Well, good morning. It’s good to be with you this morning. It’s good to be able to fellowship with you as a brother, and it’s also good to be able to fellowship with you and share with you the riches of Jesus Christ. There is no greater message I have than that of the gospel, and it’s proved itself over and over to me through my years. I’ve got more behind me than are ahead of me, and God has been faithful, and it’s an honor to proclaim his word to you this morning. Today, I’m going to pick up where Chad left off last week in his message about the parable of the cross. Chad mentioned that Jesus spoke in parables using examples that people could understand in that context, and in the case of last week’s message, communicating information, truths with agriculture as the backdrop, as the theme. Today, we’re going to look at another parable where Jesus also uses that same parable. It’s the parable of the weeds, or you may have known it as the parable of the, what was it called, the tares and the wheat, or something like that. But it’s in Matthew chapter 13. Matthew chapter 13, so if you have a copy of the scriptures, turn to Matthew chapter 13, and I will begin reading in verse 18. Matthew chapter 13, beginning in 18. These are the words of Jesus. He says, I’m sorry. Matthew chapter 13, verse 24. That was the explanation of the parable from last week, wasn’t it? Anyway, okay, Jesus 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, Then 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? But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let them 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. This is the word of the Lord. Can we pray? Father, I just thank you for the privilege of communicating your word and your truths to these wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray that you would get me out of the way, that you would speak to each person in here, including me. Through your word, as it is proclaimed, your word will not return to you void, Lord, I know that, but will accomplish your desire and achieve the purpose for which you sent it. And we pray and agree that you would do exactly that. In Jesus’ name, Amen. Now, what was Jesus trying to teach his hearers? There were his disciples and there were also other people listening. What was he trying to teach them? What did all this stuff in this parable that Jesus was giving his hearers, what did all this stuff mean? And before we talk about that, let me just give you a side note about the weeds. These were believed to be known as, I think it was called, Darnell. Darnell. Darnell is a type of poisonous ryegrass that grew in that region. And it appeared to look exactly like wheat in its infant stages of growth. But as it grew and matured, it was easy to distinguish between the Darnell and the real wheat. The problem was, as they grew, their root systems would become intertwined. And so if you tried to pull up the weed, you might pull up the wheat with it. And that’s exactly what this farmer understood. He said, no, don’t do that. We’ll wait till the harvest time because when the harvest comes, we’re pulling everything up. We’ll pull the weeds up and we’ll pull the wheat up and separate them. And that’s exactly what happens. But back to the questions. What was Jesus talking about in this parable? Well, we don’t have to look really far. To get the answer, because this is another parable, just like the one Chad gave you last week. This is another parable that Jesus explained. Look in Matthew chapter 13 again, Matthew 13. I closed my Bible inadvertently. And now I’m Matthew 13 and beginning at verses 36. The parable of the weeds explained. Then he left the crowds. The crowds then went to the house and his disciples came to him saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. So Jesus 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. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and 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. So there you have it. And I don’t have the liberty as a teacher or preacher or anything like that. I don’t have the liberty to say, This is what Jesus really meant. Right? No, he said, No, this is what I meant. This is my explanation of the parable. He said, There’s one field. There’s two sowers. One sower is Jesus. One sower is the devil. There are seeds, two seeds. One set of seeds are the sons of the kingdom. The other set of seeds are the seeds of the devil. We’re going to let them grow together and coexist together until the end of the age at which time I will separate them.

And that’s pretty much it.

So, if you want to, we can go to lunch.

Because, you know, we can’t add, you know, we can’t really add to Jesus’ words. It’s a very dangerous thing to do that. But if you will be patient with me for just a few minutes. And because as I was preparing this message and I was reading the text, you know, sometimes when you’re in Bible study, I don’t know if this happens to you, but your mind wanders a little bit. You know, it could be often to something that you just ordered on Amazon. I don’t know. But sometimes my mind will wander too. And I couldn’t help when I was reading this. I couldn’t help thinking a couple things. And I’m going to share those couple things with you. One is, when I read my scriptures about the coming of the Lord, my mind begins to… long for that return. Do you… Can you identify with that? I’m just like, Oh, Father, come back, come, come back. And it’s… If you think about that, it’s an awfully selfish thing to think about. Because why? There are millions and millions of people who have not heard the gospel. Who haven’t heard this gospel. Who haven’t heard this great news. And we are charged as believers to convey, to share that good news, any opportunity we have. But sometimes, we look around at what’s going on, and we are overwhelmed. I would suspect there are a lot of people

