SERMON STRUCTURE: What’s Growing In There?

MATTHEW 13:24-43

CIT (Central Idea of the Text): At the end of time, God will remove all evil from his kingdom. (13 words).

SERMON FOCUS: The kingdom of God grows quietly in the heart of every believer to produce a harvest of righteousness.

Major Objective: Consecrative

Specific Objective: Allow God’s spirit to grow in you, and do not be distracted by the evil in this world!

TITLE: What’s Growing In There?

Then … the completed sermon should be evaluated in terms of how well it adheres to the CIT and SF, and accomplishes its SO.

INVOCATION

OUTLINE OF Matthew 13:24-43

1. The Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat (13:24-30).

1. The parable is an illustration of the nature of the “Kingdom of Heaven.” (13:24a).

2. The owner of the field sowed good seed — the wheat. (13:24b).

3. But someone came later and sowed bad seed — weeds. (13:25).

4. And when the plants grew up, the weeds appeared among the wheat. (13:26).

5. And the master’s servants asked how that happened. (13:27

6. The master’s response was, “an enemy has done this.” (13:28a).

7. So his servants asked what should be done about it. (13:28b).

8. The master’s solution was to let both the wheat and the weeds grow together until time for harvest. (13:29-30).

2. The Parable of the Mustard Seed (13:31-32).

1. Here the “Kingdom of Heaven” is compared with a mustard seed. (13:31).

2. It is the smallest of seeds, but when it is grown, “³²it is the greatest of shrubs.” (13:32).

3. The Parable of the Yeast (13:33).

1. “³³The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” (13:33)

4. The Use of Parables (13:34-35).

1. Jesus spoke only in parables to the crowds who came to hear Him. (13:34).

2. He did so to “³⁵proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.” (13:35)

5. Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds (13:36-43).

1. Jesus’ disciples asked for an explanation of the parable. (13:36).

2. “³⁷The one who sows the good seed is the son of Man,” (13:37)

3. “³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one.” (13:38).

4. “³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.” (13:39).

5. “⁴⁰Just as the weeds are collected and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.” (13:40).

6. “⁴¹The son of Man will send His angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,” (13:41).

7. “⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (13:42).

8. “^43aThen the righteous will shine like the son n the kingdom of their \Father.” (13:43a)

9. “^43bLet anyone with ears listen!” (13:43b).

SERMON DEVELOPMENT

What’s Growing In There?

Matthew 13:24-43

Introduction

1. I hate poison ivy!

1. I’ve always been somewhat sensitive to its oils, and any direct contact with it always produces an unpleasant rash.

2. Many years ago, shortly after buying the property on which our house was later built, on a warm sunny afternoon in the late fall, I decided to clear out an overgrown patch of vines and briers at the corner of the lot.

   1. So, armed with a machete, and dressed in a t-shirt and work gloves, I set about the task.

   2. And I discovered that several trees supported large hairy vines that extended well into their tops.

   3. By this time of the year, all the leaves had fallen, and only the bare vines remained.

   4. So I went about cutting them off at the base and pulling them down out of the trees.

   5. And in the process I tore a big hole in my t-shirt and got dirt and hairs from the vines all over my arms.

   6. And you can certainly guess the rest of this story — had Linda not been a nurse, and able to give me injections, I would have ended up on the hospital with the rash that ensued.

   7. But the ultimate outcome of that encounter with poison ivy is that we still own the lot, and the poison ivy is for the most part gone.

2. I say it’s mostly gone, because from time to time a few sprigs of it reappear.

1. Just last week I put on a long-sleeved shirt and work gloves and manually pulled up several vines from the roadside drainage ditch in front of our house.

2. Having learned well what this vine looks like, and the terrible rash it can produce, I now very careful to avoid it, or to protect myself carefully if I intend to get into it.

3. What continually surprises me about this little vine is the way it sends long woody shoots just below the surface, and it pops up again many feet away from its beginning.

4. And the only ways to get rid of it entirely are to spray it with a herbicide, or to carefully pull up all the underground vines, including those that lead back to the roots themselves.

3. Our Scripture for today is a continuation of the passage from last Sunday.

1. But the emphasis is a bit different — these parables speak about things that grow silently, and sometimes innocently, but their growth can produce results that are much greater than expected.

2. Let’s hear what Jesus had to say about these growing things.

Scripture

1. Our Scripture for today is Matthew 13:24-43. We will be reading it somewhat in sections — with my apologies to Ken, who does a heroic job keeping up with my last-minute changes in the reading of our passage!

2. There are three parables in our passage for today, but like last Sunday, one of them appears in two different parts: an initial presentation, and a subsequent interpretation.

