The Hearty Harvest
Isaiah 28:23-29 New King James Version (NKJV)
23 Give ear and hear my voice,
Listen and hear my speech.
24 Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?
Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods?
25 When he has leveled its surface,
Does he not sow the black cummin
And scatter the cummin,
Plant the wheat in rows,
The barley in the appointed place,
And the [a]spelt in its place?
26 For He instructs him in right judgment,
His God teaches him.
27 For the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
Nor is a cartwheel rolled over the cummin;
But the black cummin is beaten out with a stick,
And the cummin with a rod.
28 Bread flour must be ground;
Therefore he does not thresh it forever,
Break it with his cartwheel,
Or crush it with his horsemen.
29 This also comes from the Lord of hosts,
Who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in [b]guidance.
In their song "On Fire," Switchfoot cleaves to Christ even in reproof, "When everything inside me looks like everything I hate, You are the hope I have for change, You are the only chance I'll take."
Isaiah in the close of what comes down to us as the prophet's 28th chapter does much the same thing. In Christian crooners, this inviting tone might be expected. In Isaiah 28, is truly intriguing. Isaiah has know motive for mass appeal. His tone in this very chapter has been hot to the point of indignant. Judgment is coming, he has been telling his countrymen. God will use even even foreigners to reprove you.
Isaiah 28:23 then gets to the "how," and the character of God is on compelling display. Isaiah's fellow wayward people of God's Book deserve His wrath, yet Isaiah says God's correction will be carefully measured. He takes his readers or hearers out into the field to consider the professionalism of an experienced farmer. The farmer will not destroy the crop in the process of harvesting it. He will not use a tool that is too heavy or too cumbersome for the job.
Is there a harvest still to be had in Israel? Apparently so, for inverting Paul's phrasing in Romans, not all Israel is Israel. Whereas Paul pointed out that not all will be saved simply because they are genetically connected to Abraham, we can consider the inverse Truth. However bad the state of the nation's heart, or the state of phenomenal Church, God preserves His remnant. Not only does He preserve that remnant, but He continues to develop her tenderly and expertly at the same time as He gets rid of the chaff, as it were, which grows alongside us.
Wherever we are, then, we may consider the particulars of our circumstance and of our company aspects of the array of His tools. He will, as surely as in Isaiah's day, have his harvest. We have a better idea than that prophet did, even, of the price He has already paid for His elect. Destroy her in indiscriminate anger? Far be it from Him! That being the case, His Spirit cultivates in us the more nuanced response to fresh realizations of our depravity to which Switchfoot points.
The more we realize we aren't worthy of trust, the more we realize that our culture's assumptions are somewhere between suspect and worthless, the more Christ Himself is the only One we will trust to correct us and finish the work He has started in us.
23 Give ear and hear my voice,
Listen and hear my speech.
24 Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?
Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods?
25 When he has leveled its surface,
Does he not sow the black cummin
And scatter the cummin,
Plant the wheat in rows,
The barley in the appointed place,
And the [a]spelt in its place?
26 For He instructs him in right judgment,
His God teaches him.
27 For the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
Nor is a cartwheel rolled over the cummin;
But the black cummin is beaten out with a stick,
And the cummin with a rod.
28 Bread flour must be ground;
Therefore he does not thresh it forever,
Break it with his cartwheel,
Or crush it with his horsemen.
29 This also comes from the Lord of hosts,
Who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in [b]guidance.
In their song "On Fire," Switchfoot cleaves to Christ even in reproof, "When everything inside me looks like everything I hate, You are the hope I have for change, You are the only chance I'll take."
Isaiah in the close of what comes down to us as the prophet's 28th chapter does much the same thing. In Christian crooners, this inviting tone might be expected. In Isaiah 28, is truly intriguing. Isaiah has know motive for mass appeal. His tone in this very chapter has been hot to the point of indignant. Judgment is coming, he has been telling his countrymen. God will use even even foreigners to reprove you.
Isaiah 28:23 then gets to the "how," and the character of God is on compelling display. Isaiah's fellow wayward people of God's Book deserve His wrath, yet Isaiah says God's correction will be carefully measured. He takes his readers or hearers out into the field to consider the professionalism of an experienced farmer. The farmer will not destroy the crop in the process of harvesting it. He will not use a tool that is too heavy or too cumbersome for the job.
Is there a harvest still to be had in Israel? Apparently so, for inverting Paul's phrasing in Romans, not all Israel is Israel. Whereas Paul pointed out that not all will be saved simply because they are genetically connected to Abraham, we can consider the inverse Truth. However bad the state of the nation's heart, or the state of phenomenal Church, God preserves His remnant. Not only does He preserve that remnant, but He continues to develop her tenderly and expertly at the same time as He gets rid of the chaff, as it were, which grows alongside us.
Wherever we are, then, we may consider the particulars of our circumstance and of our company aspects of the array of His tools. He will, as surely as in Isaiah's day, have his harvest. We have a better idea than that prophet did, even, of the price He has already paid for His elect. Destroy her in indiscriminate anger? Far be it from Him! That being the case, His Spirit cultivates in us the more nuanced response to fresh realizations of our depravity to which Switchfoot points.
The more we realize we aren't worthy of trust, the more we realize that our culture's assumptions are somewhere between suspect and worthless, the more Christ Himself is the only One we will trust to correct us and finish the work He has started in us.
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