Let Both Grow Together Until the Harvest

Please turn in your Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

You can find the text printed in your bulletin as well if you'd like to follow along there.

If you were not with us last Lord's Day, we just began a new month-long series on kingdom parables found in Matthew 13.

We're looking at what how God's kingdom grows, what it looks like.

And as we read these texts these weeks, we're going to see that most of us are in for a lot of surprises.

It's not necessarily how we would expect.

So reading God's holy word, he, being Jesus, put another parable before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.

And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have weeds?

He said to them, An enemy has done this.

So the servant said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them?

But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds ye root up the wheat along with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

Then he left the crowds and went into the house, and his disciples came to him, saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.

He answered, The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom, the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age.

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

He who has ears, let him hear.

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible and inerrant word that we sit under this morning.

Before I pray, just notice what Jesus said in the explanation.

He explained this parable in the house to the disciples.

Well, we're in the house.

Consider yourself blessed to be in the family of God.

Consider yourself blessed to be in the house of God where the teachings of Jesus are explained.

And much of the world doesn't understand.

Let's pray.

So, Father, we are in the house.

We are in your house.

You said your house is a house of prayer.

And so we're praying.

And we're asking.

Show us our own hearts.

Show us the truth about ourselves.

Show us the truth about your grace.

And teach us, Lord Jesus, as only you can.

We pray in your own precious name.

Amen.

These kingdom parables.

We talked last week why parables, why Jesus spoke in parables.

If you weren't with us last week, let me encourage you to go back and listen to that message on our website.

This morning we're going to look at three facts.

There are two sowers, not one.

There is a harvest, and there is a work to do now.

Let's take them in that order.

There are two sowers.

Again, last week we noted in the parable of the sower that the sower is Jesus, but now, indirectly, Jesus sows his seed through his people, through his preachers and teachers of those who share the good news.

He works indirectly through people like me right now what I'm doing.

And through many others who declare God's word and God's truth with the empowering of his spirit.

So last week we looked at that sower, Jesus.

But Jesus is not the only sower.

Who's the other sower?

What did he say?

The devil.

Satan is a sower as well.

God is working right now through the preaching of his word, the sowing of gospel seed, to the working of the Spirit and good soil, as we saw last week.

Good soil is bearing fruit.

30, 60, and hundredfold fruit in many cases.

May that be true of me.

May that be true of you.

That we are bearing gospel fruit.

What did Paul say in Colossians 1 6?

All over the world this gospel is growing and bearing fruit.

Just as it has been doing among you since the day that you heard of the grace of God and all of its truth.

What an amazing, precious promise.

Colossians 1 6.

And it's it just fits in beautifully with what God's doing in the sowing of his seed.

But there is much seed that's falling in other soils.

Again, we saw last week.

Of the four soils, there's only one soil.

There's only one soil that really leads to life.

There are a lot of people that sit in church that never really receive the seed of the gospel.

Just a very quick review from last week.

There are some people that hear the seed, who hear the gospel and respond immediately with joy, and they think this is great, but they fall away.

They never really follow Jesus.

They never really follow Jesus.

And then there's others that think that they receive Jesus, but then when the deceitfulness of riches and the pressures of this world come, they don't follow Jesus.

They just kind of fall away.

And probably wonder what happened.

And then the first soil that we looked at is nothing really even happens.

The seed falls on the path, and the path is trampled by many feet, and the seed doesn't take root at all, and that doesn't go anywhere.

God give me assurance in my own life that there's good soil in my heart.

Did you ever hear that question?

I heard it back in the 70s.

Haven't thought about it in a long time.

But if you were, is there enough evidence in your Christian life to convict you of being a Christian?

Not a bad question.

Is there enough evidence in your Christian life to convict you?

If you were tried for your Christian faith, the good soil is the heart that's receiving God's word and being transformed by it.

Friend, please be greatly alarmed if you can sit here week after week after week and not have your heart touched by the gospel.

That is something that ought to be bring fear to your heart.

If you could just sit here and hear, and it just kind of goes on in one ear and out the other ear, and there's no evidence that God is doing a deeper work in your heart.

That's not good.

That's not good for me.

If that's my condition, then that's not good for you.

The truth is, is there are going to be a lot of unsaved preachers in hell.

There really are.

Just because you stand behind a pulpit and preach it doesn't mean that you believe it.

Satan is sowing his wheat.

The English translation is not so clear, but I'm going to spell it out for you.

Because what the Greek says, he sows his weeds right in the middle of the wheat.

Not on the periphery.

Now, I'm going to spare you a lot of time.

The commentators and the scholars debate this.

