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If you would remain standing, our text this evening is taken from the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew chapter 13. Matthew chapter 13, and we’ll be looking at verses 24 through 43. Matthew chapter 13, starting in verse 24. This is the word of God. He put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed 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 servant 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.

He put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree. so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened.

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables. Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. 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 it will 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 to hear, let him hear. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our God, our Father, we ask for your blessing. We ask for your spirit. Lord, we come needy. This is your word you have inspired. You have preserved it for us, and now we need it to be life for us. We ask that you would open up our hearts and ears to hear, that we might find life, that your spirit might be present in the hearing and the preaching of your word, that it might give life, that it might accomplish all that you have for it. We ask for your blessing, your spirit, for we are helpless without you. So we pray for this. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon is The Reality of the Kingdom, Weeds, Seeds, and Yeast. And the kids can be listening for three particular words.

Not yet, already, and consummation. Well, have you ever been frustrated wanting things to change that just can’t be changed just yet? To be perfectly honest, that’s an almost constant reality for me. I have dreams and visions about things I want to do and accomplish, but the reality then is much slower and messier.

Callie and I just got a house. Many of you have been in it already. It needs renovations. We still don’t know our neighborhood. And sometimes we just struggle to keep it clean. It can be frustrating to live in the not yet of any part of life. We live in the tension of the already and not yet every day in Pittsburgh.

The Steelers have already won six Super Bowls The kingdom has broken in. But we’re definitely not in the Lombardi Trophy parade every year. Or think of spring in Pennsylvania. The daffodils, the forsythia, they’ve already bloomed. New life has come. But we still get snow flurries in April sometimes. And the garden is probably already full of weeds that won’t go away until the fall.

And Jesus is saying the kingdom is like that. New life has powerfully already arrived, but the weeds, the evil, the brokenness is still very much with us for now. Now this is a bit of a longer passage this evening, but I think it’s meant to be all considered together. The parable of the weeds is the second parable that Jesus gives in Matthew. And he provides an explanation with this one as well. And we also see in our passage a reiteration of what we saw last time about the purpose of parables. Verses 34 and 35, right in the middle there.

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables. Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. And this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world. Now at first glance, this sounds like perhaps a contradiction from what we saw last week about the purpose of parables. Seems like they are meant to reveal, bring to light things that are otherwise hidden.

But when we look at this quote in context, which is Psalm 78, which is why we read that earlier in the passage, we see that it’s actually agreeing with what Jesus and Matthew had said earlier. When we look at the whole Psalm together, we see God is telling and doing things which should have prompted a believing response. And yet instead, repeatedly, if we had read the whole thing over and over, you would see Israel gave the exact opposite, an unbelieving response. And Matthew sticks this in as a commentary because he sees this Psalm 78 as paralleling Jesus’ context. He sees it as the fulfillment of what was laid out in Psalm 78.

And the parables Jesus tells They are intended to provoke insight, but instead, for many, serve as a barrier to belief. Initially, I was just going to consider the parable of the weeds by itself, but the explanation between is separated by this interruption of two other parables. And so I had two options. Either skip over this introduction and have a beginning and an ending section, and ignore these too many parables, or ask why did Matthew, at God’s inspiration, interrupt his explanation with these two extra parables. As you can see, I took the latter option, which I think this is a good practice for every author that we might read, but especially when reading the Bible. Even if the connection is not always clear at first, It’s worthwhile assuming that there is a connection and an important reason for what is written and how it is arranged. So we’ll look at our passage this evening under three headings.

Number one, the not yet of the kingdom. Number two, the already of the kingdom. And number three, the consummation of the kingdom. Number one, the not yet of the kingdom. Jesus is saying that there, with the kingdom of heaven, there is very much a not yet aspect to it. While Jesus’s arrival does mean something significant, things are far from perfect, and in fact, they always will be to the end of this age.

Now as we get started in this parable, we need to be clear on who or what this parable is about and what it is not about, because that can affect how we interpret its meaning. This parable is about the kingdom of heaven, which is not the same as the covenant community, the church. Bible and commentator and scholar D.A. Carson says, The parable does not address the church situation at all, but explains how the kingdom can be present in the world, while not yet wiping out all opposition. That must await the harvest. This parable deals with eschatological expectation, not ecclesiological deterioration. Because there are some that would interpret this parable as the church is always going to be full of the wicked. While the scriptures do not shy away from the reality that the covenant community within the church is always a mixed multitude of those who are truly saved, this is not what this parable is intending to highlight.

