The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares

I wanted to focus on a parable that Jesus gave that's recorded in, I believe it's only in the book of Matthew. As most of us know, I think some few of the parables are only recorded in John.

You have parables of the Good Shepherd, parables of Jesus being the door for the sheep, or, you know, the description of how He nurtures the flock. You find some parables that are only recorded in Luke, like the Good Samaritan or the prodigal son. Those are ones that, you know, stand out. Some of them there are others, but I'm just mentioning a couple. But I believe this particular parable is only recorded in the book of Matthew. And it's a parable of the wheat and the tares. And I want us to focus on that. I think we all realize here in Matthew 13 you have a number of parables. And the first parable that he mentions here in Matthew 13 is the parable of the sower.

And it's talking about the sowing of the seed. And it's showing us that the Word of God is scattered.

And of course, that's what we're trying to do as we preach the Gospel. The Word of God is to be scattered.

And yet we know it falls on hard ground sometimes. It falls on shallow ground sometimes. It falls on thorny ground sometimes. And then the fourth of the four categories is the good ground. And of course, we all want to be in the good ground. We all want to be producing fruit. And it talks about how the thirty and sixty and a hundredfold production might be there. And so that's a fabulous parable that Jesus teaches us. And in a sense, He's giving us a warning. You know, don't, you know, if we've received the Word of God into our lives, don't allow that to be superfluous. Don't allow it to be shallow. Allow it to take deep root. And then it says, don't allow the thorns, don't allow the cares of the world to choke you. That's fabulous for us to realize that, well, we don't want to get choked out. We want to keep our mind focused on what our sermon is about, focused on God's intent, God's purpose, God's reason for drawing us and being a part of the Church of God and part of the family of God today. And yet, you also find, and actually these two parables in a sense have some similarity because you not only see Jesus giving the parable, but He also explains the parable. You don't always find that. Sometimes you have a parable and you have no explanation.

But this parable starting in verse 24 is a parable that in many ways is different.

It's different. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus kind of switches the analogies.

He's talking about good seed, and so again we would hope, well, we'd like that to apply to us.

But He's also emphasizing in this second parable our motivation, our intent, how much we desire to relate to the Father and to the Son. And actually you find that I think these two parables are the only ones that Jesus really gives an explanation to, and I wonder why that is.

I wonder why He gave this. You know, Matthew was writing. Who was he writing to? Well, most commentaries say that Matthew was writing to the Jewish nation. He was writing to the Jews.

And actually, if you think about that, then he was writing to those who felt religious. They felt they had a relationship with God, but in many ways they didn't. And so I want us to take a look at this, Matthew 13, starting in verse 24. We find the parable of the wheat and then the wheat, or the tares. And so I want to begin by just reading through this and then covering things, several lessons perhaps that we can learn from this. In verse 24, He put forth to them another parable, the kingdom of heaven, may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field.

But while everyone was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then the enemy went away. And so when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.

And the slaves or servants of the household, householder came and said to him, Master, do you want us, or did you not sow good seed in the field? Why is it that we have these weeds?

Where have they come from? And he answered and said, An enemy has done this. And so the servant said, Well, do you want us to go and gather up the weeds? Do you want us to go out?

You know, this, as you might imagine, would be pretty hard to do. I remember growing up in Oklahoma and at least around where I lived, and we had a lot of Johnson grass.

Johnson grass, I don't know if you're familiar with Johnson grass, but it's a weed. It grows everywhere. It grows in all the ditches. It grows in fields if you don't have something else planted there. But dad would always plant corn, and especially in the garden, and he would send us out to hold the corn. And unfortunately, the corn and the Johnson grass look identical. And so I imagine that our weeding the corn probably wasn't very effective, because I probably chopped more corn than I did Johnson grass. And so, you know, you could see what these servants are asking. Well, do you want us to go and pull this out? And so in verse 28, Jesus says the enemy has done this, and the servant said, well, do you want us to go and gather them? He says, no, I don't want you to.

I don't want you to get rid of all the weeds. I don't want you to do that. For in gathering the weeds, you will uproot the wheat along with them. And so let both of them gather, grow together until the harvest. And at the harvest time, I will tell the reapers, collect the weeds first, and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

Now again, that can be an interesting parable to think about. Well, what was Jesus really showing? Or what was he teaching? And actually, you have to say that since we dropped down to verse 36, the disciples didn't understand what he was talking about either, although it was obvious, some things were obvious. The wheats and the tares were going to both be there until the end.

That part was obvious. And yet Jesus, verse 36, was asked, he left the crowds and he went into the house, and the disciples approached him. You know, can you explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field? And so he goes ahead, starting in verse 37, he answered, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man, and the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom.

The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them as the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. But just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The son of man will send his angels, they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of evil or all evildoers. And the King James says it'll gather those who offend and who are lawless, lawlessness, and they'll throw them into the furnace of fire where they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then, he says in verse 43, the righteous will shine like the Son in the kingdom of their Father. And so he says, let everyone who has ears, let him hear. So he not only gave a parable, he later, when asked by his trainees, his disciples, what does this mean? He gave some description, he gave some definition of what does it mean. And I hope that we can see that what Jesus was talking about, you can say, well, maybe that applies to the world in some way. And in a sense, we are sowing the seed of the word of God anywhere, everywhere. We make it available through the radio or through our publications.

