Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Wheat and the Tares: Divine Patience in the Mystery Kingdom (Matthew 13:24–30)

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The Wheat and the Tares: Divine Patience in the Mystery Kingdom (Matthew 13:24–30) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed thinking.
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  Today we have a topic that I think genuinely keeps people up
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  at night. It's the elephant in the room,
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  or maybe I should say the elephant in the Pew.
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  We are taking a serious, hard look at the parable of the weeds
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  from Matthew chapter 13. It is a text that addresses what
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  we might call a scandal, and I don't use that word lightly.
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  It is the scandal of the mixed field.
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  Yeah, let's just get right into it.
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  It's that tension we all feel. If you've been a Christian for
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  more than, I don't know, about 5 minutes, you feel it.
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  Oh, for sure. We believe Jesus is king.
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  We believe the Kingdom has come. We have this theology of victory
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  and sovereignty and yet we look around the world, or worse, we
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  look inside the church, and it is a wreck.
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  It is messy. It is really messy.
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  There is evil right alongside the good.
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  There are scandals. There are hypocrites.
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  There are people who say one thing on Sunday and do the exact
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  opposite on Monday. Right.
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  And the question that naturally bubbles up is, if Jesus is in
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  charge, why does it look like this?
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  Does something go wrong? That is the core tension, and
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  usually when people face that contradiction, the perfect King
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  versus the Messy Church, they tend to fall into one of three
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  reactions. And honestly, none of them are
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  healthy. I can guess a few of them.
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  The first one has to be despair, right?
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  You see the mess, You see the pastor on the news for
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  embezzlement. You just think, well, it's all
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  fake. Precisely that is the reaction
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  of the cynic. They see the wounds and conclude
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  that the wheat isn't real either.
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  Or they decide that the gospel doesn't actually have the power
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  to change lives, because look at these people.
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  It's a total collapse of. Hope it is.
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  But the second reaction is the opposite.
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  It is severity. It is a kind of hyper zeal.
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  Burn it all down approach. In a way, it is the person who
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  wants to grab a weed whacker or a flamethrower and immediately
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  purge everyone who looks even slightly suspicious.
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  It is the desire for a pure church right now, by human
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  force. You see this on social media all
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  the time. The hunting for heretics, The
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  obsession with rooting out anyone who steps out of line.
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  It feels good though. It feels righteous.
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  It feels incredibly righteous. That's why it's so dangerous.
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  And then the third reaction. Your missiveness.
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  Right. This is the person who looks at
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  the mess, shrugs and says, well, nobody's perfect.
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  We're all just messy people loving Jesus, and they use the
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  mixture as an excuse to tolerate sin.
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  They normalize the evil. They do.
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  They stop calling weeds weeds and just call them alternative
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  floras. So our mission today, as we go
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  through this stack of sources, is to see how Jesus rejects all
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  three of those options. He doesn't want us to despair.
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  He doesn't want us to start a holy war, and he certainly
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  doesn't want us to just pretend the weeds aren't there.
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  No, he offers something else. He offers a doctrine of
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  sovereign patients, and to get there, we're going to look at
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  the text as Matthew 13, but we're also going to dig into
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  some fascinating historical context regarding Roman
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  agriculture, which is way more intense than you'd think.
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  It really is. And, of course, the theological
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  framework of the Westminster Confession regarding Providence.
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  I was reading through the notes on the Roman agriculture stuff
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  and my jaw dropped. It changes how you read the
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  whole story, but let's start at the beginning.
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  Matthew 13, verses 24 and 25. The parable of the sower has
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  just happened, and now Jesus shifts gears.
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  The Kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his
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  field. Right off the bat we have to
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  pause on the setup because every word here is doing work.
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  Jesus establishes the King's claim.
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  OK, the text says he sowed kalon sperm a good seed and he did it
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  unto Agros O2 in his field. His field that possessive
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  pronouns seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
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  It is huge. It tells us that the field isn't
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  a public park. It isn't an abandoned lot or a
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  Commons where anyone can plant whatever they want.