who are just overwhelmed. I hear story after story of

mothers who are trying to teach their kids at home and work remotely at the same time. And I’m thinking, how does that get done? You know, our daughters are doing some of that. And it’s just… We’re getting some of that stress and some of that, Oh, this is so difficult to do. And we just… We just become overwhelmed. We become overwhelmed by what we see around us. I get overwhelmed by the weeds, if you will, of wickedness that we see. The weeds of injustice. Everywhere. Injustice. Weeds of hatred and division. Weeds of bad theology. There’s a lot of bad theology out there. And weeds that are in my own life. And I’ll share that with you in just a second. But everything that I see going wrong in this world, this field, if you will, things, by the way, that only the Gospel has an answer for. Nevertheless, I find myself drifting to those final verses in the New Testament found in the book of Revelation, where John is writing his final words. And he’s saying, you know, Jesus is saying, I am coming. I’m coming back. I’m coming quickly. And he’s saying, come, Lord Jesus. And how many times have we prayed that prayer? Come, Lord Jesus. But while it is day, you and I have to continue to faithfully do the works that God has called us to do. We have to be faithful in His calling. Faithful in what He wants us to do. Knowing that that day is coming. And that is our hope.

Folks, I believe, and this is just one guy’s, one old man’s opinion, this world is lacking hope. There’s such a degree of hopelessness permeating every culture, every country, every heart. And the wonderful thing about being a follower of Jesus Christ is to be able to look down, to transcend, to look down on all that we see going on with us. And doing what we can to alleviate as much as we can. Share the Gospel. Share the Gospel as much as we can. But in the midst of that, we are transcended above it and looking down and saying, I am so glad I have this hope. And I don’t have to despair. I have hope. And that hope is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The second thing is, I hope I’m not doing a disservice or harm to the text that we just read.

If I took a few minutes to internalize it. Because again, as I was reading, and I’m not saying the Lord is, you know, the Lord spoke to me and said this and that. I don’t know. But when I was reading that text, the field that Jesus was talking about, I was thinking, could my heart be like that field? Is there stuff being sown into my heart?

Things from Jesus, the truths that I find in His words sown into my heart, things of this world,

this parallel meaning of the field being the world and the field as well being my heart. And as a believer, I also, I have weeds in my heart. And as a follower of Jesus, my desire, and I test myself on this regularly. I have this scenario where Jesus is sitting across the table from me and He’s saying, Bill, what do you want?

My answer is always the same. I want a sinless, perfect life now. I want all the weeds, all the weeds in my heart to be totally destroyed. All the works of the devil, all the works of this world, all the works of my own flesh, I want abolished. I want perfection now. That’s my prayer. But alas, I didn’t really mean to say that, but that’s an old word no one uses anymore. Alas. But alas, as long as we are in this body,

we’re going to experience a battle in the field of our heart. Our heart is going to be a battlefield. And the opponents in that field are going to be the weeds, and the wheat, the flesh, and the spirit. Each of them are going to be competing for nourishment. Right? A weed needs sun and water and everything to grow just like the wheat does. And we call that common grace where God is watering the weeds of the earth just like He’s watering the stuff we like to eat. But we have this struggle within us. And I think you can identify to some extent with that struggle. But let me turn with you to Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. You can turn there too if you want. Galatians 5.

And Paul talks about this struggle. And what he says here in just a couple of verses is expanded. He really pours his heart out in Romans chapter 7. But in Galatians chapter 5 he says this, But I say, Walk in the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to one another to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. So there it is. There it is. There’s the battle. Peter writes in his first letter. You don’t need to turn there. But he said, As sojourners and strangers in the world abstain from those passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. And I wish I could tell you that these internal struggles you’re having in your life

will end on this side of eternity.

But I can’t tell you that because it’s not true. We will continue to have this battle raging, to have this struggle within us until we put this body off and we are in the presence of the Lord. But there’s the extraordinary news. There’s the hope that we have. A day is coming as sure as the sun rose this morning that we didn’t see, by the way. But it rose. A day is coming that you and I will be gathered. One of the things before I was a believer, that attracted me to Christianity was the idea of justice. I, as a young college kid, saw it all. I was in the 60s. The turmoil was unbelievable in 1968 and 69 when I graduated from high school and went down to Auburn.

