Matthew 13:24-30

I'm Bri ish _ because they drink the tea

Just found out my dog is a ghost, had my. Suspicions the moment she waked through the door

This is the second parable, its pretty heavy and big ideas.

Last week the parable of the sower… this kind of ground that kind of ground etc…

We talked about how it was all about how you received.. it ave three negative views, and then a positive one… someone that wanted to do something great… 30 60 100 fold…

This one is the reverse… it begins with the people who are good in ministry, and ends with the bad… and looming judgment, so we just cant get away from that idea…. He’s not just up there waiting for things to go wrong, but there is part of him that has to be just, and judge or else he is no good..

Matthew 13:24–30 ESV

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, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 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?’ 28 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?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 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.” ’ ”

The Biblical story begins with making everyone in his image, we are all made in his image, and anyone you think right now, that you don’t like, they are all made in the image of god, and we sinned and he chose Abraham to redeem his people…. So the option gets put before us to be the kind of people that support the kingdom and we want it, or we choose not to…

You sitting here right now can make one of two decisions… cross… please remember me…. I dont want anything to do with you….we have questions about morality and things, but then Jesus says you have two options I will answer them…

And most of the people in our culture reject him…. Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life and no ne comes to the father but through me.. and we have to embrace that…

CS Lewis says this about eternal life…. “Eternal life isn’t something that God just arbitrarily gives out to people, it is like a fountain that is bursting up at the center of reality, and either you are close to it, and you have no choice but to take from it, or you are so far away it shrivels and dies…”

Parable is supposed to reshuffle your brain and challenge you.. he’s telling a parable tot ell you to think about how you think about god and how you think about everything in this world.. its not just a cute little story… its supposed to upend your life and challenge you… and you are thinking you know what all of this stud is for and how it is supposed to be used and it should change how you are functioning in the world…. Good stories change you and how you think and what you do..

Jesus wants to upend your life… he wants to take the story and change the way you think…

Walter Bruggaman said talking about the story of Moses, “His concern was with the consciousness that undergirded and made such a regime possible”. The regime of Egypt.. he didn’t want to go against just Egypt.. he wanted to say how could this even exist…

Jesus is constantly looking at us and thinking why do you live like this…. Why do you relate to your spouse the way that you do… Why is it true about you…

So Jesus put another parable in front of them….

Matthew 13:24 ESV

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,

Vs 24 We dont understand the kingdom of heaven…

If we say it is going to rain here…. It can have different meanings…. In Africa it mean something great… here… before a picnic… context means everything… so the reality is , when he says the kingdom of heaven we dump meaning into it… so when Jesus says that he had far more in mind than just forgiving sin.. think about how little he actually says I have come to forgive sin…his message is constantly something bigger… he’s talking about this kingdom over and over…

The core message of Jesus is the kingdom of heaven… and there are all these expectations of the Jews where there would be a day where all the sickness and disease would go away..all the sin and darkness of the world.. and the jews said one day God would reverse all of that… there will be a day… and this was the phrase they would use when they would talk about that… and Jesus comes and he is talking about that…a nd he is saying I am the climax of this story…everything you were waiting on is starting to unfold before you…the call is to embrace me… the call of heaven wasn’t just about getting your sin forgiven…

The empire of Godh as come into the world and so much so it has made it where I can experience now…. And when I met God it was more than I met God and now my sins are forgiven… it is about the kingdom fo heaven dropping in your life now and the power to change your addictions… the kingdom of heaven dropping and there is this message of hope for all of us… and if the power is real it can free you and change you and it can take you different and it can change you overnight…

For some of us it may not be immediate… she said I dont believe in God, except for when I hang out with you and I start to wonder if this think can be real…

Jesus wants us to realize its more than just later… its the here and now and the power that is on offer to every single person in this room its the kingdom of heaven… and the point is you would come under the rule of heaven and the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead would change you…

We are on mission now, we are empowered now… we are not waiting. On it to come… ON EARTH. As it is in heaven… bring Heaven into the now because we want to do something amazing….it comes only to those who come out of as Paul says the kingdoms of the world, and into the kingdoms of heaven…. There are only two places you can exist… and of those two places he is asking you are you insider or outsider to the kingdom of heaven..

Matthew 13:24–25 ESV

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

VS 24 “The kingdom of heaven…vs 25…

This is what you need to understand… if you didn’t like someone you would come and plant weeds against someones crop…and it happened so often that th romans had a law against it… he says there is an enemy and there are weeds amongst the wheat…

And sometimes we have these rose color glasses.. and Christianity actually acknowledges evil in the world…. But it puts it in check… hinduism thinks evil is an illusion…that if bad things happen its an illusion…

The biblical narrative doesn’t avoid those things, it jumps right into them and sees them.. it doesn’t try to ignore it, it says it is real.. there is weeds in life, there is stuff that comes up and it does happen to you,

Jesus said those bad things , the weeds exist and the call of the christan is to fight against them… the Bible would tell you that a theology that ignores the evil is wrong…

Soe he says evil exists but it would be silly of us to think we know how to deal with the evil and awfulness of the world like ew can take control of it all, and thats what we try to do with the world is wrestle all the responsibility from God…

Matthew 13:27–28 ESV

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?’ 28 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?’

