We are in week two of this brand new series that we kicked off called growing season. And basically the goal of this series is to help you to help us plant a faith that survives that continues to grow and deepen and produce something produce some kind of fruit. Because the reality is that there's a lot of people that want spiritual growth that want an understanding of God but don't really understand what the process of spiritual growth look like. And so a lot of us, myself included, has felt this tension before that, I want to grow spiritually, but I keep feeling stuck or why do I keep struggling with the same things over and over again. Or why does my faith feel like so full and awesome in some seasons but just dry and dark in other seasons.

And so we've been looking at Matthew 13, we started last week, and learning how to like cultivate these seasons of growth in our lives. , and last week we looked at one of my favorite parables, which is the parable of the sewer. And we talked about kind of the outcome of a seed.

And this idea of the seed being how Jesus is speaking to you. Do you know that Jesus is speaking to you. He's trying to get your attention. Whether it be through somebody else, through the word, through through a prayer that you say, whatever it is, Jesus is trying to get your attention.

And our question last week is how are we receiving that. What is the condition of our soil. Do we have ears to hear what Jesus is trying to speak to us. Now, this week, we're going to continue in Matthew chapter 13. And what we're going to see is this same kind of agricultural parable and they're going to talk about how this seed actually grows.

So, we're just going to dive right in here. I promise we'll we'll get to the the the application and the good stuff here. But are you guys ready to dig into God's word this morning.

>> All right. So, we're going to flip over to Matthew chapter 13. It's on page 839.

If you are new or checking us out or newish, we I just want to say we open these every week unapologetically. Every week, we find the answers, the way of life, how we're supposed to be living and glorifying God. All starts here in the word of God. And so, if you don't have one of these, take this home with you.

It is our gift to you. It's just my prayer that you would open it so much that it starts falling apart. , and so, , in this, , story, we're kind of continuing. So, if you follow the numbers down to, , verse 24, that's where we'll be.

And it says this, Jesus told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who swed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and swed weeds among the wheat and went away.

The same thing happens to my lawn. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner's servant came to him and said, "Sir, didn't you sew good seeds in your field.

Where did all these weeds come from. " That's what I'm saying, right. , an enemy did this, he replied. The servants asked him, do you want us to go and pull them up. No, he answered.

Because while you're pulling up the weeds, you may uproot the weeds with them. Let them both grow together until harvest. At that time, I will tell the harvesters, first collect the weed, the weeds and tie them up into bundles to be burned.

Then gather the wheat and bring them into my barn. Okay, so let's pause here for a second. This is what scripture defines as a parable.

It starts out saying, "Jesus told them another parable. " Last week I talked about what a parable is, but if you missed it, a parable is a literal truth that illustrates a spiritual one. It's an illustration. It's similar to what a lot of pastors will give and they'll say, "Well, it's like and it's to bring us into this deeper understanding by something that we can tangibly see.

And the thing that I shared last week that makes Matthew 13 really unique and really special is that usually when Jesus te tells a parable, he'll tell the parable and kind of just mic drop and kind of just leave you to figure it out. But what's cool about Matthew 13 is Jesus gives us a behindthecenes look like we're seeing the making of a movie. And so he gives us that. If you follow the numbers down to verse 36, it says the parable of the weeds explained. So let's look at that together in in case we didn't catch it the first time, he's going to explain it to us.

Don't you love when God explains something to you. Then he he left the crowd and went into the house and his disciples came to him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field. " So now he's in a much more intimate setting.

Okay, that's a good thing to note here. He answered, "The one who swed good seed is the son of man. The field is the world, and the good seeds stand for the people of the kingdom.

The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sews them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. As the weeds are pulled up and bundled into the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of the kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.

They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and nashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like sons in the kingdom of their father. Whoever has ears to hear, lets them hear. Okay, that's the second time now Jesus has given us this. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

And that's again a check on how are we listening to God's word. How are we understanding. And if I still lost you in that illustration or in both of those readings, here's visual. Who are my visual learners. By the way, I am a visual person.

