Beckett: Sermon – The Weeds of Apostasy

Date: July 23, 2023
Festival: 8th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11)
Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Preaching Occasion: Zion Lutheran Church, Mt. Pleasant, MI, and CTKLC
Appointed Scriptures: Isaiah 44:6-8; Romans 8:18-27; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Sermon Hymn: LSB #827 Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dearly beloved, we’ve prayed for rain and the Lord has heard our prayers and blessed us with rain. The bitter end of His sweet answer, though, has been the rapid growth of weeds in our yards—at least there has been in mine. After weeks of my yard becoming crusty and brown, I looked out over my yard grinning at the lush green… until I noticed all the weeds. So, I called TrueGreen Lawn Care to spray a weed killer over them, and now my lawn is beginning to look a lot better. I had no patience for these weeds. Not so with our Lord.

Beloved, as we continue hearing these parables from Jesus in Matthew 13, remember two things: First, Jesus tells these parables to describe what the kingdom of God is like. Second, these parables tell us of a now/not-yet reality of the kingdom. You will hear from Christians called dispensationlists who wrongly believe Christ’s reign is not taking place right now but will come at a later date for a thousand years. Aside from the fact that the 1,000 years is symbolic and not literal, the parables tell a different story. In the parables, Jesus insists God’s reign is happening now, albeit in an unspectacular and unsatisfying way to our human perception, and these parables also have a not yet character. God has already begun the reign of His kingdom in Jesus’ earthly ministry, and it continues, as we see in the Book of Acts, until His final reclamation of the Earth and the cosmos.

We first heard about this last week, which was perhaps unsatisfying to our ears, in the Parable of the Sower because Jesus describes His kingdom not as a sower who wisely plants his seeds in the good soil. Rather, Jesus throws the seed of His Word everywhere with reckless grace so that all may hear it. This unsatisfying character of the parables continues in today’s Parable of the Weeds, for the Enemy comes and sows weeds among the wheat, and when the servants of the good sower say, “We should gather up the weeds,” the good sower frustratingly answers, “No. Leave them, lest you pluck up the wheat with them. Wait until the harvest.” This also seems unwise for us, because like me, who in their right mind would leave the weeds in the field indefinitely? Yet there is good wisdom here. You see, we just planted a tree in our yard, and if the servants of TruGreen were not careful, they could’ve killed our tree along with the weeds. Besides, there were naturally grown flowers in the yard, but these were killed with the weeds.

And when Jesus interprets the parable for us and the disciples, it seems even more unwise. His refusal to remove the weeds among us now is upsetting. Jesus is the good sower, who throws the seed of His Word recklessly on all people throughout the whole world and carefully tends the good seed, which are the children of the kingdom—you and me. But then comes the devil who sows his weeds—or apostates—in Christ’s Church. These weeds raise various assortments of rainbow flags on their churches, others raise the U.S. flag next to the cross, some teach the Word of God is not infallible and inerrant, and cults rise to further distort the Word of God. And like all weeds, they infect some of the good seed, causing true believers in Christ to fall away. So, what do we want? To pluck them out, of course! To get back to the good ole days, whenever those were.

But what does Jesus say? “No, lest in gathering the weeds you pluck up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, that is, the close of the age, and I will tell My angels to reap the harvest, gather the weeds, and burn them in hellfire.” You can almost picture Jesus holding back people trying to kick all the liberals out of their church, or the conservatives, lest they inadvertently pluck out the faithful from their church as well because of all the rudeness and animosity. But still, this is rather upsetting, isn’t it? The devil is sowing many weeds among Christ’s Church rather successfully, so we want Jesus to come now in His harvest to pluck these weedy apostates and usher in the fullness of His kingdom! But the Lord says, “Wait.” Like the Lord said to Habakkuk when in his impatience, “For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” [2:3].

