Below is my sermon from this past Sunday... May it bless you.
Matthew 13:24-30
24 He put before
them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who
sowed good seed in his field; 25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and
sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds
appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to
him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these
weeds come from?” 28He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves
said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” 29But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would
uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest;
and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind
them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’
Each of us
know the God who works, the God who is active, the God who is present. We know
that our God displays patience and kindness when we do not. As we also know
that our God will judge the unfaithful, the destructive, in an appropriate
manner. He will instruct division to be performed. And, if we remain close to
His side, our God will reveal His purposes and plans to us intimately and
provide a heavenly reward. This is known.
But how
helpful is this foundational, theological, relational knowledge of God, and
God’s nature, when the bearded darnel works alongside of us? How helpful is a
God who is present, intimately and actively, a God who ‘gets his hands dirty’ when
“the cheat,” for that is how it is known, grows alongside of us in the great
garden of life? That is the question we are going to answer together this
morning.
The basic meaning
behind this parable from Jesus is perseverance. Today I am examining the
parable of the ‘wheat and the tares.’ I will begin where the parable begins-
with the individual who sows the seeds. But while his sowing is good, something
negative is planted along side of us that hurts. We will close then with the
harvest for more is occurring in that harvest than meets the eye.
I wonder
where, and how, you have felt the bearded darnel, the tares, choke the very
life out of you? And if you do, or if you have, felt this way, what does this
passage offer you right now?
Move 1- He plants
We begin
again where the parable begins- with someone planting. It seems bizarre in our
post-modern world, where tractors and seeders work with such perfect efficiency,
but the farmer goes out that morning with a bag of seeds that need to be
planted.
While the parable does not say
directly, yet we know from other parables, that the seed is scattered
indiscriminately throughout the field- the world in our context. He takes a
handful and carefully spreads it into the soil which has been prepared. And
God, the planter, trusts that the seed will find the fertile ground needed to
grow and produce fruit.
If you want a contemporary
comparison, it is much like the VBS program we just finished. We scattered the
seed we had been given, without discrimination, to over 100 families who came
through the doors. It didn’t matter where they came from, or how ready they
were, the seed was spread faithfully.
We, like God, did not consider who
would be receptive or worthy of the seed; we just threw it and it landed, we
believe, where God intended for it to land. It was much like the avalanche of cotton
balls or shreds of paper that were thrown onto the children after they fell on
either Steve or myself.
The seeds goes out by the hand of
the planter to ground that He believes is ready to receive it; ground that He
believes will produce fruit.
Move 2- The weeds
But someone
comes along- the enemy. He comes along while everyone is asleep and sows the
bearded darnel that I began with- the weed- right next to the innocent, pure
seed God put in you in your conversion. They grow silently along the good wheat
as seedlings until the farmhands realize something is not right; something is
growing here that God did not intend when He took the bag of seeds and set out
to do His work.
The weeds
that are sown in the parable are particularly difficult to deal with- the
farmer knows this as do the farmhands. In verse 29 Jesus states that if the
weeds are pulled up now, they will harm the precious, tender wheat that is
growing to feed the community and world.
For these weeds wrap themselves
around the roots of the good seed battling for the precious nutrients, chocking
the very life out of the wheat in the daily struggle. They want to kill the
wheat so that they can live. And we know what that feels like in our lives to
be so overwhelmed with the bad seed growing beside us, in the home next to us,
or the desk beside us that it seems hard to breath.
For the
entire growing season the wheat will deal with the weeds living alongside of
them with God not removing the painful struggle of life. When I was struggling
two weeks ago with arterial fibrillation, one of my major symptoms was a
shortness of breath. All I wanted in those moments, when the air was being
taken from me, was one more good breath to stop the confusion and return me to
normal life.
But God trusts the good seeds.
After all, that is why God planted it in that position in the first place. That
is why the indiscriminate farmer spreads the seeds to the world. God being
all-powerful, all-knowing understands that while the world sleeps the enemy
will come along and work to undermine the goodness God has begun in you; to
choke the life from us, to make the ministry we are called to live into
impossible and unfruitful.
Yet in spite of the weeds, and the
intentions of the enemy, God sees that harvest is coming.
Move 3- The harvest
Finally,
there is a harvest in the text. There are two parts to the harvest.
The first
is fairly straightforward. The master sends His angels to gather up the wheat.
It is placed in the warm, dry, safe barn so that it can feed the world. The
wheat is safe and cared for in that location. While it may have struggled
initially when it grew next to the darnel, now it is safe. Some of the seed
will be held back and repopulate the world as starter seeds for a new crop of
wheat. This is straightforward.
The second
is the burning of the weeds that were placed into your life, and the life of
the wheat, to choke the very existence from you. It was placed there to ruin
your prospects of prosperity and life.
You are
offered one or the other results…
But
pivoting back, the harvest will come but we, as the wheat struggling to grow,
must hold on during the struggle to live and grow. Even when the world into
which we were sown seems to have more tares than wheat in it- hold on. Even
when the world around you is choking you to death hold on.
·
Hold on through the endless meetings and
expectations we cannot live up to in this life and discourage us.
·
Hold on when the projection to be better than
our neighbor or the person next to us at work, presses in and the air of
competition is thin and hard to breath in.
·
Hold on when the projection to live to the
financial limits and time caps push greed and pride into our laps and make us
believe we need to do this as we forsake the God who came for us.
·
Hold on when the anxiety grows in your mind as
we bury each other, and for a time, our relationships seem to stop growing.
·
When the struggles of fewer and fewer children
and young families come to worship as they opt to stay in bed because it is far
easier to catch your breath against the tares, when you just try to ‘sleep it
off’ then to press into God, hold on.
·
Hold on when the weeds tell you that you are too
small, to insignificant to feed anyone, too tiny to survive in a culture such
as this, too small to matter in a world of relativism and plurality.
God has planted
you. God knows you are being chocked to death by the weeds the enemy has sown
around you, and God will provide the harvest in time to save you. You will be put
in the warm, dry, safe barn if you can but live a little longer with the constant
threat pressing deeply into your roots trying to tell you that you do not have
the energy for this life.
Conclusion
This text
ends with Jesus taking the disciples by the theological hand and explaining
this message to them; it ends with him reminding them that they will “shine
like the sun in the kingdom of their Father”
-
again a word of relationship between the sower and the seed that can apply to
us.
Jesus would
not have given us this passage if there were not times, seasons, where we too
feel the bearded darnel’s influence reminding us that we are just a smaller
church that does not matter any longer because what we believe is so outdated
and out of vogue.
But we do matter. We matter a great
deal to God in heaven and so we must continue to grow knowing that the weeds
grow alongside of us but the Father in heaven is watching. He is waiting for
us. He will harvest us if we but hold on.
dm
