The Wheat and the Weeds Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43; 47-50

If you were to go to downtown St. Croix Falls and talk to many people on the street and you ask them, what is the meaning of life?

You would get many different answers. If you were to look at the famous Mayans of world history and ask them the same question, you would also get many different answers.

As one author has said, when one muddies the clear waters, there are indeed as many interpretations as there are interpreters.

To talk to people or to read what many of the famous philosophers from world history have to say will leave one confused.

It leads people to ask the question, can we really know? As we think about the pursuit of truth, if we never heard from God, we would know something without question, and that is that there is a

God. For everything in the universe to be caused and for everything in the universe to have design, this leads to only one explanation, that there is a

God. But how do we know this creator personally? How do we know what he expects from us?

How do we know that when this life is over, we will go to a place of blessing and not a place of misery?

The answer to this question is not mysterious, but very clear. Thankfully, God has revealed himself more than just in creation.

He has also revealed himself in a book. He has revealed himself in a book that is the most sold book in the history of the world.

Every year, this book tops the bestseller list, and that, of course, is the

Bible. The Bible literally means the book. It is the book of all books.

It is the only book that God has written. Every other book has errors in them. Every other book, we have to eat the meat and spit out the bones because there's problems with them, but not so with the

Bible. The Bible has no errors since it comes from the one who never makes an error.

It always tells the truth. All of it is meat. All of it we need to hear, and none of it do we ever throw out.

So as we look at the world, in one sense, life is not confusing. It is black and white.

It is cut and dry. For everyone on planet Earth, what it comes down to is what do you do with the

Jesus of the Bible? Will you trust in him for your salvation? Will you follow him?

What one does with this question makes all the difference. What we have already learned from Jesus as we have gone through our sermon series on Matthew is that many will not receive him.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, verses 13 -14, Jesus said, Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the way is easy that leads to destruction.

And those who enter by it are many, for the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life.

And those who find it are few. So the question that everyone in the world needs to answer is, will you take the narrow path?

In our sermon today, what we are going to see is that some receive Jesus, but others do not. And it is

God's design that these two groups live together in this present age.

But a day is coming when there will be a great separation. So this time

I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 13. We will be looking at verses 24 -30, verses 36 -43, and verses 47 -50.

And you might say, well, why are you doing that? Because they are all related. And Jesus tells a parable, then he later explains a parable.

And then there is another parable that is an exact parallel to the parable that he gives here. So we are going to take all of these together.

If you are using a red Bible and a few, this is on page 974. This sermon is titled,

The Wheat and the Weeds. And I'm just going to read the parable.

Verses 24 -30 as we begin. He, 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 seeds 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 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.

Here's a big idea. Understand that only for a short time do you live amongst the enemy.

Understand that only for a short time do you live amongst the enemy. And we will see one reason why in these verses this morning.

But let me give you a little recap where we have been. The last two weeks, Jesus has started to tell parables like the one we just read.

Two weeks ago, we heard him give the first parable known as the parable of the sower. Last week, we learned why

Jesus tells parables. What we learned is that the glorious truth of Christ is ultimately meant for believers.

It's not meant for the world, it's meant for his people. And we saw two reasons why in that text.

The first reason why is that believers are gladly able to see. Believers are the ones who are able to receive

God's word and want to receive it. The second reason why the truth of Christ is ultimately meant for believers is that unbelievers are stubbornly unable to see.

Unbelievers are blind to the truth of God's word and they do not hunger to see it like genuine believers do.

Now this leads us to our text this morning where Jesus tells another parable, as we have seen. And I'm gonna zero in, we've already read the parable, but I'm gonna zero in on the first three verses here where he once again says,

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 seeds among the wheat and went away.

So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. What we see here is that Jesus once again uses an agrarian illustration.

In this parable, verse 24 tells us that the farmer pours good soil into the field.

And what we will see down in verse 27 is that this field is owned by a master and this master has servants.

