When I was a kid, weeding the garden was one of my least favorite activities. It was often hot out there and my back would hurt from bending over. Worst of all, I thought it was monotonous work, so often I did not pay real close attention to what I was doing. And, sure enough, I would sometimes pull up a bean or a pea or a carrot plant along with the weeds. I think my Mom thought I did that on purpose so she would decide to do the job herself, but really I was just careless. That simple mistake of confusing a weed with the plant you want to grow, is the basis of a parable that Jesus tells in our text today. We are again in Matthew, Chapter 13, and we will be exploring Verses 24-30 and 36-43. This little story about a very ordinary part of life contains some important spiritual truths that we as Christians need to hear and heed. Let's pray that God would help us understand His Word for us today.
Let's look at what the New International Version titles "The Parable of the Weeds." Matthew 13:24-26 Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared." What the enemy planted was almost certainly a weed called "bearded darnel" which looks very much like wheat when the plants are young. However, when the heads of grain appear on the wheat, there is no doubt about which plant is which. 13:27-30 "The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' 'An enemy did this,' he replied. The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'" That is the story. What does it mean? Fortunately for us, Jesus' disciples asked that question, and in Verses 37-43 we have Jesus' explanation of His parable. The Lord says, 13:37 He answered, "The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man." "The Son of Man" is a title for the Messiah which Jesus claims for himself. So in other words, the one who planted the seed is Jesus. 13:38 "The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one,..." The sons of the kingdom are believers in Jesus Christ - Christians. The sons of the evil one are all those who reject Jesus as Lord and Savior. 13:39 "...and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels." This is the cast of characters.
Matthew 13:40 "As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age." The focus of Jesus' story is the end of the age, the end of history. This will be the time when Jesus Christ returns to the earth. As we have talked about before, the Bible tells us that we don't know when this will occur. It is not for us to know the times and seasons of the end of history. It may be tomorrow or a thousand years from now. 13:41 "The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil." That is Jesus' way of referring to all who reject Him. 13:42 "They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is the destination of those who reject Christ. It seems clear that Jesus is talking about hell. It is difficult to know how literally to take this description, but it is a picture which Jesus paints for us almost every time He speaks of the punishment of the nonbelievers. 13:43 "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear."
That, friends, is the story Jesus tells of the weeds. Obviously, one implication of this text is a warning to those who do not trust in and follow Jesus Christ. Such an individual may succeed in fooling other people. Everyone may think that he or she is a wonderful person and even a wonderful Christian. But God can never be fooled. When the end comes, it will become clear who those people are whose faith is truly in Jesus, and it will become clear who those are who have been just playing a religious game. That is a very solemn warning to anyone here who is not a genuine believer in Jesus Christ. But, there is another important lesson here too. It is not always easy to distinguish between those who are believers in Christ and those who are not. Last week as we explored the parable of the sower, of the soils, we noted that not all who claim to be Christians really are. There are those who seem very sincere in their belief, and excited about Christ, but their faith proves to be very temporary. One of the things Jesus does in this parable is to remind us that we as human beings should not be going around deciding who are the true Christians and who are the counterfeits. That is not our job. If we try to do that, we are going to do some real damage. We have to let God sort things out in the end. This is an important truth and we will come back to it a bit later, but I want to first respond to a couple of mistakes people make in understanding this parable.
First, the Lord is not prohibiting us from making moral judgments. Some folks say that because it is difficult to tell the difference between someone who is really a Christian and someone who is not, we must never judge another person. No matter what their words or actions, we should see every person on the planet as a Christian brother or sister, even if they call themselves Muslims or Hindus or atheists. In our day, being judgmental is now considered the chief vice. The most popular Bible verse is no longer John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,.." but Matthew 7:1-- "Judge not, lest you be judged." But, we need to be very careful not to misinterpret that verse. I think what Jesus primarily has in mind is that we don't fall into the trap of judging the motives of another person. That doesn't mean, however, that we can't evaluate someone's words and actions. For example, let's say there is someone in a church who says, "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe Jesus was the Son of God." Is it judgmental or wrong to say this individual is not really a Christian? No! By his own words he has admitted he is not truly a believer in Jesus Christ. Likewise, I don't believe Jesus prohibits us from considering someone's actions. Let's say our church has a Sunday School teacher who gets arrested and convicted for drunk driving. Now, I can use this example because I have total confidence that this is not going to happen to any of our Sunday School teachers. But, if it did, I think it would be very proper for me to go to him or her and say, "I don't think you should be teaching Sunday School right now. Your actions reveal that you have a problem that needs to be dealt with before you are ready to serve in this way."
