Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 12 – March 1992

 

Will We Have A Pure Church?

 

Sermon by Rev. J. Rogers on Matthew 13:24-43

Reading: Isaiah 61:1-3; 63:1-3

 

Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ,

Jesus said that he came to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah 61 – to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of the vengeance of our God.

And John the Baptist expected to see as much vengeance as grace from the hand of the Lord.  So when he preached that the Kingdom of heaven was at hand, he also said:

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.  The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  I baptise you with water for repentance.  But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry.  He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering wheat into His barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.  (Matthew 3:8-12)

But when John ended up in prison, he began to wonder if it was still the day of vengeance for the enemy!  They weren’t suffering; he was!

And when he heard that Jesus was only healing, casting out demons, raising the dead, and preaching grace, he began to wonder if it really was the day of the vengeance of our God!  Maybe Jesus was not the Promised One after all!

Even before John was ‘slain because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus,’ he began to cry out with the saints in Revelation 6, ‘how long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’

The disciples too had this problem.  One time Jesus went to a Samaritan village and the people didn’t welcome Him.  So the disciples said, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them (Luke 9:54)?’

‘Come on Lord, this is the day of the vengeance of our God and the axe is already laid at the root of the rotten tree.  Drive it right home and bring in the kingdom in glory and power and honour and fullness and purity now.’

And so in our parable this morning, while the crop is still growing, the servants wanted to pull up the weeds that his enemy had sown.  But, you see, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven – it takes time to do its work.  The kingdom of heaven is like mustard seed – it takes time to grow and reach all the world.

There is a difficulty in understanding this parable.  Obviously it is talking about what the church should or should not do with people who look like Christians, but are not.  The weeds and the wheat looked much the same for a long time.

What then, is the parable teaching us?  Is it teaching us that we should never put people out of the church, because Christ will do that when He comes?  Or is it teaching us that we should not burn heretics at the stake or stone idolaters?

Actually, it is not talking about either.  It may very well be true that we shouldn’t burn heretics or stone idolaters.  But that’s not what this parable is talking about.  And of course, it most certainly is true that the church should exercise discipline.  There are many very clear Scriptures that speak about that.  But the parable is not talking about that either.  Although it might be talking about an attitude that relates to that.

But then you say to me, ‘It’s not talking about the church at all, because Jesus said, “The field is the world.”  True.  But Jesus also said, ‘As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age.  The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of His kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.’

True, the field is the world.  But the angels will weed out these unbelievers from the kingdom, not the world.  Jesus sows the seed of the Gospel in the world.  Where else could He sow it?  But He weeds unbelievers from the kingdom.

And isn’t that part of the context?  Between telling the parable and interpreting it, Jesus tells us another parable.  The kingdom is like a mustard seed which, although only a vegie-garden plant, grows into a tree in which the birds of the air take refuge.  That wording comes right out of Daniel chapter 4 in which the great Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom is world-wide and provides the needs of all mankind.  What Nebuchadnezzar had to learn was that it was not his kingdom, but that of Jesus Christ that could really only do that.  And one day, it would.

And remember also that parables are to teach the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.  There is nothing particularly mysterious about the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman living together in the world.  God said they would be, way back in Genesis 3 and they have been since then.  But that the devil would dare to sow his seed in the kingdom of God is another matter altogether.  Who would have thought God would have allowed that?

So Jesus sows His seed in the whole world through the preaching of the Gospel.  And His kingdom is world-wide; it fills the whole earth.  But in the church there are unbelievers.  They’re false when they’re in the church.  They’re only false when they present themselves here in the congregation of the Lord as members of His kingdom when, in fact, they are not.  (In this parable, church and kingdom are almost the same in Jesus’ thinking.)

Jesus said, ‘You are not of the world even though you are still in it.’  So Jesus sows His seed in the world and, as He does, people profess to be members of His kingdom and church.  But some are not true.  Some are, in fact, stooges – or stool pigeons of the devil.  So the question is; who should sort them out?  Who should purify the church?  Should we do it now?  Or Jesus later?

That’s what Jesus wants to teach us in this parable.

Even when we cry out today, on behalf of our persecuted brothers and sisters, let us be patient.  Let us wait a little longer for the Lord is not wiling that any of His chosen ones should perish.  And He is patient to give them time to come to repentance.  Should we be any less patient?  Why, it may even be your son or daughter!

It will help if we follow a development in Jesus’ teaching here.  When it comes to producing fruit, a professing Christian can be in one of four conditions.

1.  First of all, he can be a true member of the kingdom of God and producing true fruit – albeit with many failures along the way.

2.  But secondly, he can be producing the wrong fruit.  Matthew 7:15ff says, ‘Watch out for false prophets.  They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.  By their fruit you will recognise them… (and it) is a bad tree that bears bad fruit.’

Now what should the church do about people like this?  The apostle Paul tells us to ‘reject a contentious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning (Titus 3:10).’

And of course, whether it is a person’s teaching or his behaviour that is manifestly anti-Christian, Paul says: ‘Expel the wicked man from among you (1Cor.5:13).’

Principle?  If a person is wilfully and persistently unrepentant, produces anti-Christian fruit, then the church must deal with him.

3.  The third condition a person who professes to be a Christian may be in is this: he may be producing the right fruit – at least, it looks like the right fruit – and yet he is still disobedient to the Lord and is lost.  In Matthew 7:21f, Jesus said, Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and perform many miracles?’  Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you.  Away from me, you evil-doers.’

What will we do about these people?  Nothing.  These people will have much about them that makes them look like true kingdom members till their dying day.  In fact, they will have deceived themselves till their dying day.  That’s why Jesus told the parable of the houses on the sand and the rock.

Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, make sure you build your lives on the rock of the Word of God and not on ‘what we think is right or established human tradition (Lord’s Day 33).’