Jesus does say the field is the world, but what does that really mean?

It's my belief that it includes the church.

It's not just everybody out there.

I think it's pretty clear from his explanation that that includes in here as well.

Every time God's word is being sown, God's word is being preached or taught or shared, there's another sower.

And he's there to snatch the seed so that it just doesn't take root.

And he's there to snatch the seed so it doesn't really lead to a transformed life.

He's there.

There's two sowers, not just one.

And what did Jesus say?

Because the servants in the field see the weed starting to grow along with the wheat.

And they say, Master, do you want us to go and weed the field right now?

Let's pull up all those weeds.

He says, No, no.

Don't.

We're going to let the weeds grow along with the wheat.

For a while.

For a while.

We're going to let that grow.

Everybody, all the scholars are pretty much in agreement that the weeds are probably this darn, a poisonous plant that's related to wheat and virtually indistinguishable from the wheat until the ears form.

To sow this darnal among the wheat as an act of revenge was punishable in Roman law.

Back then, people did that to get back at their neighbors.

Some of them did.

So Rome puts this legislation in that that's illegal.

You can't do that.

A light infestation of Darnell could be tackled by careful weeding, but mistakes would easily be made.

In the case of a heavy infestation, the stronger roots of the weeds would get tangled up with the roots of the wheat.

Jesus knew that.

His hearers knew that.

Very common knowledge in their day.

But what did Jesus say?

An enemy has done this.

God doesn't do this.

An enemy does this.

And so he explained this parable to his disciples.

Yes, the field is the world, but the world is in the church.

Let me put it like that.

The world is in the church.

The good soil, the sons of the kingdom.

The weeds are the sons of the evil one.

And yes, there is a harvest that we'll look at in a moment or two, which is the end of the age.

The enemy has his own people who sometimes are difficult to distinguish from God's people.

This is one of the main points of this parable.

Of course they will be in the church.

Yet they're not true Christians.

The parable of the sower is that even the servants can't tell them apart for a while.

And yet the gospels tell us, and the word of God tells us, in so many places that we should not be surprised by this.

1 John chapter 2, 19.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

These people, these weeds, if we could say, went out from us.

John says there were people in the church, our church.

John's saying they were in my church.

They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they are all not of us.

The enemy loves to sow weeds right in the middle of the wheat.

Much of Satan's work occurs in the church.

And sometimes it is quite obvious.

Does your heart break like mine every time you read in the paper of another clergy abuse story?

Is there no end to this?

Again, just this week, we read about another prominent Washington bishop.

Used to be in Pittsburgh.

And the damage that these, the damage that these people are doing, the damage that they've done in the church, sometimes it's sometimes it comes to light, and it's very clear, and it's very obvious that the enemy has been sowing his seed right there.

But friends, sometimes it's not so obvious.

It doesn't have to be a major scandal like that.

Sometimes it just kind of goes quiet.

It just kind of goes underground almost.

It's just like it's not that you don't have to be an abuser to be a weed.

See, we fit the category of a weed if we're not trusting in Jesus Christ alone for our salvation.

Outside, we can look very good.

We can be morally very active and trying to live a good life and trying to be a good neighbor.

Do you know that those are the weeds also?

It can go from one extreme to the other.

God wants you and me to look to no one other than Jesus Christ as our salvation.

He wants us to receive the good seed that he plants.

And when we receive this seed, our hearts change.

Our lives change.

We look more like Jesus and less like our old selves.

We're being transformed by his gospel.

That's the point.

Somebody said, a little ditty, wherever God erects a house of prayer, the devil builds a chapel there.

And twill be found upon investigation, the latter has the larger congregation.

I think there's probably some truth to that.

Unfortunately, we are too far off and reminded of this.

But remember, God did not do this evil, his enemy did.

So every time we open the word of God, what did I just do before I preached?

Pray.

Every time you open the word of God, if you're at home by yourself, ask the Holy Spirit to give you understanding.

Ask God to open your heart and your mind so that you receive the seed.

I'm serious.

That'll make a difference in your life.

The weeds, this darnal, the damage it does.

It's not until the plants get older that it's easier to tell them apart.

Jesus was a realist.

He knew that the church would never be perfect.

Are you looking for the perfect church?

You've heard this saying.

Look at the people that are hypocrites.

That's an easy one, right?

You've heard the saying, you know, if you're looking for the perfect church, it's no longer going to be perfect when you show up.

That's true.

None of us are perfect.

We all have problems.

We're all sinners.

Saved by grace.

Stop looking for the perfect church if you are.

Jesus got it.

He understood.

