Wheat and Weeds

 

 

God has been speaking into my heart lately about a parable that Jesus taught. The parable is found in Matthew chapter 13. If you turn there you will find a very well-known parable, the Parable of the Seed. This is not the parable that God has been speaking to me about. He has been speaking to me about the lesser known parable that follows, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds.

In a nutshell, a farmer planted a field with good wheat seeds; that is seed that had no week seeds in it. Yet, during the night an enemy stole in and planted weed seeds throughout the good crop of wheat. The results are obvious, weeds grew up in the wheat. The temptation for the farmer’s workers was to go and root out the weeds. The farmer, in his wisdom, asked his workers to let the wheat and the weeds grow together so that the wheat would not be damaged by the zealous weeding of the field. Anyone who has ever grown a garden knows how easy it is to damage the crop by ripping up the weeds.

It occurs to me that Jesus is talking about the situation in which we who belong to the church find ourselves. If the church is being the church, we will find that the gospel will produce fruit. Yet, at the same time, we will see those in the church who do not exhibit the fruit of the kingdom in their life. In other words, we find weeds in the church.

Throughout my life time, I have witnessed those who have done their best to tear out the weeds in the church. They do everything in their power to judge their lives, set them on the straight-and-narrow, and protect the body. In their honest attempts to clear the field the poke eyes and tear up the field.

The words of our Savior remind us that it is not our position to “weed the garden,” it is his job. Our job is to fling the seed, the good seed of the gospel and let him worry about the weeds. The kingdom would be better off if we would…

—Just my musings