Immanuel Lutheran Church, Mt. Olive, Illinois July 19, 2026
Resident Evil
Matthew 13.24-43
Introduction
The lessons we read each Sunday come from a long Christian tradition. The lessons are divided into seasons. Advent is the season of the coming of Christ. Christmas is the season of the birth of Christ. Epiphany is the season of the realization of Christ as the Son of God. Lent is the season of Christ going to the cross and dying. Easter is the season of Christ's resurrection. Pentecost is the season of the church. The first five seasons focus on Jesus bringing salvation to the world and to us. The Pentecost season focuses on the church bringing Jesus and His salvation to the world and the church's enduring faithfully trials, troubles, and persecutions unto the Day of Judgment.
The Bible tells us that Satan attacks the church constantly. We usually think of those attacks coming from the outside as Peter said, “The devil prowls about like a roaring lion...” (1 Peter 5.8). But in the Parable of the Weeds, our text today, we see how Satan works from within the church to try to destroy it.
The Problem of Evil in the Church
What about the Devil's work inside the church? There are two ways that evil works within the church. One way is simply through the weakness and bad behavior of its members. No one in the church is perfect, and sometimes people make the mistake of thinking everyone should be perfect. So someone says something or does something they don’t like. Or perhaps they fail to say something or do something they should. They feel offended and leave the church. I meet people all the time who have spent many years away from the fellowship of the church, and that is almost always what happened. This is one problem that we need to avoid. We are to bear one another’s burdens, as Paul says, and so fulfill the Law of Christ (Galatians 6.2). But Jesus is talking about something else in this particular passage today. Let me reread the explanation that Jesus gives to this parable:
Text: Matthew 13.36-43
36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.” 37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
The Weeds of Satan
Jesus tells us in this parable that there are true believers in the church, and there are hidden unbelievers or hypocrites. They are the “weeds.” They are very destructive precisely because they grow up in the midst of the true believers and are thought to be believers by association. Jesus says they "cause sin." The Greek word is scandalon, and it gives us the English word scandal or scandalize. He also says they cause "lawlessness." They are not true Christians, yet they do things in the name of Christ and of the church that are sinful, and they bring ruin to the church. When you look at the reasons atheists give for not believing in God, they will often say it is because Christians are hypocrites. They love to focus on those weeds that Satan himself has planted in the church to discredit it. They say, "The church has a very checkered history." Yes it does, because it has always been infiltrated by hypocrites.
What kinds of sins do they cause? All Christians are sinners, and we all struggle with temptations. The difference is that in the case of the weeds there is no real repentance, no love of God's forgiveness and no desire to do better. They want the name "Christian," but they aren't committed to Christ. They are really of the world and not of Christ. When I began serving in the church more than forty years ago, only three percent of Americans would have considered themselves "non-religious" or the "Nones." Today that number is thirty percent. Many people try to blame the church for this which is exactly what Satan wants. But I believe the "Nones" were there all the time. Christians in name only has always been a problem in the church as this parable of Jesus shows us.
What We Should Not Do
There are three things we shouldn't do. The first "don't" is don't leave. Don't leave the church because it has problems. As long as the God allows the Devil to cause problems, there will be problems. The Christian church will never rest from it's efforts to stop false doctrine and practice from emerging within its midst. The second "don't" is don't go on a witch hunt. The Christian church is founded on grace. Unfortunately, the Devil teaches some people to take advantage of the grace and misuse it. But we can't stop teaching grace because of this. The third "don't" is don't give in to the resident evil. Many churches today are watering down their doctrine and practice to accomodate the "Christians in name only" to keep them in the pews and to prop up the outward institution of the church. Eventually such churches become an outershell that crumbles.
What We Should Do
There is a saying that you may know: "Don't let perfection become the enemy of the good." It almost seems as though Jesus is saying something like this. The church and the world aren't perfect, but don't give up trying to do good. I once met a retired man who had been the mayor of a small town. I asked him how he liked his job as mayor. "Well," he sighed, "the problem with a job like that is... you have to work with people." He then went on to quote this verse from Romans 12.18 "If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." Basically he was saying that in an imperfect world, you just have to do your best.
Indeed the Bible does teach us that we should always work for the good even in an imperfect world and an imperfect church. St. Paul also said in Romans, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (12.12). Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5.16). Solomon said, "He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who observes the clouds will not reap" (Ecclesiastes 11.4). It is true that we shouldn't expect perfection in this world in which the Devil is still at work, and we do have to keep working for the good.
However, this is not all. Remember how the parable ends. The farmer told the servants not to tear the field up trying to remove every weed. He told them to wait until the harvest, and then separate the wheat from the weeds. The Bible indeed teaches us to do good in an imperfect church and world. But it also teaches us not to give up on the perfection of Jesus and the coming divine justice of Judgement Day. The church may not be perfect, but the foundation of the church – Jesus – is perfect. In fact the only way we can do anything that is actually good in this imperfect church and world is to do it in the name of Jesus. The Book of Hebrews reminds us of this assuring us that, "having been perfected, [Jesus] became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him" (5.9).
Conclusion
I'd like to conclude this sermon by asking you to take out your hymnals and turn to hymn number 452, "O Perfect Life of Love." This hymn was written by an Anglican pastor in the 1800s. His father had been an admiral in the British navy. I'm sure that Henry W. Baker was very familiar with the problems and imperfections of the world and church. But his answer to that was to focus on Jesus. We have four of his hymns in our hymnal besides this one: "Of the Father's Love Begotten," "The King of Love My Shepherd Is," and "O God of Love, O King of Peace."
This particular hymn was written for Good Friday. Look at stanzas six and seven: "In every time of need, Before the judgment throne, Thy work, O Lamb of God, I'll plead, They merits, not mine own. Yet work, O Lord in me, As Thou for me hast wrought; And let my love the answer be, To grace Thy love has brought." In the midst of resident evil and imperfection, Christ is our perfection and the author of all that is good. Cling to Him, and look forward to Judgment Day, when the struggle against evil will be done.
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