Good Seed or Weeds? Don’t Be Too Quick to Judge!

Matthew chapter 13, verse 24 and following. Last Sunday I spoke about the parable of the sower, the parable of the four kinds of soil on which the seed is cast, and each seed, which is the same, produces different results—three negative and one positive—depending on the condition of the soil on which the seed falls.

And in that same passage of Matthew 13, the Lord continued speaking in parables of an agricultural nature. Remember that the Lord moved within an agricultural culture, not an urban one like ours, and so He used many images and situations from life that were similar to those faced by the people of His time; everyone knew what soil, seed, and farming were, so they were more attentive to the spiritual truths He taught through that parable.

So here in verse 24 He continues with another parable, but using that same motif of the seed, and verse 24 says: "He put another parable before them, saying: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field." You see? The seed is always good; the seed that is sown—the Word of God, the Gospel—is always good. "And this man," whom we assume to be Jesus Christ, is God Himself, who is sowing His good Word in the hearts of men and in the Church, "sowed good seed in his field, but while the men were sleeping, his enemy came," okay? "and sowed tares among the wheat and went away."

God sows good seed; we all know who the enemy is: Satan, the devil, the negative forces in the world that want to destroy the work of God, and they sow not good seed but tares among the wheat. "And he went away, and when the plants sprang up and bore fruit, then the tares also appeared." Notice that some time passed; they could not be distinguished, but over time people realize that there are tares alongside the wheat.

"Then the servants of the head of the household came and said to him: Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did the tares come from? He said to them: An enemy has done this. And the servants said to him: Do you want us, then, to go and pull them up? He said to them: No, lest in pulling up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them." Why? Because it seems the difference was not yet clearly defined. The Lord is referring here to a tare that is not like what we call a weed—thorny and ugly; it is a type of bush or plant that apparently grows in the Middle East and looks very much like wheat, especially before it begins to form heads of grain.

As long as they have not borne fruit—and I imagine there is a lesson there that we need to draw—the two, the tares and the wheat, look quite alike. So there is a risk that if one rushes to cut down the tares, one will also carry away wheat plants along with them. So this man very wisely says: No, no, wait just a moment. Let both grow together until the harvest, until there has been a process of maturation that makes it possible to distinguish clearly what is a tare and what is wheat.

And at harvest time—what is harvest time? Well, in apocalyptic and final terms, it is the last days, when all of mankind’s secrets will be seen. Before I forget, that is important. The Bible says that one day in the future all people’s secrets will come to light, and there will be people who were great philanthropists and highly respected, but suddenly it will also be seen that there were hidden things in their lives. And there will have been people who seemed reprehensible and sinful, and it will be discovered that no, they were simply judged unjustly. But in the meantime, I believe there is also a reaping and a harvest even in our own times, and we are going to see a little of that in the life of the Church.

Then it says: "Leave it until harvest time, and I will tell the reapers: Gather the tares first and tie them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat and put it in my barn." Hey, some time passed and the disciples were left a little intrigued: Wow, what could the Master mean? Remember, this business of parables was something new; they were not accustomed to interpreting things spiritually in this way. It was a new concept in the lives of the disciples.

Then, "At the end of the day they approached the Lord," verse 36, and here you have an illustration of this, don’t you? Many times in our lives, when we do not understand something in the Lord’s Word, we have to take time and ask the Holy Spirit to make things clear to us. Many times we read parts of the Bible and they are not clear. Do not rush; ask the Lord to give you clarity, look for a teaching in a book, explore the Lord’s Word. Do not simply read like a parrot, just reading, reading, reading—no. Keep a good reference book nearby, pray, and read that Word again so that the Word may truly reach you, unfold within you, and give you all the benefit you need.

They went to the Lord and said to Him: Lord, we do not fully understand what You mean. Look at what the Lord explained to them in verse 36. It says: "Then, having sent the people away, Jesus went into the house, and His disciples came to Him and said: Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said to them: He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, Christ; the field is the world. The good seed are the children of the Kingdom, and the tares are the children of the evil one." How wonderful—everything perfectly clear, right? How nice it would be if, whenever you had a dream, the Pastor told you: No, this means this, and this means that, right? The Lord tells them very clearly.

"The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels; therefore, just as the tares are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age," that is, at the end of the world. "The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His Kingdom all those who cause others to stumble and those who practice lawlessness, and they will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Oh my! I do not want to be there, and neither do you, so you had better behave yourself.

"Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Wow, what a beautiful parable, isn’t it? So first of all, this reading tells us that it is possible to be in the Church—listen to me—to have every appearance of being a card-carrying evangelical and yet not truly be a child of God, not truly be a person who lives according to the values of the Gospel and according to the Word of God.

