155 - An Untended Garden?

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, I'm a gardener, and when I see a weed in my garden, I want to get in there and get it out immediately. Don't want it to grow. Immediately. Well, in God's garden, He does allow weeds to grow.

Why would He do that? That's the question of the day as we come back to the parables on More Than Ink. Well, here we are at our dining room table. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we are still moving our way through the Gospel of Matthew. We took a turn last week because Jesus started teaching us in this device called parables, and He gave us our first training parable. I mean, He gave us the parable, and then He explained it to us. So now we are fully equipped as parable interpreters, right?

Well, we have a beginning place. There's some general things about parables. Yes, some general things we probably need to understand about parables that our listeners may not have thought through, because parables, we all know, are these little stories about everyday common situations. They're relatable. They're accessible objects and stuff that people know. They're kind of common.

Right. They're common to everybody, but they have a deeper meaning that Jesus has hidden within the way He tells the story. So here's just some guidelines that we're going to carry forward as we talk about the parables. The first one is that context is important, right? The Gospel writers usually tell us who is in the audience and what their immediate response was to the story. So that's important for us to look at, because that might tell us why Jesus told this particular story to these people. Secondly, they're simple stories. They really only usually have one main point, and you can tell what it is by the way people responded, right?

Because sometimes we get a question afterwards. So don't go overboard coming with too much. Don't go overboard with some crazy idea about what this might mean, and that leads into the third thing here, and that is that the symbols are very simple.

Don't over-spiritualize them. There's usually pretty spare detail in these stories. We'll see some with very spare detail today. And the people and the elements do represent something, but the point of the story is usually pretty simple and straightforward. And not every symbol is the same in every story. For instance, in the parable of the sower that we looked at last week, the seed was the word of God. But in the parable we're going to look at today, the seed, Jesus tells us, is the sons of the kingdom. It's different.

Right. It's different, but there is a commonality there, because the sons of the kingdom become sowers of the word. So just be a little flexible how you interpret. We just want to be careful about interpreting those symbols consistently, but not rigidly. And then the last thing probably I will say is that the parables are description.

They're not definition, right? They illustrate a general truth, but they are not the core teaching. They are an illustration of a way to understand or access the deeper teaching. So understanding the parables needs to fit into the larger framework of all the things that Jesus taught. And that's a safeguard for us against taking a parable and just running off into some weird spiritual space that nothing biblically supports.

And we do that. And we need to pray for hearing ears, because Jesus told the parables in order to engage people's imagination, their understanding, their pursuit, their spiritual appetite. So we always want to be asking, what does this story say about God?

What does it say about me? And what does it say about the kingdom? And I especially like your point about the fact that we need to make sure it squares with what we've already read in scripture. So because if you interpret these, especially some of the spare ones, a little bit crazy, you could go off into Gooneyland, spiritually speaking. So just make sure you're still, you know, painting inside the lines when it comes to what you already know in Scripture. So that's really helpful. And I over the years, I found it really helpful also to read all the parables together. Don't just read one, but take them in groups. And you gain kind of a sense of a lot of times they're telling the same story, or driving at the same point from different perspectives. Right. And these all are grouped together in a way because they're called the kingdom parables. This gives us an understanding about the kingdom of heaven and Jesus as its Messiah. So here we go.

If you're following with us, we're in the middle of chapter 13 and we're picking up. And so put your thinking caps on. We're going to look at more parables starting in verse 24.

Okay. So 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 seeds among the wheat and went away. So when the grain plants came up, they bore grain when the seeds 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? And he said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servant 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. Oh. So later in the chapter, Jesus is going to explain this.

He's going to unpack it. But first we get a couple of other little parables, but let's just make some observations about this one first. Yeah. Let's just get this one in our head. Yeah.

Get this in our head. So we're talking about here, we're talking about again, planting seeds in a field. But then, but at the time that they sprout up, you look at them and it turns out some of these are weeds. They're not really wheat. And so that's a problem. In fact, a while ago I looked this up.

