“Weeds In The Wheat, What To Do?”
Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
7-23-2023
In the name of Jesus, dear friends in Christ. As you may recall, in last week’s Gospel Jesus taught a faith lesson by using a farm related parable. It was about the spiritual soil conditions where God’s Word might be sown in mankind’s heart. It’s intriguing that immediately following that parable, St. Matthew records for us another agricultural parable of Jesus. So what’s up? Was Jesus being redundant? No, these two parables are very different even though they sound similar. As we dig deeper into our text for today, we’ll see that Jesus was teaching us how things play out for believers in a world where we are surrounded by evil. But we can take comfort in knowing that God is still in control and in the end He will sort everything out for our good and to His glory.
Okay, so here we have a farmer again who plants wheat in his field. During the night, an enemy stealthily comes along and maliciously inter-seeds the good crop with weed seed called darnel. Now to our modern ears that may sound crazy. Who’d do something so ridiculous?? But to the people 2,000 years ago it wasn’t unheard of. It was a devious way to get back at someone you hated. Actually, this act of meanness was quite ingenious because as this weed sprouts and grows it looks just like wheat. You can’t tell the difference until the plant is mature. But the evil person who did this wasn’t just hoping to diminish the farmer’s yield. You see, this darnel weed produces a seed which is toxic. And so, if that weed seed got harvested and mixed in with the wheat it could be deadly.
Keep in mind, they didn’t have the herbicides we have nowadays to prevent such a problem. And so, as the darnel grew undetected, side by side with the wheat, the roots of each plant became interwoven. As Jesus says, if you pull up the weed it will surely damage some of the wheat beside it. Therefore, the farmer instructs his workers to leave it be until the harvest when the darnel can safely identified, separated, and destroyed.
In His explanation of the parable Jesus gives us the key to understanding it. He is the farmer who sows the good seed and the field is the world. The good seed are the true believers in Jesus Christ. The devil is the enemy who sneaks in and sows his weed seeds which are the unbelievers who do the devil’s bidding. The darnel weed is a perfect picture here precisely because it looks exactly like the wheat. The same is true of humans. Stand two people side by side and you can’t tell by looking at them who’s a believer and who isn’t. Another interesting fact is that the darnel weed is a degenerated form of wheat. And isn’t that true of everything the devil does? He takes the good things which God created and perverts them into something evil. They look very similar to the good things of God, but in reality, they are degenerated imitations. The devil’s intention is not just to hurt the Lord by causing a diminished harvest, but he’s hoping to kill souls with this poisonous seed. That’s what the evil he sows does.
One of the ways he spreads his poisonous seed is to tamper with God’s pure Word. A while ago I received a survey from CPH which is our Synod’s publishing house. Granted, I have a twisted sense of humor but I got a good chuckle out of something on it that certainly was unintentional. The survey was asking about the various materials we use such as Bible Studies, Confirmation materials, and Sunday School lessons. The first question asked you to check either the “Use” or “Don’t use” box. So far so good, but right near the top of the list of materials was the Bible! The next question followed up on that by asking whether these materials we use were “Published by CPH”, “Other publisher”, or “We write our own.” Guess what was on that list also? Yep, the Bible. I was so tempted to send the survey back and check the boxes indicating that #1- we don’t use the Bible and #2- we prefer to write our own. I suspect I would have gotten an interesting phone call for that little prank, so I didn’t.
Now while we may laugh at that, there is an unfortunate truth to it. Sadly, there are some churches where the Word of God is set aside. You can hear nice sermons about how to live a more productive, prosperous life, but God’s Word is missing or barely mentioned. Equally as deceptive is when God’s Word is twisted and perverted in order to support a false teaching. Like that darnel weed it looks and sounds like the real McCoy, but in reality, it’s mankind writing their own Bible. It’s nothing less than the devil maliciously sowing his poisonous seed to mislead and harm people.
But there’s a personal application here too. Do you set God’s Word aside and check the “Don’t use” box? That’s what you’re doing if your only exposure to the Bible is once a week in worship. Don’t misunderstand. This is a good practice, but it shouldn’t be the only time you’re in God’s Word. They say that nature abhors a vacuum. In other words, a void will always be filled by something. Likewise, spiritually. Satan will gladly fill the void in your heart and mind with his perverted version of what God says.
The poisonous seed of Satan’s perverted version of God’s Word leads to all kinds of dangerous teachings and beliefs. One of the most pernicious is the idea that other religions are equally as valid as Christianity in terms of our salvation. In some recent polls of Christians, anywhere from 57-70% of them said that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved. It begs the question: Why waste our money sending out missionaries if there are many ways to get to heaven? The devil loves for people to believe that. His deceptive seed looks and sounds so loving, but actually it is dangerous and deadly for people’s souls. Jesus makes it very clear that He alone is the way of salvation. All other ways lead to the fiery destruction of hell. So we need to be aware and on guard against this poisonous seed which Satan sows.
Alright, so that explains where evil people come from and how they get “planted” around us. But what are we to do about it? Looking to the parable we’d have to say, “Nothing.” When the workers go to the Owner and ask if they should start ripping out the weeds, He says, “No. Just wait until the harvest.” Why? Because in their zeal to eradicate the weeds, the workers might destroy some of the good crop. That’s a risk the owner doesn’t want to take. This can be applied to the Church. Over the centuries there have been misguided zealots who have decided they’d do the weeding for the Lord. Using force and violence they sought to eradicate all those evil weeds or at least the folks they perceived to be evil. In the process, more harm than good was done to the harvest of souls. Christ never calls us to spread the Gospel and fight evil with violence.
Let me hasten to add though, that Jesus is not saying to forget about Church Discipline. Some folks believe that since we can’t see into another person’s heart that we have no right to judge their faith. To a certain extent that’s true. But in this parable and others, Jesus makes it clear that we are supposed to judge the visible fruit of a so-called believer’s faith. So when we see a fellow Believer displaying poisonous, sinful actions or teaching false doctrine, we have a responsibility to identify it. We also have an obligation to warn and correct them through Church Discipline.
But wait a minute. Let’s accept the fact that we would mess things up if we were assigned the duty of sorting out the wheat from the weeds, that is, the true believers from unbelievers. Well, God knows everything and can see what’s in a person’s heart so why doesn’t He do the eradicating? You know, a zap of lightening here and a zap there to wipe out the evil creeps around us. The reason God doesn’t do that is NOT because He’s a bad shot. {“Oops! I hit Paul when I was aiming for Steve!”} No, actually it would cause more harm than good in several ways. Think about it. If God operated this way, then people would obey His laws alright, but not out of loving obedience. Rather, simply out of fear. Would that be a true, sincere faith? No, it would be weeds simply acting like wheat.
But more importantly, God’s restraint in not wiping out evil people prior to Judgment Day is due to His grace. This is where we have to depart from the parable for just a second. In our world, it’s impossible for a weed to be transformed into wheat. Not so in the spiritual realm. God has the divine power to convert a poisonous, evil heart into a productive, valuable soul. Through the sowing of the precious seed of His Word into human hearts He can change the evil into good. While a person is living, there is still time for the Holy Spirit to work in their heart. There is still time for them to repent and believe in Christ as their Savior. There is still time for the cleansing forgiveness of Jesus to save them from the fires of hell. That’s what the patience of God can accomplish.
So may God continue to protect us from the poisonous seed which the devil sows in and around us. May He also give us patience with people who are currently trapped in Satan’s evil grip, praying that the Holy Spirit might reach them with the Gospel. And may our hearts look forward with joy to the glorious harvest on the Last Day when Christ will gather us safely home to Himself in heaven. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!