The master is of course in charge and tells the servants what to do. The servants plant the seeds in the field.

And once the seeds have been planted, the master and the servants think that everything is going to be good. The wheat is just gonna grow.

But something goes wrong after the men go to sleep. Verse 25 tells us that while they were sleeping, new seeds were grown in the field.

But these seeds were not put there by the master and his servants, but rather an enemy snuck in and planted these seeds.

The bad seeds that the enemy planted are weeds. Right, we hate weeds, right?

That's what they planted. No one wants weeds in their field. But that is what these men in this parable find.

And this is what they say to their master in verse 27. Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have weeds? Jesus responds in the first half of verse 28 by telling them that an enemy has done this.

And the response of these servants to these unplanned weeds being in the field in the second half of verse 28 is this.

Do you want us to go and gather them? The servants see the weeds as they still have low growth along with the wheat, so they're thinking, let's just go and pull the weeds out that were placed there by the enemy.

Let's just get rid of the problem as fast as we can. But Jesus responds as a wise farmer would in verse 29.

He tells them not to pull the weeds, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them.

What Jesus explains here is that by pulling the weeds as they are small in growth, you might accidentally pull out the wheat also.

And you don't want that to happen. Once they grow bigger, it will be more obvious which is which.

So the best thing to do is just let them grow together. The wheat and the weeds. The harvest, the end of the growing season will be the time to differentiate between the weeds and the wheat.

This is what Jesus says in verse 30. 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.

Now, what we just learned from Jesus is good farming practice.

But Jesus' primary focus, of course, is not agriculture. Everything he says here has a spiritual meaning, a deeper spiritual meaning.

And that is, of course, what he's doing here with this parable. Now, it is true that the one who does wise things in farming, business, and in life will generally do well, while the foolish ones who are lazy will not.

But this is not Jesus' focus. It's on the spiritual. Now, two

Sundays ago, Jesus explained the parable of the sower. What we learned in that parable is that every person on planet

Earth fits into four categories. There are people who reject the word outright.

There are those who appear to receive it but really don't. There are others who call themselves

Christians but are really living for this life. Then finally, there are those who truly belong to God, and they bear fruit as they gladly receive the word of God.

In the parable today that Jesus is giving, once again, every person on Earth is being described. This time, he simplifies it even more.

Every person fits into two categories. Just as Jesus explained the parable of the sower in private, so he does here.

And he does this in verses 36 through 43. And I'm going to begin by reading verse 36.

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.

What we learn in verse 36 is what we already knew. Jesus told the parables to the crowds.

What we will see in coming weeks is that Jesus also told the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven before his conversation we have here.

As Jesus tells these parables, the 12 disciples in the crowd are listening to him tell them.

Jesus was outside as he told the parables, and once he was done, he went inside the house.

And as I mentioned, Jesus had already told his disciples the meaning of the parable of the sower, presumably quietly as the crowds were still present.

But now that he is inside the house, he doesn't have to be quiet, he could just tell them because the people aren't around anymore.

And they want to learn more. What is the meaning of the parable of the weeds? And let me read what

Jesus says in verses 37 through 43. He 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 end of the age and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the end 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. Jesus begins by explaining that the master described in the parable is referring to the son of man.

The son of man is of course Jesus. This title for him comes from the Old Testament.

In Daniel 7, verses 13 -14, Daniel saw a vision of the

Messiah and in that prophecy he referred to him as a son of man.

This is what that prophecy says concerning Jesus. This is really a powerful prophecy.

And behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man. And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

This glorious passage from the Old Testament refers to Jesus as the son of man.

This passage shows that this son of man is not just a man. He is God.

To come with the clouds is a picture of deity in the Old Testament. For example,

Psalm 104, verse 3 says concerning the Lord, He makes the clouds His chariot.

What is interesting is that as you read the Gospels, this is the title that Jesus uses most often referring to Himself.