But actually, we must do one thing.  We must preach that horrible possibility and that parable of the two houses.  And while the church may not judge your actions, I must, in preaching, challenge you to search your heart.  For the day of the Lord will reveal it.  The Lord will judge it.

4.  The fourth condition in which a person professing to be a Christian, may be in is this: he may appear in many ways to be a Christian – but not produce any fruit.

And that is the kind of person Jesus is speaking about in the parable of the weeds and the wheat.  In verse 26 of our text, we read, ‘When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.’

It was only then that the servants noticed the weeds – but already then, it was too late to pull them up.  Obviously they had not been sown recently and germinated, for then their root systems would have only been small and there would have been no danger of pulling up the wheat with them.  And it was because of that danger that the master would not let the servants lift them.

So then, when it says that the weeds also appeared, it must mean that they became apparent as weeds.  When they didn’t sprout and form wheat heads, then those plants showed themselves to be weeds rather than wheat.

What then are these people like?  Well, these people can be, in many ways, very good church members.  And yet, sometimes one gets the feeling that something is lacking.  There is an easy-goingness, a drifting, a too-easy comfortableness with some.

Not that there is a lot that is positively sinful in their lives in an open sort of a way.  They are not rebellious.  There just seems to be a lack of life, a lack of enthusiasm.  Perhaps they seldom speak about the Lord.  There’s not an out-and-outness, an aggressiveness to serve the Lord.

We read in John 15:8, ‘This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.’  But with these people, there doesn’t seem to be much concern for that.  And brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, I have to say, as one charged to think about you and make your spiritual welfare my concern, that those thoughts come to me about some of you sometimes.

What must I do?  Well, I must preach like this and warn you and challenge you.  Do you love the Lord?  Do you believe in His Son whom He has sent?  Are you seeking, with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength to live in His ways?  To produce fruit for Him?

But then, should the church do anything about people like this?  Again, no!  Not these people.  “The Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.’

Actually, though, the church must do something with these people.  We must give them time to grow.  Just because some plants have matured and produced wheat heads doesn’t mean that others that will not in time mature.  Would you take the risk of pulling up one of Christ’s wheat in your enthusiasm to rid the church of her weeds?

Congregation, we don’t believe in a pure church.  Christ is still making her holy, cleansing her by the washing of water through the Word.  And not till He presents her to Himself as radiant when He comes again, will she be without stain or spot or wrinkle or blemish.  And we all need that washing every last one of us!

We do believe in a holy church but in the sense of being set apart unto the Lord to serve Him.  We also believe in being holy in the second sense: inward, personal holiness of heart and conduct.  But that comes second and slowly.  And ‘in this life even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience (HC.114).’

The idea of a pure church is an Anabaptist idea.  And the more rigorously some man’s standard of purity is applied the more filthy a cesspool of sin such communities become.  Just go home this afternoon and pull out your church history books and read about John of Leyden’s bloodthirsty, polygamous, communistic ‘New Zion’ in Munster in 1530 to see what I mean.

We believe the Bible teaches Covenant Church – a church of people who profess to adhere to God’s Covenant of Grace.  And connected with that, we do not search hearts.  We remember what Samuel said to Saul: ‘Man looks on the outward appearance; God looks on the heart.’

And so we leave God to look on the heart while we take people’s professions at face value unless and until their outward deeds demand we do otherwise.

At the moment there is no pure church. 
            Sure, we ought all to be striving for purity. 
            But we believe in a true church,
              a church seeking to ‘hold to the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.’

The crop takes time to grow to maturity and not all will reach maturity at exactly the same time.  Indeed, some will mature and show themselves to be weeds, plants of the devil in the kingdom of God.

But while it is still young and looks like a young wheat plant, that’s how we shall regard it.  Until we see the teeth peering from under the fleece, we will consider it a lamb and not a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Such people put down their roots and sap some of the energy of the church which could have been used on the elect, just as weeds take some of the goodness out of the soil that would otherwise have been available for carrots and beans and peas.

True some of these might even bring shame on the name of Christ, as Jesus hinted when he said His angels would ‘weed out of His kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.’  But how do weeds in the church bring shame on the name of Christ?

Have you ever heard people say, ‘Where is the church in this crisis?’ or ‘Why does the church not have something to say about this?’

Well, why?  Perhaps because so many in the church are not as yet producing fruit and so many others have to spend much time exhorting them.  And so Christ’s name is shamed by the church’s apparent inaction.

Of course, quite apart from that, there can be some truth in that accusation.  But what are we going to be, congregation?

Are we going to be sons of thunder calling down fire from heaven on what might be some of Christ’s wheat?  Or are we going to be shepherds spending days and nights looking for Christ’s lost sheep?

Conclusion

John, and Jesus’ disciples failed to realise that the day of the Lord was a long day.  They did not perceive that it was a mountain range.  And that the coming and ‘proclaiming favour’ was one mountain peak while the coming and wreaking vengeance’ was another.  And between the two was a long, lush valley of grace.

But they could be excused, because there in one sentence in Isaiah 61 it says, “The Lord has anointed Me to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of the vengeance of our God.’

We have no excuse for making the same mistake.  Jesus has explained it for us.  And we have experienced 1900 years of the valley of grace.

So let us have patience, brothers and sisters, with those who as yet show no fruit.  The church is not yet a church of born-again ones.  No, she holds within her bosom many who show little life.

But the Lord knows those who are His and we will, therefore, let Him sort them out in His own good time.  But we will remember that his time is always a long time.  Didn’t He put up with Israel and her gross and flagrant sin for a long time?  And has He not done much the same with His New Testament church thus far?

Yes, in this too, congregation, it will be enough for us to be like our Master, and not try to be above Him.

AMEN