One night we sat in a restaurant which shall not be named and waited for our dinner to be served. We wondered how a restaurant with such poor service could even stay in business.
I don’t think anyone likes to wait. And yet waiting is a constant part of life. Some waiting merely poses an inconvenience, other waiting is truly painful.
Years ago, the young husband of a friend of mine had a stroke. Her husband went into the Neuro Intensive Care Unit at the University of Virginia. They had an 11-year-old son and a 5-week-old daughter. The kind of “waiting room” my friend was in then is not the sort of place any of us ever want to be. Waiting to see if and how a loved one recovers from a sudden accident or health-endangering incident is one of the greatest emotional pains of life. It is situations like this that make us cry out, “Why God?”
While the next three parables in Matthew 13 do not address that “why” question directly, they do each deal with the topic of waiting. This is a topic which is poignant for every one of us at some point in life.
Listen for God’s word to you from Matthew 13:24-43. . .
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs 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 yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”
I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable 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, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children 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 collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
As I said, all three of these parables are about waiting. The farmer has to wait for the harvest time when he can effectively separate the weeds from the wheat. The birds have to wait for the tiny mustard seed to grow into a large enough plant for them to be able to nest in its branches. The woman has to wait for the yeast to work its expansive effect on the dough before she can bake it. Jesus’ main point seems to be that if we are part of his kingdom we are going to have to wait for some things.
There is a “now” but “not yet” to the kingdom of God. The kingdom can begin now in our lives as we receive Jesus to live in and through us. But the fulfillment of the kingdom, when it will truly spread to every corner of the earth, when evil will be eradicated, when no one will ever have a stroke or get sick or die—that is “not yet”. And so, we must wait.
But while we wait, we inevitably ask questions. These three parables wrestle with three distinct questions. First: why does God allow evil to persist in the world?
The parable of the weeds and the wheat makes the clear point that evil does not come directly from God’s hand. God, or in this case, the Son of Man as God’s agent, sows good seed in the field of the world. Everything about God’s original creation was good.
Then where did evil come from? According to the parable it comes from the devil, the one who sows weeds among the wheat. And how did the devil get to be the devil? He got to be the devil by free choice. God gave free choice to his angels and to human beings. We have the choice to serve him, or not. The teaching of the Bible seems to me to be that all evil in the world stems from wrong human and angelic choices, either directly or indirectly. As someone once said, “God permits what he hates in order to accomplish what he loves.” God permits evil to exist in the world, something he hates, in order to accomplish that which he loves—his creation freely choosing to love him in return.
So alright, evil exists in the world because God gave us free choice. But why then doesn’t God put a stop to evil here and now? The answer of the parable is that if God had the weeds pulled up right now, some of the wheat would be harmed in the process.
The particular weeds Jesus was talking about in this parable were, at a certain stage, indistinguishable from the wheat and often entangled with it. They could only safely be separated from one another at harvest time.
Why doesn’t God harvest his wheat and burn up the weeds right now? Human beings, unlike weeds, have free choice. God is continuing to give us the opportunity to freely come to him. As it says in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Right now, we all have a window of grace open to us. There will come a time, however, when that window of grace will close. God is like a good teacher. He knows when giving a student another chance at an exam will do some good, and he knows when it won’t. There will come a day when the Lord knows that giving us more chances to repent won’t do any good. On that day the weeds will be pulled up and burned in the fire. And in that day the righteous will shine like the sun.
C. S. Lewis once said in a sermon, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.”
Which destination are you headed to? And which one are you helping others toward as you wait for the consummation of the kingdom?
The parable of the mustard seed raises a separate but related question: why does the kingdom of God seem so insignificant?
The first disciples of Jesus must have felt very small and unimportant when they considered themselves against the backdrop of all of Jewish history and in the context of the wider world of the Roman Empire. If Jesus really is the King of the universe then why is he starting his kingdom movement with a bunch of semi-literate fishermen?
The answer seems to be that “any fool can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the apples in one seed.” In the tiny little seed that we in our humanness and sinfulness discount as insignificant, in that same tiny, fragile seed, God sees tremendous potential for growth and positive impact on the world around.
One human being alone can seem very insignificant, unimportant. But one human being planted by God in just the right place at just the right time can accomplish great things by God’s grace and power.
