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Text of the page (random words):
he darnel roots the reason that we highly suspect that darnel is the weed in question here is the fact that ancient unscrupulous farmers would go out in the dead of night and sow darnel in the fields of their business rivals so common was this practice that rome actually had a law against the illicit sowing of darnel so it s highly likely that this is the practice to which jesus was referring in our story the slaves who discover the unexpected addition to their crop ask their master if he is sure that the seed that he planted was good and not tainted i would imagine that the slaves may have been concerned that they may be blamed for the unwanted darnel that had been planted in their field but when slaves asked their master if they should pull out the weeds the master aware of the potential damage to the wheat should they do that advised them to allow the darnel to continue to grow alongside the wheat so that none of the wheat plants would be harmed when jesus and the disciples left the crowds behind and returned to the house in which they were staying the disciples asked jesus to explain the parable jesus provided a very straightforward explanation saying that the field is the world the sower is jesus the good seed are the people of the kingdom the weeds are the people of the evil one and the enemy well that s satan and here is where today s reading starts to get interesting because for hundreds of years there have been jewish parables with which jesus listeners would have been quite familiar and in these jewish parables god is almost always represented by the landowner the enemy in these stories is almost always satan himself and the wheat traditionally represents israel while the weeds represent the gentiles and viewing the parable through this lens jesus appears to be telling a story about the redemption of israel and the judgment of the gentiles but that isn t what jesus said rather than the wheat being israel and the weeds being the gentiles and this is important jesus declares the wheat to be the people of the kingdom and the weeds to be the people of the evil one and in saying this jesus is declaring that the good portion of this mixed crop the wheat representing the people of the kingdom is those who are hearing and living his word and the good portion of this mixed crop is not accepted to be israel as traditionally thought but is instead understood to be those from the ends of the earth who have heard and received the gospel message and some of these people are going to be gentiles and the bad portion of the mixed crop the weeds representing the people of the evil one are not being considered to be the gentiles but rather are those who have heard the word and have rejected it and some of these people are going to be israelites the pharisees and the teachers of the law and the jewish people who have failed to recognize or more accurately flat out rejected jesus are the people of the evil one and it is they who are the invasive plants in this narrative now as i said earlier the first century listeners to this parable would have been wondering if the landowner was nuts allowing the darnel to continue to grow alongside the wheat having the darnel mixed with the wheat will ruin the crop and the easiest best time to remove the darnel would be immediately after it sprouted leaves and so removing the darnel at that time would have been the best bet to protect his crop but removing the darnel also would have damaged a significant portion of the good crop now if this farmer is making a value judgment about the pros and cons of removing the darnel then removing it would absolutely be his best bet and removing it at the earliest possible time would minimize the damage done to the rest of his crops this is why rival farmers used to do this because it would cause his rival a loss of crops and a loss of income as many good plants would be destroyed in the process of removing the darnel but this parable is not a real farmer with a real problem this parable is something that jesus has thrown alongside to allow us to make comparisons that lead us to a truth and what jesus is really telling us here is that god in his great love and patience is going to allow the children of the evil one to continue to live among the children of the kingdom in order to ensure that every single one of his beloved children has every available opportunity to turn to him and live does this mingling of the children of the evil one and the children of the kingdom have the potential to create real world problems for people especially for the children of the kingdom absolutely and it often does and when this happens there can be no question that these real world problems can seem to be deeply unfair and to those who have not yet received the word these real world problems could appear to be a sign to them that god doesn t care or that he doesn t exist at all but when we stop to think about this we come to the difficult conclusion that those who are calling this unfair are thinking only about themselves they are not thinking about those who are desperately in need of hearing the word and as hard as it may be to accept this christians are called to think about others before they think about themselves the question that the christian needs to be asking themselves in these circumstances is am i willing to be inconvenienced to be disadvantaged or even to be hurt in order that another person may have the time that they need to become a child of the kingdom is temporary suffering a reasonable price to pay for the saving of the eternal soul of another human being it is a tough question isn t it and it s the exact question that jesus had to answer for himself in the garden of gethsemane the exact question that caused jesus to sweat great drops of blood it is a very very difficult question indeed but the believer always needs to remember that god s highest priority is reconciliation and the believer also needs to remember that if god instantly judged sin there would be nobody left because we are all sinners saved only by the grace love and patience of god it s just that we happened to be saved a little earlier than some others and so jesus asks his children to persevere to hang in there and to continue to love others and to continue to share the gospel because as the old saying goes the people of the evil one are not the enemy they are victims of the enemy and god is seeking to reconcile as many of those people of the evil one to himself as he possibly can and god is calling on us to be the ones who bring to them the words of salvation the words of life what is it that jesus said love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you chelsey harmon says the reality of how farming works both then and now is a cue to us to pay attention to the surprise in this parable the surprise that the farmer doesn t remove the threat to the wheat until the harvest challenges us to trust the farmer who is seemingly going about his trade in the wrong way this parable isn t a lesson on how we approach evil in the world it s about being able to comprehend the bigger picture of the reality that the kingdom is already here but evil is still present and will be present until the final judgement 2 the key for the believer is to trust do we trust that god knows what he is doing do we do we trust that god has a plan and do we trust that god will not only make all things right but that god is going to make all