The Parable of the Weeds and Holy Water
Good Morning Friends,
My apologies for yesterday’s mixture of metaphors. Jesus makes it pretty clear that there will be both good people and bad in the world living side by side…living sometimes within the same person. But there is no avoiding this mixture until the end. The metaphors follow. In response today we work at discovering practical ways of dealing with the conflicts caused by the reality in which we live as we study another parable and honestly, this may be one of the most practical parables that Jesus ever told. First, it teaches us that there will always be evil opposition in the world, there will always be those who try their best to destroy the work of the Kingdom of God, the work of the Church. Unfortunately, as the parable points out, some of those who try to destroy the work of the church are in the church. I touched on that situation last week related to the problem of sexual and power abuse of the religious leaders around the world. Fair warning, today we continue to combine metaphors as we study The Parable of the Weeds and Holy Water.
Scripture: but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
John 4:14 (NRSV)
Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'”
Matthew 13:24-30 (NIV)
The Parable of the Weeds Explained: Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Matthew 13:36-43 (NIV)
Message: For just about anything to grow you need water and light. It is pretty straight forward. We get both for it rains on the just and unjust and the Sun beats down where it will. Maybe that is why the number one metaphor in the Bible has got to be “water” with “light” a close second. For a few days now, I have been thinking about a metaphor good enough to represent the many ramifications of priest’s pedophilia and child abuse. One analogy is ripples in a pond. Abusing a child is akin to throwing a stone in a pond — it sends out widening ripples impacting family, relatives, friends, believers, society. So the ripple effect means that abuse of one child ultimately creates many victims. But today’s parable has a better metaphor. Here is the picture…Kingdom Seeds and the Devil’s Weeds. The problem is that weeds confuse the appearance of who is a believer and who is not. At least at first. We’ve heard Jesus say it before in Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” The truth is that there are a lot of pretending Christians and they impede the growth of believers tangling the roots of productive plants. Not everything that grows is good. People who are not Christians can get you involved in all sorts of misguided activities robing the soil of nutrients. They can stick you like sandspurs. The thing is that weeds do not produce fruit and for weeds like the sandspur, they can produce pain in the form of little pointed seeds that perennially return to harm us. Thankfully we can recognize them once the seed head is formed and before they reseed. So too a non- believer can be known eventually by the fact they produce no change in character that shows they are a Christian. But like weeds, non-believers plant many seeds – seeds of mistrust, seeds of iniquity, and seeds of apathy that if allowed to take root will harm us. The best thing to do is be healthy ourselves. Be patient with God as He grows your life. You may only see the seed, He sees the beautiful plant, and its fruit that will come. That is why pulling out weeds in your own life is a better approach than pulling out weeds in God’s garden. Harvest time will come and so will the fire.
Pray we know that if we ignore God we will harvest only weeds. Pray that we are being rooted and established in love. Pray we do not allow the weeds of faithlessness and selfishness to creep in and grow in our hearts. Pray we weed out anxieties. Pray we weed out wicked ways. Pray we weed out iniquities, transgressions and sins. Pray with repentance as God weeds out the garden of our souls….as God produces a great and transformational harvest. Pray we realize that weeds, if not controlled, will take over. Pray we inspect our own lives, but not condemn the lives of others. Pray we have faith that God will deal with the sin of others in time. Pray we encourage, exhort where necessary, but not condemn. Pray we realize that the mission is to turn water into wine and wheat into bread.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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