Good seed or tares? Do not rush to judge!

Matthew chapter 13 verse 24 onwards. Last Sunday I spoke about the parable of the sower, the parable of the four lands in which the seed is sown and each seed that is the same gives different results, three negative and one positive depending on the condition of the land in which the seed falls

And in that same passage in Matthew 13 the Lord continued to speak about parables as well as agricultural matters. You remember that the Lord moved in a non-urban agricultural culture like ours and then He used many images and life situations that were similar to those that the people of his time faced; Everyone knew what land, seed, and agriculture were, so they were more attentive to the spiritual truths that He taught through that parable.

So here in verse 24 He continues with another parable but using that same seed motif and says 24: "He told them another parable saying: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field." Go? the seed is always good, the seed sown from 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 of the Church "he sowed good seed in his field, but while they slept" men "came their enemy"? okay? "and sowed tares among the wheat and left."

God sows good seed, we all know who the enemy is. Satan, the devil, the negative elements in the world that want to destroy the work of God and they sow not good seed but tares among the wheat. "And he left, and when the grass came out and bore fruit, then the weeds also appeared." Look, that happened for a while, you couldn't distinguish it, but over time people realize that there are tares along with the wheat.

"Then the servants of the householder came and said to him: Lord, did you not sow good seed in your field, where does it have weeds from? He said to them: An enemy has done this. And the servants said to him: Do you want us to go and pluck it up? He said to them, "No, lest when you pluck up the weeds you also uproot the wheat with it." Because? because it seems that the difference was not yet well defined. The Lord is referring here to a weed that is not like what we say, weed, thorny, ugly; It is a type of bush or plant that seems to occur in the Middle East that is very similar to wheat, it is very similar especially before it begins to give ears.

While it does not bear fruit and I imagine that there is a teaching that we have to obtain, the two: the tares and the wheat are quite similar. Then there is a risk that if one rushes to cut the weeds, they will also take bushes of wheat along with the weeds. So this very intelligent man says: no no, wait a minute. Let the one and the other grow together until the harvest until there is a ripening process that makes it possible to clearly distinguish what is tares and what is wheat.

And at the time of the harvest, what is the time of the harvest? Well, in apocalyptic and final terms, it is the last times where all the secrets of man will be seen. Before I forget that is important. The Bible says that one day in the future all the secrets of people will come to light and there will be people who were great philanthropists and highly respected but for now it will also be seen that there were hidden things in their lives. And there will have been people who will have seemed reprehensible and sinful people and it will be discovered that they were not, that they were simply unfairly judged but while I believe that there is also a harvest and there is a harvest even in our times that we are going to see that a little bit in life of the church.

Then he says: "Leave it until harvest time and I will tell the reapers: first collect the tares and tie them in bundles to burn but gather the wheat and put it in my barn." Hey, a while passed and the disciples were a little intrigued: wow, what does the Master mean? Remember that this was something new about parables, they were not used to interpreting things like this spiritually, it was a new concept in the life of the disciples.

So: "At the end of the day they drew near to the Lord" verse 36 and here you have a picture of this, right? that many times in our life when we do not understand something in the Word of the Lord we have to take time and ask the Holy Spirit to clarify things for us. There are many times when we read aspects of the Bible and they are not clear. Do not rush, ask the Lord to give you clarity, search a book for a teaching, explore the Word of the Lord; don't just read like the parrot there reading, reading, reading, no. Have your good reference book there, pray, reread that Word again for the Word to really come and unravel within you and give you all the benefit you need.

They went to the Lord and said: Lord, we don't quite understand what you mean. Look at what the Lord explained to them in verse 36. It says: "Then the people were dismissed. Jesus entered the house and approaching him his disciples said to him: explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. Responding he 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 sons of the Kingdom and the tares are the sons of evil" how beautiful everything is very clear, isn't it? How good it would be if when one has a dream the Pastor told you: no this is this, this is that, right? the Lord tells him very clearly.

