A Hope Worth Hoping For

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to.

St. Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 -30 and 36 -43. 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 then 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? He said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat all 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. And then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his 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. The good seed is the children 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 clothes of the age. The reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the clothes 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. In the name of Jesus. If you are familiar with the way the New Testament kind of gives the three main pillars, if you would, of the Christian faith, they are described in Scripture as faith, hope, and love.

Faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. It is this faith that justifies. And this faith is given as a gift by God. Hope. Hope is that thing that looks forward to what is coming. And over and again we are admonished in Scripture in light of our wilderness wanderings here while we wait to enter the promised land to fix our eyes on the things that are above.

To continue to hope because that hope will motivate us in the midst of our sufferings and persecution. And then love. Love is that thing that we do for neighbor. Serving our neighbor purely out of love for them and because they have needs.

That's kind of the idea. And so today as we look at the parable of the weeds, it is going to be important for us to distinguish properly different theological concepts lest we confuse weeds and wheat and, well, make all kinds of errors.

So we're going to walk through this passage together. And you're going to note, again, like I pointed out last week, that Jesus is speaking in parables not in order to make things clear but to make things difficult to understand.

And what's also fascinating about this particular parable is that Jesus gives us a good crib sheet, if you would, on how to interpret his parables. It's real simple. Look for who's Jesus. Or look for who's God.

Figure out where you are in the story. And you're generally not going to be the good guy. That's just saying. But in this particular case, you're going to find out something very fascinating that you, brothers and sisters in Christ, are actually the good seed.

But let's return back to our parable. Jesus put another parable before them saying, Notice the phrase, kingdom of heaven. And yet this parable has nothing to do with heaven. The context is the world. The context is the here and now.

So you'll note that here we have a kingdom parable that tells us a wee bit about how we are to understand the kingdom in light of the fact that we are in the now and the not yet. We are saved but not yet, well, resurrected.

We are forgiven but we do not see God face to face. So in the now and the not yet, we struggle in this world. And here's what it says. So, kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

Do you hear Genesis talk in here? God created the sun, the moon, and the stars and they were good. And at the end, everything was tov mayod. It was very good. So when the earth was created, everything was good.

And this little bit of information is going to help us to understand a little bit of that thorny question of why is it that there is so much suffering in the world. It says this, While his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed, I love the Greek word here by the way, zizania.

Zizania. What a great name for weeds. It almost makes them sound kind of really cool. Take a look at my zizania here. Those are weeds. Yeah, I know. While his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed zizania, weeds among the wheat, and then went away.

What kind of sick individual is this? I mean seriously. Do any of you know anyone like this? I kind of hope not. Do you have an enemy like this who has made it his life's mission to destroy anything good in your life?

Well see, this tells us a lot about Jesus. Jesus is good. The devil, he has an enemy. Jesus truly has an enemy. And this enemy is just vexing beyond all belief. Just full of hatred and spite and evil and wishing to destroy all that is good.

So the enemy came, sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. And when the plants came up and bore grain, the zizania appeared also. It's important to note this regarding this zizania. It looks just like wheat in the early phases.

You can't tell them apart. Now I am not a farmer, but I have it on good authority from a local source that a good way to kind of translate this for up here would be to talk about wild oats. Now, I have no experience of this.

I just throw it out there so you can all go, yup, that's right, yeah. Apparently wild oats, they look a lot like the regular oats. And until the very end you're not going to be able to tell the difference.

But at the very end you can. That's kind of the idea here with zizania. So the plants came up. They bore grain. The zizania 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 comes the zizania? He said to them, an enemy has done this. And here the servants come up with a solution. So the servants said to him, so do you want us to go and gather them? He said, no. Lest in gathering the weeds you root up the weed along with them.

And this is kind of tough to get for us. And that is that God in his wisdom has chosen to do something that has added to his workload, if you would. And he's doing it for the sake of the wheat. He has chosen to let the zizania and the wheat grow together.

And if you know anything about weeds, they have a really bad habit of choking out the good plants. And so this means that it's going to be a crowded earth and there's going to be weeds choking out and pushing against and persecuting the wheat, if you would.

But all of this is God's mercy towards us so that we are not accidentally taken up with the weeds. So let both grow together until the harvest. And at the harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

And we hear a reference like that and you can immediately begin to feel the warmth of the fires of hell under your feet. We as sinners get a little nervous about this type of talk. But we need to understand what Christ is saying.

So then in verse 36, when Jesus left the crowds, he went into the house and disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. So now Jesus is going to explain the parable so that they understand it.

The people out there don't get to understand it. We get to understand it. We are in this inside circle, if you would, remember. We're the 13th disciple as we read through Matthew's gospel. And Jesus here also gives us a crib sheet, a way of understanding future parables because as Jesus tells more and more parables, you're going to see less and less explanations as to what Jesus is talking about.