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  It belongs to the master by right.
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  So from the very first sentence, we know who is in charge.
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  Yes. So when we see what happens
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  later, the weeds and the chaos, we have to remember that the
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  territory itself is not in question.
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  The Kingdom is not an experiment that might fail, it is a
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  rightful administration of the King's property.
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  And the seed is good. I think that is important
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  because when things go wrong later, our instinct is to blame
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  the materials. We think maybe the gospel wasn't
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  presented right, or maybe the church structure is flawed.
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  Sure, Or maybe the people weren't good enough.
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  Right, but Jesus starts by saying no, the seed was good.
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  And this touches on a vital piece of Reformed theology.
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  The good seed represents the sons of the Kingdom.
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  As Jesus explains later, they are wheat because the Master
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  planted them. Not because they planted
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  themselves. Made them plant themselves.
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  Wait, hold on, this sounds like that theological concept.
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  What's the word? Or it's all one sided?
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  You're thinking of monarchism. Monarchism.
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  That's it. Break that down for a second in
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  this context. So mono means one, ergon means
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  work. Monarchism is the teaching that
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  regeneration, the starting of spiritual life, is the work of
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  God alone. OK, in the parable, the doesn't
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  decide to be wheat. It doesn't cultivate itself.
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  It is wheat because the sower put it there.
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  Grace initiates life. So before the trouble starts,
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  the parable anchors us. In this reality, God is the
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  actor, the field is his, and the seed is good.
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  It's the foundation, everything else is built on that.
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  OK, so we have the baseline, God is good, the seed is good, the
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  field is his. But then the plot twist verse
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  25. But while men were sleeping, his
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  enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.
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  The disruption. Now I have to ask about the
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  sleeping part while men were sweeping.
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  Is Jesus taking a jab at the disciples here?
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  Is he saying if you guys had just stayed awake and prayed
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  more we wouldn't have this mess? Because that's how I've heard it
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  preached before. Like the church fell asleep and
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  that's why the culture is bad. That is a very common reading,
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  especially in revivalist circles, but if we look at the
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  grammar and the context, it is probably not a rebuke of sin.
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  Oh, really? Think about it.
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  Sleep is a natural necessity. Humans have to sleep.
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  Farmers have to sleep. If you don't sleep, you die.
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  So the farmer wasn't being negligent.
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  No, the sleeping men here likely represent human finitude.
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  We cannot be vigilant 24 hours a day.
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  We have limits. We are creatures.
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  So it is not necessarily that they were lazy, it is that they
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  were human and the enemy exploits that.
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  Exactly. The enemy strikes when the
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  church is in its natural rhythms, perhaps comfortable,
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  perhaps just resting. It highlights that the enemy is
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  an opportunist. He works in the dark.
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  He doesn't come at high noon when everyone is watching.
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  No. And Speaking of the enemy
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  working, this is where we get to the crime.
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  The sources point out that what the enemy did here wasn't just a
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  random act of vandalism, right? It wasn't just some kids
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  throwing seeds over a fence. It was a specific legal crime
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  called Super Seminacio. Super Seminacio.
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  OK, I've never heard that word before.
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  Yes. In Roman law, and in the ancient
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  Near East generally, this was a known codified crime.
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  It was malicious, oversewing malicious.
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  You would take your enemy's field, which had already been
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  plowed, fertilized, and sown with weed.
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  They'd done all the hard work and you would sneak in at night
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  and sow weeds right on top of it.
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  That is sow petty. It is incredibly petty, but it's
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  also devastating. It destroys the livelihood of
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  the farmer. It was such a problem that Roman
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  jurists actually had to write specific laws about how to
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  handle the damages. It wasn't a prank, it was
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  economic warfare. It feels very personal.
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  It is personal, and that connects to the theology here.