Christ is using an image that, as we have said, was familiar in an agricultural society: wheat and tares. Let us first look at the wheat, at the good seed. As we said before, the seed is first and foremost the Word of God, but in a sense I also believe it can refer to us, who are the soil, and to the result it produces; we too are that good seed, aren’t we? We are the ones who receive the Lord’s Word; we are the ones who interact with that Word.

What happens when God’s seed falls into our hearts? Something happens. We are the soil; the seed falls and we receive it, we make it our own, and that Word of God, that seed of the Kingdom—whether it is a teaching like the one I am giving you today—begins to act within us; it does a work. And the Bible says that the Word of God works within us believers. If you look up First Thessalonians 2:13, the Word of God is living and effective, it says, and it searches the heart and works with us, and how we receive it largely determines the result.

Through that Word that dwells in our hearts, God has given us good seed, and all we need is to live an upright life before Him through that seed that is working within us. Now, what also happens many times? That seed falls into our lives, but then it does not do what it is supposed to do; it does not produce wheat, we do not receive it, we do not act on it, we do not allow it to shape us and bear good fruit. Instead, that seed can also fall upon a person and what may be produced is, rather, a spiritually unhealthy person, a person who does not behave as a child of God should behave.

And that is also what the Bible calls tares; that is, a tare can be a negative, harmful element that is not in keeping with the Kingdom of God and that is growing within the body of Jesus Christ, within the Church. I now want to move to the level of the Church, because in the Church there are often good results—a good head of wheat, the seed of God falling on good soil—but there can also be a person who is not bearing good fruit, who is not behaving like a child of God, who is not representing the values of the Kingdom of God. That person, then, can be seen as a tare.

So the question posed by the Gospel is: What are we going to do about this situation, in which, within the Christian life, in a single church or in the Church of Jesus Christ in general, with all the different denominations that exist in the world, there may be people who look very much like Christians but are not genuinely Christians, or who at that moment do not reflect the values of a Christian, while there are other people who do—who are genuinely behaving like children of God?

And look at what Second Timothy chapter 3 says, for example. Second Timothy—this is serious, and it is something very real, something seen every day in the life of the Church. It says: "You should also know this: that in the last days perilous times will come, for there will be men who are lovers of themselves, greedy, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy"—listen, do not leave yet; do not walk out of the Church, everyone is going to run away right now—"without natural affection, irreconcilable, slanderers, lacking self-control, brutal, haters of what is good, traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having an appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people."

That entire chapter, Second Timothy chapter 3, speaks about those two kinds of people, and as you can see, there are people who are exactly the opposite and may appear godly, but in reality are not. "While the children of the Kingdom of God make the Word their own, the children of the evil one reject it in their hearts; it finds no place in them," right? So being a tare means that when you receive the Word of God, instead of bearing positive fruit, you bear negative fruit.

Being wheat is when you receive the Word of God and that Word—or rather, being a tare is failing to bear fruit in keeping with the Word of God; being wheat is bearing fruit in keeping with that Word, that seed in your heart. So those are the two things. Now, a question one often asks is: Well, why does God allow tares to exist in the Church? Why does God not simply remove all the people who behave badly, who do not do a good work in the life of the Church? Well, this Word points something out to us, and that is that sometimes it is not so easy to distinguish between the wheat and the tares. Not everyone is, for example, a psychopath who is out there killing people, so that one says: No, that person definitely should not be in the Church.

There are people there and you just do not know whether they are tares or wheat. I am going to talk to you about that later. And there is something else as well: God allows these negative elements to exist in the life of the Church for reasons that are very interesting. God is a God of strategy, just like the owner of this vineyard or the owner of this farm, who says: No, wait just a moment; let us not do it yet, because we are not sure what is wheat and what is a tare. Let us wait for a while; we must wait for a process of clarification to take place, and we must wait for some time and be patient before deciding.

So there are different reasons why God sometimes allows negative elements in the life of a congregation. I believe one of them is simply that, through the struggle that takes place between positive and negative elements within the same church, God allows His attributes of love, justice, and holiness to become clearer in the life of that congregation.

Many times there is a subtle drama unfolding in the world at large between light and darkness. And I have discovered that God often uses the presence of evil in the world and in the universe. It is as though, if evil did not exist in the world, good could not be defined. If people could not choose between one thing and the other, then there would be no true freedom, and sometimes God allows evil to occur in the world as a means of training people, so that God’s goodness may shine more brightly in us and in the world.

