Hello, everybody. I’m so glad to have this opportunity to bring this message to you. It is being brought to you by popular demand. I hear people all over Twitter, Instagram, Facebook asking me to share this message again, and I will do it. The message is called “A War Between Two Worlds”. Sowing and reaping, seed time and harvest, you have to have the ability to keep the cycle going, “A War Between Two Worlds”. Check this out.
Let’s go to Matthew 13, verse number 36. When you have it, say “Amen”. This is one of the rare opportunities we get to hear Jesus exegete a text. He has told them a parable, relayed a story, and left the disciples with some questions as to what he meant about the parable, and here, Jesus clarifies the scenario. “Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house, and his disciples came unto him saying, ‘Declare unto us the parables of the tares of the field.'” In other words, “Explain what you were talking about out there”.
I wanna talk briefly, remain standing, but I wanna talk briefly about a war between two worlds. Well, I know all of my ministers and all of my elders are looking at the text, and looking at the subject, and saying, “Well, Bishop must not have taken his medication,” because the text seemingly has nothing to do with the subject. We’re looking at a text that is basically an agricultural text that looks at an agricultural metaphor to explain the principles of the kingdom. There’s nothing in the text about a war. Normally, if you’re gonna preach about a war, you’d talk about, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities, spiritual wickedness in high places”. You’d talk about that. You’d talk about spiritual warfare.
Jesus introduces a thought that I want you to really focus on. He said, “The kingdom of heaven is liken”. It’s metaphorical. In other words, he is using something you can understand to explain something that you couldn’t understand. So, since he’s dealing with a society that focuses largely on agriculturalism for economic empowerment, that is, if you didn’t raise a garden, if you didn’t plow, if you didn’t rake, if you didn’t harvest, you didn’t have any income. Because it wasn’t so much about money in the days of Christ as much as it was about raising a crop through which you could barter the crop in exchange for other things that you need, okay? So, he’s using something that everybody, every commoner understood to explain something that was so spiritual and so abstract that it was beyond human comprehension.
Are you with me? They understood the value of a crop. It wasn’t just that if we didn’t grow a good crop we couldn’t eat, it was that if we didn’t grow a good crop, we couldn’t trade. So, when you look at the metaphor about the crop, you are actually looking at the very economic empowerment of a society of people that is based on the premise of sowing and reaping, sowing and reaping, seed time and harvest. If you didn’t maintain a cycle, a consistency of sowing and reaping, not only did you not have a harvest, it would affect everything in your house because you did not have the ability to keep the cycle going.
Now, I wanna digress and dig into that for just a moment, because I want you to understand this whole notion of sowing and reaping, and sowing and reaping, and seed time and harvest, and seed time, and a lot is said about that. A whole lot is said about that, and people don’t really shout about seed time, but they shout about harvest. They love to talk about, “This is your harvest. You’re coming into your season. You’re getting ready to reap, hallelujah, glory to God”. I don’t wanna stop your dancing, but I wanna explain something to you. Reaping is hard work. Sowing is hard work. So, when I say sowing and reaping, and sowing and reaping, what I’m really saying is working and working, working and working, working and working. This notion slips past the minds of a lot of people. They think, “I’m gonna work, I’m gonna play”. But no, you’re gonna work and you’re gonna work. You’re gonna work to sow the seed, then you’re gonna work to reap the harvest.
When you get the first bud, you gonna have to go runnin’ to catch what God has for you. The perpetual cycle of giving and receiving, of sowing and reaping is working and working, only you’re working with joy because you’re seeing some response, some value, some validation coming back into your life. Are you following what I’m saying? This system sustained the society. So, what we are talking about in the text is not just agriculture, the agriculture, the strength of the crop controlled the net worth of the holder. The strength of the crop controlled the net worth of the holder. If the crop wasn’t good then the net worth of the holder diminished. So, the text is talking about value.
If you don’t understand that, let me break down the text into the language you’re familiar with. A certain man went forth and sowed good seed into his field and sent those that were up under him to tend to the field after he sowed it. While men slept, the enemy came and planted tare amongst the wheat. Now see, if you don’t understand this, you won’t understand why the enemy came. You need to understand that the man knows the integrity of the seed that he planted. He sowed good seed into his field. There is no question about the integrity of the seed. The seed is absolutely good. The seed is so good that the jealous enemy looked over there and said, “If I don’t do something to head it off, he is going to increase the value in the kingdom,” so while men slept, the enemy came to plant tare amongst the wheat.
Now, the tare planted amongst the wheat tells you the limitation of the enemy. He couldn’t destroy the integrity of the wheat, all he could do was plant tare around the wheat, but he couldn’t stop the wheat from being wheat. See, I gotta dance a little bit, ’cause I know where I’m going, and some of you know where I’m going, ’cause you understand that what is in conflict here, what is up under scrutiny here is the integrity of the seed. And it makes me wanna say, “He that hath began a good work in you shall perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ”. You’re not counting on the weather, you’re not counting on the environment, you’re not even counting on the soil, you’re counting on the integrity of the seed.