I need to have something so obvious, even if it's kind of clip arty. So here's what's going on in this parable. You have the sewer.

The swer represents the son of man that is Jesus. He's talking about himself in the third in the third person here. Then you have the wheat.

The wheat represent the people of the kingdom. Those who have found and following Jesus who are understanding that Jesus is king, that Jesus is Messiah. And then he goes on to say there are weeds. Weeds represent the evil one and they're swed by the evil one.

And then harvest represents this idea of the end of the age, the weed and the wheat being separated. >> I still think that maybe there's one or two people that are completely zoning out and lost. So, let me give you my own parable.

When I was a part of a ministry back in the day that did concerts for metal and punk bands, okay, no joke, we would host them in a church and these bands would come in and they were very much like the weeds among the wheat. Was like a whole bunch of, you know, , non-Christians, non-saved people, which we wanted there and we wanted to welcome there, but they were among the weeds. And, , they weren't only, , they weren't only weeds, but they were also smoking the weeds, too.

, if you if you know what I'm saying. And so, , our custodian, bless his heart, , had been planting these beautiful annuals all over our church. And within these annuals, , he started to notice there was a very popular plant, I mean, out of these annuals, next to the annuals, >> and we had to wait until they were almost grown for him to separate the weed from the actual plants. Okay, sure story. And then I asked him, I was like, "So, what did you end up doing with everything that you picked.

" And he was like, "I brought it to a higher power. " And so, take that with I was like, "That's either going to fly over somebody's head or my point is this. In all of this, in all of this, there is a black and white picture of weeds and wheat. There is a very clear distinction and separation between these two things that Jesus is trying to give us. And what prompts me every time I read this is am I in the category of the weeds or am I in the category of the wheat.

And so that's what I want to talk about because as we grow in our relationship with Christ, we should be growing into this idea of wheat. So the big question is how do we know if we're weeds or wheat. Now before I go any further, this is a really important distinction. Okay, when you are looking at this question, this question is for you.

Okay, it is for you. We sometimes and people that have grown up in the church, I'm talking to you. We sometimes have the tendency to almost play judge.

And so we'll go to a celebration of life or a funeral and we'll have like this scale in our head about whether or not we think they were part of the weeds or part of the wheat. You know what I'm saying. Like at the end of their life, they either went to one or these two. That's not what this is.

When we ask this question, what this should do inside of us is to give us a heart check of accountability. Where am I at right now. And for you Christian, our job is not to judge those who are at the end of their life in that way. But it is our responsibility to help hold somebody accountable.

Accountability is different than judgment. Accountability brings somebody closer to Christ by speaking the truth in love. Okay, we all on the same page so far.

>> All right. So, , what this parable kind of talks about first, if you look at verse 29, is it prompts this question in us to know if we are weeds or wheat. And it's, are we moving towards maturity.

And when I say that, what I mean is we need to be in a place where we're progressing in our relationship with Christ, not being perfect. None of us on this side of eternity are going to be perfect. But we should be moving in such a way where we're trying to progress and mature.

Look at verse 29 again. Jesus asked them if he if he wants or the servants asked Jesus, "Do you want us to uproot these weeds among the wheat. " And Jesus says no. And my response is, "Can these guys come over to my house. Cuz I got a lot of them.

But Jesus says no. And why does he say no. Do you see it there. While they were pulling while you're pulling up the re the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. And let me tell you why that is so important.

Because between the weeds that were back in Bible times and the wheat as they matured, I wish I could show you like a video of them growing up. But you couldn't actually visually tell the difference until they were mature. Here, let me show you a picture. This is on this side some of the common weed weeds that you would see. And this is the weed.