Look at Romans chapter 9, verses 22 and 23—Romans 9:22 and 23. It says here: "And what if God, desiring to show His wrath and make His Power known, endured with great patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and in order to make known the riches of His Glory, displayed them toward the vessels of mercy that He prepared beforehand for glory? To which He has also called—namely, us—not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles." That is to say, there is a subtle mystery there: many times the presence of evil causes the power of God, the glory of God, to be manifested with greater force, and God allows that for a time, because evil is sometimes necessary, so to speak, in order for God’s purposes to be carried out.

Let me give an even clearer illustration: Judas. Judas is among the twelve disciples, and the Lord Jesus Christ knows that Judas is the one who is going to betray Him, and yet He allows Judas to remain there among the disciples the entire time. Why? Because Judas was necessary, because someone had to betray Jesus, and there were prophecies already spoken in the Bible saying that it would be one of those within Jesus Christ’s inner circle. So Judas was necessary; he had to be there so that the Word of God would be fulfilled, so that the prophecy would be fulfilled, and so that someone would be the one to betray the Son of God, so that the Son of God would be crucified and there would then be salvation for humanity.

If evil did not exist, many times God’s purposes could not be accomplished, and there are situations in the Church that God often allows in a mysterious way, things that happen which, ironically, although they are bad, produce good in the life of the Church. There are crises, situations that arise which, if we handle them properly, strengthen the Church when the Church emerges from them, and then its members come out purified.

God sometimes uses adversity, uses suffering, uses the cross to perfect His children, and sometimes that comes through those negative elements that are in the Church. Another thing I also believe is that, through the tares, the children of God are compelled to develop the character of Jesus Christ. When there are divisions in the Church, sometimes that allows negative elements to be separated out; it then becomes evident, it becomes clear who belongs to the Kingdom of God and who does not, and then there is a purification in the Church.

It is not pleasant to have tares in the Church, but frequently, when we see how grotesque it is to live with the double identity of being a tare while trying to be good seed, then, when we see bad examples, that awakens in us a desire to go in the opposite direction, to reexamine our own spiritual life. People who behave badly in the Church are like a dark background that also allows us to define ourselves and say: no, I do not want to be like that; I must be different, I must be more like Christ.

And this then compels us to learn to forgive, to love as God loves, to humble ourselves, to be more tolerant of weak people and people who do not behave well, and this produces in us a more pastoral character, one more like the character of Christ. Paradoxically, those bad situations, if we confront them in the light of the values of the Gospel, make us stronger and draw us closer to Christ.

And finally, I believe that the existence of the tares in the Church compels us to look more toward God and not toward men. If our faith and our joy in the Christian life, if our attendance at Church, if our life of service depends, for example, on our relationship with the Pastor, we are lost; we will be faithful as long as the Pastor remains steadfastly there, continually patting us on the back and exemplifying the very best, absolutely ideal values of the Gospel. But what happens when he does not behave one hundred percent like that paragon of virtue you expect according to your definition—what happens then?

So if your faith is in the Pastor and in his behaving as you think he ought to behave, what happens when serious mistakes are made, when a Church leader does not behave as he should, when there are divisions in the Church and bad examples? If your gaze is fixed on those things, you are going to fall. So the fact that no Church is perfect and that there are always imperfections in the Church compels us not to fix our gaze on people, but on Christ Jesus.

So I have learned that. Look, no Church is perfect; we Pastors make mistakes, deacons make mistakes, churches often fail; there are defects in the house of God, there are elements of tares, and that is why no one should fix their gaze on man or on the Church, but on God alone. In other words, in one sense, if you see things that way, the tares—look—make us stronger. They compel us to say: look, you know what? I am not going to look to any man because no Church is perfect; I am going to look to Christ Jesus and place my faith in Him alone.

Never allow yourselves to be overcome by the bad examples of the tares in the life of the Church, brothers and sisters. What is more, what I want to say is this: that haziness between the tares and the wheat, the fact that sometimes you cannot distinguish one from the other—that is really the point I am most interested in focusing on. You know? What I want to say is that, look, in the life of the Church, sometimes the wheat will behave like tares and the tares will behave like wheat. And sometimes what looks like tares now will be wheat a couple of years from now, and sometimes what looks like tares now will be wheat a couple of years from now, while what looks like wheat will be revealed a couple of years from now not to be wheat, but tares.

And that is why one has to be so careful, so circumspect, and so sober in how one conducts oneself in the life of the Church. There are times when a period of development is required before we can truly discover what is tares and what is wheat. The answer the sower gives his servants is very important. In verse 29 we see that he tells them: “Do not cut down the tares yet, lest in pulling up the tares you also pull up the wheat.”

