There's an old saying that goes “Whenever the Lord builds a church, the devil builds a chapel next door.” That means that wherever God's Word is preached, the devil will be right there with a false word. Jesus tells us this in the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Christ has planted His people all over the world through His Word and the devil is right there to plant false believers, his evil children. Just look around. Look at all the religions out there. Surrounding the Christian church are Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and pagans and atheists (almost like their own religion!) and so many more, many of whom actively persecute and attack Christ's church. But then if you look at Christianity, you see so many denomiations: Lutherans and Roman Catholics and Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Pentecsostals, Non-denominationals and on and on. And you could pick any one of those groups and see that they are further subdivided. Just think of all the churches claiming the name Lutheran: the ELCA, LCMS, ELS, WELS, and tons more. The world is full of religions and denominations all clamoring for attention, most thinking they're right and others are wrong. It's a huge mess that could easily lead one to throw up their hands in despair and say, “Why bother!” And that's exactly what the devil wants you to do. He wants you to see all these different churches and religions and figure they're probably just all the same and it's not worth worrying about.
But if that were true, Jesus wouldn't have told us this parable! Just think. Farmers are always looking for the next best fertilizer that will help the crops grow while cutting down the number of weeds that grow up. Weeds are bad. They mess up the crops. They can ruin the harvest. So they try to prevent them. But here comes the devil sowing weeds to ruin the Lord's kingdom if He can. But He can't. Jesus tells us this parable to rescue us from despair. He wants us to be aware that where His Word is preached, it will be surrounded by false teachers and false religions and false believers, the children of the devil. The true sons of the kingdom, Christians, are sown by the Lord Himself who has shed His blood for sinners. Jesus knows that left to ourselves we'd just be confused and give it all up. So He comes to save us from our sins and make us His own people. You were sown in His field, made a part of His church when you were baptized. There you were planted as a son of Christ's kingdom and made His own. Now the Lord teaches us this parable to rescue us form the devil's lies and the danger of the weeds around us that want us to trust in something other than Jesus Christ.
St. Paul says to the Corinthians who had all kinds of divisions and splits in their church, that there MUST be divisions so that we can tell right from wrong, those who have God's Word and those who don't. So how do you identify the Christian church? How do you tell which is the wheat and what are the weeds? Simply apply this test: Jesus sent His apostles out to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name. Is the preaching of a church about Christ dying and rising for sinners? Or is it focused on something else. Does the teaching of the church point us to Christ or to ourselves. Are Christ's gifts of Baptism, Absolution and Holy Communion the big deal or is it something else? Is God's Word of Law and Gospel properly distinguished and proclaimed? Or is the Bible made into whatever people want it to be? The center of the Christian faith is Christ crucified for sinners and sinners justified through faith in Jesus Christ. If He is not the center, if His gifts aren't faithfully given, then whatever is going on is the devil's work. It is the enemy sowing bad weeds.
Jesus tells us this parable so we don't get all worked up over these devil weeds all around us, so that we don't look at our little church and despair that we're surrounded by false teaching in the world. But He also tells us the parable so that we don't become some kinds of zealots trying to go and purge the world of what is false. “Master, do you want us to go and pull up the weeds?” “No! You'll pull up the wheat too. Let the angels sort it out on the last day.” Muslims do this. They think they have to physically destroy those who will not convert. The church of Jesus has no such command. Rather we are to bear patiently with confessing the faith in this world and life until the Lord takes care of it on the Last Day. On the other hand, we are not to ignore that there WILL be a Last Day. The world loves to skip along, saying that all religions are the same, all faiths lead to the same place. We confess, from Jesus' own teaching, that on the Last Day, those who denied Him and taught their false religions and denied His Word will be taken away and removed from being around God's holy flock. So on the one hand, don't think it's your job to take down the enemy weeds. On the other hand, don't deny that there will come a day when those enemies will be taken care of.
So how then do we live? How SHOULD we react to these weeds all around us, to false teaching and all these denominations and religions. We should pray like Abraham. He knew His nephew Lot would be doomed if the Lord destroyed Sodom so He prayed the Lord to spare that wicked city even if He only found a few righteous living in it. Rather than rejoice in the destruction that the Lord was going to bring on Sodom, Abraham kept praying that the Lord wouldn't do it for even a few righteous people. We can look around the world and hope that the Lord will destroy those places where wicked and false religions run rampant but then what would happen to our brothers and sisters in Christ? We should pray for those places that the Lord would preserve His church and keep it from being torn apart, either by the enemy or by over zealous Christians. In short, as Christians, the Lord would have us praying for this world, putting up with those around us who hate us, and having our trust and hope in the Lord to make all things right when He comes again, and to preserve us in the true and pure faith until that Day. That's also what His parable is teaching us: to trust not in our own ability to get rid of evil but that He will do it while granting us grace to distinguish the false from the true.
Christ died and rose for sinners and sent His preachers into the world to deliver that Good News. Wherever that Good News is preached you can be sure the devil will be running alongside to try to establish some teaching that takes people away from Christ and His salvation. Jesus tells us this parable of the weeds and the wheat to protect us from the despair the devil would try to bring by confusing everything and ruining what Christ has done. He teaches us so that we might identify His true church and Word which rescue us from the devil. He teaches us so that we long for the Last Day when He removes all things which are against us and establishes His kingdom of righteousness and peace forever. You, dear Christians, are the sons of the kingdom. And when our Lord comes again, He promises to take away all of your enemies and you will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father forever. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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