So if you will, open up your copy of God's Word to Matthew 13. We will be in verses 24 through 30, but we'll also read a section just later, 36 through 43. So this is the Word of the Lord. He put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, the weeds appeared also. 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? 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? He said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 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. Then skipping ahead to verse 36. Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And the disciples came to him, saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. And he answered, The one who sows the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. And the weeds are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers. and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears, let him hear. Let's pray. Dear Father, please let the words of my mouth be acceptable in your sight and please, as has already been requested, that your word be heard and that your spirit would teach us more of who you are and what you have done through the sending of your Son. Amen. So, I think All of us can easily accept that religion has played a huge part in the founding of our country. Many came to America with the hope of escaping religious persecution of some sort, and colonies were founded, one such being that of Massachusetts, where a particular expression of Christianity was vital. if you weren't of the same convictions as the church was expressed there, then you were told to leave, you were exiled. And then, in that same fashion, you get a colony like Rhode Island, where perhaps Baptists were more prevalent, and if you were to go further south, into Maryland or Virginia, you might run into more Anglicans. But the deeper you look into our history, it gets kind of complicated. And one interesting thing is that as people start to migrate west, these smaller communities, religious communities, start to form after this pattern of Massachusetts. It's this idea that if we have a fresh start, perhaps we can create the perfect expression of Christianity in our community. And, of course, this came out of a good desire, but as the inhabitants of the latter part of Massachusetts realized, this was no task fit for any man. In the worst of cases, harmful cults arose, some of which still exist today. Best of cases, there were a few denominations that were formed, but all the way in between, Many others fell away from the faith out of discouragement or were hurt in the process. And of course, this is a sweeping and brief generalization of history. And like I said, it's messy. But now, when you hear about that story of Massachusetts, what is your first thought? Is it, well, perhaps with our modern understanding of theology, maybe we could try it again? Maybe we could get this right. Or does that level of social engineering kind of make you wither inside? In either case, I think this passage speaks to us all on this subject. It challenges us to ask ourselves, how do we labor and wait for Jesus to return, living in a broken and sinful world as broken and sinful lovers of Christ? Now, contextually here in Matthew, this parable is grouped in with a series of other parables about the kingdom of heaven. And as a pattern, we can expect a lot of imagery here having to do with growing and gardening. If you were to go just a little bit further, earlier, you would find the parable of the sower, or later, parable of mustard seed, or the treasure found in a field. And while I'm sure we're very aware, I just want to make a side note. I know who I'm talking to here, but we're all very aware of the form of a parable. But I found this quote from Augustine to be really helpful. It's just a reminder of how parables work. Of course, Jesus and Satan in the Bible are referred to or described as being like lions. And we know that we have to read that in the right light, in the proper context. And Augustine says this, he asks this really almost absurd rhetorical question. Are we commanded then to imitate the devil when our shepherd told us be wise as serpents and simple as doves? Obviously the answer is no, but in an evening service like this I feel a little bit more at liberty to be kind of more teachy and less preachy and point out that this is a word concept fallacy at work here. So you, just because you find one word in one place of scripture doesn't mean that you equate it to the exact same meaning as the same word in a different part. Context plays a big role in how we read things. Of course, this is just a side note, and also, for you note-takers out there, I've never been terribly keen on the three-point structure, unless the passage absolutely demands it, but I have organized things into two rough categories for you, first being verse exposition, and later we'll get into theological practical exposition. So that said, let's look at today's passage. Jesus says here in verse 24, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. Now this kingdom of heaven that we hear so much about in Matthew's gospel, it isn't just the church as we think of it gathered. Jesus says later on in his explanation in verse 37, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man, Jesus. The field is the world and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The field is the world. And this makes sense. When Jesus sent out his disciples in chapter 10 earlier, he told them to proclaim to the