things awesome beyond our capacity to understand i can t say this loudly enough god will reward the faithful we must have trust that as paul wrote to the church in corinth no eye has seen no ear has heard and no mind has conceived the things that god has prepared for those who love him and as for those who choose not to love him well all of that darnel is going to be gathered bundled and thrown into the fire that blazing furnace is not a joke however it is that we choose to understand that blazing furnace and this is really just another instance of the finite trying to understand the infinite whether we accept the existence of eternal flames or whether we accept this as allegorical or whether we accept this as something that is just totally beyond our comprehension the one thing of which we are certain is the fact that there is going to come a time when the people of the evil one will be eternally separated from god separated from god s love separated from god s care separated from god s righteousness and if that isn t hell then i don t know what is the truth is when i stop to think about this separation from god isn t something that i would wish on my worst enemy and so in spite of the potential for difficulties the call to us is to trust god to believe that he knows what he is doing and most important to believe that his plan is good even when we can t see that ourselves his call to us is to as we are going bring the gospel to the ends of the earth we must carry the good news even to the people of the evil one we must love others even those who are difficult to love even those who reject our love because this is exactly what jesus did and so we emulate jesus in a way that through our love and even though our love for the people of the evil one those to whom we witness may discover for themselves this incredible love that god has for them judgement is a hard thing to talk about it s even a hard thing to think about the fact that there are those who will suffer an eternity separated from god is too horrible a thought to even consider and this is why we make the hard choice to love the unlovable for those of us who are repulsed at the very idea of final judgement i would like to close with something that i have said many times in my lifetime to many different people who have asked me questions about the judgement when the day comes that god reconciles the world to himself we will all stand in open mouthed astonishment at the depth of god s mercy and at the rightness of his judgments and until that day comes my friends we are going to have to put our faith in him and trust him 1 saunders stanley p preaching the gospel of matthew pg 129 2 chelsey harmon cepreaching org commentary on matthew 13 24 30 36 43 tags bible christianity faith god jesus posted in uncategorized leave a comment good soil july 13 2026 july 12 2026 matthew 13 1 9 18 23 the really cool thing about parables is the fact that you can look at them in different ways and very often learn different things based on how you look at that parable in the greek the word παραβολή para bow láy is a compound word consisting of the words παρα which means alongside and βολή which means to throw so to tell a parable is to throw something alongside in other words to use one thing to describe another when jesus uses parables what he is really doing is inviting the listener to think deeper tom long explained that jesus preached in these confusing parables in order to make people deeper thinkers about what the gospel is all about jesus did not want to have people grab the gospel too quickly because such a quick grab almost always resulted in bad faith or shallow faith that did not last long 1 sort of like the seed on the rocky soil that we will learn more about in a minute and so the object of the parables is to throw something alongside so that we can make a comparison that illuminates a truth in today s reading we have a parable about a farmer planting seed and about the results that the farmer receives based on where the seed fell the parable was spoken to a crowd at a lakeside but fortunately we have the benefit of a subsequent conversation that jesus had with the disciples where he explained the whole parable and so let s take a look at today s story it s the beginning of the planting season and a farmer is out scattering seed some of the seeds fall on the path where birds snatch it up some of the seeds fall on places where there was a thin layer of dirt over rock and the plants couldn t take root some of the seeds fall among the thorny bushes and were choked so they couldn t grow and some of the seeds fall on good soil where they take root and thrive and reading on just a little bit further we can hear jesus himself explain this parable satan steals the word from people who hear it but don t receive it just like the birds steal the seed from the path one who initially receives the word but doesn t live it has faith with no roots and at the first sign of adversity their faith withers just like the rootless plants on the rock those for whom the message of faith becomes lost in the day to day struggles of life will have what little faith they have choked just like the plants that fell among the thorn bushes but those who receive and live the word become fruitful just like the seeds that fell on the good soil and they return a hundred or sixty or thirty times what was sown and so yes there are different ways that different people respond to the word and different ways that people respond to the parables for those who are curious for those who have been blessed with a desire to know and to understand the word the parables will be an avenue to even greater understanding but for those who have no interest or for those who can t be bothered the parables taken simply at face value will make no sense at all warren wiersbe says jesus did not teach in parables to confuse or condemn the people rather he sought to excite their interest and arouse their curiosity these parables would give light to those with trusting searching hearts but they would bring darkness to the unconcerned and unrepentant 2 and so any parable s meaning will be in large part determined by the amount of thought put into finding out how that which is thrown alongside relates to the heart of the message and if that was the end of today s story this would be the shortest sermon ever but hold on a moment because we aren t quite done seeing what else may have been revealed by that which was thrown alongside this parable as we read jesus explanation it probably leaves us asking the question what kind of soil am i and our assumption is that each kind of soil is a different kind of person but what if each of these types of soil are a part of who we are what happens if one day we joyfully hear and receive the word but the next day we have a crisis and our faith is shaken wouldn t that mean that one day we were the good soil but the next we were the rocky soil what happens if we hear a passage that is difficult or if we find that we are being called to do something that we would really prefer not to do is our faith going to carry us through this or are we going to sweep that verse under the rug and wouldn t our sweeping that verse under the rug mean that today our soil was the hard dirt of the path and what if a new job or a new relationship or a new baby monopolized our time drawing us away from the church away from the community of believers and away from our study of the w...
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