Bad Weed
Notes
Transcript
Jesus teaches that sons of the kingdom and sons of the devil will be all mixed up together in this world and sorted out in the end. This is good news if you are the good seed, but terrible news if you are not. God teaches that He earnestly desires the salvation of all AND that not all will be saved. There is a road between guilt/fear motivated evangelism and passive/silent fatalism: Bold, Courageous, Spirit-led Faithfulness. Let’s be Shiny.
Find the Rejects
Find the Rejects
At work, we are currently hiring a developer and I am combing through all these resumes every week. And my first task, my first job, is to find a reason to hit the REJECT button.
Right there at the top, big old button in the hiring portal. If I move them on, I have to call them, setup multiple rounds of interviews, it’s expensive… and if we hire them it’s REALLY expensive.
So I even have some automated filters that filter folks out, I never even see some resumes before they get rejected.
So, I have been practicing all week at judging and condemning folks.
Who’s ready for church?
This is life… but not Jesus right? He’s the “love everyone” guy. He absolutely is, that is a fact!
But, it turns out, not incompatible with judgment! And Jesus has some hard things to say about our eternal destination, today. Warning: there is some fire coming.
And even some “gnashing of teeth.”
Parable of the Weeds
Parable of the Weeds
24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field,
25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.
26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.
27 And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’
28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’
29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.
30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
Here’s the Wheat.
Tares
Tares
Here are the “tares”, Zizanion, probably a weed called a darnel.
Which is which? That’s wheat on the left before it is fully ripened and darnel on the right.
It shows up often in grainfield, super hard to see the difference, and makes the bread taste bitter if it sneaks in. The seeds are poisonous.
The enemy did not like this Master.
But what does it all mean, what does the parable mean?
Are we the servants? Are we the reapers? The wheat or the weeds?
The disciples don’t know so they ask.
I love when they just ask, and we don’t have to interpret the parable, Jesus lays it all out for us.
Parable of the Weeds Explained
Parable of the Weeds Explained
36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.
That’s Jesus, the Sower.
38 The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one,
“sons of the kingdom” - what a great phrase that is. The good seed is us, growing into fruitfulness.
And there amongst all the wheat, “sons of the evil one.”
39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.
40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.
41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers,
42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
The sons of the kingdom and the sons of the devil.
One into the fiery furnace.
One to shine like the sun.
Lots to unpack here, but first… another parable, much like the first.
In case you don’t like wheat… how about fish?
Sorting the Fish
Sorting the Fish
47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.
48 When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.
49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous
50 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Same idea, really the same message. Jesus is teaching the disciples something crucial about this world and how we live in it. So… what is it? What’s the big message?
Good Fish, Bad Fish
Good Fish, Bad Fish
Good Wheat, Bad Weed
There is this: that some are fish are good and some fish are bad.
Wheat is good. Weeds are bad.
Like… from the seed? From the beginning? The picture here is that they are sowed by the devil, bad from the beginning, a trick by Satan. And these are people!
“Sons of the Kingdom” - that’s people saved to the Kingdom.
and “Sons of the Devil” - that’s people headed for destruction.
I don’t love that 2nd part. I love the idea of Universalism, that eventually everyone gets saved. A lot of people LOVE that idea… it just doesn’t seem to square with some teachings in the Bible.
That some won’t be saved, but will be separated out, divided out in the end. And it isn’t great, headed for the fiery furnace!
This is a truth of Scripture, and God has the right to set it up that way. As Paul writes exploring this topic in Romans:
21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—
Absolutely God has that right… and that is the way the world actually is. Forget what you think God “should” do, or what you think is “fair.” This is what God has done.
There is wheat. There are weeds.
And let’s not doubt God’s heart for a moment… God wants all to reach repentance.
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
So God’s heart is that all should be saved.
And, yet, NOT all will be saved. That’s hard… and that’s true.
And every parable, every metaphor, breaks down a bit. How can one go from being a weed to being wheat? You can’t do that with wheat… and yet God has done that with us.
Whether we were predestined and foreordained to salvation or not… we all started as bad seed, to be rescued, redeemed and made a new and fruitful creation. That is true of every grain of wheat.
That isn’t what Jesus’ story is about, his primary lesson here is NOT about predestination, though it includes destination.
The righteous to glory - to shine like the stars.
The unrepentant, unrighteous, children of the devil - to death and destruction. And, if we are keeping score in the Bible for what end times are going to be like, this is one with “weeping and gnashing of teeth” which sounds a lot like ongoing conscious punishment. I hope not, I prefer the annihilationist model, but there are these verses. We want to be careful not to overtranslate the parable, but that piece is there.