Because once they understand how to interpret them, they don't have to continue to ask. Does that make sense? So Jesus gives the crib notes on this. He says, alright, the one who sows the good seed, that's the son of man.

Jesus is saying, that's me. I'm the man. He's the good guy. The field's the world. The good seed is the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. Now this takes a wee bit of explaining here.

Because if we think about the weeds as being the sons of the evil one, bad preaching usually keys in on this and basically says, you need to make sure that you are less weedy and more wheaty. Play on words.

Maybe it doesn't work. But you kind of get the idea. And so they'll give you three easy steps on how to weed yourself and make yourself into wheat. I don't know if you've noticed this, but wild oats never turn into good cultured cultivated oats.

They don't do that. That just doesn't happen. And the weeds in my garden have never magically turned into zucchini plants. It just doesn't happen. But when we understand this, we have to understand the doctrine of justification correctly.

And the doctrine of justification over and again reiterates that all of us, each and every one of us, we were born dead in trespasses and sins and that we were by nature objects of God's wrath like all of mankind.

And so the question comes up, well how do I know I'm wheat and not a weed? We will begin with something as simple as, are you baptized? Have you been united to Christ in His death and His resurrection in the waters of your baptism?

Have your sins been washed away and forgiven? Have you been buried and raised with Jesus? We'll start there, because good wheat needs water. And so the waters of baptism is a place where we begin. Do you come here to hear His Word, to feast on it, to feed on it?

That's a sign that you have faith. Unbelievers have zero tolerance for hearing God's Word. They've got more important things to do. Do you come here and believe that when you hear that your sins are forgiven that I am not the one forgiving your sins, that it's Christ Himself?

And you're hanging on those words and trusting that you need them and that you have been given that, the forgiveness of your sins. Well yes, indeed. When we have the Lord's Supper together, do you believe that you're receiving the Body and Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?

You see, all of these things require faith and we are saved by grace through faith alone. And the good news is that through the preaching of the Word, through the preaching of the Gospel in the waters of baptism, you are hearing the Gospel and it is faith that comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of Christ, and what ends up happening is that when we are brought to penitent faith in Christ, to the working of the Holy Spirit, Christ Himself transfers us from the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of Light.

This is how Colossians speaks. In other words, He does this amazing miracle. He takes Zazania, which is all of us, when we were born, and He makes us new as wheat. So don't think for a second that it's all about you trying to transform yourself.

Instead, it's about believing the transforming work of Christ through His Word and through baptism. So, the weeds are the sons of the evil one, Jesus says, fields the world. The enemy who sowed them is the devil.

Scary thing that each of us, born into the dominion of darkness, were children of the devil to start things off. And the harvest is the clothes of the age. The reapers are the angels. And you can do some cross-reference work here over and again when Scripture talks about the clothes of the age, the day that Jesus returns.

He returns with the trumpet of the archangel blasting, and the angels come and they gather everybody up and put them in their respective places, if you would. And we will meet Christ in the air when He returns.

He says this, just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the clothes 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.

Scary thing, isn't it? But yeah, that's what it says. And here's the worst part. And throw them into, and I find it fascinating that here Jesus uses an unambiguous term. There are those who deny the existence of hell today.

And they do so by attacking the words used for hell. Hades being one of them. And they'll say, well that's just the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. And so there's not really a hell, it's just Jesus talking in garbage dump terms.

And I would basically say, how does that help anything? But here Jesus says they will be thrown into, very descriptive phrase, fiery furnace. If you know your Old Testament, you've heard a phrase like that before.

Remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? They were thrown into one of these things. You want to know what a fiery furnace is like? You look in the Old Testament. There was one stoked really hot.

And I find it fascinating that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were not burned by the fiery furnace. And the reason why they were not burned by the fiery furnace is because they had faith. And just like us, we also will not be harmed by the fiery furnace because we also have been given this great gift of faith.

So, Jesus says in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then I'm going to hold verse 43 for a second. So here's the state of affairs. We're going to end on verse 43. Here's the state of the affairs right now.

Look around you. Does the world seem like it's going crazy to you or is it just me? Have you noticed that politics has hit a shrill note lately? Does it seem like Christians are more and more being persecuted in all kinds of places including social media and in our society for proclaiming Christ?

Yeah, it does. Well, see, that's the state of affairs that Christ has willed for now for our sake. It doesn't seem great, though, as we're going through it because, well, we're persecuted, crowded, shoved, caused to suffer as a result of our faith in Christ.

And so our epistle text helps us at this point. Romans 8 .18, the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of the Spirit, says this, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

You see, that's the state of affairs in a field where the wheat and the zazania grow together. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God when the zazania and the wheat are readily distinguished.

