Weeds in the Garden

Talk on Holiness in the church and our response to the ungodly.

Life Church, 17^th Feb 2013 [FIRST SERVICE ONLY, we are celebrating Chinese New Year with the Chinese Group in the next service.]

Matthew 13:24-30:  Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.   But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.  When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “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?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.  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.’”

And Matthew 13:36-43:  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.”

He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man.  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, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age.  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.  They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

How would you define a weed?  What makes a plant a weed?  Or better yet, why are weeds bad?  Weed = “ a plant growing where it is not desired.” (Alan Titchmarsh)

Did you know that even a rose can be a weed?  If it’s growing somewhere it shouldn’t, then it’s a weed.

Weeds compete because they absorb more mineral nutrients & water in the soil around them.  Many weeds have very shallow roots & can absorb the rain water before it seeps into the soil for the desired, slower-growing plants that have deeper roots.

In this parable we’re looking at today from Matthew 13, Jesus talks about weeds in the Kingdom of God – the Church.  And He makes it very clear in His description here that weeds aren’t a good thing.  And He says that weeds will not end up with a good end.

This is just one of a group of parables in this section of Matthew.  This parable is a parable of judgment, and my guess is that when Jesus first gave it, it caused a number of eyebrows to rise.

But Jesus was never one to enjoy the status quo.  He shook things up a lot to get people’s attention and to make them consider the truth He was sharing.

It’s very important to distinguish this parable from the parable of the sower.

In that parable, anyone could be involved in the sowing of the seed, which was the Word of God.  The key to the parable was the soil.

In this parable, Jesus is the sower, the soil stands for the whole world, and the seed stands for the “sons of the kingdom,” or followers of Jesus.

Here in this parable, the main issue is not the soil as in the last parable, but in the seeds.  The seeds in this parable are people.  And the people in this parable meet two different ends.

I think there are four major lessons we can learn from this parable, all of which we can take to heart, so let’s dive in, shall we?

Four major lessons from this parable:

1.  The Saviour is active.

Jesus, the Son of Man, is the main active participant in this parable, and He has two main functions in it: He sows the seed (v. 37) and He supervises the harvest (v. 41).

First, He is active in spreading the message of the Kingdom all over the world.

Verse 38 says that the seed represents “the sons of the kingdom,” those who belong to Christ.

And I think it’s exciting that Jesus is spreading His seeds throughout the whole world, not just a continent or area, but the whole world (Revelation 7:9-10).

Friends, Jesus isn’t just sitting around in heaven waiting for everything to finally get done.  He’s active today – planting more seeds of His people all over the world.

Why?  Because the job’s not done yet.  Oh and one other thing – He does that work through you and me.

So would you like to be a part of the activity of Christ?  Get involved in helping people find Christ.

  

2.  The enemy is active.

He really is.

There are some who say that the enemy was able to get away with his sneaky sowing only because the servants of the Saviour were lazy or taking a siesta in the middle of the day.  But I disagree with that.  Jesus says that everyone was sleeping, which to me indicates that this happened at night.

But really the issue here is that the enemy is sneaky and malicious.  The fact of the matter is that the enemy is working very hard to do all he can to thwart the plans of Jesus in your life.

One of the ways he is active is what Jesus is describing in this parable – trying to sow evil into the life of the church.

He’s good at it, and you see it all the time around the Church of God.

But how can this be?  Surely the Church would recognise this kind of activity and “weed it out” before it got out of control, right?

Theoretically, yes.  But unfortunately, it is not always easy.  For two reasons:

• Grace:

We are to show the same grace we have been shown.  This means we treat people with sensitivity.  Thus we don’t view those in the church who are unsaved as “weeds” but as sinners in need of a Saviour. 

Thus we love them, point them to the cross, but we also know enough not to take their opinions seriously as directional in any way for the life of the church.  Thus it’s not a compromise to have non-believers attending church - it is what the church is for!

• Appearance:

The parable gives us an indication in the word that is used for the weeds – it is the word for not just any weed, but the weed called “bearded darnel.”  And what is a bearded darnel?  It is a weed that looks exactly like wheat, and for much of its growing cycle, it is pretty much indistinguishable from wheat.

The enemy does not sow weeds that would be easy to spot in the beginning.  This weed has the appearance of wheat until it is more fully grown.  Thus it is not always easy to tell what is going on in someone’s life. 

