Opening and Introduction
There’s a lot of terrible things going. It seems like every time I turn on the news, I see another act of violence, another senseless act of destruction, and the continuing sickness of the COVID-19 virus.
In just this past week, I’ve read about
• a man shot and killed while he was helping someone jump start a car…
• a woman suspected of grooming young girls into sexual abuse…
• and a con-artist family masquerading as a church, selling a COVID cure that was actually toxic.
There are all sorts of terrible acts happening around us way more often than we’d like, and they don’t seem to be going away.
Today, we’ll examine the simple struggle of good and evil in the world. We’re going to dive into the parable that Jesus taught. We’ll take a closer look at the sower of the WHEAT and the sower of the WEEDS. And we’ll look at the question, of why God allows so many bad events to exist in the world today.
God’s Sowing
In our Gospel lesson, we heard a parable that’s part of a larger discussion of Jesus talking about faith, the Kingdom of God, and how important it is for us to seek Him.
In the first part of our Gospel, Jesus told the parable to a crowd that was gathered around him, and then later to His disciples with a more detailed explanation.
This parable describes judgment day with the angels harvesting the faithful, and the gathering and burning of the unfaithful. But that’s how the story ends. I’d like to look at how the story begins.
It begins much earlier. Jesus started the parable with, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field” (Matthew 13:24, ESV). A few verses later, Jesus explains, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world” (Matthew 13:37-38a, ESV)
The term, “Son of Man”, is one that Jesus often uses to talk about Himself. He is the one sowing the seed in the world. But that sowing started a long time ago.
It started back at the very beginning. The Bible begins “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1, ESV) For the first five days, God created by saying “let there be”, and there was. At the end of each and every day, God declared that it was good, perfect, without blemish, without defect. The newly formed creation met God’s high standards of perfection.
On the sixth day, God continued creation. It was on this day that He created man in His image. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31a, ESV) The first man was Adam, and his bride was Eve. This very good creation deserved a very good place to live.
God seeded the world by planting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. A perfect paradise with all sorts of plants and trees… beautiful to look at, and wonderful to eat. It was a fantastic place to live, with no work needed to earn their next meal.
Enemy Action
Living in this perfect world had to be a wonderful experience. But, paradise didn’t last long. Only two chapters of creation, and blissful existence, and in the next chapter, the ultimate deception happens.
The Devil was in the Garden too. He talked with Eve, acted like a friend with logic and concern, and committed the greatest crime. He convinced Eve that God didn’t mean what He said.
Eve listened to the lies, and became convinced of the story she wanted to hear, and she ate the forbidden fruit. Then she sold the lie to her husband, and Adam followed suit too.
The enemy, Satan, planted his own seed of deception. He tore down the perfect world that the first man and first woman lived in, and tainted not just the humans, but cursed all of creation forevermore.
The first of many WEEDS had been planted in the garden, and it began with deceit. Neither Adam nor Eve could tell the difference between the truth and a lie, between good and evil. Understanding the difference can be difficult sometimes.
And this is why Jesus used parables. To help people understand difficult concepts, by relating them to familiar events from everyday life. Concepts like faith, God’s love for us, eternal life, and our forever home in heaven. The crowds were familiar with farmers, and sowing seed. So Jesus used these references often.
When a farmer plants WHEAT, it takes time for those seeds to grow into plants, and even longer for those plants to grow the heads of grain. In Jesus’ parable, he spoke of the enemy planting weeds in the garden.
There’s a weed called Darnel, that looks just like wheat as it grows. It has the same sort of stalk as wheat and the same color of greenness. The plant is nearly identical to wheat until its fruit begins to show.
Once found, it’s difficult to remove from the crop as it’s roots tangle with the roots next to it.
Darnel is not harmless. In fact it’s a type of poison that can cause a bit of damage. When livestock eat
Darnel tainted straw, they act strange, much as we might think of someone who had taken bad drugs.
For people, it’s a mind-altering plant that affects vision and the ability to talk. People often ate contaminated wheat when they didn’t have a choice. The poor were in this situation and the Darnel made them dazed as they went about their lives.
In the Roman empire, the practice of sowing Darnel into the fields of disloyal servants, or someone that was disliked in the most extreme way, became a common vengeance practice; the ultimate “I HATE YOU” activity.
The practice was so common, that a law had to be written to protect people against those sowing weeds.
300 years prior to Jesus telling this parable, Roman law was written that basically said, if you do something bad to me, I get to do the same thing back to you. It included a line that addressed malicious treatment of someone’s crops.
Jesus didn’t just describe a parable. He described some people ruining the income and livelihood of others. Perhaps ruining their health with a poisonous plant. The crowds that heard this parable would’ve understood the problem.
Answering the Question
Towards the end of the parable, Jesus says that the WEEDS are not to be pulled out, because the WHEAT would be damaged. In other words, let the poison remain. Our lives tend to be tangled together and inter-related in our neighborhoods, where we shop, where we work… in our daily life.
