a particular affliction for us, and you can mark her
down. It's exactly what we need. Just the right amount of pain,
and not too much, not too little. He gets His point across. And this is God's wisdom, and
goodness, and discretion. He chooses the form, the place,
and the time. It's all ordered by God to fit
the particular individual. It's all ordered by Him according
to the person that He's dealing with, because all children are
not alike. Now, let's face it, parents. You who have a Deborah,
you've got a boy and a girl. Wow, there's a big difference
in it. It takes a different sort of punishment and chastening
and so forth. All children are not dealt with
alike. They have different constitution, different demeanors and so forth.
So God chooses the form. God chooses the form of chastening. The wisdom of the husbandman
in this threshing process, the wisdom of the husbandman is far
exceeded by the wisdom of the Heavenly Father in this thing
of chastening, far exceeded. Now listen, stay with me now. Y'all got any place to go? Stay with me. One of our ladies
always is admonishing me, saying, don't look at your watch, don't
tell us you're about through. We don't have anything to do.
OK. Blame, I'm not mentioning her
name, so you can blame her if we're here two hours. Some people
receive very little trouble, very little trouble, and very
little trials, or what may not even seem like to them as trials. But some people receive very
little trouble, maybe because in the Father's wisdom and understanding,
they might not be able to take it. Right? I hate to keep bringing
up my daughter, but it doesn't take much from her daddy to get
something across to her. Sometimes just a stern look will
melt her to tears. See, different children, and
I bet if I had a boy and he turned out like me, he'd take a belt,
a big belt. And then that might not do it.
Take several beltings. But some people, you see, may
be super sensitive, like some children, and can be dealt with
with harsh words rather than a good thrashing. But some people
go through heavy trials. Heavy trial. We know people. People that just seem like their
whole lives are nothing but trial after trial after trial. And
you know, but you know the saints, many of the old and great saints
that God used. Take, for instance, Abraham or
Moses. They went through great manifold
trials, didn't they? All of their lives. Why? God
greatly used them. Greatly used them. He greatly
molded them and shaped them. They went through these terrible
trials. But it may not take as much for some as others. It may
not take as much. And heavy trials as opposed to
light trials doesn't prove that the superiority of one child
above the other, no. It doesn't at all. It's just
all according to the wisdom of the Father, because the Father
knows best. He knows best. And here's the scripture in 1
Corinthians 10, 13. He will not suffer you to be
tempted above that you're able to bear, but will, with the temptation,
also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10, 13. You may want
to mark that down. We're always looking for that
passage. He'll not give you something more than you can bear, is what
that says. And I had somebody, I had a man
ask me this one time. He said, you know, I know the
scripture says that God won't put more on us than we can bear.
But he said, he said to me, I just don't know if I can bear this
or not. You ever been there? He said,
I just don't know. Is that, what does he mean by
that, he said. I said, what does that mean?
He said, I don't know if I can bear up under this. You know
what? He did. And I say it a little later on,
I said, did you stand? Is it over? Yeah. Still trust Christ? Yeah. It's true, isn't it? Yeah, it is. At the time now,
it just seems like every trial, like I said, every trial is painful
and you feel like, I can't bear it. I can't bear it. You will. You have His promise. You have
His promise. And some trials are more difficult
to some people than others. What may be a trial to you may
not be a trial to them.

Soul Threshing

What does the Bible say about suffering and trials?

How do we know that God uses trials for our good?

Why is sanctification important for Christians?

How does God chasten His people?

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Soul Threshing

What does the Bible say about suffering and trials?

How do we know that God uses trials for our good?

Why is sanctification important for Christians?

How does God chasten His people?

Sermon Transcript

About Paul Mahan

Comments

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