Summer In The Parables - [Matthew 13:24-30]

Father, we come before you this morning, just thankful for all that you have granted us, for all that you have brought into our lives, even as we heard last

Sunday night, all things work together for our good, and Lord, we praise you for all things.

Lord, as we come together this morning to worship you, to look into your word, to see what it says about your kingdom, or to study even the parables of your son and how he taught about the kingdom.

Father, I pray that you would bless our time. Father, let us be focused on the things above, on the things that you have promised us, and on the things you have given us in Christ Jesus.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. Alright, well we've been going through the parables this summer, and I thought we would continue that this morning with the famous true or false quiz.

Remember these will be graded, and since there are 11 questions this morning, there's even more pressure than normally on you.

Number one, true or false, and this is a not so clever way of having a little review.

A parable is a story with a one -to -one correspondence between people and things in the story and people and things in real life.

I was hoping some people would say true, that's false. Look at that again, it's a story with a one -to -one correspondence between people and things in the story and people and things in real life.

What do we call that? Allegory, thank you very much. Here's the definition of an allegory, which

I happen to look up in preparation for the fact that that's what I was hoping. You know, if everybody gets it right, then the whole definition of an allegory kind of goes out the window, you know, what's the point in looking it up?

An allegory is a representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.

Everybody get that? There will be a quiz. Oh, there is one. How about this one?

A story, picture, or play employing such representation, abstract ideas or principles by figures, etc.,

etc. What's an example of an allegory? What's maybe the most famous one in all

Christendom? Pilgrim's Progress, very good. Moby Dick would be another allegory.

There are many allegories. But a parable is not, this is my own definition, which is scary.

Feel free to improve upon it. A parable is a real -life situation meant to teach one or two main points but not meant to be dissected, looking for the meaning behind each character, location, or thing.

I've given the example before, you know, the Good Samaritan, the parable of the

Good Samaritan. If you look at the history of that thing and what they did to it, you know, in trying to assign a value or a meaning to each person and each place in the parable, it becomes comedic.

So anyway, parable, you know, literally means to cast alongside. We talked about it weeks ago.

And the idea is Jesus gives, here's a real -life situation, and I'm going to explain it by means of a parable, by a story that I'm going to cast alongside to bring out one or two main points but not to necessarily be an allegory, not a one -for -one correspondence kind of thing.

Okay, number two. So some of you missed number one, which seriously, give yourself credit for that just for missing it because that's really what

I wanted. Number two, true or false, parables discriminate between people. See, everybody's quiet.

You missed the first one, which you thought was easy, so now you're going to be really quiet. It's true. It is true.

How so? That's well said.

It reveals truth to some and hides truth from others. Listen to what one man said. He said, the parables veil the truth, hide the truth, to the unbelieving crowds even as they reveal it to the disciples.

He goes on to say, parables are a judgment upon the multitudes. Pretty strong language, and yet what does

Jesus say? When he tells parables, he often says, he who has ears, let him hear.

It's interesting, MacArthur notes that Asaph, one of the psalmists, you know, how many times do you hear somebody say, the psalmist wrote, well, there are several psalmists, one of them

David, another is Asaph, and he wrote Psalm 78, and that's kind of what's referred to here.

Listen to Psalm 78, verses 1 to 3, and in fact, why don't we turn there, Psalm 78, verses 1 to 3.

Again, talking about this idea that parables discriminate between people, and I chose that word kind of carefully.

I mean, when we hear discriminate today, do we think that that's a good word or a bad word? I mean, it's almost like you should say,

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say discriminate, I apologize, please forgive me.

Discrimination now is a horrible thing, but it's actually a good thing, as we will see,

I think, this morning, but Psalm 78, verses 1 to 3, who has that? Go ahead. So what's the idea there?

What's the psalmist trying to communicate in Psalm 78, 1 to 3? He wants people to listen, right?

He's going to say a parable, but is it something new that he's going to reveal? I will utter dark sayings of old, things that we have heard and known, things that our fathers have told us.

In other words, these are truths that are just going to be presented in a new way, but some people aren't going to hear, in spite of the fact that they're encouraged to hear, incline your ears to hear, tilt your ears, give them a little...

Parables discriminate between people, how so? Because the Word of God divides, it discriminates between those who hear and obey, and those who hear and don't obey.

Those who read it and understand it, and those who read it and don't.