And I just, I just, I was embroiled by it. But then I heard about this God who will judge everything with a perfect and righteous judgment. I thought, so no one’s getting away with anything? Nope. No one’s getting away with anything. Now, to show you how immature I was, I didn’t think about my own sin. I was just thinking about the injustice in the world. Later, it would, later the Holy Spirit would say, you know, now, we’re going to turn the tables and you’re going to see your own sin as the worst of all. Our sins are not measured so much in the things we do as they are in who we’ve offended. And our sins, our sins offend a holy God. And so, all of the injustice I saw, all the rioting I saw, all the anti-war sentiment, all that stuff, my own sin was just as bad. I just didn’t realize it. There’s a song in Christ alone, I behold man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mockery, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished.

But a day will come, there’s the hope we have, perfect judgment. A day will come when you and I are gathered. You and I will be brought into the everlasting presence of the Lord and we will dwell there forever. We don’t know when that’s going to happen. It’s one of two dates. There will be a time in eternity when we’ll be able to say, well, it was October the 30th when Jesus came back. It’ll be one of two dates. The day of the Lord will be on one of two dates. It’ll be either the day you go and be with him, that is the day you die. That’s the day of the Lord for you. Or the other date will be when he comes back for his return and establishes his kingdom on this earth. We will see both days. And when that happens, all abiding corruption, the war against just about every, the war we fight, almost every waking moment of our lives will be brought to an end. And the scriptures declare that when this happens, we will be like him. That perfect sinless body, that I keep asking for, it’s, I’m going to get it. And that prayer will be answered. We will be gathered. And there will be another gathering. And that’s the most, one of the most unfortunate gatherings of those who have rejected the Lord. Jesus said there will be a gathering.

And we want, we want to take every opportunity to keep people from that, that gathering. And so we, we share the gospel. We proclaim the truth. But we continue to fight this inner battle, don’t we?

Don’t feel like you are alone

in this battle. John Newton, John Newton, it’s one of my favorite pastors. Of course, he lived in the 1700s, so I won’t be able to meet him anytime real soon. But I look forward to meeting him. Reading his biography, he’s just like, yeah, what a great pastor he was. And of course, he gave us the song Amazing Grace, right? But he also, he wrote a bunch of songs.

He, were these songs you wrote, Chad, by the way? Okay. Because Kathy Lindner says, no, no, we didn’t know any of these songs except for the last one. But there were great songs in Kathy Lindner’s own. She said, did he write those? I said, I don’t know. He might have. But John Newton was a hymn writer. He was a great pastor, but he was a heck of a hymn writer. Gave us Amazing Grace, after all. But he also wrote another hymn that I just stumbled upon in a book called Gatsby’s Hymns. And I want to close this out. This morning with a couple verses. I’m not going to sing them because we have no clue what the music was that they used back then. I just wrote the words out, you know. But this hymn has captured my heart. And it starts, the first verse goes something like this. It says, Strange and mysterious is my life. What opposites I feel within. A stable peace, a constant strife. The rule of grace, the power of sin. Too often I am captive led, but often triumph in Christ my head. And he goes on to talk about his prayer life and his Bible reading life, how lame it is. But the last verse was amazing.

Thus differing powers within me strive and grace ends. Sin in turn prevail. I grieve, rejoice, decline, revive, and victory hangs in doubtful scale. But Jesus has this promise passed that grace will overcome at last. That grace will overcome at last. Brother, you need to put that to some music.

Oh, come Lord Jesus. Let’s pray.

Father, we’re so humbled in your presence.

We see our own sin and our own shortcomings. And we oftentimes want to just cry out with Peter when you did that remarkable miracle. And he saw his weakness and he just declared from me, depart from me. Depart from me for I am a sinner. Lord, we don’t want you to leave. We want more of you. We want to dwell in your presence every hour of this day. And we ask God that you would fill us afresh. Lord, I ask you to fill us afresh. I pray that you would take old affections that have been rooted in our hearts and replace them with new affections from you. Oh God, this process. It’s difficult and it’s painful sometimes of growing and getting weeded and getting pruned. But we know it is for your glory and that is what we seek above all. But it is also for our good.

So I pray that you would take old affections from us. And I pray, God, over these wonderful people that you would give them grace and mercy and peace as they journey through this marvelous, marvelous news of the gospel. May we never become indifferent, complacent to it, but always appreciate it and love it and embrace it every waking day. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.