For those of you who weren’t here last week you missed a great presentation from our missionaries Randy and Patti Cunningham on their work down in Haiti and the Caribbean. If you weren’t here I highly encourage you to get a tape of last weeks service and listen to it. God has done amazing things through their ministry. I don’t know if you happened to catch the new name of their ministry – Kingdom Builders International. They view their mission work as building the kingdom of God in Haiti and the Caribbean. They are building God’s kingdom as they help the sick to get well through prayer and distributing basic medication, as they feed the hungry, and most importantly as they share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the people there.
Their work fits right in to what we have been focusing on over the last few weeks with Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. God’s kingdom, his realm, his perfect world began with Jesus. Jesus came first proclaiming the Good News of God’s kingdom, that it was near, it was present in Jesus. Then he demonstrated the good news as he reclaimed people from evil, through healing, casting out demons, and representing God here on earth. And then Jesus became the Good News when he died on a cross and rose from the dead so that our sins can be forgiven and we can live in a right relationship with God in his kingdom. Through Jesus, God is in the process of reclaiming those who were lost, restoring lives that are broken, and making people whole. Even though we cannot always see it, God is even now transforming the world, making it into his perfect kingdom, by changing people, one at a time.
But it doesn’t end there, God then works through us, as we serve him, to build his kingdom on earth. I realize we are not accustomed to living in a kingdom, it can be a stumbling block for us living in a democracy such as we are here in the U.S. In a democracy, who is supposedly in charge? The people, us. We vote, we decide who are representatives are, and they (hopefully) represent us in our government. In a kingdom, who is in charge? The king. The king makes the rules, he decides what is best for his people. The people have very little say in a kingdom. God is King, he is in charge, not us. Contrary to popular American belief, we are not the king or queen over our own life. We are servants to the King (capital K). If we are a part of God’s kingdom we are expected to follow the King’s commands, it is how we demonstrate our love and devotion to the King. Jesus said, “if you love me obey my commandments.” Jesus summarized all commandments as, “love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus’ final command though was to expand His kingdom, “go and make disciples of all nations.” This isn’t just a calling for missionaries in other countries but also for us right here. Fortunately, we are not alone in this endeavor of Kingdom work. God is with us and works through us to accomplish his kingdom work. Two weeks ago I said the way we discern where we are to used by God in building his kingdom is by paying attention to the burden God has laid on our hearts. What in our community does not reflect heaven, what bothers us, what breaks our heart? Whether it is disease, hunger or poverty, injustice, juvenile delinquency, or lack of education. That is God’s invitation for us to join him in his kingdom work. Don’t keep putting it off waiting for some big sign in the sky. Whatever the burden is, our job is to share the Good News about Jesus with others, so they too can be a part of God’s kingdom and God can transform their lives. As the name of Randy and Patti’s ministry reminds us we are all called to be Kingdom Builders. Turn to your neighbor and say, “I am a Kingdom builder.”
While God’ kingdom is growing here on earth, as people are set free from bondage to sin and evil and lives are transformed, Jesus reminds us in today’s parable of the wheat and tares that there is still something we need to be aware of. We must know that for this period in time, as God builds his kingdom, there will be opposition from the enemy. God, the farmer, is sowing his kingdom but there is another, an enemy, sowing weeds among God’s work. The enemies work will be allowed to continue until Christ the King returns to judge sin and remove all evil, and establish his kingdom forever.
In Jesus’ parable, a farmer sowed good seed in a field, but the enemy came and sowed weeds or tares among the wheat. In Jesus’ day there was a weed known as a darnel which looked exactly like wheat. They would grow side by side because it was almost impossible to tell them apart until the wheat would the harvest time when the head would grow on the wheat and they were distinguishable from each other. If someone wanted to be cruel, they would sow darnel into another person’s field to reduce their wheat crop, to choke out the wheat, which was why Roman law forbid it.
Jesus told his disciples, that the farmer is God, and the good seed represents those who have received the good news, they are people of God’s kingdom, they are Christians. The weeds or the tares are the sons of the evil one, the devil, or unbelievers. They were sown in among the people of God’s kingdom to cause trouble, to distract, to work against God’s plan, and ultimately to reduce the crop of believers. That’s always the enemy’s goal to work against God, and to separate people from Him.
God will allow evil to grow side by side with good
We should never expect building God’s kingdom will be easy. There will be opposition. The enemy is actively working to sow seeds of his own to disrupt God’s work in your life, in the church, in our community and in the world. We should never forget that. And according to the parable we don’t always know who these individuals are. The wheat the tares look exactly the same. They may look like Christians, act like Christians, smell like Christians (okay I don’t know what Christians smell like). They may come to church every week or not, they may be our neighbors, family members, coworkers. That’s why the Bible tells us we need to be discerning. We must discern the spirits which means we need to make sure it comes from God. Jesus said there would come many false prophets and people claiming to be him in the last days, but we are not to believe them. Wolves would come in sheep’s clothing. How do we discern the spirits? [Hold up Bible]. That’s why we have this. That’s why I encourage you to read this, study it, meditate on it so you know the truth, and can discover a lie. God allows evil to grow side by side with his kingdom.
