Amen. Thank you so much, worship team.
Always does a good job over there.
And it was really fun to join you guys again last week.
So thank you for indulging me on that one.
Yeah, so you know, when I was looking at the lectionary readings for this week,
you know, I had to pick the one where Jesus tells a parable,
goes out of his way to explain it, and I still don't get it.
Especially when he says, if you have ears, or he who has ears, let him hear.
And that's an interesting thing, because I'm like, what was I supposed to hear?
Like, it makes sense.
It makes sense.
But I felt like I needed another perspective.
So I looked into some sermons by the great Martin Luther
and found some really interesting inspiration.
So I think I'm going to start with a quick story about when I was in eighth grade.
I went on a field trip.
I think it's pretty common these days.
I went on a field trip to Washington, D.C.
And I will be completely honest with you,
I don't know that in eighth grade on that trip I learned a lot about monuments.
Mostly because what I really remember was the street vendors.
And the street vendors, especially the ones that were selling Oakley sunglasses for $5.
So, as you can imagine, none of us really thought it was serious.
You know, none of us were really convinced.
In fact, I think we called them Folkley's and Fakeley's.
But by the end of that trip, I'll be honest with you,
I think all of us had 10 to 15 pairs.
We were just trading them, trying to get all, you know, favorite colors and color combinations.
And, you know, you got a whole bus full of 13-year-olds wearing counterfeit sunglasses
and no one really looks twice.
And that's the thing, you know, about bad fakes.
Bad fakes are kind of funny.
It's silly.
You know, you could spot them a mile away.
But the fakes and the counterfeits that do damage are the good ones.
They're good fakes.
You can't really spot them.
Like emails.
When you get an interesting, they call it phishing emails.
When you get one, it looks like it came from your boss.
And he said, I need your password, quick.
Or it comes from your bank.
So log in with this very suspicious looking link.
Give me all your information for this urgent matter.
You know, I think bad fakes get laughed at, but good fakes get trusted.
And nobody knows that we trust the good fakes like the devil.
Because he's been in the counterfeiting business since the garden.
He's never been one to try to sell something that looks blatantly evil.
He counterfeits what people trust.
He fakes what is good.
He'll fake the very word of God, even in his very first act against humanity,
with the words, wait, did God actually say?
Did God actually say you would die if you ate that fruit?
That enemy is the one that we meet in today's parable.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
Noting that as he begins to tell this parable, nothing is wrong in the beginning.
The seed is good.
The field is all his.
But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.
And so everything grows together.
In fact, everything looks fine.
Right until the wheat gets mature enough to grow grains.
And only then could anyone see what had been growing there the entire time.
And thankfully Jesus does give us a good explanation.
You know, his disciples asked him later in private to explain, you know, what does that whole parable mean?
And he says that the son of man is the one sowing the good seeds.
So, you know, him.
The field is the world, the seed, the good seed, is the children of the kingdom,
and the weeds are the children of the evil one.
And that the one who planted the weeds is the devil.
It's that counterfeiting operation right out in the open.
The devil doesn't plant something that looks like a threat.
He plants something that looks like wheat.
And he's been doing it the same way in every generation since.
Teaching that sounds almost like God's Word.
It's close enough to trust.
It's a little easier to swallow.
You know, words about God that are maybe 90% Scripture and 10% something else.
And that 10% ends up being the difference.
That's how it's always worked.
Nobody notices the counterfeit until it finally bears fruit.
And by the time that happens, it's been growing among God's people for years.
And so the servants go to the master with a question.
And really, if you read it, it's more of an accusation.
Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Why are there so many weeds?
And you notice he doesn't go out to inspect the field right away
or start second guessing, you know, oh man, which seed bag did I use?
He very calmly says, an enemy has done this.
And that's the whole answer.
Because he already knows what happened and who did it
and what's growing out in the field.
You know, the weeds might have surprised the servants,
but they never surprised the master.
Because you have to remember, this is the same Lord
who just in our Old Testament reading we just heard from Isaiah
says that I am the first and I am the last.
Besides me there is no God.
Who is like me, let him proclaim it.
This is God we're talking about.
Of course he's not surprised.
The devil's been running this counterfeit operation for a long time.
And he's never fooled the master once.
Not in the garden, not in this field, and not today.
Well, the servants, you know, they think the next obvious step, right,
is do you want us to go and gather them?
Let's go pull the weeds.
And the master says, no.
No.
Lest in the gathering of the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest.
And I want us to understand what that no really means
because it's very easy to hear it wrong.
The master isn't saying that the weeds are fine and harmless.
But he's protecting his wheat.
Down under the dirt the roots have grown tangled together.
And some of that wheat is still young and weak.
And if the servants go out there
and just start pulling everything that they think is a weed,
they're going to tear up the wheat that their master fully intends to keep.
And he's not willing to risk good plants to some, like an overzealous cleanup crew.
And so the master in his divine patience waits.
His patience is how he protects what belongs to him.
Because the harvest is already scheduled.
The reapers are ready and the enemy won't get to sow forever.
And so while the field might look like a mess,
it belongs to Jesus.
Now, it would be really nice and easy for me to spend the rest of this sermon
talking about false teachings
and all the things that are out there.
