OPEN: I’m told there are only two vegetables that are “perennial” - they don’t have to be replanted to produce on their own- several growing seasons.
All other vegetables must be replanted every year.
Quiz: What are the only two vegetables that don’t have to be replanted?
(Rhubarb/ Asparagus)
Now, that’s probably a good thing for those vegetables because if it depended on me, they wouldn’t get replanted.
APPLY: There is a basic definition of the difference between garden plants and weeds:
Weeds are anything you don’t have to plant, water, or fertilize. Weeds just grow up all on their own.
But now – here in this parable about the weeds, we find that the weeds didn’t just happen. The weeds didn’t just grow up by chance amongst the good crop.
They were planted by an enemy.
In the parables found in Matthew 13, Jesus is trying tho help us understand some of the dynamics we can expect to encounter as Christians in this world.
For example:
His 1st parable talked about a farmer spreading seed on 4 different kinds of soils. I believe that part of what He wanted us to understand was that we shouldn’t get upset when people
Ø get angry with us,
Ø and reject our faith,
Ø or make fun of our commitment to Christ, etc.
… because (just like those different soils) not everybody’s heart was going to be open to our faith or our witness about Jesus.
Now, He’s telling us another parable about a farmer that sows “good seed” in the field. But - during the night - an enemy comes and maliciously sows weeds in the field.
Before we get started let’s revue what Jesus tells us about the parable…
1. The farmer is… “The Son of Man” (Jesus, vs. 37)
2. The good seed stands for… “the sons of the Kingdom” (that’s us, vs. 38)
3. The enemy is… “Satan” (vs. 39)
4. The weeds are… “the sons of the evil one” (vs. 38)
5. And the harvest is… “the end of the age” (judgment day)
Right from the start, there’s something that seems pretty obvious to me. I’m not much of a gardener but even I know – if you’ve got weeds in your garden – you pull them.
And these weeds are the tool of Satan. They are the “sons of the evil one”. Satan has sown them in this world to undermine God’s Kingdom…
So, why on earth wouldn’t God just yank them up as soon as they appear???
Well… we’ll get back to that in a minute.
But first, I want to tell you a little about the setting of Jesus’ parable. There’s something Jesus’ audience would have understood, that we wouldn’t know about in our culture. And that is the type of weeds Jesus was probably talking about.
Most scholars believe that the weeds were something known as the “Bearded Darnel”. Bearded Darnel looks so much like wheat that it’s called “False wheat”.
As it grows, you can’t hardly tell the two apart… until the ear appears.
And you wouldn’t want to make bread out of this false wheat because it contains a strong sleep-inducing, hypnotic like POISON. If you prepared bread like this for your family, you’d hurt them.
In this parable Jesus is telling us that Satan’s goal is to actively undermine the Gospel by presenting people with a substitute.
· To the untrained eye this “false wheat” (these false teacher and preachers) will look just like the real thing
· If you listened to their ideas/ teachings/ doctrines… they’d almost sound like us
· But once the full body of what they believe is known there’s a hypnotic poison about them that could drag us in/ and drag us down.
ILLUS: At the last church I served, there were a couple of families in the church that had gotten into the habit of listening to a TV preacher that came on in the wee hours of the morning. They shared a video tape of his teachings with me, and (aside from the cowboy hat and the big cigar in his mouth) his doctrines didn’t sound that far off… that is until you began reading his literature.
It seems he was teaching that Cain was the offspring of Eve and Satan! And that Cain was a black man. Thus all black people were offspring of Satan himself and were to be shunned and treated as inferior. It was a new twist on the old racial bigotry interpretation of Genesis.
Of course, this was all heresy (not to mention fairly inane), and I tried to tell these families that. But they wouldn’t listen. They’d already been pulled in by the preacher’s slick spiel.
Jesus warned us about these kinds of teachings:
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Matthew 7:15
“False Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect— if that were possible.” Mark 13:22
Peter warned us:
“… there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them— bringing swift destruction on themselves.” 2 Peter 2:1
And Paul warned the Elders at Ephesus:
“I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.” Acts 20:29-31
So, we need to come to grips with the fact that there are people - who will teach false doctrine
There are preachers, priests and rabbis that can – and do – preach things we shouldn’t believe.
Now, why would they do that?