Do you see how they somewhat look similar. The coloring of the pictures are a little bit different, but they have this there's this idea here where you couldn't actually tell these two things apart by the human eye until they were in full maturity. I'm going to say that again. Until they were in full maturity, you couldn't tell the difference.

And so for us, >> that's really good. >> What that what that prompts us to ask is, can people see the difference that Jesus makes in us. Think about it like this. We're at an elementary school right now.

And I I hope or I'm just going to assume if you're not in this camp, we we got to talk after, but I'm assuming you all made it through elementary school. You all made it through this whole grades 1 through five thing. And and all of you moved on to something else whether it was middle school or whatever it was, right. And the same is true about your relationship with Christ.

Yes, there is an elementary teaching for us that is so important that God loves us, that Jesus died for us, that the Holy Spirit lives with us. These are all these important truths of elementary teaching. But did you know that God's hope for you is to move beyond the elementary school teaching and to be a teacher of this word. Look at how Hebrews says it.

He says, "It's hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. " In other words, you don't have ears to hear. Is what this author is saying. Says, "In fact, though, by the time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. " By the way, if you feel convicted by that, I've had to have the elementary truths of God's word spoken to me again.

It's not an uncommon thing. But then he says, "You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Anybody else feel like they're wanting to do something after that verse. This one always just kind of prompts some kind of action in me because I'm reading this and I'm like, "Yeah, I don't want to be in the elementary school teaching of this anymore. There is so much more to this book. There is so much more to faith that Jesus wants you to live into.

And if you miss that because you're just learning the elementary school teachings over and over again, then you're missing some of the awesome things that God wants to do in and through you. Now, hear me when I say this because some of you, I know it. I know it that some of you hear this verse and you think, "That's great. I don't think I'm ever going to move beyond the elementary school teaching.

I don't think I'm ever going to be able to understand more than I understand. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to teach. Which is a lie that you now believe. All of us are called to bring God's word out in an area of teaching. Now, all of us are not gifted as a teacher, but teaching in different venues looks different.

So for some of you, you can be and your full maturity in Christ. You could be teaching the book of John in the original Greek. Congratulations.

You're you know more than I do. I I can't do that. That's not where I've been called to teach. Some of you have been called to teach in the area of kids ministry. Like you can't articulate your faith as much to an an adult, but man, that elementary school teaching, you're really good at teaching it, okay.

Or maybe for some of you it could be just all kinds of different things. You see, our goal is to move beyond this elementary school teaching. We all have that same starting point.

Similar to all of us having elementary school, we all have or get the opportunity to have this starting point of finding Jesus. And then we all have this same goal of of helping people find and follow Jesus, of going and making disciples. But that career, that area where we teach, that is unique to each and every one of us. So, like I said, some of you might be teaching how to do budgets to the glory of God.

Some of you guys, and that's awesome. Some of you guys might be gifted in teaching and being an empathetic voice to listen to couples that are in crisis in their marriage. You see, all of us move towards this maturity in a different way. Dallas Willard says it like this. Disciplehip is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.

And so if Jesus were walking in your shoes and gave you all of these gifts and unique experiences and has molded your individual shape, what does maturity look like. Because when we walk into this mature life that Christ has, we start to set ourselves apart from the elementary school teaching and carry it to completion. And we also in that process start to set ourselves apart from sin. And that's our second question. Are you setting your part setting yourself apart from sin.

Now, what I want to say here is this is direction, not sinlessness. Again, we're never going to get to perfection. We're never going to get to lives without sin. We've all sinned and follow fallen short of the glory of God. That is your pastor, too.

That is everybody in this room. We're all going to do it. But the direction that we're walking in is the direction away from sin, not towards it.

Now, as we go back to this verse, I want to be very careful here because it can be very easy with what we're talking about here to take this out of context. And I want to be very careful to handle the context correctly here. So, when Jesus is talking about the end of the age, okay, he's talking about the literal end, okay.

