Proper 12, Year A, Track 2
Psalm 119:129-136; 1 Kings 3:5-12; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33,44-52
I.
Jesus asks His disciples a question this morning. He asks in Matthew 13:51. He asks, “Have you understood all this?”
The disciples respond, “Yes,” but based on the response I got to the last two sermons, I think the answer from you is more likely to be, “No.”
That is certainly my fault as a preacher. Confusion coming from the pulpit is never a good thing.
But there are two kinds of confusion: deliberate, when the preacher is perverting the word of God on purpose, and inherent, that is when the text itself is confusing.
For the past two weeks we have been dealing with the second kind: inherent confusion. The text itself is confusing.
II.
The parables of Jesus are, by design, confusing. Jesus says so. He says this over the course of two verses in Matthew 13 that we did not read this morning, so I will read to you now.
Matthew 13:10-11, “Then the disciples came and said to him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ And he answered them, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.’”
The secrets of the kingdom of heaven are told in parables so as to hide them from unbelievers.
But if believers themselves are left wondering what Jesus meant, does that mean “it has not been given” for them to understand?
And, if believers still can’t make sense of Jesus’ words, might that mean they are not saved?
Are they perhaps the weeds of last week’s story who mistakenly think they are grains of wheat?
Does the soil of their faith lack depth, because, while their faith immediately sprang up once they received the good seed of the word of God, must they live in fear that the scorching sun will wither them, because their roots cannot reach the living water?
I fear this is the state my preaching the last two weeks left many of you in: a state of wondering.
Wondering if you were saved.
Wondering if what you do makes any difference (especially if the mind of God is already made up).
Wondering what point I was trying to make.
Allow me to give you a word of both comfort and clarity.
If after wrestling with Matthew 13 and the parables therein, you find yourself wondering, then you are doing just fine.
The whole chapter is an extended teaching on discernment, which is just another way of saying, wondering.
To wonder is to discern and to discern is to wonder.
If you are trying to discern the Spirit at work in your life it means you’re wondering what God wants you to do.
So, be at ease. Wondering is the whole point.
Discernment is our job as Christians.
It’s what prophets do, and all of us are called to be (lower-case “p”) prophets.
That said, confusion is most certainly not the point. Wondering that discerns nothing, discernment that never leads to any decision made or action taken is pointless and without purpose.
So, again, if my previous sermons caused you to wonder, good. That was the point. If they left you wondering in confusion, bad. That’s on me. Let me try to make it right.
As we read two weeks ago from Isaiah, the whole point of God’s word is to make plain His purpose for us, for our families, and for His church.
He says in Isaiah 55:11, “my word… shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
In other words God will succeed. His enemies will fail. That’s clear, right? Is there any confusion? No? Good.
So, we need to practice discernment. As Christians this is our work and it takes practice.
Discernment is the very heart of Solomon’s prayer that we read this morning in the third chapter of 1 Kings.
Solomon prayed, “Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil…”
Jesus’ parables are meant to help Christians govern—to govern themselves and to govern the world.
The goal of Christian discernment is not for each of us to become hermits, sages of the forest, or yogis on the mountaintop, dispensing inscrutable proverbs.
No, that is not the point of Christian discernment.
The point of Christian discernment is to equip ourselves to govern.
That was Adam’s original mandate to have dominion over the earth.
Adam lost that mandate, for himself and all his children, but Christ restored it, for Himself and for all who are in Him.
III.
The last two sermons—last week’s especially—left some of you wondering what there was left for you to do.
If God determines the soil, if God separates wheat from weeds, and, more to the point, if bad soil can never become good soil, and weeds can never become wheat, then what is there for believers to do?
Why witness? Why give testimony of your salvation? Why evangelize? Why pray for someone’s conversion?
My refrain from last week’s sermon, the servants’ question to their master, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?”—meaning: Do you want us to pull up the weeds?—and the master’s reply, “No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them,” confused many of you.
It caused confusion because I seemed to say leave things alone. God will handle it.
But then I turned around and said that Christians must not leave things alone. I said they must oppose humanistic ideologies like socialism.
I said the police must still arrest criminals, the juries must try them, the judges must sentence them, and the preachers must try to save their souls.
The source of the confusion is front and center in today’s reading from Romans. It’s right there in verse twenty-nine, that word that everyone hates, “predestined.”
Paul writes, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
And here it is again in verse thirty, “And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
If you read these verses convinced of your calling they are words of comfort.
If you hear the parable of the soil convinced that your earth is deep and rich, then you wait with hope for the harvest of thirty, sixty, and hundredfold to come.
If you are sure you are wheat, then you are prepared to outlive and outlast the weeds, suffering all their insults, practicing forbearance, kindness, and patience, knowing that one day avenging angels will harvest them, bind them, and burn them.
But if you’re not sure, oh, that’s when these verses strike terror in the hearts of men, terror and confusion.
“How can I be sure?” is the anguished prayer of many who hear these words.
“There is nothing for me to do,” come these words of resignation from another.
But, worst of all, are words such as these, “Let me take matters into my own hands.”
That is what I warned against in the other refrain from last week’s sermon: do not try to close the age; do not try to force the harvest.
That warning is repeated in today’s Gospel at verse forty-nine, “So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous.”
Do not attempt the work of angels.
IV.
For three weeks now the parables we have read speak of separation.
Good seed falls on bad soil. Weeds are separated from wheat. To those examples from previous weeks, Matthew adds today the parable of the net.
“…when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad.”
Jesus Himself adds the eschatological, meaning the end-of-the-world, interpretation when He says, “So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”
Behind all our confusion is a fear, named here, the fear of separation.
Our fear of predestination and of all these parables that support it—there is not one example of bad fish turning good (or, for that matter, of good fish turning bad)—our fear of predestination is really just separation anxiety.
What can I say to this? What words can I speak to allay your anxiety?
Paul asked the same thing. He writes, “What then shall we say to this?”
Then he begins to build his mighty answer. First comes, “If God is for us, who is against us?”
Then comes, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?”
Then, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?”
Oh, there is the assurance, the mighty confidence, that the great biblical doctrine of predestination brings.
If God has chosen you, no one can unchoose you. No word spoken can defeat you, even your own words.
My friends, even your own words can’t separate you from God. Paul writes, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
“For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
“nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
V.
My friends, your and my words are created words. They determine nothing. That is why they sometimes cause confusion.
God’s word is uncreated, and from the beginning, before there was anything to say, He spoke. He spoke to us in love.
There has never been any confusion in God’s words. God has never been confused about anything.
It is perfectly clear to Him what fish to keep and which ones to throw away. He knows where the treasure is hidden, where the pearl is to be found.
That God knows these things and we don’t is why His word must predestine things and ours can’t. This is why, when we find them, they are of such great value.
I have two more brief points: a word of comfort and a question I cannot answer.
First, the word of comfort, because without it the question I can’t answer will only leave you wondering.
Paul writes in this morning’s epistle reading, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”
I want you to focus on the words, “works for good,” “love him,” and “according to his purpose.”
Each one is something you can observe and know.
You can see things working for good. You know that you love Him. That is objective evidence that He has a purpose.
What you can’t know is exactly what is meant by the word “call.”
That brings me to the question I cannot answer.
No one knows the secret counsel of God. It is not for us to know who is called and why.
I cannot tell you why some soil is rich and deep and why some is rocky.
I cannot tell you why some men are born weeds and some wheat.
I cannot tell you why some for whom we pray—and many whom we love, our own children sometimes—seem to die in their sins, while others whom we have never met are converted, die in peace, and go to Abraham’s bosom.
However, I can tell you that no grain of wheat ever became a weed. No good fish was ever left to rot.
No harsh noonday sun ever wilted a branch planted in the Lord.
All of them—which means each one of you—are like treasure in the kingdom of heaven.
One day—at the close of the age—the householder, Jesus Christ Himself, will bring you out, old and new, last and first, and present you to His Father.
Preached on July 26, 2026, by the Rev. Jake Dell at First Congregational Church of Woodbury, Connecticut.
