The Patient Kingdom

We’re going to dig into the sermon. We’re in part 2 of a 5-part series. We, we’re focused on Matthew 13, and, uh, the, the parables that we find in Matthew 13 all point towards the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. Uh, and so we’ve entitled this Kingdom Come based on the Lord’s Prayer, where he taught us to pray kingdom come prayers. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, right? Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so we’re praying kingdom come prayers. We’re praying thy kingdom come, not my kingdom come, thy kingdom come. And start with me, kingdom.

I pray that Jesus would be king of my life. And then I pray that your kingdom would come to this world and come to the people of this world. And so that’s what we were taught to pray by Jesus in Matthew chapter 6. And when he spoke of a kingdom of heaven, he wasn’t, primarily speaking so much of a place as He was of a presence, of a person. He wasn’t merely speaking of a realm, but of a reign.

Not so much a castle or a crown, but a carpenter. He was speaking of one who came as King. He was speaking of Himself, that when Jesus came, the kingdom has come, but there’s this tension. It’s already here, but not yet. And so some refer to this as the inaugurated kingdom of heaven, the inaugurated kingdom of God.

We’ve tried to define it like this: the kingdom of heaven is the saving reign of God that entered history through Jesus the King, is even now breaking into this present age wherever His rule is received, and will one day be fully and visibly established when Christ returns. So it’s already here, it’s already at hand, but not yet fully visibly until He comes. Jesus has come as King, He is reigning as King, and there’s a time coming where this will be fully realized. But this creates a tension, and therefore He gives a parable to help us understand it. It’s the parable of the wheat and the weeds, or as those of us who have been reading the King James as we were growing up, the wheat and the tares, the wheat and the weeds.

And in this, in the middle of this parable, his servants say out loud in a question, they describe this tension they’re feeling and they pray or they speak like this. They say, 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 that’s kind of the hinge of the parable. This question is the motive of the parable to describe Why is there, if you’re the King and you brought good, why is there evil in this world?

Why is it still here? How then is there weeds among the wheat? At this point in Matthew chapter 13, we see growing opposition against Jesus. The Messiah, the King has come, but yet His own people have rejected Him. In fact, the Jewish leaders have accused Him of doing works in the power of Satan.

They’ve rejected Him. And so this has to be just confusing to the disciples. And so He begins to describe these parables to them to help them understand, yes, I have come, I am planting wheat, good seed, but there’s still a mixture of weeds in this world. And He tells this parable to talk to them about this, about the mysteries of the kingdom. They’re dealing with this question.

Let’s go ahead and name what their real question is. If God is good and Christ is King, why does evil remain? If God is good and Christ is King, why is there evil? Why does it remain in this world? That’s what they were really asking.

We often feel that same tension today. We look at a world filled with violence, with war, with unbelief, with suffering, with open rebellion against God, and we wonder if Jesus is King, why does evil remain? Why is it still here? It might cause us to misunderstand the nature of Christ’s Kingdom. We may mistake His patience for weakness, His delay for absence.

Where are You, God? Don’t You see this? Or the persistence of evil in the world as somehow defeating His purpose. And so we feel this tension, but as we understand this parable, we can learn to trust that Jesus is King and that His purposes will prevail. So let’s look at the text, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, the Gospel of Matthew chapter 13.

He taught His disciples that His kingdom would patiently coexist with evil until the appointed harvest. And at that time, He would finally judge the wicked and vindicate the righteous. And I believe today that we can understand and trust how Jesus will prevail in His kingdom. He gives us 3 reasons. So let’s unpack that today.

Let’s look at the parable of the wheat and the weeds, starting in verse 24 of chapter 13 in Matthew. He put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds 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? 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? 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.

Then let’s skip down to verse 36 for the explanation. Then He left the crowds and went into the house, and His disciples came to Him saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field. He answered, 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 will it 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.

This is God’s Word. We’re looking now for 3 reasons we can trust Christ as King even while evil remains. Here’s the first, because His sovereign purpose cannot be defeated. Because his sovereign purpose cannot be defeated. Let’s look again at the question that sits at the heart of this parable.

Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds? They’re asking, what’s the origin of this evil? If you’re a good God and this is a good kingdom, You created a good world, a good creation. Why then is there evil?

