August 23rd, 2026
by Pastor Matt Vandeleest
by Pastor Matt Vandeleest
There is a question that rises from somewhere deep inside every human being who has ever looked honestly at the world. It surfaces when another headline breaks, when another relationship fractures, when a diagnosis changes everything, when the weight of daily life simply becomes too heavy to carry without asking it out loud. The question is this: How long is this going to go on?
It is not a new question. The prophet Habakkuk cried it toward heaven. David wrote it into his psalms. In the book of Revelation, the martyrs beneath the altar are still asking it. How long, O Lord? How long must we endure? Is anyone going to do something about any of this?
The answer God gives us is not the one we want. We want him to say "now." He says "soon." He says "at the harvest." And understanding what that means changes everything about how we live in the meantime.
Time Has a Destination
Before anything else, it is worth pausing to consider what it means that time is going somewhere at all. If history is circular, if we are simply spinning in endless loops with no destination, then the honest answer to "how long" is that nothing will ever be done. Nothing can be done. But the Bible does not present time as circular. Time is driven by the one who stands outside of it, the eternal God who set everything in motion, who sustains it moment by moment, and who has determined its end. That means time has a destination. And it means the one holding it has not forgotten, overlooked, or grown indifferent to what we experience.
A Field, An Enemy, and a Patient Owner
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable about a man who sowed good seed in his field. While his workers slept, an enemy crept in and sowed weeds among the wheat. The particular weed Jesus describes was notorious in the ancient world. It mimicked wheat almost perfectly as it grew, but it was poisonous. Left unchecked and mixed into the harvest, it would render everything useless.
When the workers discovered what had happened, they wanted to act immediately. Pull it all out. Clean up the field today. But the owner told them no. Wait. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that point, the reapers will separate them carefully, burning the weeds and gathering the wheat safely into the barn.
Jesus explains the parable plainly. The sower is the Son of Man, a title drawn directly from Daniel 7, where a divine figure receives from the Ancient of Days dominion, glory, and a kingdom that will never be destroyed. The field is the world. The good seed represents the sons of the kingdom, those who have heard the message of the king and responded in repentance and faith. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. The enemy who planted them is the devil. And the harvest is the end of the age.
The Enemy Has No Authority
One of the most striking details in this parable is how the enemy operates. He comes in the night, while everyone is asleep, because he has no authority to walk openly into the field. Not one square inch of the world belongs to him. He is always a trespasser. Everything he does, he does in the dark, by deception.
And what does he sow? A counterfeit. Something that looks like the real thing, grows like the real thing, but in the end produces poison instead of nourishment. This is the enemy's only move. He has never created anything. He has only ever corrupted what God made and lied about what God said. His weeds are not something new. They are the moral and ethical opposite of what the Son of Man plants, dressed up to look identical until the fruit of a life finally reveals what was always true.
Why the Field Stays Mixed
The servants wanted to clean up the field immediately, and honestly, so do we. We look at the state of the world and we want God to act now. The owner's answer reveals something profound about the character of God.
First, he waits because the wheat is worth more to him than the weeds are an offense to him. He will not risk losing one stalk of what he has planted by rushing a harvest that is coming anyway. Second, and perhaps most remarkably, the waiting itself is an act of mercy, not just toward the wheat, but toward the weeds. The apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6 that some of the very people now counted among the righteous were once deeply entangled in the things that exclude people from the kingdom of God. And then he writes those stunning words: "And such were some of you." The delay is not divine indifference. It is divine patience. Every day the harvest has not come is another day the door stands open.
The Harvest Is Coming
But the owner's patience has a deadline. The field does not stay mixed forever. Jesus is clear that at the end of the age, the Son of Man will send his angels to gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers. The waiting ends. The separation is made permanent. And Jesus does not soften what follows for those gathered as weeds. He describes a fiery furnace, a place of weeping and grinding anguish. This is not a comfortable picture, and it is not meant to be. It is a warning, and warnings are meant to produce exactly the fear they produce.
But the parable does not end there. It ends with this: "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
That is where time is going. That is the destination. The mixture ends. The mimicry ends. The hiddenness ends. And what remains is the unbroken, unambiguous, radiant life of those who belong to the king.
Two Ways to Meet the Son of Man
There are two ways to encounter the Son of Man. You can meet him now, while he is still sowing, and be gathered into his barn. Or you can meet him at the harvest, when he comes not to sow but to reap. John 3:17 reminds us that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. He came first not as a reaper but as a Savior, enduring the full weight of human sin and divine wrath so that the door to the kingdom could be opened.