I hope you are getting my point. Jesus' parable, which teaches that it is not always easy to distinguish who are genuine Christians and who are not, doesn't mean we have to be morally paralyzed. We still should be able to declare that some ideas are true, while others are false; that certain actions are right and others wrong. We can do that, of course, not on the basis of our opinions or preferences, but rather on the basis of what God has taught in His Word. Often these days we hear people say things like, "Who are you to say that the homosexual lifestyle is wrong? You don't have a right to judge another person's behavior." Our response to that should be, "You are right. I don't have the right to decide whether what someone is doing is right or wrong, but God does. And I am able to say that a homosexual lifestyle is sinful, not because it goes against my personal preferences, but because the Bible tells us that it is wrong." Again, this is not our opinion. We are not being judgmental, we are simply repeating what the Bible teaches. Jesus tells us we are to love our neighbor and if we don't think that includes someone who is a homosexual, we'd better read our Bible more carefully because Jesus says we are to love even our enemies. Now, loving someone who is a practicing homosexual does include telling them that what they are doing is wrong, but that is very different from hating them.
Now, friends, we ought not be judgmental, but as Christians, both as pastors and as lay people, we need to tell the truth to those around us. When the Bible says that a certain practice is sinful, that practice is wrong. When the Bible says that a certain belief is false, any teaching that reflects that belief is also wrong. By telling the parable of the weeds, the Lord was not encouraging us to become moral relativists who start to think that all ideas are equal and all lifestyles are equal. The wheat is still wheat and the weeds are still weeds. We still need to call sin, sin, and false teaching, false. To think that the parable of the weeds teaches we should not do that, is to grossly misunderstand what Jesus is saying.
Secondly, the Lord is not teaching that the church should include those who are not Christians. Augustine, the great Christian teacher in North Africa in the early 5th Century, said that the parable of the weeds means that the church will always be made up of both those who are true believers and those who are not. Thus, we should be content with that and never try to change it. In his day, there was a group known as the Donatists who were very concerned about the purity of the church. They wanted to make sure that anyone who had wavered at all in the face of persecution be removed from the church. Their logic was that anyone who denied Christ certainly could not be a genuine Christian, no matter what they said now, they were not a true believer and therefore should not be part of the church. The problem, Augustine discovered, was not just that the Donatists wanted to exclude those who had explicitly denied Christ, but also those who dealt with the persecution in a different way than the Donatists thought was right. But, should those who had fled to a different community, rather than be killed for their faith, really be expelled from the church? Incidentally, the church in Russia and other former Communist countries faces a similar dilemma today. What about all the folks who stopped going to church during the Communist repression and persecution? Now that political freedom has been re-established, should these folks be welcomed back into the fellowship? What do they need to do to prove that their faith is genuine? Those are not easy questions.
Anyhow, Augustine saw that in their zeal to clean up the church, the Donatists were taking some folks who were true Christians and throwing them in a spiritual garbage dump. Thus, he argued that we need to let the church consist of wheat and weeds, of true believers and counterfeits, until the end when God, Who can see men's hearts, will sort things out. Augustine said it was not only foolish, but wrong, to attempt to purify the church and remove those from the church who do not appear to be genuine Christians. Augustine was a great and brilliant man, but on this point I think he was wrong.
Why? Well, first of all, Jesus says the field in which the wheat and weeds are growing together is not the church, but the world. Though this passage is very relevant to discussions concerning church purity and discipline, it is incorrect to say that Jesus assumes the church will be made up of both wheat and weeds. Secondly, there are numerous texts in the New Testament which make it clear that Christians ought to distinguish between those who truly follow Christ and those who do not. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul writes that it is proper for the Christians there to judge within the church and to expel someone in their group who is living an immoral lifestyle. Second Peter and Jude are two books where the Lord calls us to identify false teachers and reject their doctrine. The Bible commands us to distinguish between wheat and weeds at certain times. Thirdly, I would argue that this parable does not teach that all nonbelievers appear to be Christians. Rather, it simply teaches that some who are not believers in Christ will give that appearance.
Church history shows there can be big problems when only a minority of the members of a congregation are true followers of Jesus. I think of the Anglican church which Charles Simeon pastored at Cambridge, England, in the 1800s. Most of the folks in that congregation didn't like the fact that Simeon insisted on preaching from the Bible. They found that to be far too harsh and convicting. They preferred that a Sunday morning sermon only tell them how wonderful they were. Now, this was at the time when people rented a church pew. Because Simeon's opponents were angry with him, they stopped coming to church to hear him, and then they bought up all the pews in the church so that anyone who did want to listen to his preaching would have to stand in the back of the sanctuary. Simeon hung in there, though, and when his opponents realized they could not drive him from the pulpit, they gave up and stopped renting the pews. He ended up serving as pastor of that congregation for 54 years. That is just an example of the type of problem which can occur when a large portion of the members of a congregation are not genuine Christians.