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  The parable implies that evil in the world and in the church is
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  not just an accident. Liberal theology sometimes
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  suggests that evil is just a lack of education or bad
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  environment. If we just fix the social
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  structures, if we just fund the schools better, people will be
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  good. Like we're just blank slates
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  that got a little dusty. Right.
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  But this parable says no, there is an enemy.
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  There is active personal demonic sabotage at work.
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  The weeds are there because someone intended them to be
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  there to ruin the harvest. So it's deliberate.
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  It is personal malice. That actually makes it scarier.
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  It's not just entropy, it's sabotage.
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  Correct, we are in a conflict. Let's talk about the weapon of
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  choice here, the weed. The text calls it Zezania.
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  Now I grew up wedding gardens. Usually you can tell what a weed
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  is. It looks different.
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  It has big ugly leaves or thorns.
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  Right, it stands out. But the sources say Zezania
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  isn't your average dandelion. No, it is almost certainly what
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  is known as bearded Darnell, or Lolium temulantum.
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  And here is the kicker. And This is why the Roman
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  farmers hated it so much. Yeah, in the early stages of
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  growth, before the grain heads appear, Darnell looks almost
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  identical to wheat. Identical like you couldn't tell
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  them apart. Unless you were a highly trained
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  botanist with a magnifying glass, probably not.
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  Botanically. The blade structure, the color,
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  the way it shoots up, it is a mimic.
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  It's a counterfeit. It's a counterfeit.
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  That changes the whole vibe of the story.
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  The enemy didn't sow thorns or thistles.
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  No, if I walk into a wheat field and see a big thorny Bush, I
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  know it doesn't belong there. I can chop it down.
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  I don't feel bad about it. Exactly.
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  But if the enemy sews a plant that mimics the wheat, you have
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  a crisis of identification. And think about the theological
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  application here. Satan doesn't usually sew people
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  into the church who are wearing signs that say I hate God or I
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  am here to destroy you. Right, he sews people who look
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  like Christians. They look like us.
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  They talk like us. They use the right vocabulary.
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  They know the words covenant and justification.
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  They raise their hands during the songs they put.
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  Money in the offering plate. They might even be leaders.
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  They are false brethren. They are visually
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  indistinguishable from the elect for a certain period of time.
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  That is terrifying, actually. It means the person sitting next
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  to me in the Pew could be Zezania.
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  Or I mean, could I be? No, let's not spiral yet.
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  What's a super thought? But the sources mentioned
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  something else about Darnell that I found fascinating.
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  It is not just that it takes up space.
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  It's actually dangerous to eat. Right.
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  Yes, this is the nasty secret of Lolium temulentum.
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  The plant itself is bad enough, but it is often infected with a
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  fungus called ergot. If you grind that up with the
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  wheat and bake it into bread, it is toxic.
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  In the ancient world, they called it drunken wheat because
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  it caused dizziness, nausea and hallucinations.
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  Hallucinations. Severe ones.
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  In fact. Some historians have linked
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  ergot poisoning to events like the Salem witch trials or the
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  Great Fear in France. People would eat contaminated
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  bread and start seeing things convulsing or acting paranoid.
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  That's incredible. So the enemy isn't just trying
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  to crowd out the wheat, he is trying to poison the community.
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  That is the danger of false brethren and false teaching.
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  It intoxicates the church. It makes the community dizzy.
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  Think about when bad doctrine sweeps through a church.
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  People stop thinking clearly. They get confused.
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  They get spiritual nausea. It isn't benign.
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  It's a hallucinogen. That is such a vivid image,
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  Drunken wheat. It explains so much about how
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  chaotic church splits can feel, everyone acting irrational.
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  Exactly. It's poison.
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  We have the field, the good seed, the enemy, and this mimic
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  weed. Then comes the next beat in the
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  story, the crisis of observation.
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  Verse 26 says so. When the plants came up and bore
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  grain, then the weeds appeared also.
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  This is the principle of delayed clarity.