There's a, they're actually, this is a real thing that they struggle with today. There's this plant called Darnell and Darnell will sprout up with wheat and it literally is indistinguishable. I mean absolutely indistinguishable.

You'd have to do a DNA test to tell what it is. But then by the time it puts on seed heads, ah, well when those ears of seed come on, then you can tell because they actually grow in different directions. It's very easy to tell at that point. And then, you know, but at that point you're at harvest time. So, so what's the point of pulling them out?

And what I found fascinating is that even to this very day, this thing has, this problem exists and they solve it exactly the same way. They wait until harvest. So what they do is they have, they have harvesting machines today that can actually, while you're harvesting the wheat, it can separate wheat seeds from Darnell seeds. And so in the end, what you have is pure wheat and then you just take that pure wheat and replant it and that's how you deal with this. But even to this day in our modern 21st century, you can't deal with Darnell plants until the harvest.

And so that's what Jesus is talking about here. Well, and as a gardener, you know, I know that there are certain weeds that when they first sprout, they look just like what you planted. Sometimes you have to wait for that second, third leaf to appear before you can go in and weed. And even then if you'd sowed closely, you don't want to pull those weeds out right away because you'll pull up the roots of the little ones you want. You're prone to make mistakes. You know, it's, so it's very interesting.

Anybody who's accustomed to an agricultural situation can identify with this. But let's just talk about the parable for a minute because this story has a definite beginning and a definite end. Whereas the other one, the last one was kind of open ended. But this story has a beginning, it has a sequence of action and activity and then it has a definite end with the gathering and the burning. And so that makes it a little bit different than some of the other parables we'll look at.

Yeah, it does. But what it's really pointing out is the problem. The problem is there's a mixture and the problem is not going to be solved by us. The problem is going to be solved in another way. So he's just he's just saying, you know, you're prone to error.

So don't prematurely start yanking stuff out of the ground. So that actually connects to the next couple of little parables that Jesus is going to give. Because in this first one, there's something unintentional and unseen happening that doesn't become apparent until later on. Right. And that connects to the next two little parables.

Yeah. Do you want to read on and wait for Jesus explanation? I think it is interesting, just what you said triggered a thought is the fact that the kingdom of heaven is is not as, how am I say this as pure a process as you might think it is, it's going to be infused with evil. And so, which sounds kind of interesting, because you'd think when you have a kingdom of heaven, isn't the king in charge? Wouldn't the king make sure that evil wouldn't infuse into the process of the growth of the kingdom, but it's but evil is going to be intermixed in the kingdom.

And until the king says enough. Yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting. Well, let's push on to the next one. Because this, this first parable of the weeds, that'll get explained before I finished. Right. But let's get these other two in view. Okay.

Okay. So verse 31. He put another parable before them.

It's like he's putting all these things on the table to talk about. The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It's the smallest of all seeds. But when it's grown, it's larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. Oh, well, that's interesting.

That's the whole parable. So the picture is this little teeny seed that is deliberately sown, but then it grows into something totally unexpected, right? Larger than understood before and begins to influence its environment. Yeah, yeah. Right.

And lots of birds of the air come and nest in it. Oh, so you know, if we're just talking about the kingdom, does that mean that other things come and take, you know, build nests in the kingdom? I don't know. We're not going to make a conclusion on that. Well, yeah.

And interpreting this, actually, there's a little bit of division in Christianity about whether this is a positive or a negative kind of parable. Exactly. Well, it's the same with the next one.

And the same with the next one. So that's what's kind of fun about it. Yeah. So, okay. Well, let me just point out why our suspicions grow about maybe if we're interpreting it right.

Okay. I mean, it does talk in general about the fact that a small thing grows into a large thing. But when you look up mustard plants, they don't get the size of trees. No. They get to be bushes, but they don't become trees.