"The enemy that sowed it is the devil, the harvest is the end of the century and the reapers are the angels; so that as the tares are uprooted and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this century" that is, in the end of the world, "the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of His Kingdom all those who offend and those who do iniquity and will throw them into the fiery furnace. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. " Ayayay, I don't want to be there and neither do you, so behave yourself, it's better.

"Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Wow, how cute is that parable, right? So, first of all, this reading tells us that it is possible to be in the Church, listen to me, have all the appearances of being a card evangelical and yet not truly be a child of God, not truly be a person according to the values of the Gospel and according to the Word of God.

Christ is using an image as we say familiar in an agricultural society, wheat and tares. Let's look first at this matter of wheat, of the good seed. As we said before, the seed is above all the Word of God, but in a sense I also believe that it can refer to us who are the earth and the result it produces, that good seed is us too, right? we are the ones who receive the Word of the Lord, we are the ones who interact with that Word.

What happens when the seed of God falls into our hearts? there is something going on. We are the earth, the seed falls and we receive it, we appropriate it and that Word of God, that seed of the Kingdom is a teaching like the one I am giving you today, it begins to act within us, it does a job. And the Bible talks about how the Word of God acts within us believers if you search First Thessalonians 2:13 the Word of God is alive and effective says and, search the heart and work with us and depending on how we we receive that determines a lot the result.

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

And that is what the Bible also calls tares, that is: tares can be a harmful negative element that does not conform to the Kingdom of God that is taking place within the body of Jesus Christ, within the Church. I now want to enter the level of the Church because in the Church there are many times good results, a good ear of wheat, the seed of God falling on good soil but it can also be a person who is not bearing good fruit; is not behaving like a child of God, is not being a representative of the values of the Kingdom of God then that person can be seen as tares.

So the question of the Gospel is: what are we going to do with this element, that in the Christian life in a single church or in the Church of Jesus Christ in general with all the different denominations that there are in the world there can be people who look alike? much to Christians but are not genuinely Christians or do not currently reflect the values of a Christian? while there are other people who do, who are genuinely behaving as children of God.

And look at what it says, for example, Second Timothy chapter 3, Second Timothy, this is serious and it is something very real, very common in the life of the Church. He says: "You should also know this: that in the last days dangerous times will come because there will be men who love themselves, covetous, vainglorious, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, impious" listen to me, don't leave yet, don't leave everyone is going to flee from the Church right now "without natural affection, implacable slanderers, intemperate, cruel, despisers of what is good, traitors, impetuous, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God who will have the appearance of piety but will deny the efficacy of it. These he shuns."

This entire chapter of Second Timothy chapter 3 talks about these two types of people and as you can see there are people who are the opposite and they may appear pious but they are not really, "while the children of the Kingdom of God appropriate the Word, but the children of the wicked reject it in their hearts, it finds no place in them" right? So being tares is when you receive the Word of God and instead of bearing positive fruit you bear negative fruit.

Being wheat is when you receive the Word of God and that Word, rather tares is not bearing fruit according to the Word of God, wheat is bearing fruit according to that Word, that seed that is in your heart. So these are the two things. Now a question that one asks himself many times: well, why does God allow there to be tares in the Church? Why doesn't God just eliminate all the people who misbehave, who don't do a good deed in the life of the Church? Well, this Word points us to something and that is that sometimes it is not so easy to discern between the wheat and the tares. For example, not everyone is a psychopath who is killing people over there and one says: no, that person definitely should not be in the Church.

There are people there like you don't know if they are tares or wheat. I'll talk to you about that later. And there is another thing as well, that 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 as is the owner of this vineyard or the owner of this farm who says: don't wait a minute, let's not do it yet because we are not sure what is wheat and what is tares; We are going to wait for a while, we have to wait for a clarification process and we have to wait a while and we have to be patient before deciding.