And as I just showed you, this title, yes, shows His humanity. But also

His deity. He's fully God. He's fully man. In the parable of the weeds, the son of man is the master who oversees the field as verse 37 tells us.

But what does everything else represent? In verse 38, the field is the world.

When we talk about the world, we don't mean the third rock from the sun. What the world often refers to in the

New Testament is humanity. John the Apostle, more than anyone, uses the

Greek word kosmos. This means world in English. And he uses it to describe sinful humanity who needs a

Savior. That's the world in the Bible. John 3 .16, we quoted this all week with the kids.

Someone want to quote it? For God so loved the world that He gave

His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. God loves sinful humanity.

Not because they're lovely, because He's gracious. They're unlovely.

Now in the middle of verse 38 of chapter 13, we learn who the good seed are in this parable.

They are the sons of the kingdom. Who are the sons of the kingdom? They are believers. Many in this room, the sons of the kingdom.

When this passage uses the word kingdom, it is referring to the world. Jesus is talking about everyone under the authority of God in the world.

Everyone is ultimately under His authority because He is their Creator and He is their Judge. Kingdom here does not refer to God's kingdom that is coming to the earth where His people will reign with Him forever, as Matthew has so often explained at this point.

This parable piggybacks off the parable of the sower. In that parable, the genuine believer is described as the fourth seed and the fourth soil.

So the kingdom here is referring to all of planet earth, and in that, the sons of the kingdom are the ones who are pulled out of this kingdom and they belong to God, and then everyone else are not sons of the kingdom as we will see.

Now at the end of verse 38 and the beginning of verse 39, we learn who the weeds are in this field. So if the sons of the kingdom are believers, well, who are the weeds then?

The weeds are the sons of the evil one. So the weeds represent unbelievers in this world kingdom.

Now we all want to grow, right? It's good to grow. I mean, you're not going to talk to anybody on the street who's going to say, is growing in your life a bad thing?

Everyone's going to say, oh yeah, growing in your life is a great thing. But not all growth is good. The only kind of growth that matters is good, true, godly growth.

An unbeliever grows in sin and any apparent moral growth is not any value in God's sight.

Weeds grow, but they are a nuisance. And they have no value for the farmer. So the farmer pulls the weeds out and burns the weeds.

As unbelievers go through their journey here on earth, they are under the control of Satan.

I already mentioned that ultimately everyone is under God's authority since everyone is created by Him and will be judged by Him.

In that sense, the kingdom here is not the forever kingdom that's in the future, but it's the world.

Everyone on planet earth in God's kingdom as He is the Creator is either a child of God or a child of the devil.

If Satan runs one's life, which he does for every unbeliever, then in that sense, one is under the authority of Satan.

And this is a sobering thought because there are nice people you know who are in fact children of the devil.

Anyone who does not live for God as one is led by the Spirit of God is tragically led by Satan.

But here's what strikes me. Most of the people who belong to Satan have no clue that they belong to the most evil being in the universe.

The people who can see the lives of others ruled by Satan are believers because believers have spiritual sight.

We saw that in our text last week. Genuine believers who follow Jesus see the world for how it really is.

Do you wonder why Jesus was called a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Isaiah 53.

How can this be said of the most joyful person who has ever lived? This is said of Him because He saw clearly the fallen world that He lived in.

Jesus had more spiritual sight than anybody, of course, because He's God. He saw the world for what it really is.

He saw the suffering that sin caused. But do you know what gave Him more sorrow than anything?

A majority of the people He came into contact with belong to Satan, and they have no clue.

They're blindly following Him. Jesus knows how evil

Satan is. He saw him fall like lightning from heaven, as Luke 10 -18 says, when he rebelled against God.

Jesus knew the dark future that people will have under His rule better than anyone else. Sometimes you see people who are unbelievers and they don't look sad.

They are so focused on the distractions of life. They truly think they are good people.