So that's kind of an odd thing because it seems like there's like an unnatural bigness to it. And also the other thing that kind of tweaks your thinking is that these birds, I mean, didn't we just see in the beginning of this chapter birds picking out gospel seeds off of hard ground? Right.

Well, they were emissaries of Satan. So just put that in your pocket for a second before we come back to this. Well, yeah. Those are interesting elements in this story, but we don't want to over-spiritualize them yet. Don't over-spiritualize.

Let's get the next one under our belt. Okay. So verse 33, he told them another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened. Oh. The end. So, you know, here's a common thing. We're still talking about something that's small and looks insignificant.

Small, gets big. Right. And has an unseen working. Right. Right.

There's an unseen-ness, a hidden-ness about it and it's going to produce an effect later on. Yeah. Yeah.

So again, this comes in the category of those parables that are, I won't say highly contested, but subject to much debate. Yeah. And again, there's two unusual things in this particular story that are a little unnatural.

Okay. And I mean, one of them is the fact, the three measures of flour. If you look up how much three measures of flour, you can feed a hundred people with that much bread. A lot of flour. So it's like, it's a big gob of flour.

Isn't that kind of strange? And the other one is the leaven thing. For a Jew reading this, when you think about Passover and leaven, leaven is always a bad thing. So I think for any Jew listening to this parable right here, they shudder a little bit when you talk about this. So the kingdom of heaven is like leaven?

So anyway, that's just something that kind of, I don't know, moderate your thinking. Yeah, in what way is it like leaven? Because, you know, leaven is most often identified with the effects of sin in the scriptures, but not always. But not always. And that's what you were talking about before.

We want to be cautious here. Don't get too rigid in your parallels, because all we know is that leaven is something that's invisible and causes something to grow. And that's always true. Yeah. And the effect of it is unseen, but unmistakable down the road. Right. It's very easy to tell leavened bread from unleavened bread once it's baked.

The effects are quite obvious, especially when you put yeast in something you're baking and it doesn't rise and you go, well, that didn't work. So, you know, what we've just been doing for the last couple of minutes demonstrates the value of these little stories that they cause you to engage your thinking. Yeah, they're great puzzles. And they actually evoke kind of an emotional response. Like my initial response is an emotional one.

And then now, wait, let's think about what that really means. And there's a growth process and something unseen happening. There's a process taking place and an end result in both of these teeny little stories. Yes. But they both do have the commonality of a small unseen thing resulting evidently in great growth.

Yes. That's one thing in the kingdom. You can say that in general that's true of the kingdom.

And Christianity did grow exactly like that. And it's possible that that's all we need to take from those. It could very well be. Anything else and we may run the risk of running far afield. That's exactly right.

So we just want to go very carefully here. And that conclusion would be just enough. Now, that by itself is an extraordinary observation about the kingdom because back in the ancient days when a kingdom came it's because a general came with armies and they took over an area and suddenly, boom, the kingdom is there because we fought our way in here and militarily took it. Imposed from the outside. Right.

Large, it starts large and is imposed from the outside. So when we're saying the kingdom of heaven is the opposite, it looks small and it doesn't come in imposing but then the result is huge. And it grows from an internal something, an internal activity. Exactly. Which may in large part be invisible. Right.

Up until a point. So if that's as far as you want to go in terms of what this parallel means, that's still profound because the coming of the kingdom of heaven will be profoundly unlike any other kingdom that has ever come on earth. It comes upside down, small and invisible and results huge. And I love that. You know, when Jesus talked about the kingdom not just in parables.

Very often the point of what he said was, you know, the kingdom of God is upside down and inside out. It's not what you expect. From earthly kingdoms. Not what you expect. It's not what you expect. Exactly. It's not what you expect.

In the same way that the Messiah Jesus when he came was someone that they did not expect. Right. So again, these are both stories of unexpected outcomes. So are you engaged? Is your mind engaged? Are you thinking about these little puzzles? So if you want to keep thinking about these, you can. Like I say, a lot of Christianity still debates these to this very day.