Well, this problem is too big for one sermon to answer, and it wasn’t Christ’s purpose to answer the problem of evil here. He has a singular purpose, I think, and it’s to describe why is there this mixture of response to His kingdom and to Him particularly, Him as King. Why is it there is a mixture of people rejecting Jesus, and why is there a mixture of people receiving Him as King? And then we could enlarge that and see the implication of, well, as the kingdom is growing and as people are coming to faith in Jesus, why doesn’t He just clean this mess up? He’s already come.

Why doesn’t He go ahead? And so we have these tensions that we feel. Why is evil still in the world? And so We start to be concerned about His sovereign purpose. Like, what’s God up to?

What’s going on here? Evil is real, and opposition to Christ and to His church is real, but that does not defeat His purpose. He speaks by a parable. We talked about this last week. What is a parable?

A parable literally means something a story that’s told alongside another story. A parable tends to be an easily understood parable or a story about earthly things, agricultural things, farmers and fields, kings and their subjects, fathers and their sons, just things we understand, easily accessible stories, but they’re not really about that story. They’re about the story beside it, which tells us something about spiritual things. Here, the kingdom of heaven. And so He uses these common stories to engage our thinking and to engage our faith.

And you’ll notice in all these stories, there’ll be a strangeness to it that doesn’t quite fit. Here in this story, one of the strangest parts of the story is that the weeds don’t come up by accident. They’re planted during the night by an enemy. Now sometimes when I’m working in my yard, I feel the same way. Like I buy good seed, I buy fertilizer, I work in my yard, and I will say, where did these weeds come from?

It’s kind of a strange part of the story though, because weeds seem to come up on their own, don’t they? You have to plant good stuff but weeds just come up on their own. But in this story, it’s got a strangeness to it that an evil one, an enemy broke in during the night into the farmer’s field while his servants were sleeping and sowed bad seed, evil seed. That’s a strangeness about this story, isn’t it? That’s an odd part.

And that’s what parables do. They’re recognizable but strange, which causes us to continue to chew on them so that it opens our ears and opens our eyes to spiritual things, to see things characterized by the parable, in this case, the kingdom of heaven. Verse 24, He put another parable before them. Last week we looked at the first parable, which was the parable of the sower. He puts another one before them.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed, He says. And who is this man? Well, when we get over to 36 and following, it says they left the crowds. You see that in verse 36? And they went back to the house.

Now I believe contextually, as I’m studying here, this seems to be Capernaum and it’s probably Peter’s house. And then they go back to the house. They’re in a private location now. And the disciples, they’ve been chewing on this thing ever since He taught it. They’re like, we got to get alone with Him and ask Him what this thing means.

Verse 36, Explain to us, verse 36, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. Can you tell us what that thing means? And He goes, well, the sower is the Son of Man. Son of Man, that’s a messianic title for Christ or Messiah, first emphasized in the book of Daniel, but then fulfilled in Jesus, and then often used, especially in the book of Luke, but also in the book of Matthew, a favorite Messianic title that Jesus uses to describe Himself. He says, the Sower is the Son of Man.

I think we can conclude from the last parable that we studied last week that that applies there as well. Jesus is the Sower, and He’s the Sower here. He’s the one, but here’s— there’s a differentiation between the previous parable. The previous parable, the seed was the Word of the Kingdom, the gospel, the Word of God. Here, that’s not the case.

Here, the seed The good seed is the sons of the kingdom. Do you see that in verse 38? The field is the world, okay, the field represents the whole world, and Jesus, the sower, planted good seed, and I could combine the 2 parables in a way and say, well, it was the good word that planted in their hearts that caused them to be the good seed that He could plant in His world, in his field, and they’re sons of God. They’re the sons of the kingdom here, He says. And then He says, the weeds are the sons of the evil one.

So it turns out that the enemy that planted tares, weeds, is Satan. In fact, He doesn’t use Satan here. Verse 39 says, and the enemy who sowed them is the, and in the Greek it says, Diabolos, the devil, the accuser, the liar, the enemy of God’s kingdom. He has planted them and he’s planted them in the kingdom. He’s planted them in God’s field.

And so we see these weeds are planted right in the midst. And when did it happen? It happened while men were sleeping. The evil one, he takes— this takes place during the night in darkness while men were sleeping. Now Jesus doesn’t accuse His servants.

Servants need sleep. But we might see an implication here that God’s people need to be careful about sleeping when evil comes. And so they— the evil one plants this during the night while they’re sleeping. And what does he plant? The word for weeds, it describes a kind of darnel, a kind of poisonous ryegrass that looks very much like wheat from its earliest planting.