They have family and friends and they have enjoyment in life. And as a Christian who looks at the world, you might wonder why isn't everyone who belongs to Satan miserable?

Some might be. In fact, many are. But many aren't. Why is this?

The answer is they are completely oblivious that they belong to the devil and their future is so dark.

But as you look on, as every genuine believer looks on, you have great sorrow in your heart, like Jesus did.

A man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. Should we not be that way? Should we not mourn?

You see someone who is hopeless and doesn't even know it, and you think this person's life is being ruled by Satan.

What a horrible place to be. So thinking this way will make you feel sad.

And that's how we should feel at times. It doesn't mean always, but this should be a part of our life.

Thinking of the weeds in our life ought to fill us with compassion. We must pray for God to show them their hopelessness.

Because if they don't see their hopelessness and turn to Christ, then they will continue following Satan and will forever be lost.

But God may use us as His agent to reach them, to show them the way to everlasting life.

To show them the freedom that is in Christ. So the weeds are the sons of the evil one in the world, in this kingdom.

Now let's continue what everything in this parable represents. We've seen several already, but the next symbol is the harvest.

What is the harvest? The harvest represents the end of the age. The end of the world is the time when

Christ returns and the final judgment takes place. As the wheat and the weeds reach full growth, this is when the end will come.

It is at this point that we learn what the final agricultural image is.

And that is the reapers. At the end of verse 39, Jesus tells us that the reapers are angels.

In Scripture, angels are servants of God. They serve us as Hebrews 1 .14

says. They are ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.

But angels are also used by God as vessels of judgment, as we will see.

Now as we have seen Him explain the wheat and the weeds, how they grow together,

He tells us this in verse 30. Remember, the farmer waits for the wheat and the weeds to grow fully, to grow together, before they are removed.

But before then, as Jesus has told us, believer and unbeliever live together.

As you go to the grocery store, there are believers and unbelievers. As you drive on the highway car, as you see the cars go by, they are filled with believers and unbelievers.

As families eat meals in their homes, there are believers and unbelievers at the table. In American Christianity, there are lots of people who identify as Christians, but in that group, in churches all over America, there are believers and unbelievers.

In the present age, God does not remove all the unbelievers from the earth so that believers can live alone on earth without unbelieving influence.

That's not how it goes. Rather, believers and unbelievers go through history together.

God does not rain down mass judgment immediately. The mass judgment of all unbelievers will come.

Yes, it will. But it won't come until the end. Until the final judgment.

Jesus, at the final harvest, separates the believer from the unbeliever.

As verses 41 -43 tells us. He says, the Son of Man will send

His angels and they will gather out of this 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. Earlier, I mentioned that one of the angels' responsibilities is assisting

God in executing judgment. We see that here. They will gather those, as verse 41 tells us, they will gather those who are all causes of sin and all lawbreakers.

This is how God views unbelievers in the world. They are lawbreakers and causes of sin.

Another way to say causes of sin is a stumbling block. The New American Standard version of the

Bible uses that reading. They are entrapped by sin themselves and they lead others down the same destructive path.

At the return of Christ, when Christ raptures His church, before the final seven year tribulation, and then after the seven years, angels will gather

His people according to 1 Thessalonians 4 .16 and Matthew 24 .31.

And verse 31 of Matthew 24 says that He will send out His angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather

His elect. We could say wheat. His wheat from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.

After the seven year tribulation, at the end of the world, at the return of Christ, Christ will come to the earth with His angels also in judgment upon the ungodly.

This is pictured in Revelation 19 .11 -21, which I'm not going to read, but you can go there and look at that.

In 2 Thessalonians 1 .7 -9, the Apostle Paul explains what this will look like.

This is the wrathful side of Jesus. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know

God and on those who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the

Lord and from the glory of His might. It is after the 1 ,000 year reign of Christ that all the unbelieving dead will be raised with new bodies.

They won't be able to die. They will want to die, but they won't be able to die. And they will be thrown into the lake of fire.

