St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Pentecost 9 -- July 18^th and 21^st, 2002

Dear Children of our Heavenly Father,

In the news recently was a story about an airplane that was carrying a famous star from India and her friends and family. On the flight they were talking and moving around the plane to mingle and pass the time. The airline attendants thought they since they were foreign and they were in a rather large group and that they were looking rather suspicious that they should let the pilot know. The pilot reacting in a way that has been fueled since 9/11 called the ground and had two F16 fighters sent up to escort this plane to the airport making sure nothing suspicious looking was happening. What a mix-up. Why in the world would people react in such a way? Plain and simple it is because there is evil in the world and this has caused us to react in ways that maybe we wouldn’t otherwise.

Today we want to look at the parable of the weeds, which describes for us that the Devil and his followers will always live among us and that there will always be evil in this world until Judgment Day, but this doesn’t need to alarm us. Our theme for this morning is:

When one looks around this beautiful planet of ours and sees all of the wickedness that is in this world, one might wonder why God permits evil to exist. Since God is righteous and all-powerful why doesn’t he use His power and punish men right now and get rid of sin? Aren’t the wicked made more defiant and more boastful because of God's patient attitude toward them? Christians sometimes get discouraged when they see the wicked prosper and the righteous prosper less. When we see this, we might wonder whether this is God's world, and whether God really cares for those who follow him

The Lord answered this age-old question as he told a parable in which He pictured a farmer who carefully worked up his soil and sowed wheat in it. The farmer had selected the very best seed and had every reason, with favorable weather, to expect a good crop. But at night while he slept, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. The servants of the owner in our parable noticed the weeds, and at once they went to the owner of the house and asked him whether they were to pull them up. They were told to let both grow together until the time of harvest when the reapers could gather the weeds and burn them, but gather the wheat into his barn.

There are people who blame the origin of evil on God. They say that since God created everything, and evil is present in the world, God must have created it. In the parable of our lesson, the owner of the house did not sow the weeds, nor did God create evil. God created the world and when He had finished he said, "It is good." Things changed when an enemy sowed weeds of evil where God had created good. Jesus plainly says evil is the work of the enemy, and the enemy is the devil. The enemy is the one who hates God and everything that is good. Jesus is the sower of the good wheat and the devil is the sower of the weeds. The wheat is all those who have been led to believe and the weeds are all those who follow the evil of the devil.

But to say that Satan is the promoter of evil does not settle the question of where evil came from, for some one will be sure to say, "Did not God create the devil?" This question implies that God is responsible for the sin we find in the world. But is this a correct thought? No. Did God create the devil? No. God never created a devil. He created Satan as an angel who had the power to choose to reject God’s blessings or not. Sin is the disobedience of the will of God. The devil was not created as an evil being, but as an angel who chose to rebel against God. The devil was not created a sinner. He willingly went against God. In this respect, the devil, was created with the same power of exercising his judgment as were Adam and Eve. He had a free will to turn away from God and his blessings and that’s exactly what he and his followers did.

As we talk about the weeds of evil that he devil has planted in this world, we need to realize that no matter how hard we try to live the Christian life, evil and the followers of evil are always present. The devil loves to sow his weeds in the midst of wheat – which is right in the middle of our lives. He does not seek to plant his weeds in the desert, but he looks to destroy the good wheat. He wants to sit and rule in the church. Some one has said, "Wherever God builds a church, Satan builds a chapel alongside."

If the servants had had their way they would have pulled up the weeds, but the owner said, "‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. ³⁰Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’" Doesn’t this plainly show why God does not call upon His followers to exterminate the wicked? The Church has no commission from God to attempt by violence to destroy wickedness for the simple reason that the Church is made up of sinners saved by grace who are not able to discriminate between the wheat and the weeds..

How can we tell who is weeds and who is wheat? It can be very difficult. We can look at those who belong to churches, but we need to remember that the word "Church" is used in two different ways. The visible church includes everybody who has made a confession of Christ and whose name appears on some church membership list. Sadly, the visible church does include hypocrites, sinners, men and women, who are good, bad and indifferent. It is not a difficult to learn whether a man is a member of a visible church. All you need to do is see what church they call their church home.

The invisible church is comprised only of those who believe that Jesus died for their sins and they have been washed in the blood of Christ and are forgiven. Every person from every nation, from every time in this world’s history who believes in Jesus as their Savior from sin is a part of Christ’s invisible church and will be going to heaven. So who is in the invisible Church? No one can tell for sure who the members of the invisible church are. As I look out over this congregation, I am not able to tell who is wheat and who is weeds. I trust you are all wheat, but I do not know 100%. You all look very much alike as did the wheat and the weeds early in the growing season. There is a harvest time coming, and Jesus and his angels will do the harvesting. God does not ask us to attempt to do it now. Wait until the harvest. Where the weeds will be pulled up and destroyed forever in the fires of hell and the wheat will be harvested into God’s eternal hone in heaven. We are not always able to decide between the good and the bad, but Jesus can. We might be able to judge men's actions, but what do we know about the inner workings of a man's heart? What do we know about his motives? Nothing. Only God knows what is in man.

For instance, there are people who for a time served Satan, but who later saw the errors of their ways and repented and believed in their Lord. Paul was an enemy of the cross and fierce in his persecutions of Christians, but later became a mighty man of Christ, one of the world's outstanding Christians. Suppose some Christians had hastily pronounced him an enemy and killed him. How great would be the loss! We are not able to say when a man is eternally lost or saved. Since we are not able to tell whether a person is wheat or weeds, God has not asked us to pass judgment. Hypocrites may disguise themselves for a time. Christ says they are wolves in sheep's clothing. The hypocrite may look like wheat now, but at harvest time God will know. By their fruits you will know them.

In spite of the greatest care and our best attempts to edify the members of the Church, there will always be some weeds in the world. We should not let this fact worry us or cause us to despair. Perfection in this world is impossible. There will always be some weeds among the wheat and we should not allow ourselves to lose trust in our God. Christians have often become discouraged because of the weeds among them. Things happen and we wonder why. The greedy rich people enjoy all the joys of life and those who gain things be honest means struggle through life. This is the perception that the devil wants us to have. Our joys can’t be measured by the things of this world. Our pure and perfect place is in heaven, not on earth. Life on this earth is our opportunity by God’s grace to trust that Jesus is our only source of heaven. Life is our time to share the message with those that might be following the ways of the devil and are eternally doomed to the fires of hell. The problem is the weeds or the devil and all the evil he brings into this world. The answer is our perfect Savior who keeps us safe as we live in this world. Amen