Jesus told 39 parables which are recorded in the Four Gospels. Counting up, I have preached on 35 of them during my time in North Springfield and all of those sermons are on my blog. In the coming months I will sadly not have time to complete all 39. This evening we are looking at number 36, a parable which is so significant that Jesus not only told the story but then later explained its meaning to his disciples.
Weeds are a very familiar problem to anybody who has ever tried to grow anything in a garden. Sometimes it seems as if the weeds take over from the flowers to the point that you stop trying to pull them out and just leave them to take over. I heard that is what the Japanese have been doing for centuries. So if anybody asks I tell them I am a practitioner of Japanese gardening.
If weeds are an inconvenience to gardeners, they are a disaster for farmers. Some weeds like darnel have poisonous grains. If they get into a field of wheat the whole crop can be ruined. That was such a serious problem that in Jesus’s time there was actually a Roman law specifically forbidding sowing of weeds in an enemy’s wheat field as an act of revenge. That may well have been the background to Jesus’s story of the weeds among the wheat.
24 Jesus told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed ears, then the weeds also appeared.
Like many of the parables, this one is about how God’s kingdom grows. This is what life is like when God is acting as King. We tend to expect life to unfold in certain ways but sometimes our expectations our disappointed. His disciples were expecting Jesus their Messiah to act in particular ways, but that was not happening. This parable explains how God’s purposes sometimes work out different to our expectations.
It’s a parable about DELAY
26 When the wheat sprouted and formed ears, then the weeds also appeared.
27 ‘The owner’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?”
28 ‘ “An enemy did this,” he replied.

Jesus had come announcing “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” So why had God’s Kingly Rule not been fully established yet? Why hasn’t heaven arrived on earth? Why the delay?
Why are there weeds among the wheat? Why is there still evil in the world? Why haven’t all the evildoers been removed and punished? And why is there still sin in the community of faith? Both these questions have remained over the centuries. Not only has evil triumphed in the world. But the church has also been blighted by heresy and immorality and corruption, throughout history and even today. G.K. Chesterton wisely observed, “At least six times in history the church has gone to the dogs. But in each case it has been the dog that has died.” But why the delay? Why after 2000 years hasn’t the Kingdom of God come on earth yet?
Some people say it is because God is powerless to do anything to change things. Other people think the reason is that God doesn’t care. The parable of the weeds among the wheat gives us the true explanation for God’s apparent inactivity in the face of evil in the world and sin in the church.
‘The servants asked him, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”
29 ‘ “No,” he answered, “because while you are pulling up the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. …
This is just good farming practice. Darnel (good old Lolium temulentum) is a species of rye grass which is host to a poisonous fungus. When it first appears it is impossible to distinguish the growing darnel from the genuine wheat. The only sensible thing to do is to let the weeds grow among the wheat until harvest time when you can tell the different plants apart and separate them by hand. So when it comes to evil in the world and sin in the church, of course God is still in control and of course God cares about all the problems and all the suffering. But all of that will not be sorted out in this life. Such things will have to wait until the great harvest at the end of the age.
30 Let 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.”
One day God will put right all the wrongs in the world and separate good from evil. Not yet. But this parable points forward to the day after the times of delay when there will be
DIVISION
In the poetry of the parable, the weeds will be separated from the wheat on the day of harvest. The weeds will be burned and the wheat taken safely into the barns. And in the same way, on the day of judgment God will separate the righteous from the unrighteous. Stephen Travis called this “the great divide” and C.S. Lewis “the great divorce.” Jesus himself gives a literal explanation of what the parable reveals.