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  Delayed clarity. I like that.
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  The mixture was there the whole time.
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  The roots were going down, the stocks were going up, but it
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  wasn't visible until the fruit came.
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  Fruit reveals the nature of the tree.
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  Exactly. You can fake the blade, you can
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  fake the stock, but you cannot fake the grain.
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  Wheat produces a head of grain that boughs over when it's ripe.
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  Darnell stands straight up and has these black seeds.
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  So time tells the story. Time is the necessary tool for
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  discernment. You can't rush it.
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  And when that distinction finally becomes visible, when
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  the hypocrisy breaks the surface, it shocks the servants.
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  They. Freak out.
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  I love this part because it feels so modern.
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  In verse 27 they run to the master and say master did you
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  not sow good seed in your field? How then, does it have weeds?
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  Listen to the tone of that question.
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  It borders on an accusation. It does.
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  It sounds like you said you handled this.
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  You said you bought the premium seed.
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  What did you do wrong? Did you cheat that on us?
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  It is the psychological instinct to blame Providence, God if you
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  are good and if you are all powerful.
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  Why is this mess here? We do that all the time.
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  We see this in the church whenever a major scandal breaks.
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  When a famous leader falls, people immediately start
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  questioning the foundations. Is the gospel true?
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  Is God actually in control? Why did God let him get away
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  with it for so long? And immediately after the
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  accusation, they moved to a solution.
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  They don't even wait for an answer.
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  Really. Verse 28?
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  Do you want us to go and gather them?
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  There it is, the instinct for control.
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  Let me fix it. Let me get in there and RIP this
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  out right now. It is the temptation of the holy
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  war. It is the desire to purge the
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  evil now and notice the assumption the servants are
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  making. What's that?
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  They assume two things. First, they assume they are
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  competent to do it. They assume they can tell the
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  difference perfectly. Right, they see a few weeds and
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  think I know exactly who is who. And second, they assume they can
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  remove the weed without hurting the wheat.
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  They're driven by zeal, but it is a zeal without knowledge.
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  They want a clean field and they want it immediately.
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  They can't stand the tension of the mixture.
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  I feel that, though. I think we all feel that.
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  When you see injustice or hypocrisy in the church, you
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  want it gone. You want to be the one to say
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  get out. Of course it feels righteous.
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  It feels like you're defending God's.
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  Honor. It feels incredibly righteous.
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  That is why it is such a dangerous temptation.
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  It masquerades as holiness. I am just being zealous for the
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  Lord, but the Master sees it differently.
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  He sees the bigger picture. He sees it as reckless.
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  That brings us to the Master's prohibition, verse 29.
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  He says no, just a flat no, lest in gathering the weeds you root
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  up the wheat along with them. This is the agricultural reality
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  clashing with the servant's zeal.
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  We have to visualize the soil here.
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  Below the surface, the roots of the Darnell and the roots of the
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  wheat are intertwined. They're tangled.
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  They're tangled together. It's a mess down there.
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  You cannot RIP one up without tearing the roots of the other.
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  So the master saying I care more about protecting the wheat than
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  I do about immediately destroying the weeds.
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  That is the heart of it. It is a pastoral wisdom.
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  Think about what this means for the church.
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  There are people in the church who are immature Christians.
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  They might look a bit messy. They might be struggling with
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  sin. They might have bad theology on
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  some points. To a zealous judge mental eye,
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  they might look like weeds. The bruised greed.
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  Exactly. If you create a church culture
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  that is obsessed with purging and hunting down hypocrites, you
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  are going to crush those tender believers.
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  You were going to RIP them up. You'll create an environment of
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  fear where no one can admit they are struggling.
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  You will. This reminds me of the historic
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  Oracle warning in the sources about the Donatists.
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  I feel like we can't talk about this parable without talking
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  about them. Can you unpack that whole
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  situation for us? Who were these guys?