But we’re not very good at waiting. We can hardly wait at a stoplight, which is why we perilously run red lights, or wait through a 5-second ad on YouTube. So, no wonder we cannot wait for the Lord! We know we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things, but still, we are more afraid of the world. We wonder what will become of our children and grandchildren in this world. America will probably collapse at some point in the future, just like mighty Rome and every other empire before it, so we fear America’s further moral and economic decline despite the Church’s persistent existence when other kingdoms have fallen. We hear the groaning of creation through the mighty winds of tornadoes and hurricanes and its trembling shouts in earthquakes and thunderstorms as it vociferously groans with us for the redemption of creation and our bodies [Rom. 8:18-27]. So, we fear climate change despite God’s Word in Genesis, “While the Earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” [Gen. 8:22].

We hear this parable from Jesus—that He will send His angels to cast the apostate weeds among us into the fire—and so jump to Revelation and wait for this Word to be fulfilled, “Then another angel came out of the temple of Heaven. And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, ‘Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the Earth, for its grapes are ripe.’ So, the angel swung his sickle across the Earth and gathered the grape harvest of the Earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia,” which is about 184 miles [Rev. 14:17-20].

We know this is coming, but we want the Lord to do this now. Yet the Lord still refuses (for now), and commands us to wait while the weeds continue to rise up and cover the Church with their apostasy and heresies like lichen on the walls of dilapidated ruins. So, we are afraid for our children and grandchildren. What kind of world will they grow up in when we’re gone?

We like to look to these fire-and-brimstone verses in the attempt to provide ourselves some level of comfort, but if we’re honest with ourselves, they only serve to fuel our wrath. And why wouldn’t they? For they, like Revelation 14 you just heard, describe God’s wrath. Though these promises are important, let us not fuel our fear and anger with the Law. Rather, let us hear from the Gospel that provides us stability and security today, such as from Isaiah this morning, “‘Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are My witnesses! Is there a God besides Me? There is no Rock; I know not any” [44:8]. God only says “Fear not” when His people are afraid. Are you afraid of what the world is coming to? “Fear not,” God says. But why?

Three things: First, because of what He has told us “from of old.” For ancient Israel, to whom Isaiah is preaching here, that declaration “from of old” is their vast historical record of God delivering salvation to them, and that includes the future deliverance of their captivity to Babylon. What is it for you? Well, what has God told you “from of old”? You were baptised “from of old,” many of you as infants. And what was the Word He declared to you there? We could go anywhere in Scripture, which were written “from of old.” From Romans today, “we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” [8:23]. So, it doesn’t matter what this world will come to because of the life of the world that is to come in the new creation, like we will soon confess in the Creed. Earlier in Romans 6, Paul writes you were united in Christ’s death and resurrection in your Baptism so that you will rise from the dead like Him [vv. 3-5]. Titus describes Baptism as “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” [3:5-7], which is the hope of the redemption of our bodies—the bodily resurrection—Paul described in Romans 8.

From Jesus Himself, “Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved” [Mark 16:16a]. And as Luther expounds on this in the Large Catechism, “We know that to be saved is nothing other than to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil [Colossians 1:13-14]. It means to enter into Christ’s kingdom [John 3:5], and to live with Him forever” [LC IV, 25; emphasis mine]. In sum, just as God declared deliverance to Israel from captivity to Babylon, so God has declared to you deliverance from captivity to sin, death, and the devil.

Second, you are His witnesses. You know who God is; again, you will confess who He is in the Creed. You are His witnesses when you come to church and Bible study, witnessing to the world who the true God is and that there are none like Him. You witness when you catechise your children and grandchildren when you teach them God’s Word, the catechism, and sing hymns at home, just like God said of old, “These words I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the road, and when you lie down, and when you rise” [Deut. 6:6-7]. At home, you teach them the catechism and read the Bible. Whenever you’re by the road at a restaurant or going on a walk or some other place, you talk about God. And you say your evening and morning prayers with your spouse and children, or in secret where your Father hears you if you are single. If you do that, your children and grandchildren will be just fine because of the third and final reason:

