"Do You Look Like Wheat or Weeds?" (Sermon on Isaiah 44:6-11) | July 19, 2026

Sermon Text: Isaiah 44:6-11
Date: July 19, 2026
Event: Proper 11, Year A

Isaiah 44:6-11 (EHV)

This is what the LORD, the King of Israel,
Israel’s Redeemer, the LORD of Armies, says.
I am the first, and I am the last.
Except for me, there is no god.
7For who is like me? Let him declare it.
Let him recite in order for me the things that took place
since the time I established an ancient people.
Or let them declare what is yet to come,
and what is going to take place.
8Do not tremble, and do not be frightened.
Did I not announce this to you,
and declare it already long ago?
You are my witnesses.
Is there any god except me?
There is no other Rock. I am not aware of any other.
9All those who form an idol are good for nothing.
All the things which delight them provide no benefit.
As for their witnesses—they do not see.
They know nothing, so they will be ashamed.

10Who is this who forms a god or casts a metal image that can provide no profit? 11Look at him! All his associates will be ashamed. The craftsmen are merely men. Let them all gather themselves and take a stand. They will be terrified and ashamed together.

Do You Look Like Wheat or Weeds?

In our Gospel this morning, we heard Jesus’ familiar parable of the wheat and the weeds. We don’t necessarily need to live in an agrarian society to understand the point of the parable. If you’ve ever planted a garden from seeds or reseeded a lawn, you know what Jesus is talking about. When you’re planting seeds, the first little sprouts that come up almost universally look the same. Is it the start of beautiful grass or invasive weeds? Is it the tomato or cucumber plants just starting, or are those dandelions? At first, it can be hard to tell. And then, depending on how densely things are growing, once you can tell which are the plants you wanted and which are undesirable weeds, it can be dangerous to rip up the weeds because the roots might be intertwined with the good plants, and you’d damage them or even rip them up completely while trying to get rid of the weeds. So, sometimes, you have to let the wheat and the weeds grow together for a time—perhaps until the desired plants reach full maturity—before you can make a complete separation.

Jesus uses that picture to describe what it’s like in this life. Wheat and weeds—believers and unbelievers—live together in the field of this life. Yes, God knows those who are his, and yes, believers have been elected from the beginning of time, but from our perspective, we don’t necessarily know which is which. And as we talked about last weekend, someone who is supposedly a weed may be just one gospel-share away from God creating faith in their Savior within their heart. So all the more, as in Jesus’ parable, “both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:30). The final division will take place on Judgment Day.

But while it can be hard to tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds at times, there are signs, and sometimes we have to reevaluate our initial take on those signs. Back in South Dakota, we had this vine that would grow in some yards and in our gravel driveway. When it first sprang up, it would have these adorable little yellow flowers. We didn’t have anything that looked quite like that where I grew up in the Midwest, so initially, I was fond of them. But then I learned the truth. This vine had a nickname—puncture vine. Its seed pods had spikes that were unbelievably sharp and strong. They would puncture bicycle tires right through the tube. If you were wearing shoes with a thinner sole, it could poke you there, and heaven help you if you stepped on one of these things barefoot!

So what happened to my initial take on those adorable little yellow flowers? Pretty soon, they were markers of really bad things. I could identify the weeds and then, ideally, get to removing them before they caused more problems.

God isn’t going to just upend all people everywhere; he is going to let the world play out until the time he has chosen. But until then, you and I can look around and begin to identify some likely weeds and some presumable wheat. But really, that work is much more effective and beneficial when it’s inwardly focused rather than outwardly. From people’s words and actions, you can begin to get a sense of where things are at, but not completely because you and I cannot see into the heart. But when I look at myself, and you look at yourself, you can see those plants clearly. So, when you look inward, what do you see? Wheat or weed?