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  So we have to go back to North Africa in the 4th and 5th
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  centuries. This was after the great
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  persecutions by the Roman Empire under Emperor Diocletian.
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  The persecution was brutal and the authorities had a specific
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  tactic. They would demand that Christian
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  leaders hand over their copies of the Scriptures to be burned.
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  Burn the books. A classic move.
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  Right. And if you handed them over, you
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  were called a traditor, which is where we get the word traitor.
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  It means one who hands over. OK.
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  Now, after the persecution ended, the church had a problem.
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  Some bishops and priests had cracked under the pressure.
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  They had handed over the books. Now they wanted to come back.
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  They wanted to lead services again.
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  And I assume some people weren't cool with that.
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  The Donatists were definitely not cool with that.
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  They were the rigorous. They said no, if you were a
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  traditor, you are out. You are a weed.
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  A permanent weed. And furthermore, and this is the
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  key point, if a traditor baptized you, your baptism
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  doesn't count. If he gave you communion, it
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  wasn't the body and blood of Christ.
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  Wow, so they believe the validity of the sacrament
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  depended on the purity of the priest?
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  Exactly right. They wanted a pure church.
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  They wanted a field with 0 weeds.
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  They said the true church cannot coexist with these traitors.
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  And Augustine, Saint Augustine, he stepped into this ring,
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  right? Augustine was the heavyweight
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  champion here. He argued against the Donatists.
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  Using this very logic from Matthew 13.
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  He argued for the corpus permixtum, the mixed body.
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  The mixed body. He said that until the end of
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  the age, the visible church will contain both wheat and weeds.
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  He wasn't saying the traditors did a good.
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  Thing though, no, of course not. He wasn't excusing the sin, but
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  he was saying that the validity of the church comes from Christ,
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  not from the moral perfection of the human ministers.
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  Right. If you try to separate the weeds
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  by human force before the harvest, you destroy the church.
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  You end up with a schism. And that's what happened.
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  The Donatus split off and became this angry, isolated sect that
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  eventually withered away. And usually the people doing the
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  purging turn out to be not so great themselves.
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  There is a bit of irony there. History bears that out.
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  When you try to usurp the role of the angels, you usually end
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  up acting like a devil. You become hard, unloving and
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  proud. Which is ironically very weed
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  like behavior. So we have the prohibition.
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  Don't RIP them up. But then what do we do?
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  We just sit there. We come to the theology of the
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  interval. The command is let both grow
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  together until the harvest. Let both grow.
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  This is the doctrine of Providence again, specifically
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  from the Westminster Confession Chapter 5.
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  God permits the tares. He isn't the author of an evil.
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  Remember, an enemy did this, but he sovereignly permits it to
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  remain for a time. Why?
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  That's the question. Why let the poison grow next to
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  the food? For his own glory and for the
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  testing and sanctification of the wheat.
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  Living alongside the weeds forces the wheat to stand firm
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  against the wind. It forces the wheat to rely on
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  the sower. If the field was perfect, we
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  might forget we need grace. We might the friction of the
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  mixed field actually strengthens the true believers.
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  This brings up a really important distinction.
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  You mentioned earlier the visible church versus the
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  invisible church. I feel like this is a concept
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  that solves a lot of headaches. If you really get it, it is.
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  Essential This is classic Reformed ecclesiology.
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  The visible church is everyone you can see on Sunday morning.
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  It includes everyone who is on the membership role, everyone
• 18:42
  who professes faith and their children.
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  But we know, based on this parable, that the visible church
• 18:48
  contains both wheat and tares. It is a mixed bag.
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  And the invisible church. The invisible Church is the
• 18:55
  elect. It is the people who are truly
• 18:57
  regenerated, who have true faith known only to God.
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  Known only to God. That is the key.
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  The mistake the servants and the Donatists to make is trying to
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  force the visible church to be identical to the invisible
• 19:10
  church. Right now they want to look at
• 19:12
  the crowd and say I know for a fact 100% of you are saved.