So parables discriminate between people, and in fact, that was the whole purpose. As Pam said, it's to reveal the truth, or to remind believers of the truth, and to shield it, to hide it, to veil it from those who don't believe.

Okay, number three. Multiple choice, so this is easier. Wait, that's wrong. You had a 50 -50 shot before, now your odds go way down.

Now the primary focus of this parable is to A, give lessons in horticulture.

The more I pause, the worse you know the answer is. B, the value of wheat, the focus of this parable is the value of wheat versus the worthlessness of weeds.

C, a warning to make sure believers remove sin from their lives. D, a picture of coming judgment.

I hear D, anything else? Going once, twice, sold to D.

Okay, well, D is the correct answer. But the other ones are pretty good, I thought, you know, value, well, not really.

Okay, D is the answer, and in fact, this parable is kind of the fifth in a series of seven parables in Matthew 13.

Each of the seven parables starts with something like this, the kingdom of heaven is like, or the kingdom of heaven may be compared to, or something of that nature, depending on what your translation says.

So why so much focus? Why does Jesus spend so much time talking about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven?

Why? Why? Okay, to get the focus off themselves, to make them more kingdom -minded,

Brian. Okay, it is the standard by which we measure our lives, right?

Okay, good point. She says that so many of these parables have this dichotomy, this picture of true and false believers in the church, and how could such a thing be in the kingdom?

And Pam is pretty much on the mark there. Each of the first four of the parables in Matthew 13 focus on the kingdom of God, and the growth of the kingdom of God.

But here, really, if we think about what, he is addressing a problem, and the problem is this, and it has to do with the nature of the kingdom.

He's announced that the kingdom is there, and yet what were the Jews looking for in terms of a

Messiah and a kingdom? Political one?

Would they have anticipated a kingdom in which some of the citizens would be rebellious?

Some of the citizens would be false citizens? Some of the citizens would scratch the microphone?

No, they wouldn't have expected that. Would have cut them right off guard. They thought that the kingdom would be perfect, that it would be righteous, and that it would put an end to sinfulness, wickedness, pain, suffering, and that ultimately all of Israel's enemies would be destroyed.

All of her armies would be destroyed. No, all of her enemies would be destroyed. Jesus claimed to be the

Messiah, but he didn't meet with their perception of what he ought to be, nor did the kingdom meet their perception, their understanding.

If we think about the church today, if we think about the kingdom being present today, how can we look at it and go, well, the kingdom is here now when we see all the things that are happening?

You know, another question, why didn't the presence of the kingdom radically transform the world? So he's addressing those kind of issues.

And the main point of this parable is, be patient. Justice is coming.

Kind of like the old Wyatt Earp movie, you know, justice is coming. The kingdom will be ushered in, but it will be on Christ's term,

I mean, the fullness of the kingdom. Let's read the text, Matthew 13,

Matthew 13, verses 24 to 30. He put another parable before them, again, we've had four before this, he 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, 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 out 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.

Broken this parable down into several points here, but first I would just note this, that the kingdom is growing.

The kingdom is growing. Look at this. Verse 24, he put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

Well, what happens when good seed is sown? There's growth.

And there's ultimately going to be a harvest of what one would expect.

In this case, I mean, if you plant wheat seed, then you would anticipate getting wheat.

That's the whole point here. How do we know that this is going to grow?

Not only is it good seed, but look at, secondly, it's planted in a field. I mean, if you just go into your front yard and you throw,

I mean, this is what our front yard kind of looks like. If you just go out there and you just throw wheat seed out there, is it going to look, you know, ultimately, should you expect anything?

The whole idea of a field is it's been carefully plotted and planned and cleared of everything.

And, you know, we have neat little furrows or rows and we're going to plant the seed carefully there. So we would expect it to grow.

This man knows what he's doing. He's done it before. And he went to the store and he bought, you know,

I'm embellishing a little bit, but he bought high quality seed. You know, he didn't go into the local hardware store and give me, you know, just give me the cheapest seed you got.

This is the quality, high quality. But secondly, notice that the kingdom is opposed, verse 25.

But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

Those no good men were asleep. Okay, that's not the point. The man's enemy, the man's, the farmer's enemy came in and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

That's what happened. While his hired men were asleep. So was it their fault that they were asleep?

Might seem that way, but that's not the case. The text just indicates this is normal sleep.

It's, you know, would farmers expect to have to sleep out there at night after they've sown their seeds?