In our First Reading, God made a clear distinction between wheat and the weeds: All those who form an idol are good for nothing. All the things which delight them provide no benefit. As for their witnesses—they do not see. They know nothing, so they will be ashamed. Who is this who forms a god or casts a metal image that can provide no profit? Look at him! All his associates will be ashamed. The craftsmen are merely men. Let them all gather themselves and take a stand. They will be terrified and ashamed together. Those who make false gods and those who serve them are weeds. They ignore the true God and devote themselves to things that are good for nothing. The prophet Jeremiah noted just how worthless idols made of earthly materials are: They cut down a tree in the forest. Then the hands of a craftsman work it with an ax. They decorate it with silver and gold, but they have to nail it down with hammers, so that it will not tip over. Their idols are like a scarecrow in a melon patch. They cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot walk” (Jeremiah 10:3-5).

But before we get ahead of ourselves and think, “Well, I must look like pure wheat because I don’t have a single idol in my life!” we do well to take a second look. Sure, you might not have an altar in your home devoted to Baal, Asherah, Zeus, or Ra, but we all have idols. You have things that often become more important to you than God. At this moment, our concern is not about the weeds out there. What are the idols for you? What are the things in your life that try to steal that number-one position in your heart that should only belong to God? What causes you to look like a weed? I’m going to give us all a minute to mull that over.

…

How’s your list? Mine is a whole lot longer than I would like to admit—and it’s to my shame that it exists at all. Perhaps you identified money as a false god in your life—either because you’re too focused on amassing more to add to an already substantial amount or because worry over not having enough consumes you and crowds the God out of your life, the one who promised you daily bread. Perhaps it’s entertainment that often sucks the time out of your life that otherwise might be devoted to the study of God’s Word and setting priorities on his promises, on those things that are truly important and not fleeting. Maybe it’s lust or other sexually related sins: a desire for someone who is not your spouse, for someone performing in a video on the internet, or for someone you interact with much closer to home, desires that shove God out of the heart. Maybe it’s worry not about one specific thing but in general—worry that things are going to go badly and disastrously and you have no way to fix them, worry that kicks God to the curb despite his promises to be your continual help, your very rock, to never leave you or forsake you.

Maybe one from that list I just mentioned was prominent on your list; maybe none of them were. But whether we specifically hit yours here this morning, the reality is that we have a whole host of things that make us look like weeds, that make us look like we don’t follow our God but follow the whims of our desires and trip in the ruts of our weaknesses. And we often look like that because it is often true. So, if someone needed to evaluate you and decide whether you were a stalk of wheat or an invasive weed, what would their evaluation be?

Thankfully, other people’s evaluations are not really important; others are just as limited in looking at us as we are in looking at them. What is important is God’s take, God’s view, and I think we do well to remember how God describes himself, the titles that he gives himself even before he says a word in our brief reading: This is what the LORD, the King of Israel, Israel’s Redeemer, the LORD of Armies, says. These titles focus on mercy and power. Perhaps let’s just zero in on one of them, Redeemer. A redeemer is someone who buys someone or something back so that it belongs to them again. If we can take a step out of the natural and into the supernatural, given the imagery we’ve been working with today, we might say that a Redeemer is one who takes a plant and declares it as wheat rather than a weed. And not just calling it something it’s not, but actually making that change happen.

Yes, you and I look like weeds. Our sin is the most invasive pest vine to ever exist. But that’s not who we are; that’s not who God has made us to be. Because in his redemption, in his salvation, he’s changed us from weed to wheat. That doesn’t mean we don’t struggle with weed-like behavior; it doesn’t mean that we don’t sin. But it does mean that sin is forgiven. It does mean we are redeemed. It does mean that at the final harvest, we will not be destined for the fire but for God’s eternal barn (see Matthew 13:30, 43).

This is the work that Jesus, our Redeemer, accomplished. His life and death—both of them for us—have made us what we weren’t. His complete, flawless dedication to God’s will replaces our very flawed existence. We are what we should be because that’s what Jesus was and what he’s remade us to be.