Jews, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And this has a deep meaning. But suffice it to say for now, that the kingdom of heaven is both an imminent reality and a present reality. That is to say, it is both coming in a final sense, but it is also present now. But there's a conflict in this story. The man has an enemy who has sown his own seeds. They're different seeds. In fact, maybe your Bible has a footnote next to the word weeds, and the Greek word is sometimes translated as tares, from which we get the common title of the parable, the parable of the wheat and the tares. But if we're being absolutely literal, it probably translates to darnel. And I didn't know this before researching this, but darnel is a grain-like plant that, while it's still young, is almost indistinguishable from wheat. The actual grains, the fruit of the stalk, they'll look very different in maturity. And really it would be one thing if it was just some other common throw-in grain that wasn't wheat. But it's actually toxic, darnel, to humans, even lethal in large amounts. So historically it would have been a crime in Rome to go and sow darnel in somebody else's field because of the natural public health risk that would pose. And even intentionally sometimes people would bake some into their bread just a little bit or brew some into their beer just a little bit to add kind of a dizzying effect and so it ended up functioning kind of like a drug and ultimately took on a sense of kind of detachment from reality such that even Shakespeare puts Darnel on the crown of King Lear in one of his plays. But I don't think we need any sort of poetic finesse to really help us understand the significance of Darnall in this passage. Jesus explains himself in verses 38 and 39, the weeds are the sons of the evil one and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. This likely resonated with his disciples when he said it. Think back to Genesis, God's words to the serpent in Genesis 3.15. He said, I will put enmity between you, serpent, and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. Now, for those of you who don't know, I'm a chaplain candidate in the Army Reserves, and this came up actually in a Bible study I was leading a few weeks back. One soldier, he read this verse in Genesis and he asked, so is this seed of devil supposed to be some sort of supernatural force that we got to be watching out for? I thought that was a great question. And Jesus' parable here gives us a big part of the answer. He says that, well, we learn that it's regular people who are going to be the seed of the kingdom, and it's regular people who are going to be the children of the enemy. And verse 26 tells us that the weeds were all mixed in with the wheat. Two crops that, like I said, unless fully grown, are going to look exactly alike. And implicitly, we can gather from that, they're growing alongside one another. And we can get application from that, but we'll continue. In verse 27 and 28, we find this conversation begin to give us more of the drama of this parable. And I think we approach this conversation between the servants and the master with a lot of sympathy. These servants are seeking to do a good job. They want to be good servants of the field. More so, I think anyone here who's planted a garden ever understands the frustration of weeds. Personally, my experience is limited, but I did a lot of gardening growing up, but it was usually just to get the ugliness of the weeds out of the way. We didn't want some grass overshadowing the flowers we just planted. And perhaps there's more of an ecological or biological reason you want to get rid of the weeds, and maybe one of you can tell me that afterwards. But not surprisingly, there's perhaps a deeper reason for getting rid of these weeds that we're not as likely to notice. Yes, this darnal is poisonous, and yes, the evil man has this bad intent. We have to wonder, though, if the people who are hearing this were thinking about a Levitical prohibition. It is a Jewish context, after all, because God's law is explicit in the planting of two crops in the same field. This connection hasn't gone unnoticed by commentators, this between Leviticus and Matthew 13. So, it adds another layer of evil intent to this man, that which would go against God's created order. And if you want, you can read the verse in Leviticus 19.19 for the exact commandment. It says, you shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material. Now, we believe the Bible is relevant for our world today, and with such a belief, we have to wonder, how does this verse in Leviticus fit into our daily practice? For now, I'll just say that we certainly don't ignore this part of the Bible, even though we also don't practice it today. That would be a topic for another time. But we'll come back to that briefly. For now, just note that this intention of the servants was a righteous one. They were trying to act in a godly way on multiple levels, practically and morally. In verse 29, the master tells the servants not to gather the weeds, which comes across to us as bad gardening advice. The intent, though, is to preserve the wheat. In keeping with Jesus' explanation that he is the master, we learn this beautiful part of Jesus' character. We might, out of a hasty or maybe efficiency-driven work ethic, sympathize with those workers in the field. The thing is, don't we see Christ's love for his people here? He doesn't want a single one of those who are his to perish. Verse 30 then gives us the resolution we are hoping for. both