Tarible News

Do you ever find yourself looking around at the evil, violent, corrupt, and hurtful things that take place in the world around us and thinking, “God, why don’t you just take them all out right now?” Our natural tendency is to want to confront evil and take matters into our own hands. A coworker is telling lies about you in the workplace. Someone broke into your house and stole the silver that your grandmother gave you on your wedding day. Your neighbor’s daughter was killed in an auto accident involving a drunk driver. There are any number of examples of evil things perpetrated against us, our family members, our church family, our friends, our fellow citizens. Get some payback. Fight fire with fire. Take care of business. We want to get rid of dangerous and evil people right now! The sooner the better! We feel like James and John did when they saw that the Samaritans would not receive Jesus as He was traveling toward Jerusalem: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But God says, “That’s not your job. It’s not going to happen now. It’s going to happen later.” What are we to make of the suffering that comes our way in the evil circumstances that we face? Peter tells us don’t be surprised at the fiery trials that are part of life. Storms are a fact of life. We are all either experiencing a storm right now, heading into a new storm, or coming out of the most recent storm. God is at work in our circumstances for our good and His glory. So we pray through. We pray to be protected and delivered from evil. Jesus prayed to the Father that He would not take us out of the world but protect us from the evil one. Deliver us from evil. Amen. Payback is not an option. Proverbs 20:22 says, “Do not say, “I will repay evil”; Wait for the Lord, and He will save you.” Instead of “I’m gonna get back at you”, the Holy Spirit seeks to work in hearts that will say, “I’m going to find a way to treat you well.” Read what Paul has to say about this in Romans 12:17-21. Verse 21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The bottom line: Jesus teaches that at the end of the age he will remove from this world everything that causes sin and all who do evil. Since He is going to remove all evil people at that time, He doesn’t want US to do it now. Grace, grace, God’s grace! Thanks be to God. By His grace and for His glory, God is in the business of turning weeds into wheat – and that is what today’s passages from Matthew 13 are about.

A word about parables. Jesus knew the power of story in the process of teaching and learning -we can really connect with folks in the shared stories of our experiences, especially as matters of faith and practice are concerned. In the preceding verses of chapter 13, Jesus explained why he taught in parables. He challenged folks to truly HEAR the parables and OBEY them - this indicates that the parables are not as easily understood as some people think. The implication is that His parables enable insiders like his disciples to be given the secrets of the kingdom, leaving outsiders in the dark. Not that outsiders are necessarily bad people; they just can’t understand the parables on their own. They need to come to Jesus and be taught the meaning of the kingdom. Even the insiders needed to seek further clarification from Jesus as to the meaning of this parable.

The emphasis of the first parable in Matthew 13, the parable of the sower, is on what becomes of the good seed, the word of the kingdom. The emphasis of this second parable is on what happens to the tares, the bad seed that the enemy came and sowed along the good seed. The sermon title is not misspelled – “tarible” news is really terrible news about tares. Tarible news is not something many folks all around us are willing to acknowledge. They spurn the teaching of Scripture and declare that there’s no such thing as sin. There is no need of a Savior. There is no such thing as hell – those old fables were fabricated to scare people into believing something that just doesn’t make sense. My God is a loving God – He would never consign someone to such a grotesque thing as eternal punishment. And such things are even promulgated by churchgoers. God forbid!

The emphasis here is on the tares, the weeds, and not the wheat. Now tares [Greek: zizanion, root means drunk] are a variety of darnel weed that closely resembles wheat, almost impossible to distinguish from it until the wheat ripens and bears grain. When ingested, these poisonous weeds cause severe nausea. Not good stuff. After the good seed was sown, that enemy of the landowner came in the night, in the dark, as he invariably does, and sowed those tares among the wheat and took off. No one realized what had happened until the wheat bore grain. When the news came to the landowner, he knew what had happened. The enemy was thorough in sowing those weeds – in ancient times this was done as an act of revenge by an enemy who wanted to destroy or reduce the value of a crop. When the servants asked their master if he wanted them to pull out the weeds, he wisely told them to wait until harvest time. Don’t tear up the wheat trying to pull out weeds that look just like it. Wait until harvest time - then things will get sorted out.

