Introductory Considerations
1. Discuss my hatred of weeds and how they destroy the beauty of a lawn.
2. Sometimes we look at certain people in church as weeds.
3. Are there weeds in church? Where do they come from and how do we deal with them?
4. Remember time when some thought I was a weed - "John, a few of us were talking the other day. We were concerned about whether or not you were spiritual enough to be a SS teacher".
5. I was very upset but I couldn’t think of what to say back. Who were these people to judge whether or not I was a good enough Christian to teach SS?
6. It was as if they were questioning whether or not my faith was sincere.
7. If am an further honest, I must admit that I also sometimes have and may still look at other people who go to church and yet I wonder if they are really believers or not.
8. It seems like such a terrible thing to do - to question the sincerity and faith of others, but have you ever done it:
a. That man or woman at work who goes to church every week but whose language is very rough.
b. That elder who runs his business in ruthless ways, sometimes even breaking the law.
c. Perhaps that minister who seems more concerned with social issues than the gospel.
d. Perhaps even someone in our own church that you have known for years.
Teaching
1. We are the church of Jesus Christ - a people who share a common faith and yet not everyone amongst us may be a true believer.
2. What should we do about this? Should we not purge the church of them?
3. Jesus deals with this very matter in the parable that He presents to us this evening.
4. He has just finished telling and explaining the parable of the sower, which we talked about last week.
5. He then tells another parable about sowing but there are some differences about what the parts of the story represents.
6. Just like the other parable, Jesus explains what the parable means - the sower is Jesus, 2 kinds of seed here - good is sons of the kingdom and bad, or weeds that come are sons of the devil. These are sown by the devil.
7. The harvest is the final judgement and the reapers are angels.
8. What does the field represent? Jesus says the field is the world. That seems to mean that the parable represents how there are Christians and non-Chrsitians living in the world, but we need to read more carefully for we are told in vs. 25 that the tares are sown among the wheat.
9. John Calvin and many others say that this means that the weeds are sown in the visible church .
10. Satan plants people within the church that are not really part of the invisible church - the body of those who are truly saved.
11. Why does he do this? To affect the healthy growth of the church the same way that weeds affect a crop.
12. The tares that He talks about is an obnoxious weed that in the early stages of growth looks the same as wheat. This wheat is the home of a fungus which, if eaten by man or animals, is poisonous.
13. It not only takes nutrients from ground away from wheat but it causes sickness.
14. We can see how these people, with unregenerate hearts, would hurt a church. Their goal is not to honour God and build up His body but to destroy it.
15. They prevent the church from being a beautiful witness to the world and even can bring in false teachings.
16. The church would be much better off without them, and so like the servants we would probably come to God and say God " Let’s get rid of them before they do any more damage".
17. To our surprise God says to us "No, just leave them be"
18. Why does God say this? vs. 29 - "Because while we are pulling the weeds we may root up the wheat with them"
19. I can see 3 reasons why we should wait
a. The younger the plants is the harder it is to distinguish from wheat. People can appear to be believers for a period of time but sooner or later the truth will come out.
i. And we cannot just point to someone who sins and say they are a weed. We are all growing in faith but none is
perfect.
ii. We can begin witch hunt in which we seek to stamp out sinners, but how many would be left in church - none?
b. The roots of the weeds and the wheat may be intertwined closely and when the roots of weed pulled out so is that of the wheat. Dealing with those who are hypocrite can affect a church if not done carefully. Those who are young may find it hard to deal with and I have seen people fall away from church because of the church dealing with nominal Christians.
i. If we wait for the harvest, if any are intertwined and wheat is pulled out, it does not matter because the wheat is
ready for the harvest.
c. Reapers are trained for their work. Angels at command of Christ who is actually doing the separating through them. (Mat 24:31)
i. We can be wrong in our judgement and we must leave that judgement to God.
20. This does not mean we should not worry about the purity of the church, that we just let everything go and God will take care of it in the end.
21. Scripture teaches us different elsewhere. We must deal with immorality and we must stop false teaching. We must deal with things that create disunity to the church and dishonour to God.
22. Rather parable teaches a number of other things:
a. That we deal with hypocrites or nominal Christians (in name only) with a spirit of patience. That we do not make it our task to look for those whose faith we question.
b. We recognize the fact that there will always be a mixture of the good and sincere with the bad and hypocrites while we are on this earthly pilgrimage. With that in mind we realize we cannot change this.
c. We need to be careful and aware that Satan is active in the church. We cannot stamp Him out but we need to watch how we respond to situations. Easy to react in similar ways when we are hurt or affected byu His activity in church.
d. We must remember that way of humility always wins in long run. Let Christ be example of how He gave His life willingly.
e. Despite these weeds, God’s kingdom will grow and that the end result will be a good harvest.
23. First the weeds will be gathered together and cast into the fiery furnace - maybe they will have disrupted the church somewhat but they will get their due.
24. But the wheat will then be gathered, the righteous and they will shine as bright as the sun as they are filled with the glory of God.