plants are to grow until the harvest time, then the reapers will take care of the separation. And Jesus says, the harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels. And I think we really begin to see the fullness of this gardening analogy, as those plants, they're fully grown. They're distinguishable. And so too, at the very end of the age, everyone will be seen in their proper light. The evil will receive their just reward, and so too the good. In John's epistle, 1 John 3.2 says, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. Or in Jesus' words, as we see in verse 43, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. Now, all of that sounds really hopeful, but this present reality does present us with a lot of tension. I mean, if you're at all trying to follow the way of Christ, you have at some point been frustrated by the people around you who, at best, don't care, or at worst, kind of are antagonistic to the way you live. And don't we get tired of this kind of tension? And I think there are two immediate temptations that we might face. Now, the first is, perhaps I should just smooth over my beliefs. Go through life in a sort of syncretistic way, kind of agreeing with everyone else. Maybe in my heart I still want to believe the ways of Christ, but I'll kind of sacrifice a little bit of that just to get along. Or on the other hand, I could crack down on my standards. Maybe we could build a little island for ourselves in the extreme case, or perhaps scrutinize the testimonies of those around us just a little bit more. Who do we let into our churches anyways? This reminded me of a story. A friend of mine recently came to me. He told a story of how he was sharing his testimony with somebody, but he was accused of having a poor profession of faith because of some mistakes he had made during college. This accuser believed that my friend had some flaws in his theology and therefore was in need of some remedial lessons to get back on track. And this was all even though my friend had since repented of this behavior and moved on, still his faith today was called into question. Because apparently there were some mistakes that true Christians could never have possibly made. And that's a complicated issue. There are two things I want to take away from that. First, we can really only talk about these separations on a theological, conceptual level. That is to say, we can make guesses about who's in or who's out, but really, man-wrought segregation, at least in the kingdom of God, has no place in this earthly context, from what Jesus says. you will never really know. And there are some people, surprisingly to us, who get saved out of these places that all earthly wisdom would say, no, you could never get saved from there. And then they are. While there are others who, sitting under the best theological teaching possible for years, never come to a true sense of who their Savior is. It's really sad. And second, I think our reaction to this mixed field of a world in either direction is a classic example of these two extremes that theologians use to describe, or they describe with these two fancy words, legalism and antinomianism. In other words, too much law or too much freedom slash grace. And the temptation is to think of it like kind of a balancing act. Perhaps if we have too much law, well, add more freedom and then we'll be better. Or if we're living a little too freely, you should go read the book of Leviticus. You need some more law in your life. But it's not a balancing act like that. Instead, we're better served by looking to Christ to understand what grace really looks like. In both cases, We are not to be the final arbiters and certifiers of salvation. And if we're meant to look to Christ for how to behave, I would suggest that the key takeaway here is patience. Now, is that easier said than done? Of course. We have this one sergeant in my army battalion who very bizarrely, believes that aliens somehow landed on the earth and built the pyramids and repopulated the earth after some sort of mass extinction event and as bizarre as all that is he continued like beyond that mocks my job straight to my face in front of everybody makes fun of me having to be there kind of hints that I'm really not needed and it really grates on me after a while, but The temptation often is, okay, what if I just came up with the perfect comeback? And I just was able to yell out, got him, call it good, the day is done, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. But I haven't, and I'm sure you haven't yet, heard of someone who has come to saving faith in Christ through an interaction like that. Even more, I still have to ask myself, when my desire is to yell out, God him, is that more evidence that I have already determined the fate of his soul in my heart? And for me, I often have to answer, yes. And so I pray for him, but I also pray for my own patience, that I would be able to learn from Christ in those moments. Again, I'm not about to say that is easy or that I've mastered that in any way. If we're in a field, a world, growing up in righteousness, Lord willing, but also surrounded by those who are growing up in their own evil ways, how can we actively enact this Christ-like patience? I'm a very action-oriented person. That's a question I would want to ask. And one of the most challenging things I think you can do, actually, is practicing hospitality. And just think. You're bringing someone into the most vulnerable part of your day, someone perhaps like the pagan sergeant