This is not the first time I have posted on this blog concerning the proper ground on which to build the church. (For example, see: “Getting New Life Into a Polluted Woman.”)
The Stronghold of David was built on the Threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, 2 Samuel 24:16-25: “When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, ‘Enough! Withdraw your hand.’ The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned; I, the shepherdhave done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.’
On that day Gad went to David and said to him, ‘Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.’ So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground. Araunah said, ‘Why has my lord the king come to his servant?’ ‘To buy your threshing floor,’ David answered, ‘so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.’
Araunah said to David, ‘Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. Your Majesty, Araunahgives all this to the king.’ Araunah also said to him, ‘May the Lord your God accept you.’
But the king replied to Araunah, ‘No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.’
So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekelsof silver for them. David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.”
See also 1 Chronicles 21:14-30, and:
2 Chronicles 3:1 – “Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.”
The threshing floor of the Old Testament is a shadow or type of the New Testament threshing floor, perhaps pictured best in 1st Corinthians 14, but also pictured in Ephesians 4:14:16 – “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
A threshing floor is a place where the wheat is separated from the chaff. The way it works is, the farmers or laborers bring the wheat together with the chaff to the threshing floor where it is thrown up in the air, and as the heavier grain falls back on the floor the lighter chaff is blown away by the wind. This is what Christ-centered conversation of the saints accomplishes when we come together as God’s church. The key phrase here is “Christ-centered conversation,” as distinct from man-centered or pulpit-centered lectures aimed at the saints.
It is the Christ-centered conversation of the saints that results in them being built up together as a body, into the Head. A lecture is not a conversation. God builds His house on a conversational threshing floor, not in a lecture hall.
There’s been a problem in what’s passing for leadership, whether for a pastor or any other “fivefold” person. They can’t take up an offering for a conversation. In short, the present system is sorely compromised by the agenda of religious merchants, whatever they might be calling themselves.
The result is that the saints continue to be choked to death on “leadership” chaff!
Love!
- By Jay Ferris, originally written August 2012.
Loving Like God 
Insightful about the threshing floor. On the original, a comment hoped for the Holy Spirit to blow through the church again, bringing His fire to that chaff. There’s a phenomenon farmers have to worry about in grain bin operations – that of the air being so filled with dust (chaff) it can explode with deadly force. Could be the reason so many of men’s churches fear tongues in the Midwest. ;^) https://youtu.be/0k3fsPgRhJ0
That’s interesting, about chaff being so explosive! :-o