Have you ever wondered why there is evil in the world? Ever had someone who claimed to be a Christian hurt you? Ever had a church leader disappoint you? … We’ll try to see why some of these things happen as we see that the present Kingdom contains a mixture of good and evil, but a day of separation is coming.
The Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) … Someone sowed weeds into a farmer’s field. The weeds were probably darnell (tares) which are indiscernible from wheat until the head grows
Jesus is setting up His Kingdom now in the lives of people who follow Him (Matthew 13:37-38). … This isn’t new info as we’ve seen this already in this series, but it certainly reinforces the past sermons.
The devil is planting people in the world who look like Christians but are not (Matthew 13:38-39). … The Devil is a copycat. He plants weeds among Jesus’ harvest. By doing this, he is trying to drive people away from the church.
We cannot, at the present time, confidently separate Christians from imposters (Matthew 13:28-30). … In the verses, we see that pulling the weeds before the harvest could harm the good wheat. Likewise with Christians and imposters, we could harm actual Christians by removing those we perceive to be imposters. This does not mean we can’t make moral judgments though. Matthew 18:15-17 is where Jesus tells us how to confront sinners who claim to be followers. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5:3-5 to judge the actions of a man and woman. We are not to condemn or pass judgment on someone’s final destination, but we can judge their actions and confront the person because of them.
There is coming a time when God’s angels will weed imposters out of the Kingdom (Matthew 13:39-41). … When the harvest comes, when this age ends, the imposters will be thrown into a blazing furnace, into Hell. Let’s be clear that the division is not between sinners and non-sinners, but between repentant sinners and unrepentant sinners.
The Parable of the Net (Matthew 13:47-50) … In case we didn’t understand that parable, Jesus tells us another to teach us the same points. This time it’s about fishermen casting a large net, collecting both good and bad fish. Once the net is full and brought ashore, the fishermen separate the good from the bad.