Why Doesn’t God Give Us All the Answers? A Sermon on the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat.

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

One of the most mysterious things about God—to me, anyway—is how much he leaves up to us to figure out.

Think about it. The earth is chock full of minerals and other resources. But it took human beings millennia to discover them and learn what they could do. The forests and jungles of the world are filled with cures to our diseases, but the plants that cure our illnesses don’t come with labels. We have to stumble upon them, try them out, and pass on our discoveries to others. What was the process, I often wonder, that people went through to discover that one mushroom kills you, one makes you hallucinate, and one tastes good sautéed with garlic and butter? After the first guy died, why did they keep eating mushrooms?

Certainly, much of our lack of understanding probably goes back to the Fall. When humanity lost its innocent relationship to God, it also likely lost some of its wisdom. But nevertheless, the trial and error nature of life in this world seems—again, to me at least—baked right in. It feels like God wants us to figure things out sometimes. As every parent knows, children don’t come with instruction manuals. Our own parents, at best, only provide a mixture of positive and negative examples. And the older our kids get, the more we realize we really shouldn’t be solving their problems for them. Life is this strange thing we have to figure out as we go. And God, at times at least, seems to like it this way

In our passage this morning, we are again treated to a parable and its explanation from Jesus. The kingdom of heaven, we are told, is “like a man who sowed good seed in his field” (verse 24). “But while everyone was sleeping” (verse 25), “his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” Over time, both crops grow up together, the weeds among the wheat. And when the farmer’s servants discover what has happened and ask if their master wants them to pull up the weeds, the farmer says no. Doing that might harm the wheat. 

Later, in the second portion of our text, the disciples receive an explanation of Jesus’ parable (verses 36-43). The farmer is Jesus, we are told. The good seed are believers. The enemy is the devil. And the bad seed are those who do evil. The servants are God’s angels. The furnace is the final judgment. The harvest of the wheat is the ingathering to the kingdom of God. All well and good. Now we understand the parable… Or do we? Did Jesus really tell his disciples what the parable means? Doesn’t his explanation create as many questions as it answers? 

What does he mean, some people have been planted by Satan? 

And wait…the good and the wicked must live side by side in this age because removing them might hurt the good? 

These two most provocative parts of Jesus’ story remain unexplained. Is the point just to accept them and say nothing? Or does Jesus want us to think?

One aspect of Jesus’ ministry that we often overlook in our churches is Jesus’ role as a teacher of wisdom. The wisdom tradition is ancient, and Hebrew wisdom comes to us through biblical books like Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew word for wisdom means “skill,” and the wisdom tradition exists to make people skillful in life. At first blush, a book like Proverbs seems pretty straightforward: Make good choices, and life will go well. But there is ambiguity in Proverbs, and apparent contradiction. The most famous of these is in Proverbs 26. 

Verse 4 tells us, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.” And then verse 5 replies, “Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.” What are we supposed to do with these verses? Nothing in the book of Proverbs helps us out. It is, apparently, up to us to decide…

Do we sometimes answer a fool and sometimes not?

Are there situations where one option is better than the other?

Is the proverb telling us we are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t?” 

Is it saying we will look just as bad as the fool, but we need to speak up anyway?

Is it saying that fools are impossible to deal with, no matter what we do?

The goal, it seems, is not simply to tell us what to do—but, rather, to make us think about what we should do. And thinking about this impossible situation of having to deal with a fool, trying to figure out if we should answer him or not…This is how we gain wisdom—not necessarily a hard-and-fast answers all the time, but wisdom.

Similarly, in the New Testament, the apostle Paul counsels his young protege Timothy:

“Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules.The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.” (2 Timothy 2:3-7).

Paul gives his young pastoral trainee several proverbs, as it were. One is about soldiers, another about an athlete, and the last about a farmer. The soldier doesn’t get caught up in civilian affairs. What does that mean? The athlete won’t win if he doesn’t play according to the rules. Ok. Farmers are fed by the crops that they grow. Wait, what? Like Jesus’ parables, Paul’s words to Timothy could be taken as mere nonsense. “What does any of that have to do with running a church?” But then Paul tells Timothy, “Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all of this.” 

Think about these proverbs and pray. 

Let the Lord give you understanding as you do.

And it’s the same, I think, with Jesus’ parable in our text. The explanation simply sets up all the pieces. It lets us know who the actors are in the play. But it doesn’t really tell us what to think about the play. One real question, left unanswered in some ways, is why God allows evil to go on in this world. Yes, the parable tells us that God will judge evil one day. But it also says that God leaves evil in the world to not lose the good. What are some ways the removal of evil might harm the good? 

The point isn’t to just come up with one answer, but to sit there and chew on how this is true. Somehow, the removal of evil would harm us. Maybe it’s because some of the people we love most will never give their lives to God. So God allows us to have them for a time, knowing the pain is coming but leaving it for another day. Maybe he knows we would turn our backs on God, too, if these people were taken out of our lives before we were ready. Then again, perhaps Jesus is saying that God accomplishes much good in the world through the workings of evil, so he needs to allow evil to remain at work in the world. The paramount example of this, of course, would be the cross. 

Similarly, if God is the creator of heaven and earth and all people, what does it mean to say that the devil “planted” some people in the world? It certainly can’t mean that the devil is also a creator. The world doesn’t have two creator gods. Maybe Jesus is saying that evil can’t be thrown at the feet of God. The blame has to fall to the devil. Or maybe he is saying that some people really are children of the devil, even if they’ve been created and loved by the God of heaven. Or maybe it’s one of those details you’re not supposed to worry too much about. Not every detail in a parable has to mean something, after all. Pressing every detail to its conclusion often results in something absurd.

So God has given us Jesus’ parables to make us think. He has given us his word to make us think. He has given us a world, and a church, and relationships, not expecting us to know exactly what to say and do from the very get-go. Rather, he’s given us all these things so we can grow. So we can dig in the earth and find gold. So we can read the Bible for the hundredth time and still find something new.

God doesn’t seems to be afraid of a little mystery sometimes. Perhaps, then, neither should we.

Let’s Pray