Wait for God’s Judgment

7/19/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Opening Prayer:

Gracious God, we confess that we have failed to live as faithful disciples in Your kingdom. We allow weeds of fear and shadows of doubt to grow in our hearts, preventing us from recognizing Your love and from sharing it as we have been called to do. Forgive us and cultivate in us a spirit of faith, hope, and love. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk in Your truth.

People: Give us undivided hearts, that we may revere Your name.

Leader: The Lord is faithful and just, abounding in steadfast love.

People: We come to worship the Rock of our Salvation.

Leader: Come, let us lift our voices to the one who gives life and hope.

All: Alleluia! We worship and trust in the living God!

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Matthew 13:24–30 NIV

24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 27 “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?’ 28 “ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ 29 “ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 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 13:36–43 NIV

36 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.” 37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 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, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. 40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 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. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Wait for God’s Judgment

Movement 1 - Prayers in the Hospital

Over the years, I have visited and prayed for a lot of people in the hospital. My prayers aren't magical. They don't guarantee any specific outcomes. Often, they are just me doing my best to be with others and Jesus in the moment.

I remember, in my first few years as a pastor, I was visiting a man in the hospital. He and his wife were loosely connected with our church because they watched recorded services on television. This was back in the day before live streaming and YouTube. I don't know if they had ever officially attended our church in person or not. However, they called the church and asked for a visit, and as the associate pastor, I was sent out to see them and pray for them.

I walked into the room, introduced myself, and reached my hand to shake the hand of the gentleman in the hospital bed. He gladly grabbed hold of my hand while his wife started going through all the details of the health struggles he was having. I was nervous and as green as could be as a new pastor. I didn't know what to say, and her words suddenly became muffled and just background noise. I watched his eyes close, and his head tipped back a little bit in the bed with his mouth open, still grabbing ahold of my hand. Inside, I thought to myself, "Did he just die on me?" I hadn't been in the room 10 seconds, and already, we were in crisis mode. He still had a hold of my hand.

His wife got more animated and started talking faster, and I still wasn't hearing anything she was saying. As I tried my best not to panic, I reached my fingers down to his wrist to see if I could feel a pulse. I'm sure this whole incident took about 30 seconds, but it felt like 30 minutes as I stood there holding this man's hand, trying to decide if he was alive or not.

I was praying in my head and in my heart before I said a word. Lord, I don't know what to do. Lord, I don't want this man I've just met to die here within seconds of meeting me. Lord, what do I do? I think most of my prayers are as much about reminding me of what I should already know and believe. That day, my prayers reached beyond that, asking for help beyond what I could handle on my own.

Suddenly, his wife looked over at him and said, "Hey, did you fall asleep on the preacher?" His eyes popped open, and he started talking to me. I could breathe again.

My heart rate slowed down as I got to actually introduce myself to the man in the hospital bed. After that, it was a pretty standard visit. I didn't stay long. I prayed with them. As I headed out the door, his wife followed me. When we got beyond earshot of the room, she looked at me and said, "Thank you for coming." I said, "You're welcome." She said, "For a minute there, I thought he died on us."

In that moment, I felt a little less like a stranger. I said, "So did I."

(pause)

Some days you think everything is going fine, and then suddenly you find yourself surrounded by weeds, wanting to fix the situation as quickly as possible. Jesus reminds us that when those moments arrive, we need to remember that the field is His, and those weeds are his to deal with as well.

Movement 2: Weeds in the Field

Can you imagine what it would feel like to have a front-row seat down by the Sea of Galilee, where you get to hear Jesus himself, in the flesh, teach the scripture and tell you about God? I think "captivating" doesn't even begin to describe the feeling that the disciples must have had being around Jesus. He took some of the simplest aspects of faith and made them grow into comfort, assurance, and an unshakable peace. I bet they felt like they were in that field of God, growing perfectly under his gentle care.

Jesus tells them this story about a man who went and sowed wheat into his field. But in the middle of the night, while everyone slept, an enemy came in and sowed weeds in that same field. As the field began to grow, the servants discovered those weeds. They came to their master and asked him, "Didn't you sow wheat in that field?" The master said, "An enemy did this."

The servants, knowing the value of that field and perhaps wanting to protect their master's dignity, asked, "Do you want us to go and pull them up?" He tells them, "No, because while you're pulling the weeds, you might pull up the wheat with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest time. When that time comes, I'll tell the harvesters to collect the weeds first and take them to be burned, and then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn."