3. Let’s begin with presentation of the first parable: Matthew 13:24-30. I’m reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

[Read here Matthew 13:24-30, NRSV.]

4. And now, if we may, let’s skip to Jesus’ interpretation of the parable: Matthew 13:36-43. Again, I’m reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

[Read here Matthew 13:36-43, NRSV.]

5. These two sections together set forth a principle: at the end of time, God will remove all evil from His kingdom, and will reign with unquestioned power and authority. (Central Idea of the Text.)

6. But from this we may see a principle that is applicable to our own lives: the kingdom of God grows quietly in the heart of every believer to produce a harvest of righteousness.

Exposition

1. These parables, and the ones to follow in this chapter of Matthew, set forth the nature of the kingdom of God, or as Matthew terms it, “the kingdom of heaven.”

1. As we have already learned, Matthew, writing primarily to a Jewish audience, follows the customary Jewish practice of avoiding pronouncing or saying the sacred name of God.

2. So he uses instead the term “kingdom of heaven.” This term is synonymous with the term “kingdom of God.”

3. And that phrase therefore designates for us two slightly different but related ideas:

   1. First, it is the eternal rule of God, from before the creation of this world, and continuing for all eternity, and it is a consequence of God’s divine sovereignty and authority.

   2. But it is also the rule of God within the heart of every believer.

   3. As such, it has its beginning and its present existence in the here-and-now; it is a present reality in the life of every true believer.

   4. But it also has its ultimate culmination in the return of Christ and the establishment of His reign over all things.

2. Perhaps a word might be said here about the nature of parables in general.

1. A parable is a practical story to illustrate a spiritual principle.

2. Someone has described a parable as “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.”

3. A parable is different from an allegory in that a parable usually has only a single point, and it is to be understood as a single piece, not as a collection of individual meanings.

4. In an allegory, on the other hand, each element of the story has its individual symbolism, and may be understood to represent a specific person, place, or event.

3. The parable of the wheat and weeds may be understood on three different levels:

1. First, it may be understood as applying to the world at large, and God’s final judgment at the end of the age.

   1. The parable means that “the devil,” or “the evil one” has sown his own seeds among humanity.

   2. But the parable also cautions that it is only God, at the end of the age, who will decide who is the wheat, and who are the weeds.

2. Second, it may be understood as applying to the church itself, and the affect of competing factions within the church.

   1. Let me hasten to add that I do not think this interpretation of the parable has any application whatever to Cane Creek Baptist.

   2. In the time I have been with you, I have not seen any evidence of significant divisions among you.

   3. But the parable does point out the perils of a church divided into opposing camps, and indicates that partisanship has no place in the body of Christ.

3. And finally it may be understood as applying to individuals, and to the affect of competing loyalties within each person’s heart.

   1. And this interpretation is perhaps the one we need most to hear.

   2. Anyone who examines his or her own life closely will find in it hopefully some things with which God may indeed be pleased, along with other things which seriously need attention and reformation.

   3. And our task, as we try to grow in our faith and obedience, is to root out the poison ivy in our personal lives, and to cultivate the things we want to be growing there.

4. If the parable of the sower and the seed, from last Sunday, raises the question, “what kind of soil are you?” then this parable of the wheat and the weeds raises the question, “what kind of seed are you?”

5. The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast therefore represent the quiet and unseen, but very powerful, influence of the growth of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.

[Read here Matthew 13:31-33, NRSV.]

6. A modern analogy to the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast might be: “The kingdom of heaven is like a preacher who preached every Sunday to a congregation of twenty-five people in a city of two million residents. The preacher kept on preaching until the whole city believed the gospel.”¹

1. A “measure” of capacity, according to tables in my edition of the NRSV, is about 7 quarts, or two gallons.

2. So “three measures” amounts to 21 quarts, or a little more than 4 gallons – a substantial quantity of flour to handle manually.

Reflections and Conclusions

1. The Spirit of God, once implanted in your own life, will either grow, or it will be choked out by the weeds that grow there.

2. And when the garden of your Spirit goes untended, surely the vines and the weeds will take over.

1. You will be left with sweet-gum and poplar trees filled with poison ivy.

2. And getting rid of those unwanted things will at the least be hard work, and may put your own safety at risk.

3. God plants His word as a seed in our hearts.

1. God intends that seed to grow into a harvest of righteousness, even as the mustard seed grows into a great bush, even as the small amount of yeast gets into a much larger quantity of bread.

4. And so this gives us an opportunity to look into our own hearts and into our own lives, and to ask ourselves, “What’s growing in there?” (TITLE)