So we see here the reality that there will be a day of reckoning, harvest time – judgment is coming – according to God’s purpose and plan. Jesus speaks of the “Son of Man”, the title most commonly used of Himself, as the landowner. The field is the world – and throughout this world the Master scatters good seed, children of the kingdom. He plants us in this old world as His witnesses, to grow and become fruitful plants of righteousness. It’s no accident you are planted right where you are.

According to the Scriptures, all human beings fall into one of two groups: those who are the spiritual children of God, “sons of the Kingdom” through faith in Jesus the Son (the wheat), or those who are children of the devil, “sons of the evil one”, children of wrath by their sinful nature or unbelief (the tares). [see John 8:44; Eph.2:2-3; 1 John 3:10, 5:19] As for us wheat, most true believers can be identified by their spiritual and practical fruit (grain). The weeds, unbelievers, by their lack of it. The thing about the weeds and the wheat is they do look alike. The landowner told his servants to let both grow until harvest time – pulling up the weeds might damage or destroy the wheat. It was not their job to pull the weeds. And so it is not our job as believers to pull weeds. Jesus doesn’t ask us to get rid of evil, sinful people. We simply wouldn’t be very good at it. “Look at that no-count bum. He is a real weed.” We write people off. We look down on them. And then Jesus says, “Hey, give that person some time. Think of all that time I gave you to get things on track. You might be surprised – he can turn things around.” Jesus urges us to have hearts of compassion. Yes, we are called to preach and teach against sin and unrighteousness. No, we are not enjoined to judge and to punish, but to win souls and to convert sons of the evil one that they become sons of the kingdom. Bring it on home!

Jesus ends His explanation of the parable of the tares with some staggering words. At the end of the age, the weeds will be gathered up and burned with fire, they will be thrown into the furnace of fire. FIRE. Is there anything that could be more painful? Jesus spoke much of the excruciating torment of hell, the destiny of all unbelievers. In Mark 9:44 he spoke of the place of “unquenchable fire”, Matthew 25:41 the “eternal” fire, and in Revelation 19:20, the great “lake of fire which burns with brimstone.” Yes, yes, “in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Dreadful. No friendships, no fellowship, no comfort, no hope, no pleasure – only torment “day and night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:10). Yes, there is “a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:27). Do you feel what C.S. Lewis termed ‘the weight of glory?” Are you burdened with heart-felt concern for family, friends, co-workers, neighbors who today face the prospect of an eternity of separation from God? Make disciples. Yes, Lord. As we are going, work in us and through us to make disciples for Your name’s sake.

Jesus’s last words in this explanation are awesome – positive – hopeful – joyful! “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun”!!! Wow. Jesus will return as Judge. When the Son of Man returns with His angels, they will not only perfectly separate out the wicked for eternal punishment. They will separate the righteous for eternal blessing! (Matthew 24:31)

“He who has ears, let him hear.” To any person who is uncertain about his/her relationship to God, the question is asked: “Are you wheat, are you a child of God, or are you a tare, a weed that looks like wheat, a child of the evil one?” By His grace, God is changing weeds into wheat by faith in His Son.

To children of the Kingdom, Jesus says. “Hear! Obey!” In the power of the Holy Spirit, is He developing in you a right attitude toward the world, the loving, merciful, and compassionate attitude of our Lord and Savior? Are you ready to go forth and witness rather than to condemn, to love rather than to hate, to show mercy rather than judgment? Let us live out The General Rule of Discipleship: “To witness to Jesus Christ in the world and to follow His teachings through acts of compassion, justice, worship, and devotion under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” Glory. Hallelujah.