But I think since you see Jesus explaining this more directly to the disciples, we have to think, you know, this appears to be applying to the Church of God, applying to the people who make up the Church of God, applying to the people who, he says, are either going to be children of the kingdom and who identify with the kingdom of God, who actually, again, as our sermonette pointed out, who identify with Jesus and submit to Him. That's what the children of the kingdom are going to be. And of course, he also mentions then the children of the evil one who don't really identify with Jesus, who don't really comprehend the purpose for which God has called and drawn them to be a part of the Church, to grow and to change and to overcome the evil one.

See, they're refusing and in a sense they reflect the Satan's attitudes and Satan's actions instead of the actions of Jesus. So I think that we could safely say that this parable teaches us two very important points. And in a sense, this should be sobering. It should be sobering to us because I don't want to be a tear, but I want to guard against being a tear. But what does that tell us? Well, one thing is that we should expect to see some tears. We should expect that among the Church of God. Among the people of God, there will be some who don't identify with Jesus Christ.

The second thing I think we can also take from this is the judgment.

The judgment period for each of us is upon the household of God today. We want to be more mindful of that. We can look at that in 1 Peter 4. 1 Peter 4 says, if I can find Peter here, back here somewhere, 1 Peter 4, and I'm not going to read a lot of verses in connection with these. I just want us to be mindful of what this parable of Jesus is talking about. It talks about the fact that He doesn't remove everyone who doesn't identify with Him until later. This is what He ultimately shows. But here in 1 Peter 4, it says in verse 14, if you are reviled for the name of Christ, then you are blessed because the Spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting upon you. And brethren, how important is that? How significant is that that we be led by the Spirit of God and that we be nurtured by the Word of God? Because He says in verse 16, if any of you suffer as a Christian, don't consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear His name. For, in verse 17, the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. And if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who will be not the gospel of God? See, the judgment that God is the period of time when we're judged is right now.

It's between now and the end of our lives. Or between now and the return of Jesus. That is a period of time that God is drawing us to Him and wanting us to identify with Jesus our Lord. So, what lessons can we learn from this? I want to cover just four lessons that I hope can be helpful to us. First of all, I think we can see as we look at this parable of the Wheaton of Tears, that they both grow together until the end. And then, you know, the tears are identified and removed. They're cast into a furnace of fire, as the description is. But then He also is going to glorify. He's going to glorify the children of the kingdom. The children who have come to identify with Jesus Christ and who have submitted their lives to Him and who are allowing Him to mold and shape their lives and their minds and their hearts and their actions and their inner actions as He chooses. So first of all, we see that the Father and the Son are really long-suffering toward the Church. They're very patient. They know our limitations.

They know how much we need help. They know the struggles that we go through.

But they're very long-suffering toward us so that we will grow. See, that's what we really find here.

If we back up to verse 28, Matthew 13, this is the parable. Matthew 13, verse 28, He says, An enemy has done this, and the servant said, Well, do you want us to go and gather up the weeds? And Jesus said, No. In gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat. See, I don't want you to uproot the wheat. I don't want you, see, out of concern for our growth.

God is willing for tares to grow among the wheat that can be identified. You know, we're going to see more about how to identify the tares. But see, ultimately, what He shows is that because of my love for the wheat, because of my love for my children, I want them to grow. I want them to be nurtured. I want them to have deep roots. I want them to be able to fend off the thorns, the cares of the world. I want them to grow and not just produce a blade, but I want them to produce fruit. I want them to produce the seed of the fruit of wheat. I want them to produce that so that they are identifying with me. So what we find, again, first of all, is that the Father and the Son are very long-suffering toward us, and He wants us to grow. Secondly, there's four things that I want to mention here. Secondly, the tares, the weeds, are described. They're described, if we jump on down to verse 41, the Son of Man will send His angels, and they will collect out of the kingdom all causes of sin or evil doing. Now that's the new Revised Standard. Let me get the King James of that. The King James of that says, the Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend. See, now how important is it that we, you know, not be offensive, that we not offend others, that we not cause others to stumble? See, actually, you find numerous verses in the writings of Paul about not offending others and not causing others to stumble, not creating a stumbling block for others. I want us to go to just one verse here in Romans chapter 16.

Romans chapter 16. Romans 16, and this is, of course, a conclusion to the book of Romans. It's a concluding statement that Paul is making in this book. He gives him some final instructions beginning in verse 17. He says, I urge you, brethren, to keep an eye, to keep an eye on those who cause dissension or division and offenses in opposition to the teaching that you have learned and avoid them. So here, you know, we see one of the things that we clearly can identify that would be offensive would be creating division, creating some type of dissension, some type of lack of harmony, lack of unity. See, that, of course, is what we want to have is, in a sense, a central part of our lives, a central part of our entire work has got to be that we are working together and pulling together and united in our efforts of achieving the preaching of the gospel.