So, I believe a proper goal for a church is to have what is often called a regenerate membership. Everyone, no matter who they are, what they have done, or what they believe, should be welcome to attend any Christian congregation. But, to become a member of a church, people ought to give some evidence of really being a believer in Jesus Christ. We try to do that here in our church. When someone wishes to become an official member, they meet with our deacon board and deaconesses. We listen as they give a testimony about their faith in Jesus Christ. If someone came in and said, "Well, I believe Jesus was a good man, but I don't think He was the Son of God," then we would say, "We can't really let you be a member of our church." If someone came in and said they were a follower of Jesus Christ, but admitted that they were having an adulterous affair, we would probably say, "We're sorry, we can't let you become a member at this time because your lifestyle directly contradicts what you have told us." Would we be judgmental or wrong in doing that? I don't think so. I think it is a mistake to think the parable of the weeds means the church should be made up of both believers in Christ and those who are not.
Those are what I see as two misapplications of the parable of the weeds. But what does it mean for us? Well, the big lesson is that we must be very careful in judging others. Even though we as Christians ought to make moral judgments, even though we as churches ought to seek to include only those who are true Christians as members, we need to be careful, very careful how we judge others.
Here are some comments I hear coming from different Christians I know, and also sometimes from my own lips: "I don't think he is a very committed Christian, he never comes to church on Sunday night." "Oh, she's not really serious about her faith. She always listens to the oldies station instead of a Christian station." "Well, I know he says he is a Christian, but I have seen cans of beer in his refrigerator." "Yeah, I know everyone thinks they are great Christians, but I heard they hardly gave any money to the church last year even though they bought that new car." Friends, listen carefully, I think it is good to go to church on Sunday nights, to listen to Christian radio, to abstain from drinking beer, and to give lots of money to the church. What is wrong, what is very judgmental, is when we start accusing folks, who don't do those things, of not being committed in their faith or maybe of not even being a true Christian. We need to remember that we can't see inside people's hearts. Only God can do that. I don't know why someone doesn't come to church on Sunday nights, why someone listens to the oldies station, why someone has beer in their refrigerator, or why someone doesn't give much money to the church. Yes, if I talk to these folks and listen to their reasons, maybe I can make some accurate evaluation, but by just looking at someone, I can't tell what their motives are. Friends, remember that in Christianity, motives matter. They matter a lot. Why someone does or does not do something is very important. A woman who has the oldies radio station on because that is what her husband wants to listen to may be much more godly than the woman who puts on the Christian station just to irritate her husband. We need to be very careful that we don't misjudge others.
In recent years, I have seen judgmental attitudes do great damage in different churches. Some of you may have experienced that firsthand. Let me tell you about three different churches in Wisconsin, all solid, Bible-believing, evangelical congregations, who have recently suffered greatly because of folks who thought they could separate the wheat from the weeds. What happened in each of these congregations is that a new pastor came in and quickly developed a very loyal following from a small group of people in the church. Then the pastor tried to institute some big changes which generated opposition from the majority of the people. So far, this seems pretty normal. These types of things happen all the time in churches, but then, the pastor declared that those who were opposed to his ministry were not really following the Lord and implied that they were probably not true Christians. One of my friends has been a faithful follower of Jesus for many years and was instrumental in my spiritual growth when she was advisor to our high school youth group. She decided, for a variety of reasons, that she did not want to be part of a Bible study the pastor was leading. She was told, "Your refusal to be part of the study indicates you have an unteachable spirit. I wonder if you are really even a Christian." That is a very judgmental accusation. In the end, all three of these churches suffered division. In two of the three churches, each pastor led his small group of followers out and formed his own congregation. In one, many of the members who would not follow the pastor simply left the church. Many, many people were wounded deeply because of what happened in these churches, and their souls will carry those scars for years. The church is not supposed to be like that. Friends, labeling those who disagree with us about how something should be done in the church as "probably not true Christians" is very dangerous. It is very judgmental. I think it is one of the things that the Lord is warning us about through this parable.
Friends, I think today is a good time to remind ourselves that God has called us here together as a congregation, not to judge each other, but to serve one another. As I have said, that doesn't mean we put on moral blinders and refuse to recognize sin and error. But instead of constantly trying to analyze each other's motives, instead of trying to discern who is more spiritual than who, we need to devote ourselves to helping each other. Instead of judging, we need to focus on serving. Maybe even in this room today there are some folks whose motives you are prone to question. You kind of wonder if they are really sincere in their expressions of faith in the Lord and love to others. My assignment for you today is to try to stop asking those questions. Unless you are in some situation where you are required to make some type of moral judgment, I encourage you to just be content to let God judge that person's heart. Instead, think of a couple of ways you can help that person to become the individual God wants him or her to be. Oh, being a judge may seem a lot more fun than being a servant, but remember what Jesus said, "If you want to be great in God's kingdom, learn to be the servant of all."
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