But before I get to any of that,
I have the distinct privilege of asking you a relatively uncomfortable question.
And that is, has the devil ever sold you a counterfeit?
Because his oldest trick, it's not just putting false teachers in a pulpit somewhere,
it's whispering slightly bent versions of God's Word
to an ordinary believer who's inclined to like it.
Did God actually say?
He said to Eve, and he says to us,
God surely didn't mean that sin.
Not the one I've made peace with.
God wants me to be happy, doesn't he?
Or a very bold one being taught in churches, even right now.
A loving God would never actually condemn anyone, would he?
Every one of those sounds good.
Almost right.
90% scripture, 10% something else.
Usually our pride or our reason.
And we buy it not because we can't tell the difference,
but it's because it's what we wanted to hear.
And so we are not simply bystanders watching this counterfeit operation happen.
We are customers.
And that's a strange thing about us.
The same people who keep falling for fakes
are absolutely convinced they can spot them in everyone else.
That's the servant's offer, isn't it?
We know what weeds look like.
Do you want us to go get them?
Another thing I want to make sure that we're very clear on
is that Jesus isn't telling us to stop determining right from wrong.
This is the same Jesus that says,
Beware of false prophets, you will recognize them by their fruits.
He gave his church an entire process for confronting sin.
Scripture tells us to test the spirits and call false teaching what it is.
You can look at a teaching and say that is a counterfeit.
You can look at someone and what they're doing and how they're living their life
and you can say that is sin.
That's hurting you.
That's hurting others.
That's not playing God.
That's listening to God.
But there is a line.
And it sits right where the servant stepped over it.
It's one thing to see a weed and call it a weed.
And it's a whole other thing to go get your sickle to take care of it.
Judging between true and false is what we've been commanded to do.
But deciding that a person is finished, condemned, past saving,
written completely out of heaven,
that verdict belongs to the master alone.
Because he's the only one who can see the roots.
And we step over that line too.
When we look at someone maybe in our neighborhood,
or in our church, or even in our own family,
and we decide that one's a weed.
That one's too far gone.
We remember what they did.
We see what they post.
We know how their story ends.
See, we've already pulled them up and thrown them out.
It's in our own hearts.
Luther actually preached on this parable,
and he saw exactly what was wrong when we do that.
When you rip someone out now, you're not just risking a wrong guess.
You're slamming a door that God was still holding open.
He who errs today, Luther said, may find the truth tomorrow.
Who knows when the word of God may touch his heart?
And so that person we've written off, God isn't finished with them
because the same word that reached you can still reach them.
Jesus tells us what the harvest actually gathers out of the field.
He says it's all causes of sin and all lawbreakers.
Not just the obvious weeds, all of them.
Let's hold our own hearts up to that standard
with grudges and pride and counterfeits that we've bought because it flattered us.
And if our place in the harvest depends on being cleaner than the people around us,
then we have no place in it.
But where does that leave us?
Standing in the field with everyone else,
tangled up in our own sin with no business volunteering for harvest duty.
If there's any good news here, it's not coming from us.
It comes from the sower.
Jesus said that the one who sows good seed is the son of man.
And later on in Matthew's Gospel, we see that son of man tell us why he came in the first place.
To give his life as ransom for many.
The judge who runs the harvest first went into the field
and the field did to him what a field of sinners would do.
We called him the counterfeit, a blasphemer, a false messiah.
We bound him, condemned him, marched him out of the city,
crucified him between two actual lawbreakers as if he were the weed that needed pulling.
And it's on that cross that the fire of the harvest,
the judgment that Jesus said all causes of sin and all lawbreakers have coming,
fell on him instead of you.
He took our grudges and our pride and every counterfeit that we've ever bought
and he took it into death.
On the night he was betrayed, he told us plainly what it was for.
This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Poured out for us.
Poured out for you.
Hear it without any percentage of anything added to it.
Your sins are forgiven.
And on the third day, the man that they threw out of the field walked out of the grave.
The one everyone tried to condemn is still alive
and the Father has put the whole harvest in his hands.
The judge who's coming for that final harvest is the same judge who already died for you.
In that same sermon, Luther noted that the good seed is sown only by Christ.
That the field, if left to its own devices, never used, would grow nothing but weeds.
You aren't wheat because just out of sheer luck
or because you grew faster than everyone around you.
You're wheat because he planted you.
In your baptism, like we just saw, he put his own name on you,
joined you in his death and his resurrection and made you a child of the kingdom
and what the Son of Man plants, he will not lose.
Jesus ends this parable with that phrase I spoke of earlier.
He who has ears, let him hear.
That's Jesus saying, if you can hear this, this one's on you.
Not somebody else's field.
Not somebody else's harvest.
Yours.
And so hear it.
If you have ears, hear it, that the person that's written off is lost.
That door is not closed.
The master is not finished sowing.
So let us put down our sickles and pick up our prayers for them.
Hear also that the harvest that is coming is not a matter of waiting to find out what we are.
He already paid for this on the cross.
Your sins are forgiven.
Every counterfeit, every grudge, every verdict that's been handed down.
And so that field might still look like a mess right now.
But it belongs to Jesus.
And when the harvest comes, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
He planted you.
He died for you.
And he will not lose you.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
I invite you to please rise.