The kingdom of heaven that Jesus speaks about so often is bigger and broader. It is God’s rule in the hearts and lives of his people that is invading this world. Scholars and commentators have written and debated much about what the term the Kingdom of Heaven means in the Gospels exactly. And as we move through these parables, we’ll look at different nuances and attempt at a definition that is more rounded out. But for now, at its core, the Kingdom of Heaven in this case is the rule and reign of Christ within the hearts of those who joyfully submit to his lordship over their lives.

There’s a very real sense in which God rules over all creation. He made everything and everyone. He is God, the Almighty. He is the judge of all the earth. And in that sense, God’s kingdom extends over the whole earth. But it’s much more common for the Bible to speak of God’s ruling over those who are willingly submissive. And in this sense, God’s kingdom is growing and spreading by the regenerating power of God’s Holy Spirit. More and more people are willingly surrendering sovereignty of their own lives to the Lordship of Jesus.

And we’ll come back to that more in a moment. But the point in this first parable is not about the advancement of the kingdom, but how it exists in the world alongside opposition. We have a story of planting and harvesting cycle on a farm. The story starts out quite ordinarily. A man sows his crop that he intends to harvest within his own field. In this parable, there’s no mention of different soils that we saw last time. The seeds and soil are considered equivalent with uniform growth potential. In this story, the variation comes from an entirely different kind of seed. While his servants are sleeping, an enemy comes and sows different seeds. He sows weeds. Now a word about this word weed in this parable. The Greek term is zizanion. Kind of reminds me of the word zinnia, but this is not a flower at all. The word zizanion only occurs in this passage in the New Testament.

And it technically refers to a specific kind of weed that in English is called Darnell. Now this specific plant, Darnell, it looks very similar, especially when it is young. But when it is full grown, it becomes very obvious that it is not weed. It produces black poisonous seeds.

Now as urban 21st century You may not be familiar with Darnell, which is probably why most translations simply say weeds, but he is being rather specific in his imagery of a particular plant that would look similar to the wheat, especially when it was growing young.

But you and I don’t need to know the ins and outs, the similarities of Darnell and wheat to get the main meaning of the passage. We can still understand that between the weeds and the wheat there was a similarity and a risk of mistaken identity, especially when they were quite young. The master forbids his servants from pulling up the darnel since it could jeopardize a single plant of wheat. We see his concern for the wheat overrides his concern to uproot the darnel early.

The landowner is aware that the abundance of these weeds is not due to natural processes. You and I, if we find weeds in our garden, we’re likely to assume nature has been spreading the seeds back and forth. But in this parable, the owner knows that it has been specifically the work of an enemy, an act of garden terrorism. And the field hands, they’re zealous to remedy the situation immediately, and yet the master restrains them. The preservation of the crop that he had planted outweighs the need to eliminate the weeds. And there seems also to be an aspect in which maturing is required to properly distinguish between the good and the bad seed.

The distinction is not yet obvious enough, because the fruit from each plant is not ripe. It makes me think of a phrase that we find in Genesis chapter 15, verse 16. Genesis 15, 16, God tells Abraham about his offspring, the Israelites, and he tells Abraham, and they shall come back here to Canaan in the fourth generation to wipe them out, to wipe out the Canaanites, because The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. God tells Abraham the reason he’s not wiped out the Amorites is that their wickedness is incomplete. He’s letting Canaan grow weedy to maturity before he cuts them down.

Having your wickedness complete was not a good thing, by the way. You could think of this as a little bit like a sting operation in which the law enforcement are capturing a high-powered gangster. They might know that he’s done some bad stuff, but they might want to catch him in the act of doing some worse things. And so they set up a situation for him to be recorded committing the crime. And they hold off arresting him for the lesser stuff. not because they’re being nice or because they don’t care about the lesser things and crimes, but because they want absolute confirmation and proof that he is as bad as everyone says he is, that his wickedness has matured. And I think that’s sort of the situation that we find here in this first parable. The landowner is waiting for the weeds to mature to make their fruit even more obvious.

Jesus is saying we need a reality check when we’re thinking about the kingdom. Whether you’re a believer or an unbeliever, you need to understand what is going on. Why did Jesus not just bring fire from heaven and zap all the wicked people immediately when he came? When you hear John the Baptist speaking, you might think that that’s what he was going to do. The ax is laid to the root of the trees. Jesus is coming to bring fire from heaven.

So how come the world is full of evil still, even after Jesus came? The time that we are living in is the pre-harvest season, Jesus is saying. There is definitive good and bad seed, weeds and wheat. growing beside each other, and it’s not perfectly clear always which is which. In this age, there remains a mixture, an ambiguity in certain aspects, and instead of eradicating all evil instantaneously, the kingdom of heaven is growing alongside of evil. The harvest is not yet. But that does not mean that the kingdom is not already here and growing.

Number two, the already of the kingdom. These next two parables are, as I said earlier, they appear to be intentionally placed to add nuance to the message of the previous parable. Look at verse 31 and 32. He put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree. So the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. Mustard seed, and you don’t even have to be a gardener these days to have encountered one of these. You may have put dry mustard seed into a dish that you’re cooking or spread whole grain mustard on a bratwurst at our Easter party. So it’s likely you’ve seen one of these little mustard seeds, even if you haven’t done a bit of gardening. Now, a mustard seed is small, but if you’re like me when I was young, I was wondering, I’ve seen seeds that are smaller than a mustard seed.

So how do we reconcile that? Well, there are explanations that people sometimes give of The way that in Jesus’ situation and time, it would have been the smallest seed. I think the easiest explanation is much simpler, that Jesus is simply using hyperbole, as he does in many other places. Hyperbole, of course, is to speak in a strong way to make a point.

It certainly is a very small seed, the mustard seed, compared to many other in the garden. But we do not need to worry if we can find a few seeds that are smaller, because the point is the contrasting size to which the tree grows. Jesus seems to have chosen the mustard seed because of the great contrast between its seed and its mature size. From what I’ve read, it seems to be able to grow six to 10 to even some as much as 15 feet.

And when placed beside the previous parable, we see that Jesus is highlighting the reality that the kingdom will start small, but will get big. We should not think of the incomplete eradication of evil, that that means that the kingdom will remain small.

Jesus’ ministry started small, Him and 12 disciples. By the time He had ascended, there were 120. disciples gathered in the upper room, praying on Pentecost. But by the end of that day, there were 3,120. And within another few days, it was over 5,000 of just the men. Today, there is an estimated 2,674,000,000 self-identifying Christians in the world. The kingdom started small. but it will grow. It is growing and it’s got a big trajectory. But Jesus’s next parable adds some nuance to this point by speaking of the means by which this growth will happen. Verse 33, he told them another parable.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened. When I make a loaf of sourdough, I usually start with about six or seven cups of flour and a quarter to a half cup of starter or leaven, which is what Jesus is talking about here, a kind of starter.

Well, the woman in our parable is making a very big batch of bread because it says she has three measures of flour. And a measure in this case, in the Greek, is a specific unit which refers to 12 quarts or 48 cups each. So this woman has 144 cups of flour in the dough that she’s making. She’s either a commercial baker or she’s baking for a feast.

But the point is not what she’s making the bread for, but the point is the way Despite the massive quantity of flour, once it’s all mixed in, it’s completely permeated. And the description we have of her hiding the leaven in the flour is very apt. The process of incorporating it into the dough is like hiding. And once you mix the leaven in, you can’t tell them apart. It’s indistinguishable from the rest. But you’ll know that the leaven is in or not because over the next few hours, it will begin to rise. Of course, interestingly, leaven is often, in other places, portrayed as a negative thing in scripture. It has negative effects of permeating things.

In chapter 16 of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples to watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees, referring to their teaching and their hypocrisy. The Apostle Paul also uses this imagery in his letters in 1 Corinthians 5 and Galatians 5. telling the churches to watch out for the leaven of sinful behavior and of tolerating it because it will spread and infect the culture in the church there. But in this case, Jesus is speaking of leaven which infiltrates. Jesus flips the usual negative imagery of leaven to be something positive.

And Jesus is speaking here about the way in which the kingdom achieves the surprising growth illustrated in the previous parable of the mustard seed, because the kingdom’s growth is hidden. We might think of how Nicodemus, Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that just as you cannot see the wind, but only its effects, the Holy Spirit cannot be observed directly, but you can see his effect on people.

You cannot see the leaven working in the dough, but you can see its effect. The dough will rise. The kingdom will permeate vast quantities of people, but in hidden and subtle ways. It will not be loud and ostentatious, which just means showy. It will not have becoming with political power, but it will permeate and conquer in obscure and even unexpected ways.

The parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven serve to round out the reality portrayed in the parable of the weeds. In the wheat and weeds, we see the good and evil will persist side by side until the end of the age. The kingdom is not yet. But then we see in the mustard seed that the kingdom is here. It is growing. It’s got a big trajectory. In the parable of the leaven, we see that the great growth of the kingdom will not be ostentatious, but will be subtle. The kingdom is already here. It started small and hidden, but it is here and it is growing. So number three, the consummation of the kingdom.

We noted earlier that Matthew breaks up his parable and its explanation by the interjection of the two other parables. He wants to let the parable hang, uninterpreted for a minute, before coming back to it. But now we’re here. We find it in verse 36 through 43.

Then he left the crowds and went home, and his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the field, of the weeds of the field. He answered, The one who sows the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world, the good seeds is the son of man. 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 it will be at the end of the age. And the son of man will send his angels, and they will gather into his kingdom, all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, and throw them In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The metaphor is removed, and we get the official interpretation. Matthew gives us Jesus’ official interpretation for these first two parables, which both have to do with sowing and harvest. And the explanation is straightforward, as we saw. As D.A. Carson says, this parable deals with eschatological expectation. This parable is a very forward-looking anticipation of the final consummation, the day when the Lord will judge all people.

And the point is that while there is ambiguity in this age, there is coming a day of clarity. The darnel does not look like wheat forever. Sooner or later, the darnel is revealed to be a different kind of plant altogether. When the harvest comes, it’s not hard to tell apart the wicked. And by the way, notice which order the plants are gathered.

There are some denominations within Christianity, particularly dispensationalists, which often speak about and believe in a rapture. in which they see as a removal of the righteous from the earth. But the scriptures repeatedly portray as the opposite, as we have here in this passage. It is the wicked that are removed. And here, as in other parts of the scripture, the righteous remain.

But don’t miss the fact that within the ambiguity that exists in this age, the mixed character of the world, which contains both wicked and righteous, there still remains a binary. In the end, and all along, there are only two groups of people in the world. There’s not a spectrum of people existing in various shades of wickedness and righteousness in the final sense. There is either one or the other, weeds or wheat. Wicked and righteous.

And actually, the reality is, of course, that we’re on our own merits all wicked. All humans are born wicked. God’s rule over our lives as evidenced by our refusal to obey his commands and prize his glory above all things. And if judged purely on our own actions, we would be all those who will be gathered out of the kingdom like weeds that don’t belong and burned up because we’re all lawbreakers.

So who then is the group called the sons of the kingdom, the righteous who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father? This is they who are righteous, not on their own merits, but declared righteous on the work of him who sows the good seed, Jesus. Based on his death and resurrection, he sends the Holy Spirit to plant the good seed of faith. causing the righteous to reject their evil ways and embrace Christ and his righteousness, to love God as their father.

And this is not some exclusive club to which all newcomers are refused or banned. The kingdom is growing like a mustard seed. It’s permeating the world like leaven as God’s spirit moves and gives people new life. And if you have not, you’re invited to call on the name of the Lord and be saved.

But don’t miss the warning Jesus is giving in his parable. While he’s letting the wicked weeds grow for now in this age, he won’t wait forever and he won’t be mistaken. Every last weed, no matter how much it tries to hang out with the wheat, will be judged and found out. So don’t just hang around with the wheat or try to look like the wheat. Ask Jesus to take away your lawbreaking, to save you from your sin and all its destroying properties and its consequences. But for those of you who already know Jesus, know that he has made you righteous.

Take heart. This age is passing away. The new age of righteousness is coming. The kingdom is growing. It’s on a hidden, but definite trajectory. God will not let evil remain forever. He is coming again to make everything wrong come untrue. And if you’re in Christ, you won’t be hidden away in obscurity, despised by society and others, or hated and mocked for your faith forever. you’ll be shining like the sun. Just as all evil will be finally purged from the world, so will all good be purged from your own soul. And you will shine with a dazzling and pure brilliance that only comes from being glorified by God himself.

What a day that will be. What a thought. What a hope to hold on to as you go into this coming week. Amen. Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, we would pray with the saints, with the Apostle Paul, with the Apostle John, come quickly, Lord Jesus. We ask that you would come and banish all evil from our hearts, from our souls.

Lord, we look forward to the day when you will make everything right. We look forward to the harvest. Lord, we ask that you would make us ready. You would fill our hearts with hope and confidence and faith and joy. And yet you would come again soon. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. We’re responding.