1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

We are all vaguely aware that we live in a wealthy nation and enjoy a high standard of living. If the annual income for your household averages $20,000 per person, your income is in the top five percent worldwide. If it averages $30,000 per person, you’re in the top one percent. The “average” annual income per person in the world is about $10,000, but half of all the people in the world make less than $1300 per year.

We are vaguely aware of all this, because we don’t feel so rich. Compared to other people we know or see on TV, we seem to have less. Many of us have too much debt. There is always something more we could buy, something nicer, bigger, just beyond reach. Contentment is an elusive goal. Advertisers do their best to make sure you never achieve it. In a country where people have a relatively high income and a lot of stuff, money easily becomes an obsession.

Greed, the excessive desire for money and possessions, the sin that essentially replaces God with things, is a hard sin to identify in ourselves because it involves an attitude more than an activity. It is not the same thing as being wealthy. Some rich people are very generous. They think about their wealth very little. Some poor people are consumed with envy for the lifestyle of the wealthy. They would never share no matter how much they had. They feel driven to accumulate all they can.

Perhaps a simple test for greed is this: Does some non-necessity ever affect your happiness negatively–either because you can’t afford it or you are afraid of losing it? Then it is safe to say we have been touched by greed.

Paul doesn’t use the word greed, but that is the sin he has in mind when he warns Timothy about the dangers of loving money. It perverts religion. It makes some people think that “godliness is a means to financial gain” (1 Timothy 6:5). You hear them preaching on TV.

It leads some to leave their faith behind and fills their lives with all kinds of grief. But there is an alternative way to live. “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). Those who have godliness and contentment are the real rich people. They know the grace of God that takes care of every need of body and soul. They don’t live their lives with a constant sense that something is missing, that there is a hole in their lives that needs to be filled.

The love of money may be a root of all kinds of evil. But God’s love for us in Christ is a treasure trove that never fails to satisfy. It fills our hearts with his grace. It fills our faith with the joy of forgiveness and life that have no end.

Matthew 13:30 “Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First gather the weeds and tie them together in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”

The harvest, Jesus tells us, is the “end of the age.” It is the end of this last era of human history in which we now live. At that time Jesus comes with his angels for judgment.

Those angels, Jesus says, “will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Our Lord doesn’t warn us about the fires of hell out of cruelty, but concern. There has to be some place for those who will not trust him and do not like him. You might think that when he returns people will change their minds. They won’t any longer deny that he exists, because they will see him face to face. They will no longer be able to deny that the things he did and taught are true.

But this is not the same thing as conversion. This is not the same thing as coming to trust and love him. Let’s say that two men who don’t like each other and disagree about something decide to settle it with a fight. One man wins the fight. The other man is forced to give in. That does not mean he all of a sudden feels all warm and fuzzy about the winner. He might even hate him more.

At the end, Jesus will win the battle with those who have opposed him. They will be forced to admit the reality that Jesus was right about everything all along. But they won’t like it. They may hate him more in eternity than they did in their earthly life.

It is not a lack of compassion that leads us to conclude heaven is not the place for such people. As Jesus’ everlasting opponents they would ruin it. There is only one place left for them, banished and exiled from the Lord and Savior they don’t like and don’t want anyway. C.S. Lewis once observed that the gates of hell are locked from the inside.

But believing, trusting souls who followed Jesus through the dangers of earthly life are gathered home. “Gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.” “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (vs. 43). Much of what waits for us in heaven is beyond our comprehension now, but Jesus’ words suggest two things. First, there is glory. We will shine like the sun. We will be transformed into higher, better, perfected versions of ourselves.

Second, this all happens “in the kingdom of their Father.” Not just “the” Father. Not Just “Jesus’’” Father. “Their” Father. “Our Father.” In heaven we find love in the home of the Father who made us, and then made us his own by faith. We will be loved, treasured, and protected in the kingdom that has no end. Unbelievers may be judged, but believers are gathered home in Jesus’ picture of our heavenly future.

Matthew 13:24-25 “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.”

This is one of the few parables Jesus told for which he later gave the interpretation. A little later he told the disciples, “The field is the world” (vs. 38). Even though the parable is about how things work “in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus is not talking about heaven above, or even the church on earth. The field in this case includes the whole planet on which we live.

“The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man (that’s Jesus). The field is the world, and the good seed stand for the sons of the kingdom” (vs. 37-38). If you are a believer, you are a “son of the kingdom.” You have been planted here by Jesus himself. He prepared for this planting by fulfilling God’s law for us, taking our sins on his shoulders, and dying on the cross in our place. When he planted that good news in our hearts, at our baptisms and in the preaching of his word, he made us his sons and daughters by faith. Then we became his good seed, planted in this world.

And he left us here for good reason. You plant wheat because you want to harvest a crop. That crop is more wheat. With Christians, Jesus wants more believers just like the ones he planted. We are here to reproduce ourselves, so to speak.