• 19:16
  They want to see the roots, but we don't have X-ray vision.
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  We lash. Omniscience.
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  We cannot see the heart. We can see actions.
• 19:23
  We can see confessions, but we cannot see the secret standing
• 19:26
  of a soul before God. Now I have to play devil's
• 19:28
  advocate here. Or maybe just voice the concern
• 19:30
  of the zealous listener who is shouting at their phone right
• 19:33
  now. Go for it.
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  If we say let both grow, does that mean we just tolerate
• 19:37
  everything? Does that mean if there's a guy
• 19:39
  in the church who is openly embezzling money or sleeping
• 19:43
  around, we just say, well, wheat and tears, brother, let's grow
• 19:46
  together because that sounds like a disaster.
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  Absolutely not, and I'm glad you brought that up, because that is
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  the danger of the permissive reaction we talked about
• 19:53
  earlier. The sources are very emphatic on
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  this. This parable is not a
• 19:57
  prohibition against church discipline.
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  OK, explain the difference. How did those two things work
• 20:03
  together? We have other texts for
• 20:05
  discipline. First Corinthians 5, for
• 20:07
  example, tells us to remove the wicked man from among us when
• 20:11
  there is open, unrepentant, scandalous sin.
• 20:14
  Purge the evil person from among you.
• 20:16
  So how do we square let them grow with Purge the evil person?
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  The difference is the scope and the finality.
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  Church discipline is about judging fruit, outward actions
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  that are clear and unrepentant. It is a remedial measure.
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  Remedial. We put someone out of the
• 20:32
  fellowship to bring them to repentance or to protect the
• 20:35
  flock from immediate harm. It's like a quarantine.
• 20:38
  But it's not a death sentence. Exactly.
• 20:40
  Uprooting the tears in the parable refers to a final
• 20:44
  judgmental separation, trying to determine someone's eternal
• 20:48
  destiny and cast them out of the Kingdom entirely.
• 20:51
  Right when we discipline someone, we aren't saying you
• 20:53
  are definitely going to hell. We are saying your life right
• 20:57
  now does not match your confession and you cannot come
• 21:00
  to the Lord's table until you repent.
• 21:02
  That makes sense. We can say you can't be a member
• 21:05
  right now, but we can't say we know God hates you, right?
• 21:08
  We can judge conduct, we cannot judge the Hearts final state.
• 21:12
  Also remember a botanical weed can never change into wheat.
• 21:15
  Yeah, that's a good. Point A dandelion is always a
• 21:17
  dandelion, but a human weed, a person who is currently in sin
• 21:22
  or unbelief can be converted. That's a huge point.
• 21:25
  If you uproot them and kick them out of the sphere of the gospel,
• 21:28
  if you totally shun them, you might be cutting them off from
• 21:31
  the very thing they could save them.
• 21:33
  Augustine made this point, too. We tolerate the mixture because
• 21:37
  today's weed might be tomorrow's weed.
• 21:39
  So this letting grow isn't permissiveness, it is
• 21:42
  eschatological patience. It is living in the tension of
• 21:46
  the already, not yet. The Kingdom is here, but the
• 21:50
  consummation is not. It's restraint.
• 21:53
  It is restraint. It means the Church does not use
• 21:56
  the sword. We don't use civil force to
• 21:59
  cleanse the world of unbelievers.
• 22:00
  We don't launch inquisitions. But this interval doesn't last
• 22:04
  forever. The clock is ticking.
• 22:05
  That brings us to the harvest. The text says until the harvest.
• 22:09
  That until is the most ominous word in the parable for the weed
• 22:12
  and the most hopeful word for the wheat.
• 22:15
  The mixture is temporary. The mess is not eternal.
• 22:17
  And who are the Reapers? 1st 30 tells us clearly, and
• 22:21
  Jesus explains it later. The reapers are angels.
• 22:25
  Not us, not the pastor, not this decision, not the most pious guy
• 22:28
  in the church. Angels.