But there's a second point.

There is a harvest.

The day will come when the weeds will be separated from the wheat.

He told the servants, when the servants said, Do you want us to go and gather them and pull them out?

He said, No.

Let them grow until the harvest.

And at that time I will tell the reapers to gather the weeds first.

Trust me, I'm fully aware that in our day and age, fewer and fewer professing Christians believe in judgment.

It's scary.

Fewer and fewer professing believers believe that there will be a day of judgment.

There are many churches today that will never ever talk about this because they just don't believe it.

These are sober words.

These are not my words.

These are Jesus' words.

Verse 40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age.

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

He who has ears let him hear.

He's talking to us.

If you've got ears, listen.

Listen up.

There is a day of judgment that's coming.

That's not just fantasy.

This should guard us against falling asleep.

This should guard us against impatience of trying to eradicate all evil in the world as though we can.

We can't.

We can struggle with the waiting, can't we?

God, why don't you do something about the evil?

God, why don't you do something about the evil in the world?

God, why don't you do something about the evil in the church?

Have you ever wrestled with that?

A lot of us have.

Sometimes it seems like God just moves very slowly.

And you know what we have to do.

We have to submit to God because God does know best.

But here's the point God will make all things right in the end.

And we have to live believing that.

And at that day of judgment, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and there will be misery.

That will be a fearful day.

Jesus said, wait, yet also pray.

Do you know whenever the Bible uses this very many people today would say harsh language, I would say it's very vivid language.

Whenever Jesus tries to describe heaven, or for that matter, tries to describe hell, heaven or hell, because of our finiteness, we can only understand and comprehend so much.

So Jesus uses symbols that we can relate to.

He uses symbols that we can understand.

But hear this the reality always exceeds the symbol.

You see what I mean by that?

The reality always exceeds the symbol.

Heaven will be even more beautiful.

Heaven will be even more glorious than we can imagine.

Even when we read in Revelation of the streets paved with gold and all these things, it will be even better.

But likewise, hell will be far worse than even the language that the scriptures give us.

If this doesn't get you to pray for the lost, if this doesn't get you to pray for those who do not believe, I don't know what will.

Because there's a harvest, because there's a day of judgment, we ought to be praying earnestly.

Now we ought to be praying.

The heavens rejoice, the angels rejoice every time a sinner comes to Jesus.

And this church rejoices.

God has given us the blessing of doing a lot of rejoicing in this church over the years because we've seen a lot of people come to Jesus.

We need to keep praying.

We need to keep witnessing.

We need to keep hearing the sharing the good news.

But we need to wait and be patient.

Which brings me to the last point, which really ties in a bit with this one.

There is a work to do now.

In light of these truths, that Jesus will perfect his church one day, that Jesus will bring complete justice one day.

First application is this watch out for your righteousness fatigue.

What do I mean by that?

It's easy to get so distracted by the evil in this world.

It's easy to get so discouraged by the evil in this world.

And by the way, it's got to be harder for us than any generation, maybe.

Social media?

It's just, we're just bombarded with this.

You can get it 24-7.

You can turn on your news, you can go to your Facebook and get into all these political discussions, and it can just bring you down, right?

Stop it.

Use your time better.

Don't just get sucked into this and like, oh, you know, slump shoulders, there's nothing we can do.

This is just depressing.

Don't do that.

You ask God to give you the grace to do something more effective.

You ask God to give you the grace to get into battle in a new way to pray.

The first thing we ought to be doing is praying.

We ought to be praying for these people.

We ought to be coming alongside and sharing the good news as God gives us opportunity.

Don't let righteousness fatigue set in.

So that you become this Christian that just slumps your shoulder.

Ain't it awful?

Ain't it awful?

Well, it is awful.

But because it's awful, he wants us to do something about it more than just complain.

He wants us to get on our knees.

He wants us to tell people the good news.

There's something we can do now.

There's a work to do now.

He doesn't want you to drop out of church.

I can't handle this.

This is just too much.

People do that.

Trust me, I'm a pastor, I know.

He doesn't want you to drop out.

He doesn't want you to give up on the very things that Jesus commands us to be doing.

Which would be, yes, praying for the lost.

One of the passages that means a lot to me is a sermon.

One of my first sermons I preached.

Luke chapter 13.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

There were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

And he answered them, Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?

Listen to his answer.

No, I tell you.

But unless you repent, you will also likewise perish.

Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?

No, I tell you.

But unless you repent, you also will likewise perish.

Jesus did not feel compelled that he had to explain.

Jesus did not say, Oh, let me give you this long philosophical theological treatise why all this happened.