So there are different reasons why sometimes God allows negative elements in the life of a Congregation. I believe that one of the things is simply that through the struggle that occurs between positive and negative elements in the same Church, God allows His attributes of love, justice and holiness to become clearer in the life of that Congregation. .

There is a subtle drama often going on in the world at large between light and darkness. And I have discovered that many times the presence of evil in the world and in the universe is used by God. It is as if there were no evil in the world, good could not be defined. If men 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 way of being used to train men, so that the goodness of God shines brighter. strength in us and in the world.

Look in Romans chapter 9 verses 22 and 23, Romans 9:22 and 23. It says here: "And what if God, wanting to show His wrath and make His Power known, endured with great patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction and to make known the riches of His Glory He showed them with the vessels of mercy that He prepared beforehand for glory. To which He has also called, this is to us not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles." That is to say, there is a subtle mystery there, that many times the presence of evil makes then the power of God, the glory of God, manifest with more force and God allows that for a while, because evil is sometimes necessary to say so. so that the purposes of God may be carried out.

Let me make an even clearer illustration: Judas. Judas is among the twelve disciples and the Lord Jesus Christ knows that it is Judas who is going to betray him and yet allows Judas to be there among the disciples all the time. Because? because Judas was necessary, because someone had to deliver Jesus and there were prophecies in the Bible already said that he was one of those who were within the intimate circle of Jesus Christ. So Judas was necessary; He had to be there for the Word of God to be fulfilled, for the prophecy to be fulfilled and for someone to be the one to deliver the Son of God so that this Son of God would be crucified and then there would be salvation for humanity.

If evil does not exist, many times God's purposes cannot be given and there are situations in the Church that God often allows in a mysterious way, things that happen that ironically, although they are bad, produce good in the life of the Church. There are crises, situations that happen that if we take them properly strengthen the Church when the Church comes out of them and then comes 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 that also through tares the children of God are forced to develop the character of Jesus Christ. When there are divisions in the Church, sometimes that allows for a separation of negative elements that is then noticed, it becomes clear who are and who are not from the Kingdom of God and then there is a purification in the Church.

It is not pleasant to have tares in the Church, but often when we see how grotesque it is to live in the double identity of being tares and trying to be good seed, then when we see bad examples, it provokes in us a desire to go in the other direction, to re-examine our own spiritual life. People who behave badly in the Church are like a dark background that allows us to define and say: no, I don't want to be like that, I must be different, I must be more like Christ.

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

And finally, I believe that the existence of tares in the Church obliges us to look more towards God and not towards 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 is there firm, continually rubbing our backs, exemplifying the best absolutely suitable values of the Gospel, but what happens when he does not behave one hundred percent like that paragon of virtues that you expect according to your definition, what happens, right?

So if your faith is in the Pastor and that he behaves as you think he should behave or what happens when there are big mistakes that are made, when a leader of the Church does not behave when he should, when there are divisions in the Church and bad examples if your gaze is set 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 obliges us not to set our gaze on people but on Christ Jesus.

So I have learned that. Look, no Church is perfect, Pastors make mistakes, deacons make mistakes, churches fail many times; there are defects in the house of God, there are elements of tares and that is why no one should look at man or the Church but only at God. In other words, in a sense if you see things that way the weeds look at it, it makes us stronger. It forces us to say: look, you know what? I am not going to look at any man because no Church is perfect, I am going to look at Christ Jesus and I am going to put my faith in Him alone.

Never allow yourself to be overcome by the bad examples of the tares brothers in the life of the Church. In fact, what I want to say is this: that nebulosity between the tares and the wheat, the fact that sometimes you cannot differentiate between one and the other, what really interests me the most is focusing on that point. Knows? 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 weeds now in a couple of years is going to be wheat and sometimes what looks like weeds now in a couple of years is going to be wheat and what looks like wheat in a couple of years is going to reveal itself which is not wheat but tares.