I'm sure Matthew spent several serene moments by the sea trying to figure out how this story was like the Kingdom of God. Jesus told another parable, and when he finished, he got up and headed back to the house where they were staying, with all the disciples following him. But Matthew couldn't shake that image of the wheat and the weeds from his mind. As he looked around at the other disciples, he saw the confused look on their faces as well. Matthew was no perfect person. Before he met Jesus, he had been a tax collector, working with the enemies of his people. When Jesus told that story about the wheat and the weeds, which one was he?

Movement 3: The Parable Explained

When they got into the house, the disciples came to Jesus with that question that was burning in their minds and hearts: "Lord, tell us the meaning of the parable of the weeds in the field."

So Jesus answered them:

"The one who sowed the good seed, who the field belongs to, is the Son of Man. And that field is the world, and the good seed are 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 the angels."

The disciples knew this "weed and wheat war" was based on real-life experience. One of the ways neighbors could do great harm to one another was to sow tares, a particular kind of weed, in the wheat of their neighbor's field. Those weeds were almost indistinguishable from the wheat as they grew, and you could only tell the difference when the harvest came. Then it became a painstaking ordeal to try to separate the weeds and wheat because weeds would make you sick if you tried to eat them mixed in with wheat. The biggest problem was you couldn't tell the weeds from the wheat, the good from the bad, until it was too late.

And that's the heart of the question, isn't it? Are we wheat, or are we weeds? Are we children of God, or children of the evil one?

All of scripture tells us that no one is stuck to live as wheat or weed. People can change every day.

That is why it's so hard to tell who is who. That is why Jesus gives us this parable. And that is why we are not wrong to be concerned.

But in his explanation, Jesus makes it clear that the field, indeed the entire world, belongs to him. He shows them he's not only aware of the problem but also knows where it came from and who's responsible. Then he reminds them that there is a plan and that sorting out this problem does not happen in our time or by our hand. It is in God's time, and Jesus will send the angels to sort it all out in the end.

Our eternal destiny is not to be planted here in the dirt.

Movement 4: Growing and Shining

"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 be thrown 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."*

Jesus shifts out of the metaphors of wheat and weeds to show us that our destiny is to shine with the light of God in His kingdom. We're not twinkling like the stars or glowing with the soft moonlight. Jesus says we're going to shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father.

We won't get there by judging or by trying to pull one another up at the roots before it's their time. We won't get there by competing with others or ourselves. So how do we get there?

John Wesley had three General Rules to guide his life.

The first was"Do no harm." In typical fashion, John took this beyond the physician's vow and lived it out more as "do not sin". 

The second rule was "Do Good." Do all the good you can possibly do. 

But Wesley knew we could not fulfill the first rule, let alone the second. So he added a third rule: "Attend Upon all the Ordinances of God.” That's an old English way of saying receive God's grace in every way he offers it: in prayer, in worship, in scripture, in service, in communion, in fellowship, in fasting, and every other means of grace available to you. 

Growing in his grace is the only way we can live and grow as wheat instead of a weed.

In other words, we start with what we know, right where we are, and we grow from there. There are days we face setbacks, challenges, losses, and injuries that make us feel like we'll never grow again. There are times we are bent low by grief and feel like our love has nowhere to go anymore. In those moments, we start with what we know. We let our love grow to Jesus. We pray those prayers that are mostly reminding us to believe the things we already know. Then we leave room for Jesus to grow us from there with His grace because we know we won't reach heaven from here without him lifting us up.

But this parable was taught to remind us of that purpose, of that destiny and eternal glory, and the grace that we need to get there. It was taught to us for those days when we see the weeds growing in the soil around us, and our hearts yearn for heaven. We want to fix things now... and when we do, this is our reminder that our part is growing closer to Christ as we wait on Him to bring the harvest.

Jesus knows things are not all right. He knows that even more than we do. There will come a day when all things are made right, but that day will not come in our time or by our hand.

So, what do we do while we wait? We grow in His grace.

Closing Prayer

Lord, thank you for your patient grace that has planted us in this place, gives us the nourishment to grow, and leads us to a life greater than we could make for ourselves. We are sorry for the days we behave more like a weed in your field made for glory. Help us when we fall short, are bent low, or do not know where to turn. Point us to your light and help us to grow in your grace until we truly shine for you. In Jesus' name. Amen.