Note three things about appearance:

  

vAm I a weed?  If you are sitting thinking nervously, “am I a weed?” the answer is probably “no!”  We all have struggles from time to time, that does not make us evil.

vWe implement the 1 Timothy 5:21 principle of not laying hands on someone hastily – why?  Because sometimes sins and weed behaviour is hidden and it takes time to reveal itself.

vWe do not abdicate moral responsibility.  1 Corinthians 5: 1-5 depicts a situation of grievous sexual son, in which the church saw no wrong, and even boasted about its liberty. 

Note:  this is a “brother”, so he is born again, not an unsaved person who does not know better.  Also the sin had affected the whole church.  So there are still times when we have to challenge ungodly behaviour for the sake of the church.

We can struggle with this because we think the church is becoming more “worldly.”  We think of worldliness only in terms of sins we can see and identify.  But worldliness is a spiritual condition more subtle than that:

1 Corinthians 3:1-3: “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ.  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.  Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly.  For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly?”

But I think there is another reason that these dangerous seeds are allowed to grow, and that is seen in our third lesson from this parable, and that is that…

3.  Grace is active in the church.

One question we need to wrestle with is this: just who are the weeds?

·      Unbelievers

·      Hypocrites.

A major point of this parable is to give us a clue to the way that the enemy works most successfully.  It is by imitation, by counterfeit.  

How simple it would be if evil people would only look evil.  Wouldn’t that help a lot?  If hypocrites would only snarl and growl a little bit it would help so much.  But they always look so pleasant.  They always talk so sweetly.  They are such nice people, and that is why we go along with their ideas.  We cannot believe that such nice people could be so far wrong.  

Just because someone claims to be a Christian, and even acts like one at times, this does not mean that the person is a Christian.  These people are pretenders, not believers in Jesus.

But Grace is active in the church.  Why?  Because there is always the potential for a “weed” to become true “wheat”.  How come?  Because at one time or another we were all “weeds” (Romans 3:23-24).

Isaiah 53:6: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Note the inclusiveness of these verses.

So we cannot forget that there is the potential for transformation.  A person of the “wheat” category is one whose life has been changed by the transforming power of Christ and the Word of God.  They are striving to live for Christ as much as they know how.

2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

But if a person claims to be a Christian but causes others to sin, or sows seeds of sin within the congregation, or is in wilful, unrepentant sin themselves, then they are not wheat, they are weeds.

And what is the measure we need to use to evaluate if something is sin or not?  The Bible.  The Word of God.  If the Bible says it’s sin, then it’s sin, whether anybody else thinks so or not.

And when we find sin in the Body, we need to apply some spiritual “weed-killer” and deal with sin within the congregation when we know about it.  Leaving a weed to grow without doing something to stop the spread is a dangerous thing to do.

My advice to you is to examine your life for any attitudes that are not pleasing to the Lord. 

The church needs to remove weeds in a way that takes care to not uproot the wheat that’s in place.  We don’t do a wholesale “slash and burn” to get rid of the problem.

But let’s turn out attention now to the fourth lesson we can learn from this parable, and that is that…

4.  Separation will be actioned.

One thing we can understand from this parable is that this is going to be a problem until the time Jesus returns.  So why doesn’t Jesus just take care this already? 

Having “weeds” growing makes the church look messy!  But there reason some things are left is for the sake of the church!

Matthew 13: 29: “No,” he answered, “because while you are pulling up the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.”

We don’t like to think about judgment – particularly leading up to Christmas when our attention is turning towards Jesus’ birth.

A lot of people will not only refuse to think about judgment, they will refuse to consider Jesus at all, because they don’t want to believe in a God that will send people to hell.

But when someone tells me they don’t believe in that kind of God, I have to simply answer, “I hope you’re right, because you can’t afford to be wrong.”

If I’m wrong about Jesus, then no big deal – we just die and that’s it.  But if you’re wrong, then you’ll have eternity to regret it.

Because Jesus is very clear here that there will be a separation, whether we want it or not.

Jesus says that there will be those who have spent their time among His people who will not be in heaven, because they were not truly believers.  They looked like believers and acted like believers, at least for a while. 

Wrapping it up:

How do we respond?  By taking responsibility for our actions.  We do not have to be weeds!  We can be wheat. 

ü If you are not born again – give Him your life today.

ü If you are a Christian struggling with weeds in your life – remember the Christian life is all about your response to His ability to transform you.  Allow Him too.

ü If you are perfect “wheat” don’t judge harshly those around you, but set a Christ-like example “in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” (I Tim. 4:12b).