The great day of the harvest. For the creation was subjected to futility. And that's something we've got to come to grips with. If you want a full-blown explanation from the Bible on what that's all about, a reading through the book of Ecclesiastes would take you deep into the depths of this concept.

That literally because of our sin, the whole creation has been subject to futility so much so that, well, Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes that it's all meaningless. And surely it is. Because what do we do?

We're born in sin, we grow up, and then we toil and toil and suffer. And we experience, well, just what that fruit that Adam and Eve ate promised them. The knowledge of good and evil. It's awful. Sometimes you have these good periods in your life, things are going pretty swell.

Don't get comfortable with it. Because just as soon as you start to get a little bit comfortable, that part of the faucet turns off and on comes the evil part. And we get it in spades. And all of this is because of our sin.

And so literally, and I hate to describe our universe in this way, but this is how Scripture describes it. A good way of kind of thinking about it is that right now creation is inside the toilet bowl getting ready to go down.

It's meaningless. We toil for what? You work so hard for what? A house with a picket fence and a nice garden, and then you get old and die. And somebody you don't even know, who probably wouldn't even like you anyway if they knew you, moves into your house.

And what do you have to show for all of this toil? Zip. Over and again we say you can't bring a U-Haul with you at a funeral. It never works that way. And so here we are, because of our sin and because of the evil one, the enemy of Christ, the whole creation currently is subjected to futility and not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, listen, in hope.

Christ has something coming. And the thing that is coming is the thing that we are hoping for, and so right now the zazania and the wheat grow together in hope. In hope when he can finally separate it all, new heavens, new earth, face-to-face relationship with Christ in a world that does not end, which means anything that you put your hand to will no longer be meaningless or futile.

But he's subjected it in hope so that the creation itself will eventually be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Think of it this way. Y 'all seen the movie Beauty and the Beast?

He's saying, which one? Doesn't matter, they're both great. And if you know this about me, I am a sucker for the fairy tale. Sorry, I see them all as pictures of Christ. And so in the story of Beauty and the Beast, what do we have?

We have this terrible, awful, selfish, bent-in-on-himself jerk of a prince who wouldn't even help an old lady who also happened to be some kind of a witch of some kind. And because of how cruel he was, he was subjected to futility, turned into a beast, and all of the people in his palace became, well, objects like teacups and pots and dressers and things like that.

And their big hope is that this curse would be lifted because if somebody could love that beast before the rose petals fell off this rose, this magic rose, then they would be set free. And see, that's us.

Here we have Mrs. Potts and Lumiere. We're all subjected to futility right now. And here's the best part of the story, though, is that the unlovable beast is loved. But not by Belle in our story, but by Jesus Christ himself.

He is the one who sets us free from this curse so that we can finally once again be what we truly are. Have you ever considered that you have yet to know what it means to be human? But that's the reality of the situation.

You have yet to experience what it means to be truly a human. So we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

I was talking with a friend of mine really recently and we're about the same age and we were kind of joking about the fact that we're trying to exercise again and get a little bit more fit. And I told him, I said, I'm really at this point thinking my only hope is the resurrection.

It's gone too far. There's no way to pull this thing back. But here the Scriptures tell us of this hope that we have and that's the redemption of our bodies. That day that comes when our youth will be renewed and I will forever and all eternity look into the mirror and see my 17 year old self.

What a thought. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that's seen, it's not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. So likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

So note here, in this time when the weeds and the weed are growing together, even within our own selves we see that inner conflict because we are simultaneously saint and sinner in this current world.

And so even now the Holy Spirit, those who are truly wheat, who have been raised to life, faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Even now we are still too weak of ourselves that the Holy Spirit assists us.

For we know not what to pray for as we ought. How terrible of a condition is that? But don't worry, the Spirit himself in true gospel grace, he intercedes for us with groanings that are too deep for words.

And he who searches the hearts knows what is in the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And so think of it this way, even in the midst of this weedy wheat field, God the Holy Spirit is looking over you and making sure to pray for you, even when you don't know what to pray for for yourself, so that you will continue in the faith so when the day of the harvest comes you will be gathered with the wheat, not the weeds.

And so, as promised, we come back to verse 43 of our gospel text, and on that day then when Jesus returns in glory, it says this of us who are in Christ, then the righteous, those who have been declared righteous by faith, they will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

And this day is coming for you and for me, brothers and sisters. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Let this hope always fill our hearts and our minds because it's in this hope that we're able to bear up under the suffering that we find ourselves in, whether suffering in body or suffering for the faith, as we await that day when Christ returns and we receive a new glorious body that will shine like the sun, and we will forever live in eternity as true human beings once again, no longer subject to futility, no longer having to bear with and tolerate wicked and evil weeds, even within ourselves.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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