Think of William Wilberforce who fought and won the battle for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire against overwhelming odds. Think too of Telemachus, a simple Christian hermit living out in the desert, called by God to go to Rome. Telemachus found his way to the gladiator games. There was a crowd of 80,000 spectators watching men slaughter each other. Telemachus was disgusted to the point he knew he must do something. He ran into the arena and stood between the gladiators. They threw him out, but he came back. The crowd was angry and began to stone him. Still, he struggled back to his place between the gladiators. The prefect commanded his execution; a sword flashed in the sunlight and Telemachus was killed. A hush fell on the crowd. They suddenly realized a holy man had been executed in their midst. Something happened to that crowd in Rome that day. There were no more gladiatorial games from that day forth. The death of one man changed an empire for the better.
Little becomes much when you place it in the master’s hand. Sometimes the work we are doing for Christ’s kingdom does seem insignificant, but that is only because we lack God’s perspective. We see only the seed, and not the tremendous tree that will grow from the seed. We need to trust in God and keep planting those little seeds of the kingdom.
A third question is raised by the parable of the yeast: why does the kingdom of God seem to be so hidden?
Jesus’ answer is, “Yes, my kingdom may seem hidden, but so is the yeast when you put it in the dough. In time it will permeate the whole loaf and you will see its effects.”
Jesus’ first hearers would have been surprised by this parable. Leaven or yeast represented evil to the Jewish mind. In preparation for Passover every year all the yeast in every Jewish household had to be removed.
Perhaps Jesus is making a special point by using yeast as an illustration of something positive. Maybe he is saying to the Pharisees and others: “Yes, you may look down on my disciples now as disreputable characters. But I will take just these people whom you despise, and I will use them to change the world.” And indeed, Jesus did just that.
Do you realize that though Jesus began with just twelve disciples, Christianity has become the most universal faith in history, with believers composing a majority of the population in two-thirds of the world’s 238 countries? Christianity began the 20th century as the world’s largest faith with 555 million believers, 32.2% of the world population.
Christianity finished in the 20th century as the largest faith with 1.9 billion, or 31% of the world’s population. Indeed, the yeast is working its way through the whole loaf.
Yet, the positive effects of Christianity are still a secret to many. Some people ask, “What has Christianity done for the world?” The answer is: Christianity has changed the lives of millions for the better. Not only that, it has changed society for the better. It is Christianity, as a movement, that has elevated the status of women in the world. Christianity has transformed life for the weak and the ill. The first institution for the blind was founded by Thalasius, a Christian monk. The first free dispensary of medicine was founded by Apollonius, a Christian merchant. The first hospital was founded by Fabiola, a Christian woman. These are just a few of the good things Christianity has brought to the world. The goodness of Christianity is hidden to some people, just as yeast is hidden in a loaf of dough. But upon inspection over time we can see the tremendously good effects of Christ’s growing kingdom throughout the world.
We all struggle with waiting—waiting for God to deal with evil, sickness, sin and death once and for all—waiting to see the significant, visible effects of God’s kingdom. We all love to sing or hear it sung at Christmas—that climactic verse from Revelation 11:15, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” That verse, set to the triumphant music of George Frideric Handel, thrills our very souls. But we aren’t there yet. The kingdom of God has begun in our hearts but has not been consummated. We live in the tension between the “now” and the “not yet”.
We are all just a bit like the little boy whose father planned to take him on a picnic. They made their plans, fixed lunch and packed the car for the picnic to take place the following day. Then it was time to go to bed. But the boy couldn’t sleep. So, he got out of bed and ran to his father’s room. He woke his father up and the father said, “What are you doing? What’s the matter?”
And the boy said, “I can’t sleep.”
So, the father asked, “Why can’t you sleep?”
And the son answered, “Daddy, I’m too excited about the picnic tomorrow.”
The father replied, “Well, son, I can understand you being excited. It’s going to be a great day. But it won’t be a great day if we don’t get some sleep. So, go back to your room and lie down and try to get a good night’s rest.”
So, the boy obediently went back to his room and got in bed. But it wasn’t long before he was back in his father’s room. He woke his dad up again and the dad said, “What’s the matter now?”
And the boy said, “Daddy, I just want to thank you for tomorrow.”
We all struggle with waiting, as we are caught in the tension between the “now” and the “not yet” of God’s kingdom. But that’s where we need to take our cue from that little boy. Though we are not there yet—though God has not yet eradicated evil, though the mustard seed has not grown into the towering tree it will one day be—though the yeast hasn’t worked all the way through the dough—though the kingdom of this world is not yet fully the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ—though the picnic is not yet here—still we can thank our Father in heaven for what is coming.
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