40 ‘As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The Son of Man, Jesus himself, will be responsible for the judgment of humanity. There will be a two-fold separation removing not only “everything that causes sin” but also “all who do evil”. These are consigned to the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The parable was poetry but this explanation is not. Some people want to water down the prospect of judgment. Some people deny the existence of hell. But those words from Jesus himself are a solemn warning. For some there will be a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth for all evildoers. At the same time,
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
This is the wonderful happy certainty of heaven. But there is a dark side to that hope. If we believe that there will be in some sense the blessings of heaven where the righteous shine like the son, then it follows that there will also be a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. All the Jews were expecting this great divide on the day of judgment. The Old Testament foretold it in so many places. All of Jesus’ teaching and especially His death on the cross assume that this day of judgment is coming. Those things only make sense if human beings are indeed lost without the salvation Jesus came to bring. There will be a day of judgment. We get exactly the same message in another parable which Jesus told later in Matthew 13, and the parable of the net ticks number 37 off my list tonight as well.
Matthew 13 47 ‘Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The net represents the kingdom of God. The fish represent human beings and the fisherman represents God and Jesus. These things are poetic. But again here following the parable of the net, the explanation Jesus gives is literal. God will separate the wicked from the righteous. Again in this parable, the people who are not saved will be thrown into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. At least 15 of Jesus’s parables were warnings about the day of judgment, from the rich fool to the wise and foolish builders, from the rich man and Lazarus to the wicked tenants in the vineyard. But even if Jesus had not said so many other things on the topic, the two parables of the weeds among the wheat and of the net make two things very clear. Firstly, the day of judgment is certainly coming. And secondly, nobody can say, “it will all be alright in the end”. None of Jesus’s parables give grounds for any hope that everybody is going to be saved. They all warn of the reality of inescapable judgment. Which is no surprise, because of course, this theme of ultimate division is present throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. In a few weeks we will find it again in the second letter of Peter. Paul taught the same in many places.
2 Thessalonians 1 7 … This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed.
The day of great division is coming. The book of Revelation is equally clear.
Revelation 21 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. …
7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.’
Division is inevitable. Everything evil is going to be permanently excluded from the presence of the holy and righteous God. Billy Graham said, “Hell was not prepared for man. God never meant that man would ever go to hell. Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels but man rebelled against God and followed the devil. Hell is essentially and basically banishment from the presence of God.”
Division is inescapably. We dare not ignore or soft-pedal all Jesus’s warnings about hell and judgment. The day of judgment is coming. Just before the death of actor W. C. Fields, a friend visited his hospital room and was surprised to find him thumbing through a Bible. Asked what he was doing with a Bible, W.C. Fields reportedly replied, “I’m looking for loopholes.” Very sadly for many, there are no loopholes in the Bible. The day of judgment. In these times there may be a delay. but one day there will certainly be a great division. So, this parable of the weeds among the wheat calls everyone to make a
DECISION
Harvest day is coming. Everything that causes sin and all who do evil will be separated as the darnel is weeded out from the wheat at harvest time.
43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Jesus’s parables do not only inform people. They call us all to make choices. They demand a response. The secret of any parable is to understand the punchline. What is the response Jesus is calling us to make? Jesus explains why the farmer delays separating the weeds from the wheat.
‘The servants asked him, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”
29 ‘ “No,” he answered, “because while you are pulling up the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let 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.” ’
The farmer is waiting until harvest time to separate the weeds from the wheat because he does not want any genuine wheat to be lost. This is why God is waiting until the day of judgment – to allow as many as possible to be saved. Again we will come back to this in a few weeks in the second letter of Peter. The delay is giving the opportunity for a miracle – for weeds to be transformed into wheat. The question for everyone is very simple. On the day of judgment, will we turn out to be true wheat or imposter weeds?
38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age,
At the end of the age, will we prove to be the people of the kingdom or will we turn out to be the people of the evil one? Wheat or weeds?
Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Jesus ends with this joke. The way the farmer can tell the wheat and the weeds apart is that when they have fully grown, wheat has ears but darnel does not. Whenever God’s word is proclaimed, people are deciding for themselves whether they will be saved or whether they will be lost. Those who hear the message and respond to it will be saved. Those who reject all the opportunities to receive God’s love will remain lost.
For now there is delay – God is holding off judgment day so that as many as possible will be saved. But the day of ultimate division is surely approaching. So everybody needs to make their own decision. Whoever has ears, let them hear.