Did they suddenly wake up one morning and say… “Gee, I want to preach heresy today?”
No… of course not.
Most of these folks are totally committed to the things they teach.
They believe that they’re right… and you’re wrong.
How did they get that way?
Well, they fell captive to Satan’s deceptions.
Now, Satan has a lot of deceptions… but the most common are found in Matthew 4. That’s the story about how the devil tried to tempt Jesus. And he used 3 basic approaches:
1. 1st Satan appealed to pride
In Matthew 4:3 we’re told that the devil told Jesus "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
Come on Jesus PROVE you are the Son of God!
2. And then Satan appealed to the desire for power
"All this I will give you,"
You don’t have to work for it, you don’t have to suffer, you don’t have to struggle. I’ll give you all the power and influence you could possibly ever want…
“IF you will bow down and worship me." Matthew 4:9
I’ll give you power… all you have to do is just fudge a little on doctrine.
3. And perhaps the most difficult temptation for a preacher to overcome is the temptation to indulge in speculation… and build doctrines on theories.
In Matthew 4:6 Satan quotes Scripture for the only time in his attempt to bring Jesus around.
“If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Satan used Scripture… but he took it’s meaning and twisted it to fit his own particular theology. He “interpreted” it to create false teachings.
Pride and power and the desire to create one’s own theology on obscure texts lays at the heart of much of false teaching and preaching
ILLUS: I recently read an article by a “scholar” in a Christian magazine. He was talking about the importance of scholarship in the church. And I thought he some good points so I read the whole article. I mean, the church does need scholarship to help us better understand many things in Scripture. But then he started going off the reservation.
He claimed that there were times when the idea of “where the Bible speaks, we speak” was not sufficient to help us understand good doctrine. He said there were times when you really needed scholars to help you know what Scripture meant.
Automatically red flags went up. Any time someone tells you that you can’t understand Scripture’s meanings on your own… watch out!
Then he illustrated his point by bringing up an obscure passage of Scripture and showing what modern scholarship had determined about it… even though the conclusion he was hinting at ran against the bulk of what other passages of Scripture taught.
That “scholar” had fallen prey to all three of Satan’s temptations:
1. Pride: In his exaltation of “scholarship” (he was a scholar… and you weren’t) he was displaying his pride. You needed men like him to chart your way through the complexities of Scripture.
2. Power: The Bible by itself was not going to help you. In his attempt to place scholars above Scripture, he betrayed his own desire for power
3. Speculation and theories: He was building his own pet theology on a “scholarly” interpretation of an obscure text.
These were the same tricks tried on Jesus in the wilderness…
But how did Jesus defend Himself?
He quoted scripture right back at Satan
Each time Satan tried to tempt Him… Jesus said: “It is written”
Good doctrine starts with what the BIBLE SAYS
Good doctrine is built upon what repeated Biblical teaching on a subject
And you’ll find that when God wants you to see something… He repeats Himself a lot
For example:
The Book of Genesis covers 2000 years or so of man’s history.
The next 4 books (The books of Law - Exodus thru Deut.) comprise a period of about 120 years
One book covers 2000 years (Genesis)
Four books cover a period of 120 (Exodus thru Deuteronomy)
Where do you think God wants His people’s attention to centered?
Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t valuable teachings in the book of Genesis… it’s just that God wanted Israel to focus the lion’s share of their attention on the books of the Law.
The same is true in the New Testament
You’ve got one book that tells the history of the early church (Acts)
But you have 4 books (the Gospels) that tell us the story of Jesus
Where do you think God wants our attention to be centered?
½ of the OLD TESTAMENT deals with prophecy about the coming of Jesus. But in the New Testament, only one book is dedicated to prophecy (Revelation)
By contrast, half of the New Testament focuses on how we as Christians should live.
Where do you think God wants our attention centered?
But, have you noticed where many TV evangelists spend their time? In prophecy, speculating about the 2nd coming of Christ.
God repeats Himself when He thinks something is really important.
But the weeds in the garden don’t think that way.
They’re not satisfied with what the Bible actually teaches.
They often love to go down side paths and indulge in speculation and private theories.
The Jehovah Witnesses aren’t satisfied with what Scripture actually says, so they’ve rewritten the thing.
The Mormons’ aren’t satisfied with the Bible, so they’ve added four of five extra books and call them “the Other Gospel of Jesus Christ” (gag).
