Q3, S03 Weeds

Quarter 3, Session 3: Weeds

WHAT KIND OF FRUIT ARE YOU PRODUCING?

Passage

Matthew 13:24–30, 36­–43

Concept

This session falls under Jesus’ seventh question: Can you see my kingdom as a tree? Jesus told a parable that warns against pulling weeds out from amidst the wheat, “lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.” It’s a reminder that there are two distinct categories—a kingdom and a counter-kingdom—and that only God can sort out who is who. 

Key Question

What things in your life pull you away from the kingdom? How so?

The Tree Tool

Do you see our Tree tool being played out in Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43? With whom? How so?

Weeds

Think of a time when your expectations have been off. Think, for example, of the way love and marriage are portrayed in films. The depictions are not always entirely wrong, but love and marriage are often portrayed as easy and lighthearted, as though these things come naturally. What we discover when we get married, however, is that while there are seasons like this, love requires hard work and marriage has to be tended and fought for. We shouldn’t be surprised to find a Hollywood representation less robust than the reality.

But we encounter a similar dynamic in many areas of life. Our expectations do not often match reality. Significantly, this happens when it comes to following Jesus. We sometimes expect everything in life to get better, or we think we’ll be constantly brimming with joy and spiritual insights, but the reality is often much more difficult than that. We can easily find ourselves disillusioned. We set out to follow Jesus, but we struggle. We choose to enter his kingdom, but later we find ourselves confused: Is this real for me? Am I truly following him, truly part of his kingdom? Is this what being a part of God’s kingdom really looks like?

Jesus helps us in this by setting our expectations: the kingdom is rarely as clear cut and obvious as we expect it to be. There is a certain ambiguity and an inherent wrestle that only God can sort out, and only at the end.

1.     Read Matthew 13:24–30, 36­–43. Right off the bat, what strikes you about this passage? What do you find interesting or challenging or confusing?

Growth Requires Cultivation

There are many things in our modern world that we can get instantly. But if you want to grow and produce a peach in your own backyard, it requires time and labor. There is a moment in which you enjoy the fruit, but that moment is the result of so much time and cultivation. You have to put in the work first, and then the fruit comes later.

Think of all the hard work it would take to grow a harvest of wheat. In the parable, a man sows the wheat, but his enemy sows weeds. And yet it’s not until the wheat grows up that he can even recognize that weeds have been mixed in. And he has to wait until the harvest to separate them.

Think of all the time and cultivation required to get things to this point. Jesus is giving us a picture of spiritual life that is anything but instant. It requires patience and labor. And it turns out to be a frustrating process. Though we want instant results, true spiritual life requires tending. So how are you doing with this?

2.     Up to this point in your life, how have you been cultivating your faith (or how have you been neglecting to cultivate your faith)?

Are You Embracing or Resisting the Kingdom?

The seed being sown in the parable is the good news that there is a new king and a new kingdom, and more specifically, the seed is those people who embrace this good news. Being a part of that kingdom means relating to Jesus as a subject to a king. All throughout the Gospels we see people encountering Jesus and receiving invitations to the kingdom, and then they have to decide whether they will accept or reject Jesus and the invitation to the kingdom. We all have to make this choice: Am I going to be part of this kingdom?

On the flipside, the weeds can be seen as excuses we will use to avoid the kingdom. Every weed represents someone who wants nothing to do with the kingdom, and each of those people will have a different reason for resisting. Some of these reasons are vices and lame excuses, to be sure. But very often, these weeds can be good things that we turn into ultimate things that then compete against the kingdom. If the bad seed represents those who resist the kingdom, then think of everything that pulls you away from the kingdom of heaven. Can you identify even good things that do this from time to time?

Another way to say this is that there is a kingdom, and there is also a counter-kingdom. What things in our lives sprout up like weeds to become a counter-kingdom? Is it your career? Your family? Your hobbies? You desire to achieve some status or significance or pleasure? Taking stock of the bad seed in our lives will help us assess where our heart is focused.

3.     What things threaten to become weeds in your life, pulling you away from God’s kingdom?

What Kind of Seed?

One thing we learn from this parable is that it’s naïve to think that we’ll simply be sowing seed and watching it grow. We have to be aware that there is an enemy who is sowing weeds among the grain. And it can be very difficult to tell the difference initially.

Sometimes we think that our objective is to never make a mistake. That’s not the point. There are times when we’ll think we’re pursuing something good, but it winds up leading us down a bad path—for a variety of reasons. In reality, we do our best, and when we find we’re making a mistake, we repent and turn. We always have to be ready to step back onto the right path, but we equally need to avoid the paralysis of waiting until we’ve got everything sorted out before we’ll start doing anything at all.

What is the solution in this parable? What is the laborer told to do when he identifies the presence of the weeds mixed in? The solution is to wait and see. Eventually it will become obvious because good seed produces good fruit and bad fruit produces bad fruit. Don’t rush to do the weeding, wait for the harvest.

There will come a day of judgment when everything will be sorted out. In light of that, we have to ask ourselves if we’re wheat or weed. This is an important question for us to continue to ask. But we also have to recognize that the job of sorting out which is which is ultimately God’s. It’s not our job to be the judge and determine who is weed and who is wheat. Remember, too, that the qualification for the kingdom does not look like the things we’re most likely to point to: avoiding alcohol or promiscuity or being “clean cut,” not church attendance or external piety. Being part of the kingdom simply comes down to whether or not Jesus is your king. Have you encountered Jesus? How are you responding to him? This is what really matters.

There is a healthy tension we have to continue to wrestle with: Am I part of the kingdom or not? Jesus tells us parables like this to help us continually wrestle with the question in healthy ways. To give us an increasingly clear picture of the kingdom so that we can continually decide whether we see Jesus as king and want to relate to him as such, or whether we are longing for a different kingdom.

4.     Do you ever feel the tension of not knowing whether you’re weed or wheat? If so, what causes the tension and how do you process it?

5.     What factors do we usually appeal to in trying to decide who is wheat and who is weed? Why are each of these inadequate in making such judgments?

6.     What does it look like to encounter Jesus as king even as you experience this kind of tension?

7.     Spend some time in prayer. Ask God to help you process whether you are truly part of his kingdom. Pray that he would produce fruit in you and allow you to cultivate everything that makes for a healthy harvest.

Key Question

What things in your life pull you away from the kingdom? How so?