27, 28

Do you want us to gather them… God you want me to take care of this, I know what to do when my life starts to fall apart… I can handle this I will just wrk a little bit harder… and some of you are exhausted from trying to fix you kids and your money and your parents and your job… and you working it because you know what to do… an the one thing you are not saying is, master I have no idea…

And the second level point is God on his worst day knows way better than you and you are spending all your energy on it and You have to stop and just let it go toward him… so you dont mess it up…

Science of fear… we think we know better… but God is so much better than me… Sep 11,2001 - Sept 2002… people stopped flying…. People were afraid, and started driving, and if you can make it to the airport, thats the dangerous part…. And people studied traffic patterns and they saw people died because they drove instead of flying…. 1595. People died because they were driven to a decision because of fear…. And some ideas that feel right to you are just Not right. But emoitonaly hey feel right, we dont reject the idea of hell because we dont like the feeling of it.. .but the Bible tells us its not about what we feel, its about what we know….

And we try to tell God how to deal with evil.. .get rid o it all… let me go get it and pull it up now…. And I dont think we think through all the implications of it… if we think through all the evil in the world.. .would we really want him to stop it,,, he couldn’t do it once.. he’d have to do it all the time and it would ruin free will… would you really want him to do that… they go to the land owner and say would do this…. We think he should stop it now… and he goes

Matthew 13:29–30 ESV

29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 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.” ’ ”

Vs 29,30

Hes saying, you dont understand why, but we have to let the good grow alongside the evil and I know you dont have patience because you are living in the moment and you dont understand that waiting has a purpose so I need you to wait… until win… the harvest time… but we think he should end it now its the same thing the disciples did in Luke 9

Do you want ustojust rain fire down on these guys. He says chill out… you are not to bring judgment but to do ministry… thats my thing.. I decide when harvest is… and every time we see smiting bad we think come lord Jesus …. And you know why he doesn’t come… its not because he doesn’t pay attention, its because he is gracious

He is giving you some more time… and if you wake up tomorrow he is giving you more time to come to know him and give your life to him… man I am glad he didn’t come in 2000 like we thought he would…. I wasn’t walking with him… I would have ended up in the final group

Every day the sun comes up he is giving us another day to find him.. he isn’t letting it happen because he is dumb there is a harvest time coming where he will bring judgment but in the meantime he is giving us another chance… and we cant understand what he is doing on a 30,000 foot level… we dont get it… so we see disciples saying bring the fire down… take out the ones that dont like you and deal with it now… and we get stirred up as righteous…. They voted wrong… they picked the wrong song… let me take them out now… and he says No.. its not your job… its not on your timeline.. this is called grace….we dont get to decide…

God doesn’t have to give you another day, he has you redhanded and we think we know what is best, but he is trying to give us a chance…

And some of you dont really believe in any of this, and you think man I know how I would handle this universe so much better… and I would pick the weds, and do it different… there might be a whole part of reality that you dnt understand…

Science is going through a crisis of faith because there is so much science that points to a creator…. Some of the greatest philosophers of the planet come to Jesus and think we might not know it all, we may be blind to some stuff… we couldn’t see it all…

Trump… hes going to win… and we missed it because we were too insulated… and thought there was no way it could ever happen, and we need to reevaluate what we think about America and what America wants… spiritually we do the same thing… we hang out with the same people and hear them the same way and it takes a story like this to blow up our minds and show us we may be missing something… and the story is saying it wants us to doubt our doubts… is this really who God is.. is my rejection of the natural nature the most legitimate way to go through life… or does Jesus have something…

And it ends with this warning that we may not have the best plan, but if we think we do, and hold on to it…. Vs 30

Matthew 13:30 ESV

30 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.” ’ ”

Listen to this image

Gathe the weeds first, bind them in bundles to be burned… God isn’t laughing at our sin… there will be justice… eternally separated from him…we cannot forget God is a god of judgment… if we do not become behind Jesus then the judgment is on us… its not irrational… we want judgment to be there..we want justice on the guy that killed that girl… if we are all going to the same place…why worship a god like that… who isn’t an all consuming fire…

Miraslov Volf … When we begin to think about not believing in a judgment he says this… “it take the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis….that God refuses to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, that idea will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one will do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the Modern western world.”

We are comfortable so we reject certain ideas of God… that god is an all consuming fire.if we are in the other group, the group the wheat, he says gather it into my barn… he doesn’t want us to be motivated by fear… he wants to take the love of the world and trump it with the love of God that will get me into the barn… how do I get into the barn… How do I get to be the wheat and not the weeds…. And Jesus says I came and gave my body so you could be gathered into the barn of a God that wants to bring you in….