or someone else at church, perhaps a new Christian. It could be anybody. And there's no expectation except that you continue to live like Christ. In a sense, that's really freeing. I mean, the nice thing about hospitality is you get to set the tone and the table. There are infinite ways this can be done. Why are we challenged by it though? Why is that such a hard thing? Because I think the reality of heaven is really attractive to us. It's that place where we will someday feast in perfect communion without all this uncomfortable mixture. But Christ, if we allow his life to teach us, shows that the dinner table in this case, while living in a messy field of a world can be a tremendous opportunity to grow in patience, show God's love, or share truth with the outcasts of the world who might be curious about why we're living our lives in such a different way to begin with. Which, by the way, when I have heard stories of people who've come to faith later on in life, probably 85 to 90% of the time it's in a context like hospitality. which I think is really awesome. I will highlight, however, there's another side to this coin. We have from our Lord the gift of the Lord's Supper. Jesus's table is distinct from the family's table. The Lord's Supper is a place for the people of God. It's a place for those who have sought Jesus Christ in repentance. And Paul says, if someone needs food, that's what homes are for. We can serve them in that way. That's not what we should be thinking of the Lord's Supper as. And one of the things I love about our tradition is that the Lord's Supper is done in a corporate and public manner. I realize I'm saying this in a Presbyterian church, but it's kind of like an altar call, if you think about it. Like, imagine. If you are of God, if you are living a life in repentance, come to the table. But, if you have yet to submit your life to Christ, repent. Talk to the elders about it. Perhaps you can come to the table another time. There's a process there, and I think that's really beautiful, and I assume you had communion last week, was it? Yeah, well, maybe it's something to think about for next month. Maybe that seems odd. In a world where Christ will make this final separation like he talked about, that we have this exclusive meal that we share together, but think about it. This act of feasting on Christ's body and blood, as we say, is in fact a kind of resistance. What we're doing, in part, is saying that what couldn't possibly be true is. We lean into this reality of the resurrection both as a victorious act of salvation and the defeat of the enemy who seems like his kingdom is growing up all around us. And we are a new creation, miraculously. Christ is living in us. The old man has died. The new one is there. We hope for that day when we will finally feast in perfect communion. And I'll end with this. Think back to the command in Leviticus. Not to plant two types of seed in the same field. Why? Why would God say something like that? The short answer is we don't know exactly. There's a rabbinical tradition that puts this law into the category of things that we don't understand but we just do it anyways. But we in the Reformed tradition tend to like to figure out why and understand things a little bit deeper, so commentators and theologians have come up with two good possibilities One, those commands in Leviticus 19.19 indicate that people should not mix those things which God designed to be distinguished. Or two, that the mingling of unlike substances is reserved only for the realm of the holy. Think of the angelic beings with different animals' faces, or the different materials used in the tabernacle. And ultimately what we get there is a distinction between what God can do by virtue of Him being God and what we are asked to do. It's a distinction. So we then zoom back to our parable of the field. So yeah, there's a practical problem at hand. Someone just mixed poisonous grains in with the good and we don't want people dying from their bread, yes. But Jesus is teaching a spiritual lesson to this story. He's teaching us that His gardening skills are far superior to any instincts that we might have as humans in our current situation. And wouldn't He know? When He was born in human flesh, would not have all of us seemed like toxic darnel surrounding a single stalk of wheat? Again, what couldn't possibly have been true was God became man, Immanuel, mixed in amongst people who shouldn't have been worthy to be in God's presence, were not worthy, and He saved us. The God-man was hung on a tree, again, what shouldn't have possibly been but was, and allowed us a path to salvation. So, if bearing with difficult times seems hard, know that perhaps there might be a sentiment there that's justified, and if you can avail yourself of certain circumstances, do. But more than that, know that you have a perfect example of holy patience to look to beyond yourself and anyone else growing up around you. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we can be confused, confounded by what is going on in the world, whether we read in history what has happened or we read in the news what is happening. but please help us to know you and trust that you will provide, that you have provided in your son, and look to you for patience, for endurance, and for comfort. And we thank you for this church, for our brothers and sisters around us, for the community that you have given us, and that ultimately we will enjoy in perfection one day in glory. In your holy name I pray, amen.