And we're not fully there yet, okay. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in week four because e every time somebody talks about the end of the world, you know, everybody's ears perk up and it's like, , we're in it. And we we all have our own kind of ideas here, right. And that is what Jesus is talking about. He's talking about the end of the age here.

And he starts kind of bringing the parables in that direction as we move towards Matthew 13. But the age that we are in right now is not necessarily the end times, but we are living in something called the messianic times. The messianic age is what it's called. I'll nerd out about this in week four of the series, but the idea in both ages, in the end of the age, and in the messianic age that we're in now, is this, that sin is the separation between us and God. And in order for us to be separated fully from that sin is to walk into and walk towards a relationship with Jesus.

So look at verse 30. In verse 30 as Jesus tells this parable, he says no to them, you know, harvesting and picking out the weeds. And he says until harvest, that is the end of the age. Until the end of the age we will grow together. So that means for us we are as Christ followers growing apart separating ourselves apart as weeds and wheat but we are also growing at the same time.

Did I lose any of you. Let me let me just say it like this. It's like if you're trying to diet while you're at a buffet. Okay, that's what this looks like is there's two things that are trying to happen that are kind of at odds with each other. Okay, and so if I were to give a visual illustration, this is like, by the way, you're going to hear this if you hang around with destination long enough, you're going to hear me say this one again cuz I love this this visual of kind of what our lives look like walking towards Jesus.

Imagine on this side this side of the stage represents being in the weeds being ultimately at the end of my days in hell and in with the enemy and over here towards the direction of the cross is the loving arms of Jesus. Now, as we are here on this earth, we get to kind of pick a course of direction a little bit with our free will. And some of us, what we'll do is we will have our eyes focused on Jesus, but all of our actions are walking in a different direction. For some of us, all of it is just pointed this way. And for some of us, we're almost pingponging going back and forth.

And so we'll walk towards Jesus and then walk away and then walk towards and walk away and then get really sore feet. Okay, that's my life. , but the point is is we're we're walking in one direction and what is that direction for you.

What Jesus is saying here is that we're growing together, but our aim is to be walking in the direction that at the end of our lives or at the end of the age, we are being welcomed home to the loving arms of Jesus where he says, "Well done, good and faithful servant. >> And sometimes, I didn't have this in the message, but man, I feel like this is for someone, so I'm going to go there. Sometimes, just so you know, the spiritual warfare that happens in your life is that the enemy will keep you not hitting rock bottom, but close enough to rock bottom where he can keep you within arms distance.

That is not full life. That is not life away from the enemy. Life away from the enemy is back towards fully running towards Jesus. And so the last question that I have for you is, are you moving towards Jesus. Are you taking that next step.

Let's look at verse 41 again. I'm actually going to read it. So look at verse 41 with me.

The son of man will send out his angels and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will be thrown into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and nashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like sons in the kingdom of their father.

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. So again, this establishes that that black and white kind of thinking that you are either weeds or weed. At the end of the age, you are either in the furnace with nashing of teeth or you're shining like the suns in the kingdom of heaven. The good news for where we are now, imagebearers of God. The good news for where we are is Jesus can turn the weeds into wheat in our lives.

>> That all it takes is just steps towards Jesus, not away from Jesus. I want you to think about it like this. , let me give you one more visual. , who in here has been into a split level house before.

Split level house. I'm just making sure. Like literally this should be everybody cuz this is like half of Minnesota's houses. Let's just be honest, right.

Who lives in a split level house. See what I mean. So, if you are the one who didn't raise your hand, split level house.

You walk in and what. You can either go up the stairs or down the stairs, right. I grew up in one of these.

I want you to imagine for a second, even if you have to close your eyes to visualize this, I want you to imagine for a second that you walk into an entryway and your goal is to take the least amount of stairs as possible. And the stairs going down is two steps. That's all it takes to get to the basement.

But the stairs to get up are they look like they're never ending. They look like they just continue on to the clouds to kind of like a stairway to heaven. Okay, I had to work it in.