Denominational preachers often don’t preach from Scripture, but will instead use articles from magazines or secular books for their texts.
And even those who quote Scripture may often prefer to teach their church’s doctrines rather than actually asking what the Bible says about a given topic.
And people can get caught up in following the thinking of these false teachers…
… because too often they don’t study their Bibles for themselves
… they don’t go to Sunday School or Bible Studies
They just don’t have the time to be bothered.
Don’t let yourself get caught out because you’ve failed to know your Bible.
Spend time in personal Bible Study
Spend time in Sunday School and Bible studies…
MAKE THE TIME FOR IT
Now, back to the original question:
Why doesn’t God just yank up these weeds - these false teachers, and preachers, etc.?
Well… there’s a couple of things we need to know.
1st – notice that the weeds are sown “in the world”… not in the church
In the church, WE ARE commanded to pull those weeds out
Romans 16:17 “I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.”
The church is commanded to pull up the weeds.
Preachers, Elders, teachers… they’re responsible for guarding the flock from false doctrine.
And John wrote: “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching (about Jesus), do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work.” 2 John 1:10-11
In other words: Do not allow a Mormon or Jehovah Witness or any cultic person into your home.
Weeds are not to be allowed in the church, or in our homes.
Pull them up. Yank them out. Don’t permit them to teach or preach their false doctrine anywhere near God’s people.
But out in the world, God doesn’t yank up the cultic individuals or the false teachers/ preachers. How come???
(pause) Because they’re not the enemy.
That’s right… the Jehovah Witness is not our enemy
The Mormon missionary out riding his bicycle is not our enemy
The Preachers and teachers who teach false doctrine are not our enemies.
Who is our enemy?
Well, Jesus said: “… the enemy who sows them is the devil. Matthew 13:39
And Jesus said the reason God didn’t want the weeds pulled up was because
“… while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.” Matthew 13:29
Now, here’s where you’ve got to stay with me…
REAL physical Weeds never change.
They were born weeds… they’ll die weeds… they will NEVER be wheat!
But people who’ve been “sons of the evil one” aren’t locked in.
They may be weeds right now… but they don’t have to stay that way.
The power of God is capable of transforming them into the “good seed” (sons of righteousness)
2 Peter 3:9 tells us “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
God wants even the weeds to change.
That’s why, II Tim. 2:23-26 tells us
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.
Those who oppose him (the weeds) he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”
The weeds aren’t the enemy.
The weeds have been taken captive by Satan’s lies and deceptions.
And God wants to grant them repentance that will lead to truth.
But, now… how are they going to hear that truth????
That’s right!
By us gently instructing them.
By us knowing our Bible well enough to expose their falsehood and leading them to know God’s truth.
In other words… don’t be afraid of them.
Don’t welcome them into your house, or into the church bldg to teach their falsehood, and don’t argue or quarrel with them…
But if you get the chance, say “Aw honey, you don’t realize what you’re saying.”
AND the more you know about your bible, the more prepared you will be to be able to place the seed of doubt into their hearts about the falsehood Satan has deceived them into believing.
ILLUS: For my closing illustration, I want to share something with you of which I feel ashamed. But I’m convinced that even a bad example is a good example if it helps us to understand what we can do for God.
Last week I was sitting at Burger King working on this sermon when a young Asian woman started talking to a Hispanic couple in a booth a few feet from me. She had a colorful box, and was showing them a paper and asking them questions. Eventually, that couple shook their heads and she left their table and came over to me.
She introduced herself, showing a badge that indicated she belonged to the cultic group called the Unification Church.
Now, I’m not a real quick thinker.
I should have asked her if I could buy her a coke or a sandwich and I should have asked her to sit down and explained the Gospel of Jesus to her…
I should have invited her to church or to study the Bible with me….
But I didn’t, I just told her I wasn’t interested.
I’m ashamed now… because I might have made a difference.
I mean, the poor girl was selling knick knacks for one the foremost quacks in the religious world. How bright could she have been???
It’s not like she could have reached out her talons and penetrated my heart and perverted my faith in just a few moments.
I could have at least tried… but I didn’t. I just turned her away.
Would she have listened to me??? I don’t know. But it would have been worth the effort. And I pray that I don’t overlook that possibility ever again.