My fellow stalks of grain, your God is the one who created all things and redeemed you from your sin. Devote yourselves not to the temptations and worries of this life, but to the God who loves you, forgives you, and will bring you to himself eternally. I am the first, and I am the last. Except for me, there is no god. For who is like me? Let him declare it. Let him recite in order for me the things that took place  since the time I established an ancient people. Or let them declare what is yet to come, and what is going to take place. Do not tremble, and do not be frightened. Did I not announce this to you, and declare it already long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any god except me? There is no other Rock. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Where Do We Find the Lord?" (Sermon on Isaiah 55:6-11) | July 16, 2023

Sermon Text: Isaiah 55:6-11
Date: July 16, 2023
Event: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year A [Proper 10]

Isaiah 55:6-11 (EHV)

Seek the Lord while he may be found!
Call on him while he is near!
7Let the wicked man abandon his way.
Let an evil man abandon his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord,
and he will show him mercy.
Let him turn to our God,
because he will abundantly pardon.
8Certainly my plans are not your plans,
and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord.
9Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways,
and my plans are higher than your plans.
10Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky
and do not return there
unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout,
so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth
will not return to me empty.
Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please,
and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.

Where Do We Find the Lord?

Have you ever had that moment where you need to find something, and you remember seeing it… somewhere? Perhaps you saw it sitting somewhere and even thought, “Well, that’s a weird place for that thing to be. I would never find that there; I should move that to a more logical place,” but then you didn’t? And then, the next time you were looking for that item, you could remember that you saw it in a place that didn’t make any sense, but you can’t remember where that place was?

Maybe you’ve had that experience or maybe it’s just me. Regardless, I can assure you that it’s not a great feeling. Trying to hunt something down that you know is around but is in a place you’re unlikely to come up with is frustrating, even if it’s basically in plain sight. Why were my keys on the bookshelf anyway??

If you’re looking for something, you want to know where to find it. That may be why you always put your car keys in the same place at home each time you return. Maybe that’s why you invested in a little tracking device to put in your wallet or on something else valuable and important so that if you can’t find it, you can hunt it down relatively quickly. Maybe that’s why you store those important documents like birth certificates or Social Security cards in that fire-resistant safe; you know where they are, and they are protected.

But, as important as your keys or wallet or documents may be, there are things that are more important than those. Chief among them is your God. Your relationship with God—or maybe more importantly, his attitude toward you—is what is going to determine not just a day or week or year, but eternity. Will you be in hell as just punishment for your disobedience toward him or will you be in heaven with him in unending joy and peace? And how do you know?

This is comfort and knowledge that we cannot have on our own. We can’t look around us and determine how God thinks about us. We can’t do some deep soul-searching and decide what our status with God is. We can make things up, we can tell ourselves stories, but we will always know that that is all those are—creations of our own minds. So, if we want certainty, we need to go to the source. If we want to know God’s heart, he has to reveal that to us. How do we do that? Where do we go? Where do we find the Lord?

Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls on people to act: Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Isaiah’s ministry took place at a very fraught time in Israel’s history. After King Solomon, David’s son, died, the nation split into two pieces, roughly 10 tribes in the Northern Kingdom and two tribes in the Southern Kingdom. Isaiah was sent as a prophet to the Southern Kingdom.

In both kingdoms, the leaders’ and people’s faithfulness to the true God was very poor. They often worshiped false gods in the hope of blessings that the true God was not giving or simply because the false gods’ worship was more “fun” and less strict than the law God gave his people. It had gotten so bad that during Isaiah’s ministry, God used the nation of Assyria to come and exile the Northern Kingdom, whom we never hear from as a unified group again. Assyria harassed and conquered cities in the Southern Kingdom as well, but God saved them from the Assyrian army before they could conquer the capital of Jerusalem.

