Matthew 13 Missionary Message
Most of us know the story of the wheat and the tares, spoken of in the 13th chapter of Matthew. The wheat are the righteous and the tares are the wicked. The Bible Dictionary tells us that: “The word, tares, denotes darnel grass, a poisonous weed, which, until it comes into ear, is similar in appearance to wheat.”
Further, Matthew 13:37 tells us that the field, where the crop is sown, is the world and the sower of the wheat is the Son of man, meaning the Savior. The sower of the tares is the devil. The JST of that passage says that first the wheat is taken into the barn and that the tares are bound in bundles to burn. D&C 86:7 tells us the same.
What does this have to do with missionary work? As missionaries we search for the righteous in heart; we look for the wheat. Have you ever wondered how God could burn the wicked without injuring the righteous? It is because the righteous are first separated and then the wicked destroyed.
What did God do with the righteous in the days of Noah? Some were on the Ark but most were taken up to the city of Enoch (Moses 7:21) and separated from the wicked before the wicked were drowned in the flood.
All of us are like delicate plants; we have both wheat and tares growing within us. The Savior is kind not to root out all our weaknesses and sins at once, rather with tenderness, he allows us to grow and when we have improved enough we will be separated into righteous places and the wicked will be burned in preparation for the Millennium.
Dr. David Ridges, BYU Education Week instructor and noted LDS author has said: “Perhaps you have noticed that there are wheat and tares in almost every branch and ward in the Church. This will continue to be the case until the Second Coming, when there will be a complete separation of the righteous from the wicked.
In the meantime, through kindness and patience on the part of the missionary minded members and with the help of the Holy Ghost, some tares will be converted and become wheat. We must be a light to all non members everywhere. Therefore, we continue to press forward with faith in carrying the gospel to the entire world.”
GOD AS ONE
Have you ever played on a team or been in an organization where everybody worked together and got things done and you felt one with the persons on your side or in your organization? I feel that way about the members in my temple group. We work together to do the Lord’s work and are one.
God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are one God, in that they are one in purpose. A similar statement was made in John 17 when Jesus prayed for His Apostles and all the saints.
He said, in John 17:21-22:
21. That they all may be one; as thou, Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.
Now does that scripture mean that somehow all the Apostles, Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father are all melted into the same being? Of course not; but they are one in purpose.
Bruce R. McConkie said it well in Mormon Doctrine, under the topic, Godhead, when he explained:
“Though each God in the Godhead is a personage, separate and distinct from each of the others, yet they are “one God” meaning that they are united as one in the attributes of perfection.
For instance, each has the fulness of truth, knowledge, charity, power, justice, judgment, mercy and faith.
Accordingly they all think, act speak and are alike in all things; and yet they are three separate and distinct entities. Each occupies space and is and can be in but one place at one time, but each has power and influence that is everywhere present.
The oneness of the Gods is the same unity that should exist among the saints as spoken of in John 17 and 3rd Nephi 28:10-11.”
Honesty
Pres. James E Faust has said: There are different shades of truth telling. When we tell little white lies, we become progressively color-blind. It is better to remain silent than to mislead. The degree to which each of us tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth depends on our conscience.
David Cass Stevens of the Dallas Morning News tells a story about Frank Smanski, a Notre Dame center in the 1940s, who had been called as a witness in a civil suit at South Bend, Indiana.
“Are you on the Notre Dame football team this year?” the judge asked.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“What position?”
“Center, Your Honor.”
“How good a center?”
Smanski squirmed in his seat, but said firmly, “Sir, I’m the best center Notre Dame has ever had.”
Coach Frank Leah, who was in the courtroom, was surprised. Smanski always had been modest and unassuming.
So when the proceedings were over, he took Smanski aside and asked why he had made such a statement. Smanski blushed. “I hated to do it, Coach,” he said. “But, after all, I was under oath.”
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Now I say: When I was in the military, an honest friend of mine, I’ll call him Ted, desperately wanted to get promoted. In those days, one of the primary means to move upward was to score high on a promotion test. Ted studied hard and the following week Ted was approached by someone on the testing board who informed him that for just a few dollars, he could guarantee that Ted would get a high score.
Ted thought it over and reasoned that though he did not believe in cheating, surely this once would be OK since he had studied so hard. Sure enough, Ted received a perfect score on the test, but since perfect scores were so rare, the testing board supervisors became suspicious.
They investigated and discovered that cheating had taken place. The supervisors agreed not to press criminal charges if Ted and his accomplice would accept a demotion in rank and a dishonorable discharge from the military.
The guilty pair agreed and what had seemed a way to get ahead instead became a costly source of dishonor and embarrassment. They discovered, in a painful way, that honesty should not be just the best policy, but instead, the only policy.
A STORY ABOUT CHARITY
From the book entitled Discourses of President Gordon B. Hinckley, page 409 we read:
This boy, Normand, grew up in …southern Utah – he and his brother. (WWII) came along and they decided to join the service. They told the recruiting officer that they wanted to stay together as brothers throughout all of their time in the service. They were put in a tough outfit. They traveled through the battles of the Pacific. Both of them were on the initial landing barges that came into Leyte Gulf and landed there when the American forces came back to the Philippines.
They came in under terrible fire and they were climbing up a hill when a Japanese shell hit his brother, and pierced his spine. Normand held his dying brother in his arms and wept. There came into his heart a great bitterness, an intense hatred for those who had killed his brother and so many others. He vowed that he would fight with great viciousness if it meant that…He passed through the war and came home lonely and embittered.
He was called on a mission-I think to the Central States-and something happened to him. He became acquainted with the Savior. He read the New Testament. He read the Book of Mormon. He prayed. He brought those elements into his life. A great spirit of love (and charity) filled him. The hatred of the past disappeared. He became a changed man. He came home after honorably filling a mission and married a girl from that area. He got 80 acres of sage-covered ground, cleared it and planted it and became a very successful grower of alfalfa.
He cubed that alfalfa and there was a big market for it in Japan. He shipped it to Japan. Subsequently, the head man of the company that bought it in Japan invited him to come to Japan. They had established a relationship and he decided he would go, so he and his wife went. They were treated royally, beyond anything they could have imagined from those who had been his former enemies.
While he was in Japan, he decided to go back down to the Philippines. He did so and went down to Manila and from there down into the jungle where his brother had been killed. While there, they were met by a few of the native people who were very friendly. He struck up a correspondence with a woman, they wrote back and forth. He said, “I’m going to send you a book that will change your life if you will read it and pray about it.” So he sent the Book of Mormon.
This family read it and was converted to its truth; they were touched in their hearts. They went up to Tacloban, the nearest branch, 40 miles away through the jungle and became acquainted with the Church. Eventually they joined the Church. They established a little branch down in Jaro, on the Leyte Gulf. Normand went back there again ten years later and found this branch. He listened to the people and felt their spirit. I was curious when Normand died as to whether that branch was still functioning.
I had my secretary send an email to the Area President and we had a reply that indicated that this little branch has 165 members, that they have about 30 Melchizedek Priesthood holders, 95 percent of whom are active. There have been 14 missionaries go out from that branch, including five who are out today (2002). Now that is the fruit of the kind of work in which we are engaged. How wonderful and beautiful it is.
