Matthew 3:12

“Whose winnowing fork (or ‘shovel') is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.”

The ancient way of threshing grain among the relatively poor was to toss it into the prevailing wind with a winnowing fork, and then with a shovel. The good grain would then fall to the ground, and would be shovelled away and taken to the barn, and the useless chaff would be blown to one side, some to be gathered up and burned, other to be blown away on the winds and lost for ever. And this is the activity that John pictures with regard to the coming Mightier One as the Great Winnower.

Thus here the whole of Israel (and the whole world) is seen as God's threshing floor. All are as it were gathered there, multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of Decision (Joel 3:13). The world is His threshing-floor. And that threshing-floor will then be thoroughly cleansed. Nothing will escape His attention. All will in the end be dealt with and that with the thoroughness of God. Those who have repented and openly admitted their sins to God, and have become fruitful, and have enjoyed the life-giving showers of the Holy Spirit, will prove to be like harvested grain. And they will be gathered into God's Barn. But those who have proved themselves to be chaff will be blown to one side, gathered up and burned in the fire that can never be quenched (Isaiah 66:24; Isaiah 1:31; Isaiah 34:10; Jeremiah 4:4; Jeremiah 17:27; Jeremiah 21:12; Ezekiel 20:47).

That Matthew saw this process as going on in the ministry of Jesus is unquestionable. We must not interpret Matthew by Luke. What Luke would write later was unknown to Matthew (and Luke also would have the Holy Spirit active throughout the life of Jesus - Luke 4:1; Luke 4:18; Luke 11:13). We must recognise therefore that Matthew is to be seen as providing his own answers. And it is inconceivable that he would show this ‘drenching with the Holy Spirit' as lying at the very root of what the Anointed One was coming to do and then not show in what followed how He would bring it about. To Matthew therefore Jesus' presence and great success demonstrated that the Spirit had come in the coming of the Kingly Rule of Heaven in Jesus (Matthew 12:28). He was here as the Spirit-filled Servant of Isaiah (Matthew 12:18). That was why men could even now pray in expectancy for the ‘good things' of the Messianic age (Matthew 7:11) which Luke describes in terms of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 11:13). And that was why his description of the ongoing future was in terms of the presence of Jesus with His people (Matthew 28:20). To Matthew, Jesus as the Anointed One among His people was the absolute proof of the presence and outworking of the Holy Spirit, as He continued His work through Him, satisfying men's thirst and welling up in men in eternal life (John 4:10).

Our problem is that by misinterpreting Luke, who in fact also makes clear the presence of the Holy Spirit from the beginning (Luke 1-2) and as continuing throughout the ministry of Jesus (Luke 4:1; Luke 4:18 and onwards, see our commentary), we overlook Matthew's vital message, that the work of Jesus as the Drencher with the Holy Spirit began immediately that He commenced His ministry. John also makes this absolutely clear (John 3:1; John 4:10; John 7:38 where the drinking had begun even though the floods would come later). What would occur later in Acts 2 was the wider outreach of this Drenching reaching out to the wider world, the inauguration of the people of God as the living evidence of God's presence in the world in the absence of the physical Jesus because of His resurrection, ascension and enthronement. It was in order that they might replace Jesus as God's physical witness to the world on earth, by being indwelt by the Holy One Himself, Who was there manifested in wind and fire. They would now be the channels of the Holy Spirit. But Pentecost was by no means the commencement of the work of the Holy Spirit, as Luke makes clear in Matthew 11:13, and as John's Gospel makes clear in Matthew 3:1; Matthew 4:10), especially when he speaks of Jesus' words about the drinking of the Holy Spirit as occurring at the time that Jesus was on earth, while in the next breath speaking of the future outpouring as following Jesus' glorification (John 7:37). This is something that Jesus also makes clear in the Upper Room after His resurrection where He breathes on His Apostles and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit, which is there the Spirit in His function of leading them into all truth (John 20:22; compare John 16:13) as He enthrones them on their ‘thrones' over His people, ‘the twelve tribes of Israel' with the power to bind and loose (John 20:21, compare Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30 in context).

So Matthew pictures this drenching with Holy Spirit and fire as going on in the ministry of Jesus, as continuing in the ministry of the Apostles, and as resulting also in the destruction of Jerusalem by ‘burning' (Matthew 22:7), (which burning did not literally fully occur in Jerusalem apart from the Temple, but the parable does not say that it was speaking specifically of Jerusalem), and in the end of all things (Matthew 13:30; Matthew 13:42; Matthew 13:50).