As you can see, the final judgment of the unbeliever comes in stages during the end of the world all the way to the very end.

But right now, there is not a mass judgment, but at the end of the world, there will be.

And this is what we call the great separation. It's not happening now, but it will. And later on in this chapter,

Jesus uses a different parable to describe the separation in verses 47 through 50. Jesus says,

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.

When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad.

So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.

In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Mark and I went ice fishing this past winter, and as we caught the fish, if it was too small, we'd throw it away.

If it was big enough, we'd keep it because that's the fish that you would eat.

And so he's using this illustration of fishermen throwing out the bad and keeping the good.

This is what it will be like at the end times. Now you might wonder, how accurate we can be in telling a believer from an unbeliever because they grow together in weeds.

With some level of accuracy, we can tell a believer from an unbeliever in the present age.

The letter of 1 John tells us how we can know that someone is saved.

I'm just going to run through the four marks. One is you have sound doctrine.

You understand the gospel. You don't believe false teaching. You believe the truth. That's one. Number two is you love the church, not the building.

And if you ask the average person in American society what is the church, they would say the building. The building is not the church.

If this building burned down this week, Eureka Baptist Church would be just fine because the church is the people.

You love the people. You love other believers. That is one mark of a genuine believer.

You want to serve other believers. You want to help other believers. You want to receive that from other believers.

That's the second mark. Number three and four are very close. You love righteousness and you hate sin.

It doesn't mean you don't sin, but you hate it. My old pastor used to say, he said the presence of sin is not the problem.

It's the lack of repentance that is the problem. So if someone is caught in a sin and they just completely deny it and they go on denying it, that's what an unbeliever does.

If a believer, if a sin comes to the surface, if either you confess it or you're caught, you'll repent.

That's the difference. It's not the presence of sin that is the problem. Obviously, we don't want to sin, but the biggest issue is repentance.

Is there sorrow? Is there a desire to change? Believers have that.

Unbelievers don't. At the end of the age, at the final harvest, there will be no question who the believers and unbelievers are.

Jesus and His angels will separate the believer from the unbeliever. And what Jesus says in the parable in verse 30 is that the reapers, the angels, will gather the weeds to be burned.

As the unbeliever is judged, we see their dark future as Jesus describes their future as one where they will burn.

Jesus says that the reapers at the harvest, the angels, will throw the unbeliever into the fiery furnace.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus uses the fiery furnace as an image for hell.

He gives us a sobering description of what hell is like. Sometimes people joke that things are so bad on earth that it's hell on earth.

Others say that they will party with their buddies in hell like they party with them on earth. But anyone who says these things has no idea what hell is really like.

Jesus uses dreadful images to describe this place. And in verse 42, He describes it as a fiery furnace.

There are lots of false Christians out there who try to explain hell away. How do you know someone has sound doctrine?

They believe in hell. That's a big one. If you just want to sift through the field, anybody who says that hell is not real or hell is not as bad as we think or it's just an experience on earth, don't listen to those people.

That's not what the Bible teaches. In recent years, wolves in the church have said that the

Bible doesn't really teach it. I'm teaching it to you right now. In fact,

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers became good friends with a false teacher sadly named

Rob Bell. Bell falsely told Rodgers that it was those Puritans from the 17th century who believed in hell as a horrible place where real people go when they die.

But how wrong that is. But here it is in our text. Jesus is saying it right here and He describes hell with dreadful images and He does it to warn people you don't want to go there.

And so, I offer myself so that you don't have to. So let's listen to the words of Jesus.

He describes it as a fiery furnace. We know that furnaces are a place where there is excessive heat.

The heat our homes in the winter, but you don't want to be inside of one. Now we don't know for sure if there is literal fire in hell.

This may just be an image describing a painful place since to be burned is a very painful experience.

But the important thing is this. Jesus is describing a place so horrible that He compares it to standing in a furnace.

No one wants to go there. No one who knows what hell is really like would ever want to go there.

You wouldn't want your worst enemy to go there. Yet many in this world are one heartbeat away from this place unless they grab on to the life vest of Jesus Christ.

May God use us to be those who throw the life vest out to people. And one evidence that you are saved,

I've already talked about evidences that you are saved. One evidence that you are saved is that you don't want to see people go there.

You want to share Christ with people. Charles Spurgeon, 19th century pastor once said, if you don't want to see others saved, you are not saved yourself.

Be sure of that. It is incredible that God uses the witness of believers to deliver people from this horrible place.

In fact, in the Old Testament and it says in Romans as well, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

Hell is a place of unending sorrow and anguish. He describes it also in verse 42, as a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

According to this clause, Jesus describes two types of people in hell. Those who have unending sorrow and those who are angry.

I know someone right now who is in prison and he will also be there for several more years who is deeply sorrowful that he is there.

He can't believe that his life turned out this way and every day he wakes up in his prison cell with regret.

But he is a Christian who has hope. He will get out. He will go to heaven.

But anyone in hell will have an unending regret. There is no hope.

Those in hell will always be in hell. There is no way out. I remember hearing theologian

R .C. Sproul explain the meaning of weeping and gnashing of teeth that Jesus uses here. Imagine the person who thought he or she was a

Christian, but really wasn't. This will be the one who is weeping to God, crying out,

Lord, I thought I was going to heaven. This is the one who Jesus describes as weeping.

But what about the gnashing of teeth? Imagine the atheist who knew deep down that God was real, but argued his whole life that he didn't exist just to justify his or her sinful lifestyle.

This will be the one who is gnashing his teeth at God saying, how dare you put me here?

This is very sobering as we think about this. But please understand this. The best experiences that an unbeliever has on earth will be the height of their existence.

While the worst experience that a believer has on earth will be the worst experience that you will ever go through.

For every believer, this should encourage you. The hardships you face will be gone and you will never have a hardship again once this life is over.

The experience of the unbeliever and believer cannot be more opposite. God has very strong negative words against the unbeliever, but strong affirmation for the believer.

Verse 43 says, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their

Father. So as we see here, everyone in the history of the world is either among the glorified or the cursed, the wheat or the weeds.

Understand that only for a short time do you live amongst the enemy. In this text we have seen one reason why and that reason is the great separation awaits at the end of the world.

And as we close, for every believer in this room and every believer who hears me, let's praise God that He has rescued us.

That we will never go to the fiery furnace. That we will never go to the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And may we also have an urgency to be used by God to turn people from weeds to wheat.

But for anyone who's never believed in Christ, believe in Him today. The Bible promises that if you believe in Him, you will be saved.

And I mentioned the life vest. Jesus is that life vest. It's a common illustration that people use.

Imagine someone on a boat and a huge storm has come upon you with giant waves.

And there's someone on top of the boat. The only hope you have is that if this person can throw out his life vest to you and he throws it to you and you grab it and you're pulled in.

That's what Jesus does to those who are saved. To those who are among the wheat.

Those who believe will be saved. So what a blessing to be the wheat that are gathered into the barn never to be burned.

Now, next Sunday, we're going to see another parable from Jesus. And in that parable,

Jesus will once again compare the activity of agriculture. Remember, He's using this common illustration, this common activity.

He's going to compare this once again to a spiritual truth. And I look forward to looking at that with you. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer.

Father, it is sobering to think that everyone on earth is either the wheat or the weeds.

And it's always been this way. And You've always been the only hope for people.

And Satan has done a great work into blinding people. The Bible says that he has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the gospel of the glory of Christ.

People wander to hell. And my prayer,

Lord, is that we would be a people who have awareness.

That You'd give us an urgency. That we'd make our life count here. Realizing that the time is short.

Realizing that everyone is on this trajectory either of going to heaven forever or going to hell.

And so help us to live in light of that. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for saving us.