Stephen F. Whaley
Matthew 13.24 - 43
July 18, 2008
A Note to the Reader: Sermons are best received when they are delivered audibly and from the pulpit, because they are written with their ultimate delivery in mind. With this in mind please be merciful in the critique of the writing style and grammatical errors..
- I know you’re all not used to hellfire and brimstone preaching, but it’s kind of hard to avoid when Jesus tells us today ( )
- When I was a young boy my grandfather had purchased about a hundred acres of low-lying wetlands near the Gulf Coast in Old Ocean, Texas. Before he retired as a shrimp boat captain, he spent the weekends clearing the palmetto and underbrush, and small trees…every year it seems that a hurricane would come along and help him clear some of the larger trees as well.
- I’d spend weeks in summer piling up the brush and chopped wood onto heaping fires all around the yard; the Spanish moss crackled throughout the day as the fires burned white hot and high, // what might seem like work today, was play for a boy. At night with fireflies floating all around, we’d roast hot dogs and marshmallows on whittled sticks. After the fire died down we’d call it a day and turn into the cabin.
- One morning I woke up before everyone else; wide awake after a refreshing night of sleep, and I went outside to survey the clearing. What once was a dense, impenetrable quagmire was now a clear shady woodland, where we children could run and play. I walked across the property to the gate and back and observed how strangely cool it was for a summer morning and how all the fires had died, not one was even smoldering.
- I came near one of the piles and notice how pure white the ash was, and how fluffy and soft like white snowflakes it appeared. I don’t know if it was the coolness of morning but without thinking a reach down to run my hand through the soft ash and discovered such a searing sting that can’t be described. I must have screamed, because out ran all the adults still in their pajamas. I spent the rest of the morning with my little hand buttered in a cup of ice water
- I learned something important that day…don’t pick up white ash. Don’t play with fire.
- In the parable of the wheat and tares Jesus gives all of us a similar warning that their will be a purifying fire that will eradicate sin and evil-doers and separate the children of God from the children of the devil.
- The post modern age rejects this idea of a winnowing fire (separating fire), because post-modernity thinks
- That if God exists, God loves us, with a love of complacency that isn’t concerned with our sanctification. Post-modernity is content with allowing humans to be self-centered and rejects the idea that God loves us with a transforming love, a love that changes us, a love that makes us worthy of being called children of God.
- Jesus tells us of a different love, a love that makes the sinner righteous and transforms him into the image of God, it is a love that makes us want to be better, even in the midst of our sinfulness.
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It would help us to understand what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of Heaven.
- Our modern day notion of heaven is that when we die we go to heaven. Well that’s true. But it’s incomplete and it’s not the Gospel that Jesus preached.
- Remembering that “Gospel” means “Good News”
- The gospel or the good news that Jesus preached was this
- The Kingdom of Heaven/Kingdom of God is at hand/has come near to you.
- In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life two phrases are used interchanging.
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- Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God is the same thing.
- But because we are so familiar with these phrases we tend to think we understand what they mean,
- What they meant to Jesus was not only that there is life after death, that you go to heaven when you die;
- It meant that the Reign of God/God’s Kingdom was at hand and has come near to you, right now.
- And that we experience that Reign in this life.
- We experience it through our worship together
- through our fellowship together //
- Through our ministry and service to others we experience the Kingdom of God here on earth.
- When we bring our faith and values to the world around us we experience the Kingdom—in fact we see it more clearly because the values of the Kingdom stand in stark contrast with the values of the world.
- We receive a foretaste of that heavenly banquet when we commune with God at the altar, // in this life.
- You are already living in the Kingdom of Heaven. Living la vida loca.
- St. Paul tells us the same thing, “Don’t you know that you have been baptized into the death of Christ… So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
- The Kingdom of Heaven is alive, now.
- So today when Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to seeds being sown in the field…he’s talking about seeds planted today, and tomorrow and the next day.
- Seeds will be sown in a field, and they are good seeds sown by the Son of Man, but weeds grow up with them. Your are his seeds, good seeds, but there are weeds among us and within us.
- Those weeds are planted by the devil.
- The word Jesus uses here for weed is a darnel—some of you gardeners may know of this plant.
- The darnel is a weed that when it grows looks like wheat,
- But when it matures it changes color. It’s difficult to distinguish the two until harvest.
- So he tells the disciples that field (which is the world) will be a mixed bag of righteousness and sin, of good and evil.
- Around us and inside of us coupled with the Good Seed is the weed.
- The weeds interfere and choke our spiritual lives, gets in the way and detract from our life in Christ.
- For those who are the children of God he will not separate the weeds for fear of harming the wheat as it matures and grows.—this is why there is suffering—because it is through struggle that the wheat grows stronger.
- This should be of sign for us to practice patience with one another and our own selves.
- through that struggle whether we are frustrated at the world for not being fair,
- frustrated at our neighbors for doing wrong,
- or frustrated with ourselves for not doing right.
- We must be patient
- The wheat needs to mature and be cultivated, plants must be pruned
- There is sin in the world; there is sin in the church and in each of us.
- That sin must be cut out, but it takes time patience,
- It is patience born out of faithfulness to God who brings things right in our hearts and minds and in the lives of the people around us.
- The kind of patience that God alone can give us. è
- Eventually will cleanse us.
- But when patience has run its course there will be a time when the final causes of Sin and those whose refuse to surrender their evil deeds will be burned and consumed by a refining fire
- When goldsmiths or workers of precious metals melt their intrinsic elements, the impurities are freed from the metal and either burn away or float to the top where they are scraped off.
- You and I will find that refining fire is a reprieve from the frustrations and sadness of this world rather than our condemnation or judgment.
- And we will find that our lives, which had been a quagmire of confusion, sadness, heartache, and frustration, will, through faithful and persistent patience and reliance on the Lord, have been cleared by his fire.
- The Kingdom of Heaven will be a peaceful clear woodland where God’s children can run and play.
He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” 28He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” 29But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’
31 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’
33 He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with* three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’
34 Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet:*
‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’*
36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ 37He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man;
38the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
If you have comments or clarifying questions please contact me via email at fr.stephensfa@sbcglobal.net
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