It looks the same indeed all the way up till the point of fruition. When it bears fruit is the first time you can tell them apart. And so wheat is golden and it’s rich and has this wonderful fruit at the top, And then this darnel, this weed, this tare, it grows up and has, when it comes to fruit, kind of a black fruit, and it’s not good for you. In fact, it has a poisonous flavor, and it has this other detail that we see that as they grow together, its roots intertwine with the wheat so that the wheat and the weeds Their roots grow together. And so that’s like the enemy, that’s what the enemy does to do, loves to do.

We could see here a description of the strategy of Satan in a way. First of all, he seeks to counterfeit God’s work. And so he makes his own version. So they look just like good seed. He seeks to corrupt God’s people by the intertwining And he seeks to distract God’s servants because the servants go, hey, do you want us to go dig it up, the weeds?

And see, that’s the other strange part about this parable. He says no, ’cause if you pull up the tares, the weeds, because their roots are intertwined, you’ll pull up the wheat too.

Now, I used to spend summers on the farm with my grandfather. My least favorite job, I loved to help him plant, I loved to help him harvest, I did not like going between the rows with a hoe and hoeing weeds.

Good farmers usually try to get rid of weeds. People who have lawns, They try to get rid of the weeds, but this is a strange parable. He says, no, leave it till harvest because harvest is coming. And if you pull them up too soon, not only will you have trouble telling them apart, but their roots are intertwined and you’ll pull up the good grain with it. And so we see the explanation.

He describes all of this and He says, the harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels.

Angels. He makes this parable really clear, doesn’t he? It says in the book of Job, no purpose of the Lord can be thwarted or defeated. He says, I know that you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted, cannot be stopped. You might sometimes wonder, God, what are you up to?

What are you doing? Why, why is there evil in the world, suffering disease, war, the enemy planted at night while the workers slept. It might look like the enemy has ruined the field, but the Lord still owns the field. He hasn’t given up ownership. It’s still His field.

He’s not stopped the wheat from growing. The wheat’s still growing. And He will not determine what happens at the harvest. Because the harvest is coming. His purpose will be coming to pass.

The enemy has interfered with the field, but he has not defeated the farmer’s purpose. Opposition is not the same as defeat. Indeed, it’s been my observation as a pastor, as a Christian, that I’ve grown the most And many of you, as I know you, have grown the most during seasons of opposition, during seasons of difficulty. We often see God making us more like Jesus during those seasons. I wouldn’t wanna go through ’em, but I’m always glad after I’ve been through them because I’m closer to Jesus.

He knows best. His purposes cannot be defeated. The enemy may oppose the King’s work, but he cannot defeat the king’s purpose. This is the first reason we can trust that Christ is King even while evil remains. Here’s the second reason, it’s because His patient wisdom cannot be rushed.

His patient wisdom cannot be rushed. When the servants learned that the enemy had sown the weeds, they immediately said, you want us to go dig ’em up? Do you want us to go gather them? But the master said no. If you pull ’em up prematurely, you’ll uproot the wheat with the weeds.

Let both grow together until the harvest, he says in verse 30. We might view the master’s delay as weakness. We might look at it as weakness, but it’s actually wisdom. He gives them the reason why. The servants wanted immediate separation.

They wanted to pull away, go live on their own island, They wanted to pull away from all the evil in the world and let’s hide out over here. But He said, no, I want you to continue to be in the world but not of the world.

His delay was not weakness, it was wisdom. That is part of the mystery of the kingdom. We often want Jesus to deal with evil right now. We want Him to heal right now, fix it right now. Repair it right now, get rid of it right now.

But His patience is purposeful, not passive.

No, He says, lest you root up the wheat with the weeds.

Let both grow together for now. At harvest time, I’ll handle it. ‘Cause harvest is coming. Scripture repeatedly connects God’s apparent delay with His patience and wisdom. Peter talks about it.

He says, the Lord isn’t really being slow about His promise, as some people think. No, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.

He’s waiting on you. He’s being patient for your sake.

His wisdom cannot be rushed.

A surgeon may delay a surgery because after he gets the tests back from a CT scan or some test that’s been taken, he might find that immediate surgery would actually risk the person’s life more than the surgery would help. And so they might come up with an intervention that’s safer that they could maybe later do the surgery if they handled it first. A wise surgeon will delay and try other means. The surgeon sees what the patient cannot see. And in this parable, the servants saw the weeds, But the master saw the roots.

And man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.

And he’s patient. I’m glad he’s patient with me.