This isn't like, you know, shepherds and sheep. This is wheat. You don't, you know, when you plant your lawn, you don't lay out there on the lawn at night, you know, protecting it.

This is just seed and you just think, well, you know, you plant the seed, you've done all the preparation, everything should go well.

You might think to yourself, and believe me, during my career in law enforcement, I thought this a lot, who in the world would do this?

What would motivate somebody to do this? Why would you go out in the middle of the night, sneak into somebody else's field and plant weeds?

I mean, I was thinking about this and I go, Becky says, competition, and I go, you know, when I think about it, this is kind of like, you know, ancient industrial espionage.

You know, you're going to sabotage the other guy. You know, this is Acme field thing, you're going to go out there and...

This is sabotage, that's what it is. Some people, you know, I mean, you see stuff like this in real life, you just go, why would anybody do that?

Well, some people can't stand to see other people prosper, right? And, you know, you think, well, this is really far -fetched, but the truth is, what do we say about parables?

These are real -life situations that people would hear and they would understand and they would go, yeah, and he uses those real -life illustrations that people would understand to make a point.

And in this case, can you believe that there's actually a Roman law against doing this because people would do it?

Sneak into somebody else's field at night and put... I mean, you've got to be pretty desperate. I'm going to teach old

Hank a lesson, you know, I'm going to teach him. It's what they did. But this is key.

No one notices the enemy performing this dastardly deed.

He sneaks in there, nobody knows about it. Everybody's asleep. And again, it's not some kind of slackness on their part, they should be sleeping.

Look at verse 26. So, when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.

So, at this point, the plants are fully grown and it's only then, you know, understanding what's looking at the results that they can think back and go, oh, something's wrong, we've got weeds here.

In fact, the weeds and the tears are side by side. And this particular weed is virtually indistinguishable from weeds.

You can look at it all day long and you can't tell the difference until harvest time, until there's either supposed to be weed at the end of it or there'll just be some seed that will produce more weeds.

But this weed or this seed, sorry, these tears, this weed,

I keep wanting to say tears because that's what, it's easier to separate weeds, no, tears and wheat than wheat and weeds.

They just, you know, the two. Anyway, the weeds produce nothing of value.

Kistenmacher says this, he says, the plant has the appearance of wheat and grows, I like this, exclusively in cultivated fields.

This weed was perfect. It would only grow in one place when you had a perfectly nice little row of things and you would sneak in at night and plant it.

And so it would grow up and look, I mean, this is really industrial espionage because it would look perfect until harvest time.

And the man's servants, the servants of this farmer are mystified. Look at verse 27, 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? They're pretty confident. They know this guy. They know that he didn't go out and buy the cheap stuff.

So what's going on? What's the solution? You know, it's like they're out there one day and they kind of go, it's harvest time.

They come back in and they go, oh, got some bad news for you. That crop you thought you had is not so good.

Got some problems. But verse 28, the master knows the truth.

He said to them, an enemy has done this. He knew exactly what he had purchased and he knew that the only possible reason things did not turn out as he had expected was sabotage.

Now, the servants, being zealous for their master, they want to solve the problem. They've got a solution.

They say, well, then do you want us to go out and gather them, meaning the weeds? Look, it's no problem.

We'll go out there and we'll rip up all these weeds and, you know, we'll take all that stuff out and we'll just have the wheat left.

And in essence, they're saying, look, you know, the enemy has tried this kind of strategy, the sabotage, but we're going to undo that.

We'll take care of it. But their plan is flawed, verse 29.

But he said, no, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them.

Let me ask you this, how many gardeners do we have this morning? I salute you.

I remember, you know, being a kid and I'd go out and pull up weeds. Well, have you ever, for those of you who raised your hand, those hearty few, have you ever tried to pull weeds out, you know, when they're in the midst of other plants that you care about?

Well, if they've grown for a significant amount of time, what happens? What's that?

The roots are spread out. So when you start pulling up the weeds, what happens? My azaleas, you know, who cares about the azaleas?

But that's what happens. You pull them up and there go the other plants that you did care about.

Weeds have deep roots, they spread out. I mean, there's a reason why, you know, my mom used to say, you're growing like a weed.

I don't know if she meant that in a good way or not, but weeds, you know, they grow without any effort whatsoever.

And they spread and they cause all kinds of problems. That's why they're weeds. What's the difference between weeds and grass?

Whether you wanted them or not, right? I mean, that's the whole, I didn't want that, it's a weed. But if you just go and pull them out, you're going to cause more problems than you solve.