And that is why one has to be so careful and so circumspect and so sober in how one conducts oneself in the life of the Church. There are times when a process time is required for us to truly discover what is tares and what is wheat. The sower's response to his servants is very important. In verse 29 we see that he tells them: "Do not cut the tares yet, lest in pulling up the tares you also uproot the wheat."

As I said before, the tares in the Middle East are very similar to wheat, it is not always easy to distinguish between one and the other. If we rush to cut off from the Congregation everything that looks like weeds, we may be disrupting or hindering God's plan in a life because in the life of every Christian there are processes, there are processes in which the weeds and the wheat are fighting with each other. .

The stumbling blocks in a Church are not only those who scandalize others through their sin and bad behavior, but also those who do not show God's love, mercy, and patience in dealing with their weak, slow brothers. and difficult in faith. How many of us have ever wondered: if God took a spiritual picture of my spiritual condition right now in this moment and used it as the sole basis for determining my fate on Judgment Day, would I be damned or saved? hmm?

How many times are we in a behavioral situation in our life that if you froze that moment and said: this is the moment that is going to determine your eternal destiny, wow where would we really go? The Christian life is a life of continuous process, right?

Many of us discover that many times we have behaved like weeds even though God in His Mercy had us destined to be wheat in His barn. The important factor in all of this is God's timing. Over and over again as we consider the existence of the tares we are led to recognize divine sovereignty in the process of salvation. The fact that God has a specific path for each individual and that it is only up to us to respect His mysterious designs, recognizing that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.

There are times when God deals differently with certain people and sometimes people will fall, people will behave badly in the Church, sometimes people will have all kinds of spiritual failures and I believe that pastoral Congregations are needed. that they understand that the process of developing a life includes moments of spiritual highs but also of spiritual lows and that we cannot say: oh look at this individual because he did this at this moment we must remove him from the Church or we must corner him in a place.

I believe that wise people are a person who, as the Bible says: time and occasion happen to everyone. There are people like I said who are involved, God has dealings with them and is leading them and we have to be very respectful of God's dealings with a person and say: you know what? I'm not sure what God is doing in that person; you have to give it time, you have to let God do His work in it until you clearly define what God has with that person.

Now that is not to say that there is no discipline in the Church. Discipline is needed in the Church, I want to talk about that a little bit, right? But I say here that people come to the Church and immediately we want them to become spiritual giants overnight, they come made tares and we want them to become wheat overnight, it is not like that, nobody it is so in reality and we get impatient when we see a person who is not behaving completely well; the proud, the foul-mouthed, the indifferent, the one who does not bear fruit as we would like immediately and immediately we want to uproot them, throw them out of the Congregation, we want them to disappear from the life of the Church.

And the truth is that the Church is a swarm of processes, each individual is in different stages and it takes time, give people time. I believe that this is the essence of the pastoral character so that they can be clearly defined. Sometimes I often feel in trouble with the brothers because: oh so-and-so, let's say acquaintance or with a public profile in the Church, perhaps he has done something wrong and a little sister, a little brother comes and points at him as if to say: we have to cut off his head the person, get him out of the Ministry, get him out of this, out of that.

And I assure you, brother, that we Pastors continually live in agony about what to do with different situations. You cannot imagine in a Congregation the size of ours, as varied as our Church is, how many situations there are, that there are people who seem to be tares but one knows that it is wheat that is on the way, that it is still in process and there are people who are wheat and one also knows which foot they secretly limp on.

There are little sisters who may not have a problem with matters of sensuality and bad behavior with men, but they have such a long tongue that I would prefer that they perhaps make a mistake in another way and cause problems and accuse other sisters, hurt new little sisters in the Church, they create problems. So what is wheat, what is tares? and one with his pastoral heart often has to give time to the process.

Peter, the apostle Peter how many headaches he did not give Jesus Christ. Imagine Peter came to deny Jesus, he cut off the ear of a poor servant, a centurion there when they came to, an impulsive, difficult man but the Lord knew that one day he would become a great apostle and he gave him time, he struggled with the. He disciplined him, confronted him, reprimanded him at times but he dealt with him little by little saying: give him time, this is a jewel of My Church, I am going to use him greatly but I have to hand him the trapiche first. You have to squeeze all that bad stuff out of him so that he then becomes the man I need, right?