• 22:30
  This is a crucial distinction. We are witnesses.
• 22:33
  They are the executioners. So we don't have the job
• 22:35
  description for that, no. God has a specialized team for
• 22:38
  the final separation and we are not on it.
• 22:41
  Angels have a perception that we lack.
• 22:43
  They act on the direct command of the Son of Man.
• 22:45
  And there are two destinies. Let's look at the first one, the
• 22:47
  fire. Gather the weeds 1st and bind
• 22:50
  them in bundle to be burned. It is a stark image.
• 22:54
  It is a distinct rejection of modern sentimentality or
• 22:58
  universalism. Yeah, you hear people say, well
• 23:00
  in the end God is love, so he will just hug everyone and it
• 23:03
  will be fine. The weeds will just turn into
• 23:05
  flowers. Jesus doesn't say that here.
• 23:07
  He speaks of a furnace of fire, of weeping and gnashing of
• 23:10
  teeth. The judgement is real, it is
• 23:13
  personal and it is terrible. It's final the.
• 23:16
  Tares, the sons of the Evil 1, face a definitive rejection.
• 23:20
  They're removed from the Kingdom.
• 23:21
  It's interesting that they are gathered into bundles.
• 23:23
  It's like they are grouped together in their rebellion.
• 23:26
  It creates a sense of finality. They're bound.
• 23:28
  They can no longer mimic the wheat.
• 23:30
  The masquerade is over. But then the barn.
• 23:32
  But gather the wheat into my barn, I.
• 23:34
  Love that image. A barn is safe.
• 23:37
  It is dry. It is where you put the things
• 23:38
  you value. It implies protection from the
• 23:41
  elements. It is a picture of homecoming
• 23:43
  insecurity. And notice again the possessive
• 23:45
  My barn. Just like it was his field, it
• 23:48
  is his barn. The master knows his own.
• 23:51
  And here is the assurance. Not one grain of wheat is lost.
• 23:56
  Even if that wheat was growing right next to a toxic weed, even
• 23:59
  if its roots were tangled, even if it was bruised and bent by
• 24:02
  the wind. If it is wheat, it makes it to
• 24:05
  the barn. The Reapers don't miss any.
• 24:08
  The sources mentioned verse 43 in this context.
• 24:11
  Then the righteous will shine like the sun.
• 24:13
  That is the gospel connection. Why do they shine?
• 24:16
  Not because they were shinier than the weeds on their own
• 24:18
  merits. Remember, they looked identical
• 24:20
  for a long time. They shine because they have the
• 24:23
  imputed righteousness of Christ. They are the sons of the
• 24:26
  Kingdom. Christ is the sower and He is
• 24:28
  the Lord of the harvest. He starts the work and he
• 24:32
  finishes it. So what does this all mean for
• 24:34
  us today? We have walked through the text,
• 24:36
  the history, the weird botany, the theology.
• 24:39
  Now we need to land the plane. Let's talk to the different
• 24:42
  listeners out there, OK? First, the zealous listener, the
• 24:45
  one who was really frustrated with the state of the church,
• 24:47
  who just wants to clean house. To the zealous listener, the
• 24:50
  text says repent of the desire to play God.
• 24:54
  That is a hard word, but it is necessary.
• 24:57
  Stop trying to fix the church by hunting down every hypocrite.
• 25:02
  Recognize that your desire for immediate purity might actually
• 25:05
  be an idol of control. You want to be the king, but
• 25:09
  there is only one king. And you're not him.
• 25:11
  And you're not him. And realize that purity culture,
• 25:14
  when it becomes harsh and suspicious, often hurts the
• 25:17
  weak. It tramples the weed.
• 25:19
  Put down the side. It's not your tool.
• 25:21
  That is hard to hear, but necessary.
