Wheat and Weeds Growing Side By Side!

       I once read about a church treasurer who found a receipt from a local paint store signed by someone named “Christian.” The treasurer, unaware of any member of the congregation buying paint or any church member by that name, called the store manager to point out the mistake. The treasurer told the manager, “You must be mistaken, because there are no Christians here at our congregation.” How about at yours?!

    There are Christians in every congregation of God’s true people, of course, and Jesus knows who they are! When Christ sent word to His church at first century Sardis, He told them, “you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” That’s pretty straight talk about a very sad situation –a dead church. Not a sick church. Not a tired church. Not a sleepy church. A dead church. Pronounced dead not by some disgruntled church member or by a preacher with an axe to grind, but by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself,  the same One who purchased the church with the shedding of His own blood (Acts 20:28).  In love and longsuffering He went on and called on them to repent, but warned them He would move to judge them if they didn’t. And then He spoke these surprising words – “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy” (Revelation 3:1-ff). So there you have it, and from no less an authority than Jesus Christ Himself – even in a dead church there can be (and almost always are) a few names who are worthy of being called “Christian.” Again, the most important point to remember here is that it was Jesus who diagnosed their spiritual condition as terminal. He, and He alone, possesses complete and accurate knowledge of the true spiritual condition of every person and congregation of His people. Thus He alone is qualified to judge.

    Jesus’ parable about the tares and wheat (in Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) reminds us of the need for restraint in setting ourselves up as judge over other people’s eternal destiny. In that parable Jesus said wheat and weeds (“tares”) were growing side by side. Servants who noticed the presence of the weeds were alarmed, and after some discussion asked the farmer, “Do you want us to go and gather them [that is, the weeds] up?” His answer was direct - “No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.” The owner explained that at harvest time, when the wheat matured, the weeds would be separated from the wheat. The weeds would be bound and burned, and the wheat would be “barn-ed” (“gather the wheat into my barn” [vs 30]). The Lord explained this all pointed to the final judgment over which He will personally preside “at the end of this age” (verses 36-43). One lesson we learn from the parable is that the church lives in a weedy world. The devil is determined to sow weeds among the Lord’s wheat (13:28, 38-39). There will never be a nation, community or congregation so wholly Christian that there are no weeds amongst the wheat! No matter where we look in our world we see tares – in families, in churches, in politics and in pulpits, and even in our own hearts at times – tares and weeds growing right alongside the wheat.

Another lesson to learn from this parable is that we ought to work at least as hard at being good wheat as we do at whacking weeds! And when we do take a whack at a weed, we must do so with care lest we harm the wheat in the process. As usual, Jesus gives us a lot to think about. Will you?

      by Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN