Now, after the Lord Jesus Christ
told the story of the sower, and that was just a few verses
before in this chapter, Matthew chapter 13, he also taught his
disciples an important lesson about the church, or as he calls
it here in this parable, the kingdom of heaven. The church
has a lot of different names in Scripture. Perhaps we'll make
a study of that someday and we'll think about the different names
that the church has. But the word church is an interesting
word by itself because it can mean different things. Sometimes we call this building
the church. And maybe this morning when you
were getting up and you said, what day is it today? And somebody
said, it's Sunday, we're going to church. You thought, yes,
that's really great. I don't have to go to school
today. Well, You've come to church and it's good to see you. But
we need to realise something about this building. This building
isn't really the church. It's the people who gather here
who are the church. This is just a building and it's
not the bricks and the beams or the design or the lights or
the pulpit at the front that makes this the church. This is
just a building which we have set out in some way to make it
functional as the place where the church meets together. And so we come together as the
church But then too, we have another
little problem when we describe the people who go to church as
being the church. This is a kind of difficult word.
I bet you didn't realise the word church was so difficult.
Because the truth is that not everyone who goes to church is
the true church. Not everyone who prophesies to
believe in the things of God, truly believe in the things of
God. And the Bible gives us a definition
of the church, which is perhaps useful for us to know. We find
it in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 23, and it says this, that
the church is the general assembly and the church of the firstborn,
which are written in heaven. And what that is telling us is
that really, as far as the word of God is concerned, as far as
the Lord Jesus Christ is concerned, his church are those whose names
are written down in heaven. And that's not necessarily exactly
the same people or group of people that go to church to worship. And so there's a little distinction
which we must make when we come to this word church. And that's
what the Lord is talking about in this parable. Why am I telling
you this then? because the Lord Jesus Christ
wanted to teach his disciples an important lesson about the
church, or as he called it, the kingdom of heaven here upon earth. And the lesson is this. It is
impossible for us to tell exactly who comprise the church. Now you could look around the
people in the building today and say, well, I know everyone
here. I know that this is the church. I know that this is the
church gathering together to worship here in this place in
Great Falls. And that's true. We recognize
one another and we acknowledge one another. And we believe that
as we come together, this is the church as a local fellowship
coming together to worship God. But the problem is that we look
on people from the outside. We say that person comes to church
every week, that person reads their Bible, that person lives
a good life, that person is a nice person, that person has been
baptised, that person takes communion. They must be part of the church. And they may be part of the local
church here, But that doesn't always mean that they're part
of the spiritual church. And sometimes things go wrong
in people's lives. And sometimes sin creeps into
people's lives. And sometimes we discover that
the people that we once looked to as being part of the body
of Christ have gone far away. And that can confuse us and that
can make us wonder about what is happening. Can you be part
of the true church and then not part of the true church and then
part of the true church again? Can you come in and out of the
true church? So sometimes we just need to
be aware of some of the differences in these words. But one of the
important things to remember is that while we look on the
outside, God looks on the inside. He knows people's hearts and
he knows people's minds. In this parable, the sower is
pictured as being the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ
sows good seed. The gospel goes out when the
Lord Jesus Christ sends his message into the world, but the devil
is pictured as being the enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ who
comes and he sows not good seed, bad seed, where the Lord has
sown good seed. And this bad seed comes up like
weeds. And it looks very much like the
wheat, so much so that from the outside, it's hard to tell the
difference. Satan works inside churches as
well in order to copy, in order to mimic, in order to counterfeit,
and in order to spoil. So not everyone who claims to
be a Christian is truly a Christian. Not everyone is truly born again
or have their names written in heaven. And sometimes it becomes
evident that there are tears amongst the good seed and that
there are weeds amongst the wheat and false professors amongst
the Lord's people who spoil the testimony of the church. What
do we do about that when we see it happening? The servants of
the householder, they wanted to go out into the field and
rip out the tares. They said, there's one there,
we can get rid of that one, we can pull it out. And they said
to the householder, sir, can we go out into your field and
can we take up these tares? And the householder said, no,
don't do that. Don't do that. Because while
you gather up the tares, when you pull out these weeds, do
you know what's going to happen? You're going to pull out some
of the good wheat as well. You're going to damage the roots.
You're going to have consequences for the good wheat as well as
for the tares. Let them both grow together until
the harvest. And you see, that was the Lord
telling His disciples that it would not be possible for them
to truly live in a church that was comprised only of the Lord's
people. That there would always be question,
there would always be doubt, there would always be those who
would come into the church who would not truly be His people. And the truth is that that's
a very hard lesson for us to learn, because we want to make
the church pure. We want to purge the church.
We want to keep it polished and pretty and pure. And we get disheartened
when we see sin and error and division, and we want to fix
it. We want to make it right. The
question is, are we wise to do so? Yes, there is a place for
good management and even for discipline in the local church,
but not to the exclusion of repentance and restoration. It's the Lord's
business to separate out people in the church. It's the Lord's
business. And he says that at the end of
the world, he will send his angels and his angels will do the job
properly. Verse 41 of Matthew 13 says this,
The son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather
out of his kingdom, that is the church, all things that offend,
and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace
of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing
of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. who hath ears
to hear, let him hear. We want the church to shine. We want the Lord's people to
be a picture of the glory of God. But what the Lord Jesus
Christ says here is this, that the Lord's people will only shine
at the end when his angels have separated out the wheat from
the tares. As we go through our lives there's
always going to be trouble in the church as well as outside
of the church. In our lives because we have
to deal with sin, we have to live with sin, and because the
devil is going about endeavouring to do as much damage as he can
to the people of God and the witness of God. So I want to
leave with you this thought this morning. This is the church that
you're a part of here. This is the public face of a
local fellowship of the Lord's people. But that doesn't necessarily
mean that everyone here is a true child of God. And each of us
has to examine our hearts. Each of us has to be clear in
our thinking. Each of us has to think about
our own situation and ask whether what we're doing is honouring
to the Lord and what we're doing serves His cause and the well-being
of His people. May the Lord be pleased to grant
us an understanding of what it is to believe in him and to have
faith in him and to join together with his people in this local
fellowship and to understand nevertheless that there will
always be trouble and problems beset us throughout our days
in this world and in the body of believers. Amen.