Godly Insights for the 21st Century Life

This past Sunday, the associate pastor at my church, preached on six short parables found in Matthew 13. Two of these parables, the first and last in the gospel lesson, talk about the end of the age. The first appears in verses 24-30, and tells the parable of the weeds among the wheat. In this parable, a farmer sows grain in his fields, but an enemy sneaks in one night and sows weeds among the wheat. As the plants grow, the dastardly deed is discovered, and the servants want to rip out all of the weeds, but the farmers tells them no. Ripping out the weeds would uproot the wheat, so the farmer allows them to grow together, and instructs his reapers to separate them out at harvest time. The second is found in verses 47-48, and compares the kingdom of heaven with a net that was thrown into the sea and caught many varied kinds of fish, It was then drawn in, and the fish were separated into good fish to keep and bad fish to throw back. Both the separation of the wheat in the first parable a