What is Jesus’ primary point?
Where is the weight, where is the dialog, what lesson is learned in the story?
The point is that the sorting out will happen in the end. Why?
28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’
29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.
Sorting Out the Bad People
Sorting Out the Bad People
Here is the temptation, and one the church has fallen to again and again throughout history.
Let’s sort out the bad people. Let’s pull some weeds.
It’s what the Pharisees are trying to do, policing Jesus’ behavior, policing the other Jews… get the bad ones out of here!
It’s the Inquisition. It’s the Nazis. It’s the dream of a commune with just the “right” people in it.
It’s the “perfect church” with just the Good Christians in it. I don’t go to that church, I wouldn’t be welcome in that church.
The “servants,” (note: not the reapers), the “servants” are ready and willing to pull the weeds. Why not? Just get the bad ones out of here.
Why not? Not only is it hard to tell, that’s the “darnell” thing… but they are enmeshed, one so close to another, you’ll pull the good right out with the bad. And isn’t that what happens in all these attempts? You do damage to absolutely everybody! Everybody loses!
So INSTEAD of ripping out the weeds, the weeds will stay through to the end. As in, until Jesus returns.
And here’s the other beautiful thing: you aren’t in charge of discerning between wheat and weeds.
Here is the beauty: you aren’t the one to figure that out!
You don’t have to… and you shouldn’t. It’s NOT YOUR JOB!
39 … The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.
…
41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers,
Who’s sorting it out? Jesus and his angels.
What’s your job in that scenario? Be shiny.
Angels are called to judgment.
If you are the wheat in that story, sons of the Kingdom, you are called to righteous influence living right there amongst the weeds. There’s some rich metaphor there: dig roots down deep, drink the Water of Life, don’t get choked out by the weeds, all those things.
If you are the servants, and the servants sure sound like the disciples to me, they are caring for the wheat and weeds alike… because they can’t care for one without the other. Honestly, they can’t tell the difference, I think.
You are called to righteous influence now, and to glorify God forever.
Saving Weeds
Saving Weeds
Final note. On evangelism. On sowing seeds, to use Jesus’ last parable. Here, on growing wheat.
I can imagine two takeaways here when it comes to evangelism.
First: it doesn’t matter what I do, they are wheat or weeds. It’s all in the seed man, children of the Kingdom or children of Satan, it’s all written, it’s all predestined. There is a passive fatalism that rises from a shallow and lazy doctrine of election.
That isn’t what Jesus is teaching… most demonstrated by Jesus’ example: that isn’t what Jesus is doing. It isn’t what he is modeling. He is here teaching all, loving all, reaching all… and then sending out his disciples to love and teach all that He commanded, out to the whole world! Are some lost? Yes, but it isn’t your job to know and judge, it’s your job to go and make disciples of all nations. It’s your job to sow, just keep sowing!
On the other hand, you could read about the wheat being “thrown into the fiery furnace… with weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And be driven by a fear and passion that you must not let your family and friends be thrown into this HELL!
Woooh. I mean… yeah!
Jesus uses some POWERFUL language here to describe the destination of bad fish and weeds… but he isn’t at any point here using that to motivate evangelism. There’s nothing here about “make sure your friends aren’t weeds!” Just that it will be sorted out in the end by Jesus and the angels.
Is there a road here between guilt/fear motivated evangelism and passive/silent fatalism?
Yes. Absolutely. It isn’t in this Parable, but it is in the one giving the Parable.
Bold, Courageous, Spirit-led Faithfulness.
Bold, Courageous, Spirit-led Faithfulness.
Jesus, remember is first giving this parable balancing standing on a boat addressing a crowd along the shore. That’s pretty bold. And continues to do so up and down through Jerusalem until he is killed as a threat to political and religious power. Bold. Courageous.
And in absolutely everything he did, led by the Spirit. Everything by the Will of His Father, doing only what he saw His Father doing, led and empowered by the Spirit… which he then gave to us. A Helper, to empower and guide.
So we learn to listen to the Spirit… and then be bold and courageous, faithful in following that lead.
So, some have specific questions about specific friends. Should I share with this friend and, if so, how? It isn’t about screaming in your friends faces and being purposefully offensive.
It is about praying for them, and watching eagerly for good opportunities, and when the Spirit nudges, being bold.
It shouldn’t be rare, it should be common. It should be often.
It shouldn’t be a story about that one time, years ago, that I said “Jesus.” It should be a common part of our weekly routine. How did you get to share Jesus this week?
Let your light shine. Let the harvest be as absolutely GIGANTICALLY fruitful as it possibly can be. Keep sowing, keep shining.
Let’s be Shiny.
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