That’s why the weeds are a problem. “But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared” (vs. 25-26). The enemy, Jesus later tells us, is the devil. The weeds are the “sons of the evil one.” They are the unbelieving. The picture Jesus chooses is an interesting one. It appears that the kind of weed to which he is referring is darnel. It is a plant that looks very much like wheat. It even produces a seed head when mature. But darnel kernels are mildly poisonous. Eating them will make you sick. Just a few mixed with your wheat can ruin a harvest.

So we come to the tension. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?” “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 are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest” (vs. 27-30). Any time you leave weeds in a garden or a field, you endanger the good plants. The weeds compete for water and sunshine and space and nutrients. The plants you want may become weak and even die.

That’s the way it is for us Christians in this world. Our faith and life is endangered by the “weeds.” World-wide, no one dies for their faith more often than Christians do, whether at the hands of those who follow other religions or hostile governments.

Then there is spiritual sickness and death by temptation. Christians are surrounded by people inviting them to throw off their faith. Give up your marriage if you don’t find it fulfilling anymore. Give in to the lure of pornography, drugs or same sex attraction. Make money, or career, or sports, or travel the center of your life. We are surrounded by vast crowds cheering us on as we move farther and farther from the faith. It’s not hard to understand why the owner’s servants ask about the weeds, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”

But the Lord’s answer is, “No.” At the present time they must be tolerated, “because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.” Wheat and darnel look very much alike for much of their growing life. So do many believers and unbelievers. Even though someone may leave us no doubt that he is not a Christian today, do we know what God’s plan is for him in the future?

Nabeel Qureshi came to the United States from Pakistan to go to college and to spread Islam. Once here, he became a Christian evangelist and author leading many more Muslims to Christ. Rosaria Champagne-Butterfield was an atheist, lesbian activist who despised Jesus and those who follow him. Today she is the wife of a man who pastors a Christian congregation and has raised a family with him.

Wheat or weeds: how would you have guessed? We Christians may long for the security of living in a world where we will not be attacked for our faith. Our Lord has different priorities. Now he tolerates the unbelieving in his world. It is their time of grace, their time to repent and believe the good news. Now his people live with danger to their souls. Weeding God’s field, removing the unbeliever by force, is not our job.

Matthew 9:37-38 “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send workers into his harvest field.’”

My church spends almost 20 percent of its annual budget on “evangelism” each year. We will send postcards and brochures, rent space at various events, perhaps take out some ads online or in local publications, give away school supplies and Easter baskets, host a sports camp, and do other things to meet our community. All of it will include giving away information about our faith and our worship times. We will do this even though we know that a very small percentage of the people who receive our information will ever come and visit us, much less choose to make this their church home.

According to surveys done by Lifeway Research, eighty percent of unchurched people would accept an invitation from their churched friends to attend church. More than ninety percent of people who do visit a church for the first time come because someone personally invited them. Obviously a human touch is very important. Direct contact with another person, an invitation to “come and see,” is far more effective at getting people to visit than anything else.

It should not surprise us, then, that Jesus does not say, “the harvest is plentiful but the money are few,” or “the harvest is plentiful but the advertising are few,” or even “the harvest is plentiful but the buildings are few.” These things are all useful, even necessary, but they are not the main thing for getting the work done.

No, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” What Christian mission and ministry needs is people, people who are willing to share the gospel, or at least an invitation to hear it, with someone else. This means pastors and missionaries, of course. But it also includes laymen and women who will get involved, and talk to the people they know, even if all they do is say to a friend, “Why don’t you come to church with me this week?

So if we understand what Christian ministry is, and how it works, we pray, “Send workers, Lord.” Better yet, we pray like Isaiah once did, “Here I am. Send me! Send me!”

Matthew 9:36 “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

The crowds of people that came to Jesus were a mess. They were harassed. Sickness and disease hounded them. They didn’t have decent medical care. They couldn’t even take an Advil or a Tylenol if they were in pain. Many of them were disabled, all of them were overtaxed, and there were no food stamps or social security checks to try to make ends meet.

Instead of bringing them a little comfort, instead of offering them a little relief in God’s grace and promises, their religious leaders just piled on. On top of God’s commandments, which are already more than anyone can keep, they added hundreds of their own rules for holy living. In another place in the gospels Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for tying up heavy burdens and putting them on men’s shoulders, but then they won’t lift a finger to help them carry them.

So here are the crowds before Jesus: dealing with physical pain, struggling to survive, convinced that they are spiritual failures and that their lives are grave disappointments to God. Should it surprise us that some of them may have become skeptical of the old Bible promises, or that many of them just gave up on trying to live a decent, godly life? Should it shock us if some of them jumped at the opportunity for a few moments of pleasure, even sinful ones, or fudged on some of the things God’s law demands? Understand, their situation did not make their sinful choices acceptable, just not a huge surprise.