I’m glad he’s patient so that we have time to come to our senses. And repent and confess and believe. I don’t understand it sometimes. I’m glad he’s God and I’m not.

Sometimes I would just be like, let’s just clean this up. But he knows best. He’s patient. This parable teaches us to trust the wisdom of the king. He knows what to remove and what to keep and when to do it, what to preserve.

So instead of asking, Lord, why haven’t you acted yet? Why haven’t you answered yet? Perhaps we could ask, which one am I, wheat or weed?

Which one am I in this parable? Instead of worrying about, Lord— and the truth is, for those of us who say, you know, I feel like I need to leave this church and go find a better church, the problem will be is that you have weeds in your heart. If we just take this parable a little further, none of us have completely weed-free hearts. The Lord is working on us. He’s sanctifying us.

He’s counting us righteous, but we still have some weeds to crucify, to kill, to remove, to pluck out. And if you go join a new church and you find a perfect church, please don’t join it because you’ll mess it up.

And, uh, there’s another application. Uh, we’re not the final judges of the field. Christ has not commissioned us to judge.

That’s his job. He sits on the throne. Jesus is judge. Our job is to faithfully bear fruit, proclaim the gospel, and await for the harvest. And look for Jesus to return.

Now, I don’t want to overreact to the parable because the same Jesus that teaches in chapter 13 is also the Jesus that teaches over in chapter 18 when He’s talking to the church. And He says, in the church, if there’s one who offends you because he’s sinned, go to him privately. You don’t need to enlarge the sin. Go to him privately and warn him. And if he doesn’t hear warning, take a witness and then, Warn him again.

If he continues in his offense, bring it before the church. And so there is a place where weeds need to be handled.

So we don’t want to over— anytime we study a word, we always want to study it in the larger context of the whole word. And so we need wisdom, but He’s given us a picture of what the kingdom looks like. And in this season, there are counterfeits in the kingdom. There are weeds, there’s evil seed in the midst. Which one are you?

And if you’ve heard, if you have ears to hear, spiritual receptivity, the way that we know, that you know that you’re wheat, that you’re good seed, is that Jesus is your King, your Lord. Your Savior, and you’ve declared Him thus because He’s placed the faith in your heart to do so, and you have done so.

And that leads us to the third reason. We’ve said His purpose cannot be defeated, His patient wisdom cannot be rushed, and thirdly, because His final justice cannot be escaped. Harvest is coming.

We’re in the final verses, 39 through 43. Jesus explains the parable, and He left no ambiguity about the meaning of the harvest. Verse 39, the harvest is the end of the age.

There’s an end coming. There’s an end of this age coming.

And the harvest will come at the end of the age, He says. That’s what the harvest represents in this parable. And He says the reapers are angels. And so there are heavenly angels, servants of God, messengers of God. You can’t see them, but they’re real.

There are fallen angels. There’s a real Satan. He’s in the parable, the devil. Evil is real.

This parable is showing us things that can’t be seen with human eyes, only believed and seen with spiritual eyes and understood with spiritual ears. There’s an end coming, an end coming, and the harvest represents it. And the weeds are gathered and burned with fire. At the end of the age, verse 40. And the Son of Man will send His angels.

You know why? Because He’s the one sitting on the judgment seat. He’s been given all authority in heaven and earth by the Father. He sends the angels and they gather out of His kingdom, ’cause there’s an intermixture, all causes of sin, all evil, He’s gonna gather it all up, and all lawbreakers, all sinners, all those who have been in rebellion against the King and have never bent their will.

Verse 42 says, and throw them into the fiery furnace, which brings forth the imagery of Nebuchadnezzar throwing the Hebrew children into the fiery furnace, But it also, after studying not only the Bible but extra-biblical sources, that the Jews often used that imagery of the fiery furnace to describe hell. Jesus often describes it with this additional imagery of how the people will respond to this in that place. Seems to be a real place, doesn’t it? In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

He talks about an end of the age when those who have rejected the King will find themselves in a real place called hell. Then verse 43, he doesn’t finish with the furnace, he finishes here. Then the righteous, who are the righteous? They’re the good seed. How did they become righteous?

Was it their own effort, their own righteousness? No. When Jesus died on the cross in my place, in your place, His righteousness to those of us who have received Him as Lord and Savior and believed Him, His righteousness has been imputed to our account. We had overdrawn our account. It was in the negative.

