For thought and meditation

[rl69]

Watch out! Don't let your hearts be dulled by carousing and drunkenness, and by the worries of this life. Don't let that day catch you unaware, like a trap. For that day will come upon everyone living on the earth."

—Luke 21:34–35

In 1990, the singing duo Milli Vanilli won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. They were very successful until it was revealed that they didn’t sing on their own album and lip synced a live performance. It was a scandal in the music industry, and their Grammy was taken away. Milli Vanilli had to face the music.

Jesus told a story known as the parable of the wheat and the tares in which a farmer planted a crop of wheat. But during the night his enemy came along and sowed tares, or weeds, among the wheat. The tare was also known as the darnel seed, which looks almost exactly like wheat in the beginning stages of growth. But after a while, it becomes apparent it is a weed that actually uproots the wheat.

The farmer said to his workers, “Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn” (Matthew 13:30).

Jesus told this story to illustrate that the church also will have people who infiltrate our ranks, satanic plants who undermine the Word of God. We don’t know who is who, necessarily. They breathe the same air. They sing the same songs. They read the same Bible.

But here is what we need to think about: It is not our job to weed out those people. We don’t see a person’s heart. Our concern should not be who the hypocrites are; our concern should be whether we are hypocrites ourselves. Our job is not to weed out the others. Our job is to make sure we are the real thing, because there is coming a day when we all will have to face the music.

[square butte]

Thank you for the good start to this day rl69 - Good lesson to think about

[buckwheatpaul]

Great point about judging....it is not our job....yet many of us have jobs that require it.....a true problem that carries over into our private life......thanks for the lesson....Paul

[Good Cheer]

rl69,
Yes there is indeed organized satanic infiltration by malicious intent into Christian congregations.
But, I don't think that leaving them in place and accepting their devilish agenda into your midst is the point of the parable.

[Boaz]

Thank you rl69 .

[USMC87]

Great lesson.

[Blackwater]

I can only smile ashamedly at this one. Back in my college drinking days, I learned all to well and all to fully, what a waste drinking to excess truly is! It breaks down the walls of our resistance to evils, and all sorts of other things that do NOT benefit us in ANY sort of way! I'm glad I learned pretty early and very well! I'm one of those Baptists that'll still speak to you in the liquor store, but now, expecially with my health problems, one moderate drink is IT for me! And modern medicine has pretty well proven that a LITTLE can be good for us old timers. Keeping the definition of "a Little" accurate is crucial, though!

And I've too many friends who can't drink at all to not know what it's worst potential really is. Alcoholism is one of those diseases or conditions or whatever anyone wants to call it, that eats out all a man really is inside, and the LAST thing it comes for is the physical body, to take to the grave. What a pitiful and sorry way to go! I truly feel for those who are physically addicted to it. It's something most folks don't really understand, and many just like to put alcoholics down, but God loves them just as much as he does the righteous. It's our job to come as close to God's way of looking at them as we possibly can. And it's not easy for many (it wasn't for me at first, either!), but what that's easy in our world is really worth while and edifying once we master it? It's the harder things that we really learn from, always. Blessed be the name of the Lord, and the reading and understanding of His word.