He's quite to the point.

No, they didn't suffer these fates because they were worse sinners than you.

But I tell you, unless you deal with your sin, unless you run to Jesus, you likewise will perish.

But that's not done.

He's not done.

And then he told this parable a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it, and he found none.

And he said to the vine dresser, look, for three years now I've been coming seeking fruit on this fig tree.

I don't find any fruit.

Cut it down.

Listen to this.

Sir, leave it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure.

Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good.

But if not, you can cut it down.

Kind of an interesting passage, isn't it?

But here's the main point.

We all ought to be pleading and working to do everything we can to get the good seed in the soil.

So that the soil is good, that the soil bears fruit, that people come alive in Christ.

Don't just curse the darkness.

Follow the light.

What else can we be doing?

Engaging in worship in spirit and in truth, keeping our eyes more focused on the glory and the grace of our God than what's wrong.

Keep sowing God's seed.

Keep preaching the gospel to yourself and to other people.

Focus more on the good news than the bad news.

That's how we're productive.

That's how we fertilize around that seed so that it actually grows.

One commentator put it like this: if the enemy cannot strike the root, he will smash the fruit.

If he cannot hinder faith, he will corrupt love.

I think there's something to that.

If you're good soil, if you've got the gospel in you, he can't take that away from you.

But boy, he can mess with your days.

He can mess with your life.

He can get you all down in the dumps, like we've been saying.

He can get you distracted, he can get you discouraged so that the real fruit of love just gets lost in all this.

We are supposed to love our enemies too.

That's quite clear.

Engaging in worship in spirit and in truth.

Be careful.

Watch out for your attitude.

I need to watch out for my attitude.

Wait, work.

Jesus is working.

Jesus has worked.

I'm going to say this, two things in closing.

There was a minister that wrote this article, William Willeman.

He talks about how why people give up in the church.

He said, I would wager the two predominant reasons I've heard people give up or not being inactive in church are number one, people in the church seem just as lousy as everybody else.

They assume that they're hypocrites.

Number two, with so much evil and suffering in the world, belief in good and loving God seems silly.

The implication of these charges is that if we could clean up our act, just think of all the wonderfully morally sensitive people that would get into the church.

If only God could clean up God's act.

He just talks about the parable.

Also, what happened?

The servant said to the master, Did you not sow good seed?

The farmer says, An enemy must have done this.

Enemy, my eye.

You watch this farmer at work, and the last field he planted, there were a lot of weeds and birds and rocks.

You get that kind of result when you start slinging seed in every direction.

This farmer doesn't need enemies sneaking around at night to ruin his harvest.

Master, do you want us to go out and try to pull these weeds now?

No.

It's a surprising story, and it's particularly surprising to hear a story like this from the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew's not a gospel of permissiveness, it's a gospel of judgment.

His gospel is full of stories about judgment, about the separation of good trees from those that don't produce fruit.

All right.

The good and the bad.

It was Matthew who told the story about fishermen who made it who have a great dragnet.

Pull them in, as many as you can.

Master, do you want us to make an invitation list on the basis of the New York Social Register?

No.

Just send an invitation to everybody who's listed in the Manhattan telephone book.

You got that?

Spread the good seed to everybody.

We don't know who God's people are.

Spread the good seed.

So I close, I say this.

If you're tired of waiting, if it feels like the waiting is too long for God to make everything right, if it feels like the waiting is too long and evil is winning, if it feels like we're just kind of slumping off, falling asleep, N.

T.

Wright put it like this.

Remind yourself that God has already worked and God is working powerfully.

Look back to Calvary and Easter and know that God did indeed act suddenly and dramatically at that moment.

When today we longed for God to act, to put the world in right, we must remind ourselves that he has already done so and that we are now awaiting the full outworking of his gospel.

We wait with patience, like people in a dark room wondering if anyone will ever come in with a lighted candle.

No, that's not how we wait.

But we wait like people in the early morning who know that the sun has arisen and it's still rising.

And the more it rises, the more we'll see.

Justice and righteousness cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.

Oh, please pray with me.

Father, please give us grace this morning to wait well, to work well.

Oh, Father, may we be seed planters, every one of us.

May your gospel continue to grow within us.

30, 60, 100fold return.

May we see many more people in the city of Alexandria in Washington, D.C.

come through these doors and find life in Jesus Christ.

Father, thank you that you did act decisively and dynamically at the cross in the resurrection.

Forgive us when we get impatient.

Give us grace to wait, and Father, we know that at the end you will make everything right.

As only you can.

We pray this prayer in the name of your Son Jesus.

Amen.