But all this temporal chastisement came because the people had wandered so far away from God. They weren’t listening to him, they weren’t looking for him, they didn’t care about him. God didn’t want them to be destroyed eternally so he uses earthly barbs to wake them up. But he couples that pain and discomfort with calls through his prophets to return to him. So, it is in this context that God sends Isaiah to plead with his people, “Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Let the wicked man abandon his way. Let an evil man abandon his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will show him mercy. Let him turn to our God, because he will abundantly pardon.”

Despite all the negative things that the people were enduring, there is so much gospel in these words. First of all, it is not too late—the people could still seek after God. He is near to them and ready to be found. For all that they had done wrong—for all their sins that brought down God’s eternal punishment—there was mercy and pardon available from God. He would forgive their sins. He loved them.

We may think it would have been wise for God to clearly set up shop on earth at this time. That is, that God should have just made himself visible to all the people. The messages he had to share should have come right from his mouth and he should have made it inescapable if he really wanted people to listen. That’s a whole lot of “shoulds” coming from people who don’t have God’s perspective and wisdom. And it seems that God anticipated this line of argument. God continues through Isaiah’s pen: Certainly my plans are not your plans, and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans are higher than your plans.

God rarely speaks directly to people. As you read through the Bible, it might appear that God was talking to everyone all the time during the time the events of the Bible were happening. The truth is, only a very tiny number of people have ever had a direct conversation with God—even considering those who spoke with Jesus during his earthly ministry. Instead, God has chosen to communicate through his Word, verbally recounted and written down throughout the ages. In what was probably a parable, Jesus recounts a rich man in hell begging Abraham to send the poor man, Lazarus, who had died, back to speak to his brothers. While this wouldn’t be God speaking directly, it would be a miracle that would hopefully cause those on Earth to stand up and take notice. Our natural sense is probably agrees with the rich man’s logic, but the words that Jesus put into Abraham’s mouth are alarming to us as we nod along with the damned man’s reasoning, “They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them…. If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:29, 31).  

God has always worked through his Word primarily shared through human messengers rather than through direct contact. So, if we’re looking for the Lord, if we are seeking to return to him, we need to look for him where he has chosen to reveal himself. As such, we will not find him in nature, we will not find him through pure meditation and introspection, and if we’re waiting for God to have a nice chat with us over a cup of coffee, we will probably be waiting our whole lives without it ever happening.

Where do we find the Lord? You may not find him in nature alone, but in his Word, you will learn the details of how he created the universe we call home. You may not find him through an emptying-of-your-mind meditation, but meditation that centers on the promises and truths of God’s Word will be productive. And no, God may not sit down with you at the café for a warm drink, but if you bring a devotion book with you or perhaps enjoy a beverage while sitting in Bible Study with your fellow Christians, there is where God will be found.

Word of God is not just sounds voiced into the air or scratches of ink on a piece of paper. God attaches promises and power to his Word—as unassuming and unimpressive as it might be at first glance: Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return there unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout, so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty. Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please, and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.

The Holy Spirit works through his Word to create faith in our hearts and to sustain it. When the Israelites were separated from God’s Word and promises, they were distancing themselves from the God who loved them so dearly. When you and I seek to fill our spiritual needs with things that do not include God’s Word, we do the same thing.

But, when we dig into his Word here at church, in our homes, even in our cars or as we go for a walk, as we read or listen to that truth, to those promises, there the Spirit builds us up; there faith is maintained and grows; there alone do we find return and remaining with our Savior God. Because there in that Word we hear God’s clear condemnation of our sins and his complete forgiveness in Jesus’ death in our place. We cannot learn about Jesus’ salvation apart from God’s Word. That’s where he’s chosen to reveal these eternally-important truths; that’s where we find the Lord.

So, my sisters and brothers, “Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near!” Where do we find him? Where he has chosen to reveal himself, in that Word that will not return to him empty. Value it. Cherish it. Use it, now and until that day when our Lord calls us home to himself in heaven! Till the soil of your hearts so that this Word, planted like seed, may grow and flourish into faith that trusts God’s forgiveness for eternity. Amen.