Sometimes like Job in the Bible we may wonder, “Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power (Job 21:7)?” Why does God allow evil and even allow them to prosper if he is establishing his kingdom on earth? Why does he allow terrorists to blow up buildings? Why does he allow a college student to kill 24 of his fellow students? Why does he allow racism, ethnic cleansing, and tribal extermination? Why does he allow all these bad things to happen, and even seem to reward them (at least materially)? Or to put it Biblically why does God allow the evil one, the devil, to sow his evil in this world? Why doesn’t God snuff out the work of the devil, and get it over with? We don’t get a complete answer here on why God allows it go on, but he does give one answer as to why God doesn’t disrupt Satan’s work now…because he doesn’t want to lose any of his children.
In the parable, Jesus said the wheat and the tares grew side by side, until it was too late, they were fully mature, the servants were told not to pull the weeds because it might disrupt the good wheat. If Jesus were to allow his angels (the servants) to judge the world now, pulling up the weeds, getting rid of all non-believers, all evil, before the right time it would disrupt the people in God’s kingdom.
1) Some of the believers may be lost.
I told you a couple of weeks ago about how I decided not to pull weeds in my garden last year. I’m sure I was just following God’s principle here, he said don’t pull the weeds yet. This year I have been weeding my garden, but occasionally I would miss some of the weeds growing right next to the plant because I was using my hoe and didn’t want to kill the plant. I have had a couple of occasions where I finally went back to pull a weed up growing next to the plant and I inadvertently pulled up the plant with it because the roots of the weed had intertwined with the plant.
Jesus is implying that people who do evil (unbelievers) will continue to be around even though God’s kingdom is growing and expanding here on earth. They will be in your family, in your church, in your neighborhood, at your job, in your government, everywhere. If God were to bring his judgment now, it would disrupt our world, our nation, our families, and it might cause some of the believers to fall away.
2) It also gives unbelievers more time to repent and receive Christ as their Savior.
There is a Scripture which says, “[The Lord] is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9).” God is waiting for the right time because God “wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4).”
God puts up with evil to allow every person to hear and respond to the Good News of Jesus Christ. God doesn’t want to lose any because he loves every person, and he wants them to be with him in his kingdom forever.
God’s Kingdom Will Come – The King Will Return
But God’s patience won’t last forever. God has set a time when his kingdom will come in its fullness. In fact this was the main point of Jesus’ parable. If you notice in his explanation of the parable of the wheat he didn’t say anything about leaving the wheat and the tare. His sole focus was on the last verse, the harvest. He was warning people to get ready because when his kingdom comes, it will be a glorious day for the believers, but a bad day for those who do not believe, for those who do evil.
We don’t know exactly when this time will come, but it will come after every nation, and every person has had a chance to hear and respond to the Good News of Jesus Christ (Matt 24). After that happens there will be a judgment upon this earth, a harvest. The weeds will be separated from the wheat. The angels will remove out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and every person who does evil because God’s kingdom and evil cannot coexist. This includes the sin and evil within us. When people think of the weeds in the parable, they think of people like Osama Bin Laden, but every sin and sinner must be removed, which means any person who has not believed in Jesus and been forgiven of their sins will be like the weeds, they will be separated out and thrown into the fiery pit where Jesus said (not Pastor Matt said) there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Most people see this as an allusion to hell.
Jesus was very blunt, he was trying to warn people that they needed to choose which kingdom they wanted to be a part of. Because a time was coming when the King would return and claim his kingdom.
We read about this in two other places in Scripture; Revelation chapter 19 and 20 and 2 Thessalonians chapter one as taking place after the return of Jesus.
2 Thess. 1:6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.
While God is giving people time and opportunity to repent and turn to Jesus and be part of the kingdom. One day judgment will come.
It won’t matter how “good” of a person we are. What good things we have done with our life. Whether we attended church every week or not. The only thing which will matter is what we have done with Jesus. Do you believe he died for you, do you follow him? Have your sins been forgiven through Jesus, are you walking with him? Are you a child of God’s kingdom?
The Glory
While Jesus was warning those who have not turned to the Lord, he was also reminding those who are children of the kingdom, who endure persecution, hardship, suffering, and sometimes even pain for the sake of the kingdom, he was reminding them that it would all be worth it. A time will come when God will restore all things. When the King returns all will be made perfect. God will be glorified in his people. “The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13:43).” We are given a picture of this perfection in the book of Revelation (chapter 21) which tells us the old order of things will pass away and God will bring the new heaven and the new earth. God will dwell directly with his people, they will be able to look directly upon his face, something which no one on earth has ever done. It says God “will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away. Sin will be gone, the evil one and all evil will be gone, disease will be gone, death will be gone. He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making all things new (Rev. 21:3-5).”” God’s kingdom will be complete and perfect. Praise God. I’m sure most of us look forward to that day when we all get to heaven and live in the kingdom.