That's how engaging they are, how engaging they are. Okay, let's read on. Verse 34. All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables.

Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables.

I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. Okay, that's interesting because Matthew says spoken by the prophet, but that's a quote from Psalm 78. Yes, a Psalm. So it's a Psalm that he's quoting. But it just Jesus was doing nothing to teach them without a parable. He was both revealing and concealing the truth.

Doing the both at the same time. As we talked about last week. Yeah, yeah. And I like when he quotes this Psalm because he says through this utterance, what has been hidden will be revealed.

Right. So there's the kind of discovery process that comes out when you use parables and stuff like that. And what's the benefit of searching out something that's hidden? It causes you. You internalize it better. You internalize it, but it causes you to search and to follow up the clues and to develop your thought process to seek out understanding. Yeah, you're clearly more engaged with the truth as it's unearthed. Right.

Absolutely. And yeah, where's that passage that says it's that God hides a thing and it's a delight of kings to discover. It's in Proverbs. That's what it is. It's Proverbs. God, God hides a thing and it's delight of kings to uncover it. Delight of kings to uncover it. So that's really what we're talking about. You are just more engaged with the topic.

And it's fun. It's kind of like unwrapping a gift, unwrapping a package. Yeah.

Or some of those old jigsaw puzzles that had stories in the picture and so you wouldn't get the whole picture until you put the puzzle together. Yeah. Okay, well now he's going to give us an explanation of the weeds. Okay, so now we are alone in the house with the disciples because that verse 36 says, then he left the crowds and went into the house and his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of weeds in the field.

Help us, help us, help us. And he answered. And this is just a straight out explanation. He decodes the thing.

Yeah, this is great. This is verse 37. And he answered them. 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. That's pretty clear. That's a pretty straight decoding, isn't it?

This is that, this is that, this is that. And there's some very obvious takeaways from this. I mean one obvious takeaway is that at the end of the age there's really only two destinies. There's two destinies, only two destinies. And we mention that because the religion and the area that we live here has multiple destinies. Well yes, and it's clear when you read Jesus teaching about the kingdom, in the scriptures there pretty much are only two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. Right, and you'll see this, we call this the spiritual binary.

This comes up all the time. You'll see this at the end of Matthew when we get there too in terms of the separation of the sheep and goats. I mean it's everywhere. It is.

It's everywhere. But what he's saying is that God is going to allow creation to grow up to a final, let's say reaping stage. He's going to allow evil to kind of co-mingle in the midst of this creation.

To be present. Yeah, but he's not going to be fooled. In the end there will be perfect justice between the two.

You know, this gives me such tremendous hope to know that Jesus said from the very beginning, you know what, the weeds are going to be among you. You may not be able to tell the difference. Right.

Don't go on a witch hunt. Right. Because, that's okay, that's my interpretation.

That's good enough. Because you can't tell the difference. Yeah. Sometimes. The time for telling the difference is when the fruit, the final fruit is born, when the harvest comes.

Yeah. And so God's not going to be fooled by these, the superficial. He's not fooled by their DNA.

Well yeah, the superficial resemblance. That's not going to fool them. It would fool us though. And also. I think it fools us continually.

It does. And it's a great danger. And there's a, you know, many times we talk about why it is that God would allow evil in the midst of his creation like this. And here he's actually saying it's deliberate.

It's really quite deliberate. However, no one's going to pull the wool over God's eyes. When it comes to judgment and separation, it's God's job to divide in judgment and not our job to divide in judgment. But there is an active opponent. Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, he says the weeds are the sons of the evil one.

The enemy who sowed them is the devil. Yeah. He is active. It's an active component. In the process of invading God's kingdom to usurp what is God's. Yeah.

And actually putting counterfeit wheat. Right. In amongst, yeah, for his own purposes. But I might also mention that, you know, because of this, because he says, you know, don't do the separation yourself.