So, if the enemy cannot remove my wheat status, why did he come? If he can never destroy my wheatness, why does he come? He comes to devalue the harvest, he comes and plants the tear amidst the wheat to devalue the harvest. Look at the things that have been planted in your life to devalue the harvest, the things, the people, the environment, the circumstances that have been planted to devalue the harvest. What the tare will do is rob the soil of the nutrients that could have fueled the wheat to be wheatier, to be mightier, to be stronger, to be fuller, to be richer. It will extract from the ground what was meant for the wheat to stop it from being as bountiful as it could’ve been.
And the Bible says that while men slept, the enemy came and planted tare amongst the wheat. He is not attacking the wheat, he’s attacking the owner. Though he has planted the tare amongst the wheat, the wheat has nothing to gain from being wheat, it just is. The owner has something to gain from the wheat being what it is, so the enemy is not the enemy of the wheat, he is the enemy of the owner. You with me, aren’t you? I know you’re with me. So the wheat is caught up in a war between the enemy and the owner. This is why the battle is not yours.
You’ve been standing here with your dukes up, and you’ve been swinging, and you’ve been punching, and you’ve been fighting, and you’ve been talking about, “The devil is attacking me”. The devil is not attacking you, he is using you and your life to attack God. Paul says in Ephesians, he says, “I prayed for you without ceasing that the eyes of your understanding might be enlightened, that you might know what is the hope of his calling”. His who? God’s calling. He said, “I want your eyes to open up to the hope of what God had in mind when he planted you, the hope of his calling”.
Nobody plants a field without intention. A weed just grows, but a field is always planted with intention. Nobody just plants corn. “Why you plant it”? “I don’t know, I just, you know, just planted some corn”. No, you planted the corn ’cause you’re gonna harvest the corn. You planted the cucumbers ’cause you’re gonna grow cucumbers, you have a hope. Paul said, “I want you to know what is the hope of his calling”.
Whenever you see the enemy come, you always know there’s value. They were telling us the other day, they sent out a news flash to be careful in our community because there was some robbers out in our community. You know, they were going around hitting houses or something. And I thought, “Okay, yeah”. The thing you have to understand, you don’t see people robbing the homeless shelters. Wherever you see a thief or a robber, there’s gotta be some value. ‘Cause nobody cases a homeless man. “We gonna hit you tonight. We gonna get you good tonight”. Because if there is no perceived value, if I don’t think you’re holding anything… why would I stick up a broke person? The very fact that I’m trying to rob you ought to tell you you got value.
The very fact that the enemy comes in the garden to deceive Eve is because she has value. The very fact that the enemy attacked you like he attacked you is a sign you have value. Now, all you people who think an attack is that you had to park on the other parking lot, y’all sit down. But the people who have had unusual attacks, been through adversity that just boggles your mind and you sit back and say, “How in the world could I have been attacked like that”? People who have been attacked in your youth, in your childhood, all of your life you had to fight.
The Lord sent me to tell you that you are caught up in a war between two worlds, “And the sons of God gathered around the throne that day, and among them came Satan, and God said unto him,” this is Job chapter 1, “Where have you been”? Satan responded, “I have been going to and fro and up and down throughout the earth”. “What have you been doing”? “Seeking whom I may devour”. God says to him, “Have you considered my servant, Job, who is a faithful and upright man”? He says, “Yes, I considered Job, but you have a hedge around him. And if you move that hedge around him, I will make him curse you to your face”. God said, “I will move a hedge around him, and around his property, and around his family, but not from around his soul”.
God said, “I’m gonna hedge”… Listen at the discussion going between two worlds about Job. And all of a sudden, Job’s life is affected by the war between two worlds. Satan says, “If you move the hedge from around him, I’m tellin you, Job only serves you when things are going right. You couldn’t get a praise out of Job if you moved the hedge from around him”. God said, “Let me show you”. All of a sudden, people started dying, crops started burning, chaos broke out everywhere. Job got sick in his body, and the Bible said all the way down, Job lost property, Job lost influence, Job lost respect, Job lost his children, Job lost his wife, Job lost his health, but he never lost his integrity.
My God, I feel like runnin’ this morning. There are some people in this room who have lost a whole lot of stuff, but I don’t care what you lose, hold on to your integrity. You understand what I’m saying? You are who you are. Don’t let anybody have your integrity. Your values, who you are, what God created you to be, you may cry, but hold on to it. You may suffer, but hold on to it. You may go without sometime, but hold on to it. Because as long as you hold on to your wheatness, when the storm is over, you’ll rise again. I’m coming out of this. I’m in a storm, but I’m coming out of this. I may get wet, but I’m coming out of this. I may have mud all over me, but I’m coming out of this. I will rise again. Tell brother tare and sister tare, “I will arise out of this”.