As I said before, tares in the Middle East look very much like wheat; it is not always easy to distinguish one from the other. If we rush to cut out of the Congregation everything that looks like tares, we may be cutting short or obstructing God’s plan in a life, because in the life of every Christian there are processes, there are processes in which the tares and the wheat are fighting against each other.

The stumbling blocks in a Church are not only those who cause others to stumble through their sin and bad behavior, but also those who fail to show God’s love, mercy, and patience in the way they treat their brothers and sisters who are weak, slow, and struggling in the faith. How many of us have ever asked ourselves: if God were to take a spiritual picture of my spiritual condition right now, at this very moment, and use it as the sole basis for determining my destiny on Judgment Day, would He condemn me or save me? Hmm?

How many times are we at a point in our lives where we are behaving in such a way that, if that moment were frozen and they said, “This is the moment that will determine your eternal destiny,” wow, where would we truly go? The Christian life is a life of continual development, isn’t it?

Many of us discover that we have often behaved like tares, even though God in His Mercy had destined us to be wheat in His barn. The important factor in all this is God’s timing. Again and again, as we consider the existence of the tares, we are led to acknowledge divine sovereignty in the process of salvation. We recognize that God has a specific path for each individual and that our only responsibility is to respect His mysterious designs, acknowledging that His ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts.

There are times when God deals differently with certain people, and sometimes people are going to fall, people are going to behave badly in the Church, sometimes people are going to experience all kinds of spiritual failures, and I believe we need pastoral Congregations that understand that the process of a life’s development includes moments of spiritual heights but also spiritual lows, and that we cannot say: ah, look, because this individual did this at this particular moment, we must remove him from the Church or corner him somewhere.

I believe that a wise person understands what the Bible says: time and chance happen to them all. There are people who, as I was saying, are being dealt with; God is dealing with them and leading them along, and we must be very respectful of God’s dealings with a person and say: you know what? I am not sure what God is doing in that person; we have to give them time, we have to let God do His work in them until it becomes very clearly established what God has in store for that person.

Now, that does not mean that there should be no discipline in the Church. Discipline is needed in the Church; I want to talk a little about that, all right? But what I am saying here is that people come to Church and we immediately want them to become spiritual giants overnight; they come in as tares and we want them to become wheat overnight. It does not work that way; no one is really like that, and we become impatient when we see a person who is not behaving completely well—the proud person, the foul-mouthed person, the indifferent person, the one who does not immediately bear fruit as we would like—and right away we want to pull them up, throw them out of the Congregation; we wish they would simply disappear from the life of the Church.

And the truth is that the Church is a swarm of processes; each individual is at a different stage, and time is needed—we must give people time. I believe that this is the essence of pastoral character, so that things can become clearly defined. I often find myself in a difficult position with the brothers and sisters because, ah, let us say that so-and-so, someone well known or perhaps with a public profile in the Church, has done something improper, and a sister or brother comes and points it out as if to say: we have to cut this person’s head off; remove him from the Ministry, remove him from this and from that.

And I assure you, brothers and sisters, that we Pastors continually agonize over what to do about different situations. You cannot imagine how many situations arise in a Congregation the size of ours, as diverse as our Church is. There are people who look like tares, but one knows that they are wheat on the way, that they are still in process; and there are people who are wheat, yet one also knows what hidden weaknesses cause them to limp.

There are sisters who may not have problems with matters of sensuality or improper behavior with men, but their tongues are so long that I might prefer they make a mistake in some other way; they cause problems, accuse other sisters, hurt new sisters in the Church, and create problems. So what is wheat, and what is tares? And with a pastoral heart, one often has to give the process time.

Peter, the apostle Peter—how many headaches he gave Jesus Christ! Imagine, Peter went so far as to deny Jesus; he cut off the ear of a poor servant—a centurion there—when they came to... He was an impulsive, difficult man, but the Lord knew that one day he would become a great apostle, and He gave him time; He worked with him. He disciplined him, confronted him, and rebuked him at times, but He dealt with him little by little, saying: give him time; this man is a jewel of My Church. I am going to use him greatly, but first I have to put him through the mill. All that bad stuff inside him has to be squeezed out so that he can then become the man I need, right?