• 25:23
  What about the cynical listener, the one who has been burned by
• 25:26
  church hurt, or who reads the news about the scandals and
• 25:28
  thinks it's all a sham? To the cynic, the text says,
• 25:31
  don't be shocked. Jesus predicted this.
• 25:33
  He told us 2000 years ago that the field would look like this.
• 25:36
  It's not a bug, it's a feature of this age.
• 25:38
  Exactly. The presence of weeds doesn't
• 25:40
  mean the master has lost control.
• 25:42
  It means the enemy is active, but the master is patient.
• 25:46
  Don't let the hypocrites Dr. You away from the sower.
• 25:49
  The wheat is real, even if the weeds are loud.
• 25:51
  That is a good line. The wheat is real even if the
• 25:54
  weeds are loud. Because the weeds are loud, they
• 25:57
  take up all the oxygen in the room.
• 25:58
  They do, but the barn is waiting for the wheat.
• 26:01
  And for the fearful listener, maybe the person who worries am
• 26:05
  IA weed Is the church going to survive?
• 26:07
  Is everything going to fall apart?
• 26:08
  Take comfort, the master is protecting the wheat.
• 26:12
  The only reason the reapers haven't come yet is because he
• 26:15
  is waiting for the full harvest. His patience is salvation.
• 26:20
  He knows you. If you trust in Christ, you are
• 26:23
  his wheat and you will be gathered into his barn.
• 26:26
  You are secure not because of your perfection, but because of
• 26:29
  His ownership. And finally, evangelism.
• 26:31
  This parable actually changes how we view evangelism, doesn't
• 26:34
  it? It does.
• 26:35
  It shifts us from a war footing to a mission footing.
• 26:38
  Since we cannot uproot the tares, our only option is to
• 26:40
  evangelize them. As I mentioned, a botanical weed
• 26:43
  can't change, but a spiritual weed, a human being, can be
• 26:46
  transformed by the gospel. We live among them, we grow
• 26:49
  among them, and we bear witness to them, praying that the Spirit
• 26:52
  turns tares into wheat before the harvest comes.
• 26:55
  That is a powerful perspective. Instead of seeing the world or
• 26:59
  the fake Christians as enemies to be destroyed, we see them as
• 27:03
  a mission field. We do.
• 27:04
  We are planted next to them for a reason.
• 27:06
  Exactly. The field is the world.
• 27:08
  We are planted here to shine. Well, we have covered a massive
• 27:11
  amount of ground. We have gone from Roman
• 27:14
  agricultural crimes to the end of the age.
• 27:17
  As we wrap up this deep dive into the parable of the weeds,
• 27:21
  what is the big take away? The summary is this.
• 27:24
  We need to have eyes of faith regarding the messiness of the
• 27:27
  world. We need to trust the sower's
• 27:30
  goodness and the King's timing. We are not the judges, we are
• 27:33
  the crop. Our job is to grow, to bear
• 27:36
  fruit, and to endure with patience.
• 27:38
  And I want to leave our listeners with a final
• 27:40
  provocative thought, something that wasn't explicitly in the
• 27:42
  discussion but lingers around the edges.
• 27:45
  We have been talking about wheat and weeds as these fixed
• 27:48
  categories in the story, but I want to ask you, the listener,
• 27:52
  which one are you? That is the ultimate question.
• 27:54
  Because the only difference really is the nature of the life
• 27:57
  inside you. It's not about how tall you
• 28:00
  stand or how green your leaves are.
• 28:01
  It's about the seed the. Source of life.
• 28:04
  And consider the mercy of the delay.
• 28:06
  If you are sitting there thinking I might be a weed or
• 28:08
  I'm not sure. Remember that the only reason
• 28:11
  the fire hasn't fallen yet is that the master is waiting.
• 28:15
  The delay is an opportunity. It is.
• 28:17
  It is a call to examine ourselves and to rest in the
• 28:20
  sower. Thank you for joining us on this
• 28:22
  deep dive. This has been reformed thinking.
• 28:25
  Until next time.