When we hear a story in the news about a terrible thing happening, the first question we might ask isn’t “did that happen to a believer or an unbeliever?” Instead, we might ask “where did that happen?”, and “what really happened?” or perhaps “Do I know them?”
Bad things continue to happen. Some of those bad things impact us, or others close to us. Many of those terrible events may impact us indirectly, if not directly.
In the time that we have remaining, I’d like to look at three ways that may explain why God allows so many bad things to continue in the world today.
First, God allows evil acts, to bring people closer to Him. There are all sorts of examples of things not going well for people in the Bible.
I’d like to look at a story that started out really bad, but God had a different plan. In chapter 3 of the book of Daniel, we hear a story of a King who made a golden idol 90 feet tall, and dedicated the statue in front of all the Babylonian officials.
A decree was announced that whenever any music was played, that everyone should bow down and worship the golden idol, or be cast into a burning fiery furnace.
Three Jews, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, didn’t bow down to the idol, so the king ordered them bound up and thrown into the furnace. (Daniel 3:21)
The flame was so hot, that the furnace overheated and the men who brought the three Jews to be burned, were killed by the fire themselves. (Daniel 3:22) But, the faithful three didn’t die.
The king saw that they were safe and that the flames weren’t doing them any harm. He called for them to come out of the furnace. Then he made a decree that no-one was to say anything against the “God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego” (Daniel 3:29, ESV) An idol worshiper was turned toward God because God saved his people. An evil act turned into a good news story.
But, I think there’s a more contemporary example for us to think about. Anyone here remember the horrible events of 911? Four planes crashed, 2 into the World Trade Center in New York, 1 into the Pentagon, and another in Pennsylvania.
The events were horrific with over 3,000 people killed in a very short time. But, it’s the events after the devastation that I find interesting. All across the country, people gathered together in prayer vigils.
Yankee Stadium was turned into a prayer service on Sept 23, 2001. All across the nation, people were seeking God, being brought to their knees, to ask for all sort of things, but probably most prominent was the many requests for peace and mercy.
Evil things still happen in the world today. But, God can use them, to bring people closer to Him, even unbelievers
Second, God is patient to allow time to open the hearts of even the WEEDS.
We don’t always accept things when we first hear them or see them. It can take time to accept new ideas. Any parents here? Ever struggle to teach your kids anything?
Sometimes we grow and learn facts from a different perspective and that gets us to change our view on a variety of topics.
A few days ago, there was a report about a 30-year old man who died from Coronavirus in San Antonio after attending a COVID-19 party. He didn’t believe the disease existed and thought it was all a hoax. Just before he died, he told a nurse that he made a mistake. He became a believer in the virus.
God gives opportunities for the WEEDS to stop rejecting his message. Allows time for atheists and agnostics to reject their strongly held beliefs. God’s grace extends to the unfaithful, allowing them time to understand His gifts, and have faith in His love for us all. The unfaithful won’t burn if they gain faith.
Probably the best example of God waiting for someone was the thief on the cross. At his crucifixion, the thief said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43, ESV)
God’s patient with the WEEDS, waiting for them to become WHEAT, no matter how long it takes.
First, God uses events to bring others closer to him.
Second, God’s grace includes patience, waiting for unbelievers to find faith.
Third God uses the WEEDS, to build up the hearts of the faithful.
The WEEDS that Jesus spoke of continue to follow their master, Satan, and follow what He has planned for them to do. They lie, they cheat, they steal, and leave a wealth of problems in their wake. Paul’s second letter to Timothy captured this. Paul wrote:
“For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.” (2 Timothy 3:2-5, ESV)
Have you ever come across someone that sounds like that? When people put themselves first, and don’t care who they hurt in the process, others get hurt. A person in need is an opportunity to build up the hearts of the faithful.
Have you been involved with a cause, or a person, that needed your help? Did you consider donating your money, your time, or your talents to assist? Any time someone needs help, it’s an opportunity for us to step up and show our faith.
A book that Martin Luther really struggled with is the book of James. He struggled with it because Grace is how we are saved, not by works. But James shared a lot of wisdom about faith in action. James wrote:
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James, 2:14-17, ESV)
What fruit will we choose to show? Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Perhaps we can show our faith by using our gifts and our talents and bless those around us that could really use a little bit of help and encouragement. They’ll be strengthened, and our hearts will be opened.
Conclusion
We can learn a lot about the sower of the wheat and the sower of the weeds.
God sowed the world with everything good, but the enemy, Satan, seeded whatever he could reach. Man listened to the deception and rebelled from God’s command, cursing not only all mankind but all of creation.
Sometimes, the worst events bring people to their knees and bring them closer to God. Sometimes God allows an unsolvable problem to land in our lap to get us to seek Him.
God is patient with all of us. When we do wrong things and when we do things wrong. Even, with the unfaithful so that they have time to become faithful.
Every situation is an opportunity to show our faith. Especially, when people are hurting, and need help.
God does not cause evil, but He controls the outcome, all the way to the harvest. He uses every situation to bless His people.
Amen.