We were bankrupt spiritually. We were not righteous. We were unrighteous. But by believing in Him, we didn’t earn our righteousness, but we receive it as a gift so that His righteousness is deposited, imputed to our account. So the righteousness of Christ becomes our possession.

By faith in Jesus. In fact, a great exchange happens at the moment of faith that He died my death, for the wages of sin is death. He died my death and offers His eternal life. He took my separation, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me? He took my separation and offers His sonship.

He took my sin so that the sins of the world fell upon Him. And He became a sin offering. He who knew no sin became sin so that I could receive His righteousness. Oh my goodness, harvest is coming. Who are the righteous?

Those that Jesus planted in His kingdom, who placed their faith in Him from the good seed of the sower and the good seed, which is us, as Him being the one who plants us. We didn’t plant ourselves. He plants us in the kingdom. Then the righteous will shine like the sun. That could be spelled either way in my book, S-U or S-O.

In what kingdom? The kingdom of heaven? Yeah, but He describes it different here at the conclusion. In the kingdom of their Father. Their Father, because they, that were in rebellion against God have been planted in the kingdom and they are adopted into the family.

They are children of God and they’ve been planted in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

This is the third reason that we can trust in Jesus while evil remains in this world. Harvest is coming.

Paul preached this same truth in the city of Athens on Mars Hill. Judgment is not uncertain, it’s already been set. The date’s already in God’s heavenly calendar.

Paul says this, he says, God has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a Man whom He has appointed. Who is that Man? Jesus. He preached this on Mars Hill in Athens. Now, as we read in Hebrews, it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.

There’s a day, just imagine, God knows that day. He has that day, He has it fixed. It’s coming. There’s no avoiding it. Harvest is coming.

Judgment is coming. And through the growing season, the wheat and the weeds are nearly indistinguishable.

But as they grow to maturity, the wheat grows golden and bends over from the weight of the fruit.

But the tares, the wheat grows black and continues to point upward and straight and thin.

Seems appropriate that the wheat bows, doesn’t it?

Let Jesus make a decision about this. He can see the heart. He knows where you are today. The resemblance at harvest time gives way to reality. They no longer resemble.

You can tell them by their fruit. So the question this parable finally puts to us is not what should we do about the weeds?

Jesus is gonna handle that. The question that’s put before us is which one are you?

Which one are you in this story? If you explain your part in this story, which one are you? Have you received Jesus as King? Have you recognized Him as Lord of your life? Have you surrendered the throne to Him or not?

The delay you’re living in right now is not proof that judgment isn’t coming. It’s proof of His patience.

So why delay?

Because no man knoweth the hour. The appointed hour is coming. If you’ve never come to Christ, today is the day of salvation. And if you have come to Christ, why worry?

Jesus is going to handle it, not in your timing, not in my timing, His timing. So we can rest, we can pray as Paul teaches us in His letter to the Philippians, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, make your requests known to God. And the peace that passes all understanding will be yours in Christ Jesus. Why? ‘Cause He’s got it.

Oh, He’s got it. And harvest is coming. His sovereign purpose cannot be defeated. His patient wisdom cannot be rushed. And His judgment cannot be escaped.

The weeds are still in the field, but the field belongs to King Jesus. And here’s the grace in this parable. The harvest has not yet come.

Jesus warns us about this judgment because He is still offering mercy. At the cross, the Judge of all the earth stepped into the guilty place of sinners and stood in our place that we might receive His place in the kingdom, that He might plant us in the kingdom. So do not mistake His patience for absence. Do not worry about how He’s gonna handle evil in this world. Trust in King Jesus and pray kingdom come prayers.

Harvest is coming.

Let’s pray. Lord, I pray first of all for that one that’s here today, and the Holy Spirit’s really working on your heart right now. You’re hearing maybe more clearly, better than you’ve ever heard, and that’s the Spirit of Christ pursuing you. Why not today declare Jesus King of your life? Why not today?

I hear you, Lord, and I repent of my sin. I confess my sin to you, and I believe that you died on the cross for my sin, that you were raised from the grave, that you live today. Come and live in me by your Spirit. I surrender my life to you. I want you to be Lord and Savior, King of my life.

I wanna follow you all my days. If you’re praying that prayer of faith believing, He’ll save you. He’ll adopt you into His family. He’ll plant you in His kingdom. Others are here and you’re a believer, but you’re anxious, you’re worried, you’re afraid.

But Jesus says to us, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. He prays over us even now as our intercessor.

Let’s trust Jesus together.

In His name we pray. Amen.