You're going to make errors. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't outwardly judge wickedness. When you see wickedness, you can out really judges.

He's talking about the case where outwardly everyone looks good. And at that point to separate the people who outwardly look good, you actually have to have an ability to judge the hearts. And we can't do that. We don't know how to do that, but God does.

And he won't make any mistakes. But you just let God deal with that. But when it comes to outward wickedness, yeah, we can judge that just fine. And we should.

He calls us too. Well, and judgment is very present in this parable. Right. So the day is coming when God will remove from his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers.

Gather them up and throw them into the furnace. Oh. Pretty final.

Did Jesus believe in hell? Apparently. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not a surprising agricultural outcome because that's what they did.

No, that's what you do. Those weeds are useful for nothing. Right. In fact, that darn nail that I talked about before, if you ate that, you could eat the grains of that, but it would make you drunken like. Oh, so it's toxic.

Well, yeah, it is. It's actually poisonous. It brings on kind of a drunken nausea. And if you eat too many of them, it'll actually kill you. So that's why even the scientific name for that plant comes from the word drunken. Oh, that's interesting.

I didn't know that. It's poisonous. It's poisonous.

So it's not useful for anything. You can pull it out. You might as well just burn it. And that's what God's saying. In the end, you know, it all gets burned. Yeah. And that's a powerful thing. And not only burned, but to a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. But the one who does that is the one who sowed the seed in the first place, right?

The one who owns the field, who has a purpose to get to gain a good crop. Exactly. And so it's the Lord Jesus who sends out the angels, the reapers, and they bring the judgment at the end of all things. And there will be no mistakes, though. Right.

The separation will be just in 100%. So you know, sometimes today we talk about the reputation of the church, which is not synonymous with the kingdom of God, by the way, we need to say that, but the reputation of the kingdom of God in the world is tarnished by the presence of these these weeds. So it's interesting to me that Jesus finishes this parable by saying then in verse 43, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father, he who has ears to hear, let him hear, right, let this penetrate to you.

There may be a tarnished effect now. But when all sin and all law breaking is removed, the righteous ones will shine like the sun. Yeah. And that seems to be a quotation from the book of Daniel. It sounds like it. It's very similar. It's not a direct quotation.

It's the same idea. Daniel 12, three says, and those who have insight, ah, those who have a spiritual understanding, will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven. And those who lead the many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. Yeah, very similar idea of the righteous ones shining on when all sin is removed, has been actually just that gate was opened by Daniel. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And and and God won't make more will not make errors in terms of who is who in the end. But I do like the fact because it's a great focus on judgment. And many times we look at judgment is saying God separates people. But what God is in that's part of it. But what God is doing, he says it there in verse 41. So clearly, he is going to gather out of his kingdom, all causes of sin, and all lawbreakers who are the people who embrace sin as a lifestyle, right? So if you willfully embrace sin as a way to live life, you're going to go in this judgment because he's going to remove all causes of sin.

If you're a promoter of sin, and a law breaker is one who refuses to submit to the righteousness of God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. So actually, it's good news for many of us who from day to day and week by week, are despondent about the destructive effects of sin. And so we can look forward and say, well, there is a day coming, where he's going to pull all that stuff out. And sin is going to be removed from the contact with the people that God loves. And sin will be gone sin, you know, since just a bad deal for people. Well, sin separates us from God. And when we willfully continue to choose it, we have chosen our own destiny.

That's right. And even though Satan is going to try and blur the scene by planting people who are promoters of sin, still not going to pull the wool over God's eyes. He's going to see it even though they bear a superficial resemblance to good people.

God knows who they are. Well, we're out of time. And next time we're going to continue the kingdom parables. So I hope you got your thinking cap on and that you're going to come back next week even more further equipped based on our last two weeks of doing parables and they will engage you in a way like nothing else does that Jesus teaches. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we hope you join us again next time on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself. And you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. That was a little clunky. Clunky, but not bad. That's pretty. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Rhythm City.