And ultimately, patience is the order of the day. Look at verse 30. This is a master's instruction. He says, let both grow together until the harvest.

And at the harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them into bundles to be burned.

We gather the wheat into my barn. Well, if we think about the reapers as people who, this is what they do.

You know, every season at harvest time, there's a group of people that maybe come in from another country.

No, I mean, this is what I know from California. There are people who just spend their lives picking fruit or whatever.

This is what they do. So if you had someone that harvested wheat that was a reaper, would they be especially good at telling the difference between wheat and weeds, or wheat and tares?

Yes. You know, it's like the well -worn analogy of the

FBI. You know, what do they do? They train people to look at bills so that they recognize the authentic ones. They just study those so that when a counterfeit comes along, they go, wait a minute, something's wrong here.

And they figure it out. Same way. If you spend all your time harvesting wheat, when there's something that is not wheat, you'll recognize it right away.

So I'm going to let the reapers take care of this. And they will remove only the weeds.

Besides that, if you do it at harvest time, then what? You're not going to do any damage to the wheat because the wheat's job is done.

It's produced the seed, and that's all you wanted. So everything is fine.

Is that it? Okay, yeah. Right, and we're going to address more of that.

You know, Pam was saying that, you know, there are times where it seems people don't bear fruit.

And, you know, it would seem like, I mean, while you don't necessarily question their salvation, it kind of creates a difference between you.

And here's the issue, you know, is the wheat, can it be differentiated from the tares?

Well, maybe, but maybe not. Right, not inherently, but sometimes there appears to be.

Well, Jesus is going to address this here in a little bit. There appear to be differences. But ultimately,

I would say the point he's making here is that we need to be really careful and not pull up the tares lest we damage some wheat or even misidentify them.

There are specific workers who are assigned to the task of separating the wheat and the tares.

Let's look at quiz question number four. True or false? There are many applications from this parable, but only one meaning.

Boy, I hope you say true. How many meanings can any scripture have?

One. You know, so if someone says, well, you know, it could either mean this or it could mean that, or, well, that's not true.

It can only mean one thing because why? What's that?

Jesus tells us what it is, which is a good answer. I'll never forget going to a

We're Shepherds conference one year. We went to Saddleback, and Rick Warren was teaching on the parable of the soils.

And he talked about it, and then he gave its meaning. And he said its meaning is this, that God wants you to remove all the obstacles from your life so that you can hear what he has to say to you.

And I was like, well, that would be a really great meaning, except for Jesus gives us the meaning, and it has nothing to do with that.

And, you know, we left that day, and we were all leaving and walking out together and talking about it.

And Carl Larson said, well, I could give a better message than that. And I'm going, I'm sure you could because you don't want to contradict what

Jesus says. You know, I mean, there's a problem with that. So, I mean, that is the key.

How do you know that there's only one meaning? Because Jesus gives us the meaning. But in any scripture, there's only one meaning, and that is the original meaning of the author.

We talk about authorial intent. If God, writing through a man, wanted one particular meaning, then it's not a multiple -choice issue.

Yes. Oh, we'll get there.

We'll get there. She wants to know what the other applications are, and I'm like, well, why don't we just skip to the end, and we can't do that,

Pam. Nice try, though. She's trying to get me off track here. OK. You know, maybe we should all take a chance, take our turn at interpreting the parable.

No, we're not going to do that. We're not going to, you know, I mean, I talked about the first Bible study I went to was a pooling of ignorance.

And I mean that in love because it was just a bunch of people who just didn't know all that much, and nobody studied.

And we just got together and, you know, what does this verse mean to you, and kind of thing. And that shouldn't really be surprising considering we came from all different kinds of churches, had different levels of understanding and everything like that.

And it was pretty goofy, ultimately.

OK, so how are we going to understand it? Well, as Joni said, Jesus gives us the solution to this.

So let's look at Matthew 13, verses 36 to 43 with the reveal, as they say in television.

There's some interlude here, but ultimately we wind up in verse 36. Then he, talking about Jesus, 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. He answered, so, you know, if you're teaching through this and you come up with some novel interpretation, not having gotten to these verses, you're in trouble.

Verse 37. 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 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 all law breakers 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. Number five.

We'll talk more about that text here in a moment, but have to keep moving through the quiz, which we probably won't finish today.

