Consult God before judging
Psalm 51: 17
17The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit; you will not reject a humble and repentant heart.
Brethren, this small verse serves us very well as an introduction to today’s topic. We can clearly read that God will not reject a REPENTED heart! Well, for the heart to be repentant, there must have been a sin, because it is not possible to repent of something that has not been practiced.
With that in mind, let’s reflect today on the need to “Consult God before judging.”
In the words of Jesus: “Ask when to separate the wheat from the chaff”.
Matthew 13: 24-30
Weeds among the Wheat
24 Jesus then told them this story:
The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a farmer scattered good seed in a field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left.
26 When the plants came up and began to ripen, the farmer’s servants could see the weeds. 27 The servants came and asked, “Sir, didn’t you scatter good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?”
28 “An enemy did this,” he replied.
His servants then asked, “Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?”
29 “No!” he answered. “You might also pull up the wheat. 30 Leave the weeds alone until harvest time. Then I’ll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I’ll have them store the wheat in my barn.”
Jesus Explains the Story about the Weeds
36 After Jesus left the crowd and went inside,[a] his disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the story about the weeds in the wheat field.”
37 Jesus answered:
The one who scattered the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seeds are the people who belong to the kingdom. The weed seeds are those who belong to the evil one, 39 and the one who scattered them is the devil. The harvest is the end of time, and angels are the ones who bring in the harvest.
40 Weeds are gathered and burned. That’s how it will be at the end of time. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom everyone who does wrong or causes others to sin. 42 Then he will throw them into a flaming furnace, where people will cry and grit their teeth in pain. 43 But everyone who has done right will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom. If you have ears, pay attention!
Our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ, taught his followers many things through parables. Here we read Jesus comparing the Kingdom of God to a wheat crop, which was very common at that time. Nowadays, although we have many wheat fields practically all over the world, we are not, all of us, farmers (like Franz) and this comparison may have been far from our understanding. Jesus himself explained this parable only to his disciples. Let’s reflect a little more, remembering that we read as an introduction that “God will not reject a REPENTED heart”.
(photo of the chaff and wheat together)
Reading the parable carefully, we notice that the employees identified that among the wheat there was the tares. This is something that we must pay attention to: we must know that, mixed with what is good, there can be what is not good. We must be careful to identify the aspects that are not pleasing to God. If employees weren’t paying attention, monitoring the plantation; if they were so confident about the good seeds they planted that they could relax and simply wait for the harvest, they wouldn’t have identified the good seeds.
Brethren, we must not let our confidence be an excuse for not being attentive and watching! It is necessary to evaluate what we allow in our life. Attentive to what we watch, what we hear and even our conversations. We need to know that in the midst of wheat planted with good seed, the enemy tries to put the tares together.
But what to do when we identify what is bad? Again, reading carefully, we see that the employees didn’t take action on their own. They knew what they could do, as they were probably experienced farmers, as they identified the tares among the unripe wheat. What they did when they identified the harm was to consult the owner of the plantation to find out what he would like to see done.
So we must also do: consult God about what He wants us to do. We must know that, no matter how experienced we are, no matter how much we study the word of God, we are still limited and do not know the purposes and even less the plans of God. Humility to pray and submit to God’s answer. So did the servants in this parable. By the judgment of the farmers they would have done a job to remove the tares from the wheat, but the owner did not want to risk losing some wheat in the process.
God doesn’t want to risk losing a saved life in the process of prematurely eliminating an unsaved one! God wants us to have patience and trust in God.
When we read Jesus’ explanation, it seems clear to us what to do: even knowing that there is something bad in a situation or in a person, we must tolerate it. However, this understanding is not complete, as we have seen, this happened as a response from the owner to the employees on this occasion, that is, this would be a possible answer from God to our prayers on a given case. But this answer is not always the same.
Attention my brothers, so that we are not confronted and left unanswered. Let’s be aware that Jesus’ lesson today is not about watching without taking action. The lesson is about consulting God before acting! I say this because in the Bible there are stories about other answers from God that can be used to confuse us.
Passages like Matthew 18: 17, where Jesus says to treat the sinner “…like a Gentile or a tax collector.” or 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, where Paul says “… cast this immoral man out of your midst.” they are examples of different answers to prayers, they do not represent contradictions to the word of God.
You have to trust that God is in control of everything. If in our church or in our circle of friends or family there is someone who looks like a “tares” as in the parable, it is necessary to consult God. We need to be attentive, know how to identify, but act only with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We do not know if this person is close to us for him to hear the word of God and repent.
Remembering that God will not reject a humble and repentant heart.
Let us pray:
Lord God our omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent Father, praise the Lord for your words. Allow Father, this teaching to be understood and imprinted in our spirit. Give us, Lord, a humble heart, repentant and trusting in your care! By the name of Jesus, amen!