Matthew 13.24-43
Holy Trinity Harare 8th March 2026
The almighty God, God the Son, the second person in the holy Trinity, became a man, and has been appointed by his almighty Father as the promised king of Israel and the Lord of the whole world. The Lord Jesus promises his presence wherever two or three gather in his name,[1] so it is a joy to be with you this morning, gathered as his people, in his presence. Being a visitor, I do not know your circumstances, so I do not know what I should say to you. I decided I would speak about something which is a problem to me, and I think may be a problem for many Christians at the present time.
This week the eyes of the world have been everywhere focused on the US attack on Iran. It seems there will always be one country in the world that is more powerful than the rest, and that it will therefore act as a peace-keeper in the way it sees best. The US took over that role from Britain after the second world war, and for many years has been restrained in its use of power. That has now changed. We are helpless to do anything, and can only look on and pray. We don’t know where the present conflict will lead, or what the world will look like at the end. Our only comfort is the assurances of God’s word that he is in ultimate control, and is moving history to its conclusion. Wars and natural disasters are part of this. Things are unfolding as Jesus said they would.
But for me, it raises the question of how God is working in the world to bring about his promised kingdom. It is not a question that can be answered in one sermon, or in full at all, but Jesus gives us some answers. Today I want to focus on his Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, which has something to say about his strategy, which may help us in our thinking at the present time. Let’s begin with the parable itself, and then go on to Jesus’ own interpretation.[2]
A man plants his field with good seed, but when the plants appear the field is full of weeds. The owner sees his enemy has been at work, and his workers suggest they go and pull out the weeds. “No,” he says, unless you pull up some of the wheat. Let the wheat and the weeds grow together, and at harvest time we will separate them.
The parable starts like this: “The kingdom of heaven has been compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field …” Has been compared! Who made this comparison? Jesus of course. This is a follow-on parable. He has just likened the kingdom of heaven to a sower who sows the seed of the gospel. In his interpretation he makes it clear that he is the sower. He sows the word of God, and it meets with various responses. A lot of the seed goes to waste, but much does not; it matures and bears fruit. And now he goes a step further: “The kingdom of heaven has been compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.” But, just so our thoughts won’t go off in the wrong direction, we need to refer here to Jesus’ interpretation, where he says that the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. This parable is not first and foremost about the fortunes of the word but about the people who receive it. Jesus sows his seed, and the seed is the people of the kingdom.
What is the field? We might think he is talking about the church, but no, in his interpretation he says the field is the world!
Think about this! Jesus spent almost all of the two to three years of his ministry in the land of Israel. Only once did he go north into Lebanon for a while. So, we are talking about a small-town builder living at the far eastern edge of the Roman empire. He has heard of Rome, but never went there. When he sent out his disciples he told them not to go amongst Gentiles, but only to the lost sheep of Israel.[3] With a few exceptions, all of his ministry was to Jews. And yet here we have him saying that the field in which he is sowing the sons of the kingdom is the world. Add to this that he died the death of a criminal on a Roman gallows. Who would think his movement could possibly go anywhere except into the land of forgetfulness? And yet he is quietly confident that what he is doing is going to result in the world (the kosmos)being sown with the seed of the sons of the kingdom. He knows it will be so.
I got a thrill from teaching in Cape Town. I often reflected on Jesus’ words that his gospel of the kingdom would be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. And I was there— at the foot of Africa, at one end of the earth—at a time when God was sowing Africa with the seed of his people. Truly “this gospel of the kingdom has been proclaimed in all the world”—the end must surely come soon. The parable tells us about how Jesus saw it.
So along comes an enemy and over-sows with weeds what should have resulted in a beautiful harvest. The weeds are the sons of the Evil One. When the plants begin to appear the farmer’s workmen are horrified to tell him the crop is a mess; quite properly they suggest they must go and pull up the weeds. He surprises them by telling them “no”: the weeds should be left alone to grow with the crop until the time of harvest.
A lot of the people listening to Jesus would have been farmers, and they would have laughed out aloud. “Does this man know anything about farming? Unless you get rid of the weeds there isn’t going to be a crop!” I grew up on a banana plantation. Removing the weeds was essential if you wanted to get any sort of a yield. Last week I was at Rusitu Bible College; on Saturday the students were slashing weeds around the bananas. Jesus often put surprising twists into his parables. They made people laugh and argue with him mentally. And that meant they were now awake and listening. So, Jesus is telling them to do what to any farmer must have seemed like madness. But, of course, he is talking about how the kingdom comes, not how to get a good crop of bananas.
Let the wheat and the weeds grow together. Is this Jesus strategy for growing his kingdom in the world? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get rid of all the unbelievers and have a fully Christian country? I had a student, who believed we should be struggling to take control of South Africa and establish a Christian government. Then we would make it illegal to have a mosque, or any other place of worship other than a church. Then there would be no confusion. But this was not Jesus’ strategy. “Let them both grow together until the harvest.”