And that's okay. Number five. I told my wife this morning, I don't think we're going to finish this morning. Number five. True or false.

The enemy is Satan. How do we know that? Okay, good answer.

And you know, I think it is important to just note that consistently throughout scripture, what happens to Satan?

Does he win or lose? He loses. And in this case, he loses too. Very clever plan he had, but it doesn't work.

Number six. True or false. The weeds represent unbelievers who need to be removed from the church.

Casey says false because of the second condition. Do the weeds represent unbelievers?

Yes. Who need to be removed from the church? False. Okay, number seven.

True or false. With the right apologetic approach, the weeds might just end up being okay. Yeah, that's false.

You know, I mean, yeah, I mean, look at the Weasley wording. Who wrote this? The weeds might just wind up being okay.

That's ridiculous. The end for the tares and wheats cannot be more plain.

I mean, there's just no way of modifying that. Also, you know, getting back to the beginning here.

The good seed is always good. It's always good, but it couldn't be demonstrated to be good until when?

Until the harvest. Now, what about the bad seed? I mean, here's the problem we have, and we'll get to this a little bit.

Here's the trick. We don't know who the good seed and the bad seed are, and we're not going to know.

How many times do we hear of someone? Well, think about the thief on the cross.

Lived his whole life the way he wanted, and we would have said if we were, you know, looking at his life, bad seed, bad seed, bad seed, tare, tare, tare.

And then what happens? At the very end, he is saved, and we go, okay, he's wheat.

Who knew? Well, we can't know. It's not our job to know. I mean, a classic example in the

New Testament. You know, do you think that the church, the early church, was thinking, you know, that's

Saul of Tarsus. He's a fine specimen of wheat. No.

That would have said tare, tare, tare, tare, tare. And then he got saved. Then they would have said wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat.

Again, wheat and tares, this specific type of tare, cannot be distinguished.

You can't tell the difference. They're very close in terms of botany. I mean, they are almost identical until they mature.

And, you know, I just hearken back to Matthew 7, where Jesus is wrapping up the

Sermon on the Mount. And he says, on that day, talking about the Day of Judgment, many will come to me and say, what?

Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things? I mean, they may have even thought to themselves, wheat, wheat, wheat.

God says, no. You're tare. One writer says this.

I like this word, so I had to work it in. Their tarishness, in other words, the fact that they are a weed, will only become evident with time.

Only as people bear fruit or fail to do so, can they be distinguished as wheat or tares.

And we ultimately, as human beings, as fallible human beings, can never make that decision.

We don't know. Number eight, as we march through the quiz, true or false, the church should expend great effort in getting rid of false professors.

They need to be evangelized. Other thoughts? False, because of getting rid of.

What's that? You know, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Okay, the farmer continues. I mean, he doesn't say, oh, wait a minute. We, well, ultimately, he doesn't know until the time of harvest.

But he doesn't, knowing that the farmer is the Lord, he doesn't say,

I will go through and I will pull out, or you go through and you pull out the weeds and the weeds and the tares.

And I will give someone, how about this? We have anybody at BBC who has the identifying tare ministry?

You know, Department of Tares, you know, here, got a couple questions for you.

No, let the recording reflect. He showed his badge. Okay, Joni.

Yeah, the great commission is to preach the gospel and to make disciples of all men. Not to, you know what, here's the great commission.

Go out and determine who are the wheat and the tares. Go out and determine who are the elect and the reprobates.

No, Brian. Okay, the deeds of darkness.

Okay, we need to expose the deeds of darkness. Now, you said something that you kind of,

I think, slipped up a little bit there. You said, in terms of kicking out, I think you said false teachers.

Difference between a false teacher and a false professor, although false professor we might think of as a teacher, because, you know, professorial, you know, education, all that.

Professor just means someone who says that they're a Christian. Should the church be looking to identify those who really aren't

Christians, even though they say they are, and therefore give them the boots? No. No.

Now, let me tell you. Let me just, go ahead, Charlie. You're probably going to wind up going where I'm going, but go ahead.

That's okay. Excellent point.

First point, that this parable isn't about the church. It is about the kingdom of God, and he identifies the kingdom as being the world.

Second issue is, you know, we might pray for an end to sin in the world.

Well, that day is coming. But guess what? It's not going to come until the

Lord establishes fully his kingdom, until he's ruling and reigning. And that day has not yet come.

But I said here, were there other comments? Okay, said it was false.