God is the Rock of salvation, upon whom all our waiting and teaching rests—He is solid, immovable, our mighty Fortress [Psalm 46]. As God said to the Israelites earlier in Isaiah, “You shall have a song in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the LORD, the Rock of Israel” [30:29]. Once again, sign hymns about God your Rock, both here and in your homes. Don’t twiddle your thumbs in the service and stare out into space while others are singing praises to the Lord with excuses that you’re a bad singer, or tone deaf, or whatever it is. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” the Psalms say [Pss. 98:4; 100:1]; they don’t say you have to be in tune. When a 3-year-old brings her painting to her father, does he say, “This is nothing like Monet or Van Gogh or Rembrandt. I hate it!” No. Instead, he delights in it and hangs it up in his office. Just so, when you sing to your heavenly Father, He does not compare your voice to Sinatra or Whitney Houston or Taylor Swift and despise it, but He delights in the voice of His dear child and leans His ear closer.

And so, when you’re at home during the day or the night and you find you are tempted, or downtrodden, or afraid, {hold up hymnal} you have a rich resource to sing hymns unto the Lord! Like our beginning hymn this morning, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, / Let me hide myself in Thee; / Let the water and the blood, / From Thy riven side which flowed, / Be of sin the double cure: / Cleanse me from its guilt and pow’r” [LSB #761 Rock of Ages, Cleft for me, stz. 1]. When Johann Sebastian Bach was near death, he was asked why he dedicated his life to music. He said, “The aim and final end of all music is nothing less than the glorification of God, and the refreshment of the soul.” Bach was a Lutheran Kantor who played at four churches in Germany, so perhaps he was drawing from Luther, who wrote this two centuries earlier:

Not that there is a difference between singing and saying, as there is between chanting or saying a psalm… But by adding the voice it becomes a song, and the voice is the feeling… For the faith does not rest and declare a holiday; it bursts into action, speaks and preaches of this promise and grace of God, so that other people may also come up and partake of it. Yes, his great delight impels [David] to compose beautiful and sweet psalms and to sing lovely and joyous songs, both to praise and thank God in his happiness and to serve his fellowmen by stimulating them and teaching them… A good song is worth singing twice. It is customary for people, when they are really happy or joyful, to repeat a word two or three times. They cannot say it often enough, and whoever meets them must hear it. This is the case here, that the dear saints are so happy and joyful over the miracles God does for them when He delivers them from sin and death, that is, from every evil of body and soul, that out of sheer joy they sing their song over and over again.

LW 11:294; 15:273; 14:82

That is the character of Good News, is it not? Christians do not sit in stoic silence but open their mouths to sing of God’s miracles! It is not silence but music from our mouths that glorify God and refresh the soul! And what such miracles do we sing about to the Rock of Israel? In our first hymn, we sang that our works cannot fulfil the Law’s demands, no matter how zealous we are, but Christ alone fulfilled it all on our behalf—by the miracle of His single act on the cross, He atoned for all your sins against the Law of God. In the sermon hymn, we sang that just as rain and snow fall from Heaven and waters seeds in dusty soil, so the Lord sends forth His promise to you dusty soils to give you life, joy, and peace—a miracle only God’s Word can do, not our words. In the first distribution hymn in just a little while, we’ll sing of the miracle of Christ’s incarnation to win salvation for you while you will be receiving that salvation through the miracle of the Lord’s Supper—that Christ makes the bread and the wine truly, miraculously, and unfathomably His body and blood for forgiveness, life, and salvation. And so on in the other hymns we’ll sing today.

We know these hymns so well because, like Luther said, we cannot just sing them once or twice or thrice, but many times because of the Good News they teach us that is grounded in God, the Rock of our salvation. There is nothing to fear for ourselves, our children, or our grandchildren when we teach them who Jesus is for them and sing songs of praise to Him with them, because these songs of God will echo throughout human history to the crescendo of Christ’s glory to be revealed when He descends from the clouds to raise His Church from the dead to everlasting life. And who knows? Our hymns and catechesis in our homes and on the road may just miraculously transform the weeds among us into sons of God by the powerful seed of His Word that makes His enemies into His dear children. To Christ belongs all the glory, now and forever. Amen.