I gotta tell you, at some level, preaching these parables from Matthew 13 has been quite a chore for me.  As it would turn out, I have a bit of a black thumb.  It started out when I was in college.  My mom gave me a fern to sit outside of my front door of my very first apartment in Atlanta.  That thing withered away until the property manager asked me to throw it away. 

  So, I’m a little out of my depth when it comes to talking about these particular parables.  We’ve been talking about parables all summer long and I’ve said a lot about what they are and how they work in the broader Gospels but I do want to mention this.  At core, parables are something by way of a comparison.  A parable means “a comparing together” or “laying one thing aside from the other.”

  Jesus made liberal use of parables, telling 40 during the course of His ministry.  Parables were used because they’re accessible and easy to understand.  Jesus took the stuff of everyday life and used them in order to advance His Kingdom.  Parables were ways of engaging entire crowds.  Anytime you see a master story teller, and you see how captivated an audience can be, it is staggering awareness.  I imagine how winsome Jesus was and how His ability to tell parables made it such that His sheep would understand.  And this particular parable deals with some of the deepest, potentially scariest stuff in the entire Bible.

  Years ago, I’d made friends with our local UPS driver.  Friends, maybe just more like good acquaintances.  We’d gotten to know each other because Joel was the delivery driver both for our home and for the church I was serving at the time, First Presbyterian over in Mount Holly.  Well, it was nearing Christmas time and, as such, I’d been seeing a lot of Joel, delivering stuff to my house for Christmas and the church for various reasons.  Well, that particular year we had the tragedy in New Towne.  As news of the massacre reached my ears, Joel arrived with a package.  I don’t remember how, maybe he saw the sadness of my face, but we talked for a bit about what was going on.  In light of the Christmas season, we both prayed that “Jesus would come, and that right quickly.”  It was a poignant scene for me that day as we wept together briefly in the midst of our work days. 

  It’s events like that massacre or the one recently in Uvalde that give us pause.  A chill goes down our spine as anger rises up in us.  “Who is in charge of this place” we wonder.  And, if we’re honest, we have to grapple with the toughest question of all – “If we worship a Good God, why is there evil in this world.”  School shootings, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, these are the kinds of tragic events which thrust the spotlight on the fact that this world is still quite broken in some very real ways.   

  One of the age-old questions has do with the problem of evil. Why is there evil in the world? People wonder where did it come from and why doesn’t God do something about it?

  This question grows even more serious now that Jesus has come.  Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God had arrived in His person.  So, now the question becomes, if the kingdom has already come, and Jesus is the King, then why is there still so much evil in the world?  Why didn’t Jesus take care of it the first time He came?

Jesus has just told the parable of the sower to explain why there are different responses to the gospel.  Now He tells the parable of the weeds to explain why there is still evil in the world even though the King has already come.  How can there be evil the world when God’s kingdom has come?  That’s the question we are going to be looking at this morning as we study this parable together.

  First, Jesus tells the parable of the weeds.  The story itself is very simple.  Wheat and weeds are sown together in a field.  Pulling up the weeds right now would harm the wheat.  And so, the best strategy is to let them both grow together until the harvest and wait until then to separate them.  So, let’s take a closer look at the story together.