So we see in the Christian life that we have to be patient with each other, give time to time. Now I think so, that in the Church there must be discipline. It is important. Because? because also in the Church and I tell the brothers: be patient with us Pastors and with the Church when sometimes we give you or someone some kind of limitation or discipline that does not necessarily mean we are punishing you or we are flogging for something but also the Church has to be careful. The Church of Jesus Christ has some high values that it has to adhere to for them as well and sometimes there are situations where if the Church doesn't put some kind of discipline on your life for something you did then people are going to think: well, this Church has no spiritual values, everyone does what he wants where are they then, how can we encourage people to behave as a true Christian if not also from time to time with pain in our hearts establishing some kind of discipline? so that those who have not yet committed that sin say: wow, I have to take care of myself, this is not from God, look how the Church deals with that issue.

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

And I beg you to trust your Pastors, trust the authorities of the Church. We take the moral values of the Gospel very seriously. I believe in this Congregation. And what happens is that there are times when we know things that you don't know; We know intimate things about that family, about that marriage that is hanging by a thread and if it is not treated very carefully, the whole house collapses and those children are scattered, the marriage is divided and the Pastors are there trying to maintain a relationship. thing with the other, to take care that that marriage is not completely broken with an act that throws that family out of the Church or that points out that person or that makes their sin public, because you simply have to give it time for something to happen.

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

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

That is why I will leave you with a verse, Galatians chapter 6 verse 1. All this follows from what I consider the key verse of this parable, which is when the sower tells his workers: do not cut the weeds yet, give them time, let it grow because it is not so easy to discern between one thing and the other. Let it mature well and in the meantime hold your hands because you are going to want to cut it right away and wait until things are quite ripe before then intervene and do it correctly, right?

Galatians 6 verse 1 says: "Brothers, if any of you is caught in any fault" that is to say in some sin, some error, some bad behavior, something that seems to be tares "you who are spiritual" cut off his head, get him out quickly . No, it says, "restore him." Restore him with what?: "In a spirit of meekness, lest you also be tempted." And I would read you verse 2 as well: "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ."

I believe that the best posture of a Congregation is when there is a posture of mercy, of love, of grace. Look, brother, what does it take away from me if I put up with that little brother a little longer there; 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 to be more patient, more loving, more humble, simpler. That does not contaminate me because I am clear in my position.

So what does it matter that in a Church, as I say, it is not that we tolerate or celebrate sin but rather that attitude that the apostle Paul reflects here; If you observe someone in some kind of fault, do everything possible to restore him or her, that is, to help him. Advise him, talk to him, right? Confront him lovingly, do it in private if possible. Don't embarrass him and don't run there to tell so-and-so: hey, do you know what I saw so-and-so doing? No, isolate the sin as much as possible and deal with the sin within privacy and love so that that person suffers the least possible damage or his family, that other brothers are not scandalized. Restore him, right?

With a spirit of meekness and one always looking at oneself. Listen, do you know what helps me a lot when I want to cut off someone's head? think about Roberto Miranda, honestly. That helps me a lot. There are many people out there that I say asking for and in my mind that I know the life and sin and virtues of that person who is asking me for someone's head I say: but does that person know how she behaves too? That if I applied the same laws to him or her, would I have to be more severe with him or her than against whom he is accusing?

So one has to look at oneself first and be careful, right? and try as much as possible to reflect the love of Christ and bear the burden of others. I believe that a Church like this, brother, is going to be a blessed Church, it is going to be a Church that the devil will not be able to do anything with, amen? God willing that it be. That is going to be a Church that God is going to bless greatly. So hopefully that will have some kind of positive effect on us and we will be tolerant and loving towards each other.