, I want you to imagine that for a second, okay. Because what ends up happening to a lot of people is this is where they get stuck with their faith. They see the easy path.

They see the path with the least amount of steps. And what we see as a culture is we see all of these successes. We see all of the awards, all of the victories, all of the good stuff all over social media, but we don't see the steps that it took to get there.

There is steps, there is training, there's all of these things that Olympic athletes and movie stars and musicians and all of these people that we admire here on earth have done in order to take steps to where they are. And the same thing is true about your relationship with Jesus >> that it is so easy to take the path of least resistance to take the path downward because it seems like less work. Okay, but Jesus has a next step for each of us.

And what is yours. Maybe your next step is just to simply start the relationship with Jesus. Maybe you've never taken that step because it's looked too intimidating or because you don't feel good enough. But let me tell you that Jesus walks that staircase with you. This is good news.

Maybe for you, your next step is as simple of that as this. Meet someone after church today. Meet someone new. Find a new friend.

Maybe you're surrounded by co-workers that just constantly are bringing you down and you need some people in your life that are going to help bring you up bring you up to the next step. Maybe it's to ask for a resource or understanding or listen to messages when you're not here. Here's here's here's a next step for somebody in this room.

Maybe your next step is baptism. We got a baptism service coming up. And so maybe your next step is just to come up and proclaim your faith in in front of the best church audience, right. The best church audience that is going to be supportive of you taking your next step. The way that we say it at Destination is that everybody has a next step.

Myself included. All of us have a next step. And here's what I want you to hear in your next step.

Here's what I want you to get actually out of this message. What I don't want you to leave here with is, man, if I screw up, if I don't grow, if I don't clear my life completely of sin, I'm going to end up in hell. Partly, we can we can talk about that again week four.

But here's what I do want you to get from today. That God made it possible through his son Jesus. That we get to progress in maturity, that we get to walk away from the enemy and be forgiven of our sin, >> that we get grace, that we get wisdom for every step that we take. Jesus can turn weeds into wheat.

So hear this destination. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you. He doesn't want to see anyone be thrown into that fire. Just because he's giving this parable doesn't mean that it doesn't break his heart.

And so please, if you're not taking steps towards Jesus, Jesus loves you and he wants you on this side on the staircase that's moving upwards. And don't miss that opportunity. It will quite literally, and I am a walking, breathing testimony of this. It will quite literally change your life. >> So, I want to invite you into this understanding.

So, , would you just like bow your heads and close your eyes here for a second just for a moment of reflection. I'm going to invite the worship team to come up. We do this every week here at Destination. It's not meant to be like this weird moment where something's going to happen or whatever, but it's just meant to be a moment between you and God. A moment where you think about what is your next step.

And so what is it. What is your next step. I'm going to just share with you this as your pastor. This is my prayer for each and everyone of you in this room. For everybody who calls destination their home, that at the end of their lives when it is their celebration of life that everybody is sitting out there and they don't need to be judgmental because there is not a shred of doubt where you are going because of how much you love Jesus and how much Jesus loves you.

And if you're here today and you know you haven't been walking in that direction, I just want to assure you I've been there. I've been on the side that hasn't been walking fully in the the fullness of Jesus. And I want to invite you if you're here today and you just need to start a relationship with Jesus, would you just do one thing for me.

Would you just raise your hand so I can pray for you today. You want to start a relationship with Jesus. For the rest of us, our aim is to move towards this maturity in Christ.

So, let me pray for each and every one of you in here. God, help us to be like the wheat. Help us to produce and continue to grow.

That God as we grow among the weeds of the world, help us to help others turn into wheat and to find freedom in your name. Help us to find freedom in your name. God, help us to to move forward in maturity to take the next step, whatever that is in our faith.

Help us to be serious about growing. Jesus, we love you and we worship you for your love for us. It's in Jesus name we pray. >> Would you stand as we close in worship.