In many parts of the world Islam is experiencing a revival: a return to basics which is capturing the imagination of millions of young Muslims. Islam is a mutant form of Christianity and Judaism, and has its own idea of the kingdom of God. One of the basics of Islam is the ancient idea of the Dar ul Islam, “the House of Islam.” The world is divided into two parts, the House of Islam and the House of War. The goal is to purify the House of Islam by removing from it all non-Muslims except those who accept a subservient status. With the House of War there will be conflict until the whole world is Muslim.
In 1979 the Shah was forced out, and Iran became an Islamic republic. The dream was to establish the kingdom of God on earth. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard was God’s instrument for this. Killing their own people is of no concern to the mullahs: if they protest in the streets they are the enemies of God and should be destroyed. Pull up the weeds! This is the strategy of radical Islam. But does it result in a good society? Judge for yourself. It is not Jesus’ strategy and it has never worked.
In 1917 Communists took over in Russia determined to create a heaven without God, a secular society. Lenin decided the way to establish this workers’ paradise was to remove the old middle-class; they would surely try to spoil the revolution. How many were killed? In 1975 I attended a language school in Germany. Our class had about forty students, some of them refugees. I became friendly with Georges Becker from Moscow. His mother was a famous German film-star. She and Georges’ father were passionate Marxists; as a young child they took him to Russia to help Stalin with his great revolution. But Stalin had no time for idealists. They were both arrested, Anatol was shot, Carola died of typhus in a Siberian prison camp. Georges was sent to a state orphanage. In our class in Iserlohn in West Germany we each had to give a twenty-minute talk in German. Georges wrote a number on the blackboard: sechsig millionen—60 million. “That must be the population of Russia,” I thought. Underneath he wrote “Getötet”—killed. Sixty million—the weeds removed from Russian society, many shot like his father, to bring about the workers’ paradise. Today’s Marxists hesitate to kill—it is no longer fashionable—better to “cancel” those who oppose them, so they no longer have a voice in society.
We should not be surprised that this should be the strategy of Marxism and radical Islam. When Jesus was refused entry into a Samaritan town, his disciples James and John asked his permission to call fire down from heaven. Those two sons of thunder would gladly have joined their master in a jihad to drive the unbelievers out of the country – out of the world—but Jesus says, “No, because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest …”
Matthew 13.39 The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it 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 law-breakers, 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, let him hear.
When they heard this, some in the crowd must have thought of John the Baptist’s words about the coming Messiah: “His winnowing fork is in his hands. He will clear the threshing floor. He will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”[4] This is Messiah’s task. There will be a separation; there must be if there is to be a new world, but only the Lord himself is able to judge who belongs and who does not. John thought it would happen immediately, but Jesus said no, not until the end. Until that time we must put up with compromise and confusion.
Confusion and compromise are everywhere in our world. Muslims claim they are the true people of God, and so do various sects in Christianity. Australia’s referendum on same-sex marriage revealed that more than half our population has no interest in the will of Christ. Even the churches were divided. If the churches cannot agree on what is Christian, what hope is there? If only the church would be the church and speak the truth as Christ has revealed it! But no, even where you expect to find the wheat, the weeds are growing luxuriantly. Whatever can our Lord be doing? Surely this could not be his plan? But Jesus says it is!
Part of the answer may be that the weeds and the wheat do not look all that different, and attempts to separate them always finish up destroying some of the wheat. We all start out as weeds, and when we become children of God, we do not suddenly live fully Christian lives. So, the Lord wants to protect us. We see his care for his children; he does not wish that one of the children of the kingdom should be lost. He is the good shepherd who cares for each one of his sheep, and no one shall snatch any of them from his hands.[5]
But there is another thing. If each of us was once a weed, then it is surely the presence of children of the kingdom among the weeds which led to our salvation. So, Jesus’ strategy is also a plan for salvation.
Notice that the angels will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers. Some people think the kingdom of God will begin when Jesus comes again, but, no, the Lord is growing his kingdom here, now, among the weeds. When the Lord returns he will find the kingdom fully grown. He has only to remove the weeds. Then will we see the kingdom in its perfection, without any confusion or compromise.
Living in this world of confusion is not easy, but we should not despair. It is as it is meant to be; it is our Lord’s strategy to build his kingdom, and it will succeed. Let us not worry that there are people who think differently to ourselves, even those who think we are enemies of God. Let us not despair when things in the world are chaotic and difficult to understand; such things are inevitable in a world of good and evil. Let us make up our minds to live and believe as God’s children. Sure, there will be confusion, but as Paul said to Timothy at just such a time: “God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from evil.”[6] In the end “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father”; everything will be clear.
[1] Matthew 18.
[2] Matthew 13.
[3] Matthew 10.
[4] Matthew 3.
[5] John 10.
[6] 2 Timothy 2.19.