Now, here's what that doesn't mean. When I say that we should not expend great effort in getting rid of false professors, those who say that they're

Christians when they're not, here's what I don't mean. I don't mean that we should fail to practice church discipline.

That doesn't mean when we have somebody who's in obvious sin, that we don't exercise church discipline.

In other words, this idea that we're going to have, in the world, we're going to have unbelievers, and even in the church, we're going to have unbelievers, doesn't mean that we go through and we try to weed them out.

But it doesn't, it also doesn't mean that we fail to, when someone is in sin, and we know of that, that we fail to go to them and reprove them in private, that we fail to, if they don't repent, to take one or two persons with us.

And then finally, that we bring it to the church. But I mean, this whole thing kind of, you know, let's put it this way.

If we think of the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus has just explained here, as the world, and we understand that the tares and the wheat are always going to grow side by side until the day of judgment, then would we spend a lot of time trying to reform the world and trying to Christianize it?

You know, should the focus be, you know, the kind of the moral majority, we're going to take all these tares and we're going to force them to act like wheat?

Yeah, it's pretty funny. I mean, that's just a, that's a crazy idea. It also doesn't mean, this idea does not mean, that we should fail to point out false teachers.

We have several passages that would talk about false teachers. What we don't do, what we cannot do, is people who say that they're

Christians, they give us reason to believe that they might be Christians, we can't ultimately determine whether they're

Christians or not, and therefore kick them out of the church. And again, if we think of the tares as every unbeliever, every unbeliever in the world.

Well, are there unbelievers that come to BBC on Sunday morning? Yes, yes.

Ultimately, the church cannot discern, cannot judge the heart of an individual, cannot know what motivates them, cannot know if they're saved or not, and cannot know whether, if they're not saved, if by coming to church week after week after week, they might be saved.

Kissmarker writes this, the servants reflect the impatient mood of many Christians in God's kingdom.

Under the banner of maintaining the purity of the church, zealous believers have caused untold damage by passing judgment on fellow

Christians, and by cutting them off from the church. There are undoubtedly people not as far along in the faith as you are.

It doesn't mean you've run. I mean, this is kind of like, you know, the church lady mentality. We're going to go out and we're going to kick out people who don't, you know, hold to our standards.

Again, I'm not trying to just, you know, wallpaper over sin or wallpaper over false doctrine.

That's not the issue. Another man writes this, the kingdom cannot be purged of its tears before judgment.

The church will never be pure and cannot be made pure. He goes on to say the cure would kill the patient.

Why would that be? Why would he say something like that? The cure would kill the patient. Charlie, okay.

There would be no rebirth, no reproduction. We were all tears at one point.

Yes. Can you imagine what would happen if pastor

Mike got up this morning and he said, I have a challenge for you this week. I want you to identify all the tears in the congregation.

Next week, we're going to have a terror burning. Charlie. Okay.

And that's what we'd wind up. We wind up with, you know, a bunch of what? Pharisees running around trying to, you know,

I'm holier than you. You must be a terror. He goes on to say at its best, the church will be infiltrated by the ungodly.

Even the best church is going to have false professors. Why? Because ultimately, unless they're in sin, unless they're teaching false doctrine, you can't know.

You know, the Sunday only Christian may actually be a Christian and may not, you know, I mean, Sunday only in appearance.

In other words, you know, we may have people that come in every week who never participate in much of anything and they may have good reasons for it.

And we, you know, they may be Christians and we'd like to throw them out. I'm not saying we would, but you know,

I'm just saying, you know, if we were to go on the terror hunt, we'd go, well, that guy, listen to what

Matthew Henry said. He said, the Lord would rather permit tears than endanger wheat.

If we go through with our undiscerning eyes and just start pulling everything up, we're going to get rid of some wheat.

We're going to stop here and we will conclude next week. Let's go ahead and pray.

Father, it is a blessing to consider your kingdom, to consider the kingdom promises.

Even as Charlie was saying, we pray for an end to sin, but we know,

Lord, because your word tells us that day will not come before our Lord Jesus returns.

Father, we pray for that day. We anticipate it eagerly. We look forward to the day when he establishes his kingdom fully on this earth.

Lord, would you make us those who indiscriminately spread the seed of the gospel, that we would be those who would be quick to proclaim the good news, that we would neither presume someone is a wheat nor that they're a tear, that we would speak glowingly and greatly of our

God and our savior, that we would present the truth, that people might hear the truth and that you might use the truth to save many.