The field is still standing. The harvest has not yet come. If you find yourself outside the kingdom today, that is not a reason for despair. It is an invitation. Call out to the king. Ask him for a new heart, a new nature, a place among the wheat. He has not yet sent the reapers. The door is still open.
It is not a new question. The prophet Habakkuk cried it toward heaven. David wrote it into his psalms. In the book of Revelation, the martyrs beneath the altar are still asking it. How long, O Lord? How long must we endure? Is anyone going to do something about any of this?
The answer God gives us is not the one we want. We want him to say "now." He says "soon." He says "at the harvest." And understanding what that means changes everything about how we live in the meantime.
Time Has a Destination
Before anything else, it is worth pausing to consider what it means that time is going somewhere at all. If history is circular, if we are simply spinning in endless loops with no destination, then the honest answer to "how long" is that nothing will ever be done. Nothing can be done. But the Bible does not present time as circular. Time is driven by the one who stands outside of it, the eternal God who set everything in motion, who sustains it moment by moment, and who has determined its end. That means time has a destination. And it means the one holding it has not forgotten, overlooked, or grown indifferent to what we experience.
A Field, An Enemy, and a Patient Owner
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable about a man who sowed good seed in his field. While his workers slept, an enemy crept in and sowed weeds among the wheat. The particular weed Jesus describes was notorious in the ancient world. It mimicked wheat almost perfectly as it grew, but it was poisonous. Left unchecked and mixed into the harvest, it would render everything useless.
When the workers discovered what had happened, they wanted to act immediately. Pull it all out. Clean up the field today. But the owner told them no. Wait. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that point, the reapers will separate them carefully, burning the weeds and gathering the wheat safely into the barn.
Jesus explains the parable plainly. The sower is the Son of Man, a title drawn directly from Daniel 7, where a divine figure receives from the Ancient of Days dominion, glory, and a kingdom that will never be destroyed. The field is the world. The good seed represents the sons of the kingdom, those who have heard the message of the king and responded in repentance and faith. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. The enemy who planted them is the devil. And the harvest is the end of the age.
The Enemy Has No Authority
One of the most striking details in this parable is how the enemy operates. He comes in the night, while everyone is asleep, because he has no authority to walk openly into the field. Not one square inch of the world belongs to him. He is always a trespasser. Everything he does, he does in the dark, by deception.
And what does he sow? A counterfeit. Something that looks like the real thing, grows like the real thing, but in the end produces poison instead of nourishment. This is the enemy's only move. He has never created anything. He has only ever corrupted what God made and lied about what God said. His weeds are not something new. They are the moral and ethical opposite of what the Son of Man plants, dressed up to look identical until the fruit of a life finally reveals what was always true.
Why the Field Stays Mixed
The servants wanted to clean up the field immediately, and honestly, so do we. We look at the state of the world and we want God to act now. The owner's answer reveals something profound about the character of God.
First, he waits because the wheat is worth more to him than the weeds are an offense to him. He will not risk losing one stalk of what he has planted by rushing a harvest that is coming anyway. Second, and perhaps most remarkably, the waiting itself is an act of mercy, not just toward the wheat, but toward the weeds. The apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6 that some of the very people now counted among the righteous were once deeply entangled in the things that exclude people from the kingdom of God. And then he writes those stunning words: "And such were some of you." The delay is not divine indifference. It is divine patience. Every day the harvest has not come is another day the door stands open.
The Harvest Is Coming
But the owner's patience has a deadline. The field does not stay mixed forever. Jesus is clear that at the end of the age, the Son of Man will send his angels to gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers. The waiting ends. The separation is made permanent. And Jesus does not soften what follows for those gathered as weeds. He describes a fiery furnace, a place of weeping and grinding anguish. This is not a comfortable picture, and it is not meant to be. It is a warning, and warnings are meant to produce exactly the fear they produce.
But the parable does not end there. It ends with this: "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
That is where time is going. That is the destination. The mixture ends. The mimicry ends. The hiddenness ends. And what remains is the unbroken, unambiguous, radiant life of those who belong to the king.
Two Ways to Meet the Son of Man
There are two ways to encounter the Son of Man. You can meet him now, while he is still sowing, and be gathered into his barn. Or you can meet him at the harvest, when he comes not to sow but to reap. John 3:17 reminds us that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. He came first not as a reaper but as a Savior, enduring the full weight of human sin and divine wrath so that the door to the kingdom could be opened.
The field is still standing. The harvest has not yet come. If you find yourself outside the kingdom today, that is not a reason for despair. It is an invitation. Call out to the king. Ask him for a new heart, a new nature, a place among the wheat. He has not yet sent the reapers. The door is still open.
Posted in Matthew
Recent
Archive
2026
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
No Comments