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Morning Message Text: Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
The Parable of the Weeds
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.
25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.
26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.
30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ ”
The Parable of the Weeds Explained
36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man.
38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one,
39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age.
41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.
42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Morning Message:
I think that all Christians struggle to some degree with the world that we inhabit. We struggle with the evil that at times seems to be overwhelming and all around us. Why does God allow evil to exist? We hear and see things that are unmistakably anti-Christian, so much so that it goes against everything that we know is right and in our human heats and minds we must wonder why God puts up with such things. I will be the first to confess that when I see and hear the way people talk and act in this nation there is a part of me that burns inside and I ask why. Just one of the things that I regularly must confess and ask forgiveness for. Let me explain myself a little. God made me a black and white thinking person. Before I became a Christian I saw very little gray areas in life. Things were right or wrong, black or white, good or evil. God is constantly changing me and now, because of his grace, he has made it possible for me to show grace and mercy. But I am still imperfect, I am still prone to be rigged especially when it comes to good and evil.
I realize that at times I question God as to why he allows this world to exist as it does when he could change things in the blink of an eye. Then I am reminded of Job. Job had accepted great good from God. I have received wonderful good from God. Can’t we all say that? Job had ten children and owned herds of thousands of sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys. He was the greatest man of his day. Job showed his gratitude to God by living a righteous life in every regard. But when God allowed Satan to remove all of Job’s many blessings, he was faced with a choice: Bless God despite his difficulties, or curse God because of them. Job’s wife was no help at all. She said, “Curse God and die.” Do you remember what Job said to his wife? “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” We would never curse God, but do we accept or curse the things that God allows to affect our lives?
We are not good at waiting. I don’t want to speak for all of us, but I know that waiting is not my strong point. Psalm 37: 7-8 says this: “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Cease from anger and forsake wrath; do not fret—it only causes harm.”
This is from my devotional: Television news often features segments at the nation’s largest airports—usually based around flight delays or cancellations. When the reporters interview travelers, they are often impatient or disgruntled. No one likes their plans to be delayed, much less canceled. Delays happen all the time in our lives. We do our best to manage them with a measure of grace. What is harder is when we find ourselves in situations where we feel we have been wronged in some way and we ask God to intervene on our behalf. That was the motivation behind David writing Psalm 37, the contrast between the righteous who suffer at the hands of the wicked and the wicked themselves.
David’s counsel to the righteous is not just to wait for the Lord to act but to wait patiently. If we are waiting patiently, we will not be angry or anxious. Instead, we will wait actively in prayer and in pursuit of acts of righteousness. There is a quote here by Ronald Dunn: “Faith is not idle; it works while it waits.” You have probably heard this from me at least a couple of times. Faith is not passive, it is active. We are waiting for the Lord to return; we are at times waiting for God to act and we should let judgment to the Lord, but that doesn’t mean that we do nothing while we wait.
The parable of the weeds is straight forward. It answers two questions. How can good and evil coexist during this age? What should we do about it? Now we should all understand that we are not to judge others, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t identify good from evil. We know that there is evil all around us and today, more than ever, we see evil manifested in our society, and we see the results many times of evil going unchecked. We must wait for the Lord to judge, but that doesn’t mean that we should be passive and not stand in opposition to the evil we see. We may have to live in this sinful world, but we are called to stand up for what we believe and what is holy and right. Satan is having his day in this world, but he has already been sentenced for eternity along with every evil aspect of this world.
Here are the facts. This is where my black and white nature takes over. There are two planters, just two, God and the devil. There are two plants, the good seed and the weeds. Let’s state that another way. There is the saved and the unsaved. There is nothing in between, you will be one or the other. There are two plans. A plan for good, a plan for salvation and eternity with God, and a plan to destroy everything that is good, to drag as many as possible into the lake of fire for eternity. And there are two prospects. Eternity with Jesus in heaven and torture for eternity with Satan.
Now it is important for us as followers of Jesus to understand who we are in this parable. We are the servants tending to the fields that God has planted here on earth. As servants we have an earthly idea of how to handle what we see as evil. Through the centuries Christians have at times mistakenly thought that standing against evil meant that we should judge it and try to eradicate it ourselves, but the owner, God, knows that we are not capable of this without disrupting what is good. Only God knows the true heart of every human being, and only He has the power to remove evil. We should understand the nature of our God, He is love, and He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to salvation and turn to Jesus. I find it encouraging to know that God loves His creation so much, He loves every person ever born so much that He will wait until the very end to judge. Where does that leave us? We are to actively wait for the harvest.
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
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