So we see in the Christian life that we have to be patient with one another and give things time. Now, I do believe that there should be discipline in the Church. It is important. Why? Because in the Church as well—and I tell the brothers and sisters: be patient with us Pastors and with the Church when at times we impose on you or someone else some kind of restriction or discipline. It does not necessarily mean that we are punishing you or flogging you for something; rather, the Church also has to be careful. The Church of Jesus Christ has high values that it too must abide by, and sometimes there are situations in which, if the Church does not impose some kind of discipline on your life because of something you did, then people are going to think: well, this Church has no spiritual values; everyone does whatever they please. Where, then, are those values? How can we encourage people to behave as true Christians if we do not also, from time to time and with pain in our hearts, establish some kind of discipline, so that those who have not yet committed that sin will say: wow, I have to be careful; this is not of God—look at how the Church deals with this matter.

So the Church does sometimes have to impose discipline, and we have to be understanding and teachable and submit to that discipline which the Church imposes, so that there may be healing in the Church, so that there may be a morality that distinguishes us from the morality of the world. So when you fail or make a mistake or violate the highest values of the Word of the Lord, the Church does sometimes have to intervene in some way, but it must do so with love and mercy; there has to be a balance between the two things.

And I beg you: trust your Pastors, trust the authorities of the Church. I believe that in this Congregation we take the moral values of the Gospel very seriously. The thing is that sometimes we know things you do not know; we know intimate details about that family, about that marriage that is hanging by a thread, and if it is not handled very carefully, the whole household will collapse, those children will be scattered, and the marriage will fall apart. And the Pastors are there trying to hold one thing together with the other, taking care that the marriage is not completely broken apart by an action that drives that family out of the Church, singles out that person, or makes their sin public, because we simply have to give it time for something to happen.

And that is the Pastor’s work. The Pastor is like a surgeon working on a person who has a very delicate condition, and if he intervenes too abruptly, the patient dies. But many of us are outside the situation looking in, and we want the Pastor to come with a machete and cut out the disease once and for all. No, brother, that needs a scalpel; that needs a laser beam. Believe in your Church.

I can tell you that we take many things in the Congregation seriously, but we are managing about thirty different factors to maintain stability—the families, the Church, the brothers and sisters—and so we often have to balance grace with mercy, discipline with love. And if we ultimately have to act to remove someone from the Congregation, we do that too, and we will do it in a way that reflects the values of the Gospel.

That is why, as I conclude, I leave you with a verse: Galatians, chapter 6, verse 1. All of this follows from what I consider the key verse of this parable, which is when the sower tells his workers: Do not cut down the weeds yet; give them time, let them grow, because it is not so easy to distinguish one from the other. Let them mature fully, and meanwhile keep your hands in check, because you are going to want to cut them down right away. Wait until things are fully mature before intervening, and do it in the right way, right?

Galatians 6, verse 1 says: “Brothers, if any of you should be caught in any fault”—that is, in some sin, some error, some bad behavior, something that looks like a weed—“you who are spiritual,” cut off his head, get him out quickly. No, it says: “Restore him.” Restore him with what? “With a spirit of gentleness, lest you also be tempted.” And I would read verse 2 to you as well: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

I believe that the best posture for a Congregation is one of mercy, love, and grace. Look, brother, what do I lose if I put up with that dear brother there for a little longer? That is not going to take anything away from me; on the contrary, it is going to make me a better Christian. It is going to help me be more patient, more loving, humbler, simpler. That does not contaminate me, because I am clear about where I stand.

So what does it matter if, in a Church—as I have said, it is not that we tolerate or celebrate sin—but there is that attitude reflected here by the apostle Paul? If you see someone committing some kind of fault, do everything possible instead to restore that person, that is, to help them. Counsel them, talk to them, right? Confront them lovingly; do it in private if possible. Do not shame them, and do not run over there to tell so-and-so: Hey, do you know what I saw such-and-such a person doing? No. Isolate the sin as much as possible, and deal with the sin privately and lovingly so that the person, or the person’s family, suffers as little harm as possible and so that other brothers and sisters are not scandalized. Restore that person, right?

With a spirit of gentleness, always examining oneself. Listen, do you know what helps me a lot when I want to cut someone’s head off? Thinking about Roberto Miranda, honestly. That helps me tremendously. There are many people out there asking for someone’s head, and in my mind, since I know the life, sins, and virtues of the person asking me for someone’s head, I say: But does that person know how he or she behaves too? That if I applied the same laws to him or her, I would have to be more severe with him or her than with the person he or she is accusing?

So one must look at oneself first and be careful, right? And try in every possible way to reflect the love of Christ and bear the burdens of others. I believe that a Church like that, brother, will be a blessed Church; it will be a Church that the devil will not be able to do anything against, amen? God willing, may it be so. That will be a Church that God will bless greatly. So I hope this has some kind of positive effect on us and that we will be tolerant and loving toward one another.