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Text of the page (random words):
is storeroom new treasures as well as old and while there are lots of guesses as to meanings that may be hidden in this short parable one thing is certain jesus describes his disciples as teachers of the law the teachers of the law or scribes were those who had dedicated their lives to learning the torah and to teaching others about the law here jesus is telling his disciples and that would include us that we have taken over this responsibility that we are the new scribes the new teachers of the law last week my friend david ourisman sent me a link to a substack post of his about this week s lectionary reading in it he said so by the time you reach the scribe of matthew 13 52 the question this chapter has been building toward has changed not what s the treasure rather what kind of person can be trusted with the treasure understanding is not enough matthew seeks teachers whose understanding has grown into mercy feeding welcoming visiting before calling them ready to teach others matthew does not ask only whether a teacher has found the treasure he asks what the treasure has done to the teacher 5 and so today i ask us to ask ourselves the question what has the treasure done to us are we allowing this treasure to make us more christ like are we allowing this treasure to lead us to become more compassionate more forgiving more loving more willing to step out of our comfort zones in order to reach a world that so badly needs to hear and to understand the message of the gospel the kingdom of heaven is like a tiny pinch of yeast that when shared has the capacity to permeate the lives of others not only that they may be saved but that they in turn will spread the yeast of the gospel to others growing god s kingdom to the ends of the earth one heart at a time 1 music and lyrics by andrew lloyd webber and tim rice copyright 1970 1971 by universal mca music publishing ltd and the really useful group ltd 2 grant r osborne exegetical commentary on the new testament matthew pg 541 3 matthew beare findings pg 315 4 scott hoezee cepreaching org commentary on matthew 13 31 33 44 52 2 5 david ourisman surprised by the text when the text won t stay small tags bible christianity faith god jesus posted in uncategorized leave a comment what s the deal with the blazing furnace july 19 2026 july 19 2026 matthew 13 24 30 36 43 so for the second week in a row we have an agricultural parable but even though both of these parables are related to seeds and harvests their meanings couldn t be more different last week we discussed how the seeds fared as they landed on different types of soil the parable taught us that different circumstances can cause different people to react to the word in different ways and even taught us that a single person can react differently in different times and in different situations we also touched on the extravagance of god s grace as he shares his word generously not wishing that anyone would fail to hear the good news but this week our focus is on the crop itself so let s take a look at the story a farmer sows his field with good seed but an enemy comes at night and sows weeds in the same fields that were just sown with the good seed as the crop begins to grow the slaves working in the field discover the fact that there are weeds mixed in with the good plants the slaves ask the master if they should remove the weeds but the master tells them to leave them that they would all be sorted out at the harvest and for the second week in a row i have learned a few things about agriculture first i learned that allowing the weeds to grow along with the crop is highly irregular saunders tells us that the surprise in the parable comes when the householder forbids them from removing the weeds he directs the servants to let the wheat and weeds grow up together until the harvest when the weeds will be collected first bundled and burned and then the wheat would be gathered into the barn ancient audiences might well have wondered what kind of farmer this is and if this farmer knows what he s doing 1 the second thing that i learned is that the likely weed that was sown alongside the good seed was something called darnel darnel looks identical to wheat until it begins to mature when it sprouts leaves darnel is poisonous in substantial quantities and is capable of killing a human but in small amounts it is an intoxicant and indeed darnel was purposely cultivated to add to beer to increase the level of intoxication received from the beverage we also know that darnel has a very robust root system and that mixed in with wheat pulling the darnel plants out by the root would have damaged or killed many of the wheat plants whose roots had become entwined with the 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 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