The priests and Pharisees looked at these crowds with nothing but criticism. In John chapter 7 they complain, “This mob that knows nothing of the law–there is a curse on them” (vs 49). Jesus saw them differently. “He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” He was not okay with their weak faith, their spiritual faults, their selfish choices, their sinful behavior. But he was not so filled with righteous anger that he was ready to deal out death and judgment. He was moved to compassion. He was filled with mercy. He genuinely felt sorry for the people in front of him. On this day it led him to preach and teach, to heal and to pray. On a day not far in the future it would lead him to die in their place on a shameful cross to take away their sins.

People like this are still “the field” in which we work. This is still what Christian ministry looks like. How do the “culture wars” make you feel? We live in the middle of a crowd that now embraces every kind of perversion of God’s good gift of sex. We are more a part of that crowd than we may be able to recognize or care to admit. People no longer know which rest room they should use. Mothers will kill their own offspring before they are born, and children will kill their own parents when they have become old and weak. We hear otherwise intelligent people arguing that all of this is okay, even a matter of basic human rights. All of this can get conservative, Bible-believing Christians stirred up. Sometimes it gets them so stirred up that in personal conversations or comments online they can sound a lot like the priests and Pharisees, “This mob that knows nothing of the law–there is a curse on them.”

If Jesus shows us what Christian ministry looks like (and he does), then the proper reaction to the field in which we have been placed is compassion, “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” That is what the people in our mission field are, sheep without a shepherd. We cannot be okay with their weak or lacking faith, their spiritual faults, their selfish choices, or their sinful behavior any more than we can be okay with our own.

But have compassion. See their spiritual pain and sickness, even if they don’t fully realize it themselves yet. Bring them the medicine of God’s grace, the good news that God loves them and will forgive them–the woman who terminated her pregnancy to keep it a secret, the young people who practice little or no self-control over their bodies, the mass of people who don’t seem to understand why God created two genders. They need Jesus just like we do.

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior, so that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.”

Political candidates campaign on promises they make to the voters. Once elected, many of them seem to lose interest in keeping their promises to the people who voted them in. Jesus is installed at God’s right hand in heaven as rightful ruler of the universe. Does our Prince and Savior have anything to offer us today?

Peter’s words answer that question. Today Jesus is at God’s right hand so that he can give us his gifts. The first of those gifts is “repentance.” Jesus doesn’t spread the Christian faith by adhering to the old marketing principle, “The customer is always right.” I have been a part of paid market research focus groups in the past. Companies interviewed me and others to learn our opinions. Then they tried to tailor their products to our tastes. They assumed the customer must be right, and they changed to suit us.

No, Jesus does something that seems counter-intuitive if you want to develop a following. He starts by telling you your ideas are all wrong. You and I have developed tastes and preferences that need to change. Our behavior and treatment of others is inappropriate. Our ideas about right, and wrong, and often God himself are backwards. He calls us to repent. He calls me to recognize that I am selfish, prideful, bossy, manipulative, dishonest, two-faced, ungrateful, lazy, lustful, greedy, impatient, and discontented. He calls me to stop defending it and rationalizing it, to feel genuine sorrow and regret for it.

But he does more than call us to repent. He gives repentance as a gift from God’s right hand in heaven. He exposes our sinfully wrong-minded notions in his word. He accompanies his word with his Spirit to convict us. He directs the events of our lives so that we are forced to come face to face with our true nature, to know ourselves in ways we never, ever wanted to know ourselves. He gives repentance to his people as a gift.

“Some gift,” we might think. But it is a gift, a gift of inestimable value. We will pay a doctor a great deal of money to uncover the physical deficiencies that are causing us pain and threatening our lives. Only then can we get the medicine right that puts us on the path to health again. How much more valuable is the diagnosis that uncovers the spiritual deficiencies that have condemned our souls!

Then we are ready to receive the other gift he gives from God’s right hand, “the forgiveness of sins.” However we have offended God, however we have hurt each other, however we have twisted God’s good gifts like sex or money and made them sick and grotesque, he does not hold against us. He does not say that it was okay. It wasn’t. But he does not hold them against us. He does not let our past determine how he will treat us in the future. Every day, every moment, we start off with a clean slate–as though we were as pure and as holy as an angel in heaven.

This, too, is more than an offer. It is a gift he gives–the gift he thought so valuable that he suffered death by crucifixion to make it happen. It’s more than a neat idea, a happy concept. Jesus’ sacrifice forms the real historical basis for God to forgive our sins.

Now from his Father’s right hand he distributes it to us. He sends it around the world as he spreads his word through preachers and laymen alike. He washes us in it at our baptisms. He feeds it to us in his supper. His Spirit fans the flames of this good news so that it grows in our hearts and catches on in the hearts of more and more people. All this he does with the power and authority he enjoys from God’s right hand in heaven. Truly it is a gift to us that Jesus occupies such a place!