Here he says, I want you to be aware, brethren, to keep an eye on those who cause division and who cause offenses in opposition to the teaching that you have learned and avoid them. For such people, he says in verse 18, do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but they serve themselves. They serve their own appetites, and by smooth talk and by flattery, they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and yet guileless in what is evil. And then he says in verse 20, the God of peace will shortly crush Satan under his feet. Of course, that's going to happen at the end. That's going to happen at the end of the age, according to the parable. There will become a time when God will crush Satan's influence. But clearly, we don't want to identify with the devil's approach to offending others, stumbling, causing them to stumble, but as it says here, just to avoid them. And so, not be adversely affected by them. So, tears are described as those who offend others.

The third thing I can point out here, as you just continue in this a little further, maybe we can read verse 41 again, the Son of Man will send out his angels.

Now, excuse me, I'm back in Matthew 13, verse 41, the Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, those who are not guided by an understanding of sin, they realize what they need to get away from, they become tolerant of sin, and tolerant of obedience or disobedience, and they become disobedient. So, let's go back to Matthew 7.

There's two verses here, two verses that we can identify that would clearly tie together. We see, and I know that Tom has gone over recently, more of the signs of the times here in this area, signs of the times in this age, and yet, we see that it is an undermining of people who base their lives on the Word of God and who are desiring to obey and serve God, but even here in chapter 7 of Matthew, in verse 21, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father.

That is in heaven. See, here he's talking about not those who simply talk a good fight, not who simply say the right thing, especially when they're seen, but it says those who do the will of the Father, those who truly identify with Jesus Christ, those who have cultivated a relationship with the Father and the Son through prayer, through study, through being nurtured in understanding how it is that God wants to change our nature. He wants to change our heart, and I want to be a willing participant, but here he, of course, is identifying those who just talk a good fight and those who actually do the will of the Father.

He says in verse 22 on that day, talking about a day in the future and perhaps a day that is described here at the end of the age, in Matthew 13, on that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and did we not cast out demons in your name and do many deeds in your name?

And I will have to declare to them that I simply don't know you. Go away from me, you evil doers. See, there are some who would fit the category of tares who refuse to listen, who refuse to fight the good fight, to refuse to identify what's wrong, and then strive to ask God to help them to do that.

So they, in a sense, they are practicing lawlessness. They are practicing disobedience, and they're not allowing God to make the transformation that they need to make in their lives. Another verse that we might tie together here with lawlessness is found in 2 John, 2 John 9. Now, 2 John is a tiny little book here at the end of the New Testament, and it is written primarily by John about a man named Deocthrophes, and the fact that he was among the church, and so you could say, I guess you could identify him as a terror, but he didn't acknowledge the leadership of Jesus Christ.

He didn't acknowledge the direction that Christ was giving the church, and in this case it was through the Apostle John who had walked and talked and lived with Jesus Christ. The one who Jesus said was a beloved friend and disciple of his, one that he loved dearly.

And of course he knew even that John would live the longest through the first century, that after Christ's death there would be people who would live throughout the remainder of that century up until about 195 or 100 when John finally died and when he wrote the book of Revelation.

But here you find that John makes mention. He says in verse 9, I've written something to the church, and so John had the prerogative, he had the directive, he had the authority of Jesus behind him because as Jesus is the head of the church, you know, John was able to teach and preach and solidify the church and encourage and teach them not to be lawless but be mindful of their need to honor the law.

He says I've written something to the church but the atrophies who likes to put himself first, who is willing to lift himself up and to think that his opinion and his idea and what he wishes to do is more important than what John was saying. The atrophies who likes to put himself first, he does not acknowledge our authority. And so if I come, I will call attention to what he's doing in spreading false charges against us and not content with those who even refuses to welcome the friends or brethren and even prevents them from wanting to or those who want to do to expel them from the church.

See, obviously, the atrophies was defective. He was obviously a terror, and in this case, John was even identifying him as someone among the church but was not growing in a close relationship with God, was not growing. His actions, his words did not reflect what it is that God is wishing to see in each of us. And so not only are terrors going to be described as those who offend, but terrors are also going to be those who practice lawlessness, and he tells us to be on the lookout for that.

And then the fourth thing I'll mention is just in regard to the parable of the wheat and the terrors, we have to think of well, are we growing like the wheat was to grow? Are we growing as a child of the kingdom?

Or are we allowing the influences of the devil to adversely affect us? We must not allow the wicked one to rule in our lives. See, now I can make that statement because I know how easy that is. That's almost like breathing. Satan, he interjects his ideas, his lies, his deceit, his disobedience, his arrogance. We identify with that because we see that that's a part of the way we are. That's how we become in this world. But see, he continues. See, what we're told is that we have to resist those attitudes. See, if we don't resist them, then we will just emanate them. We will identify with the works of the devil more than the works of Jesus Christ and the work of the Spirit of God growing in us. You'll find this here in 1 Peter. Guess we can back up at the page or two.

1 Peter 5. You see a very striking example here. He says in the latter part of verse 5, all of you need to clothe yourselves with humility and you're dealing with one another.

For God opposes the proud and He gives grace to the humble.

You know, it's amazing how many times you see reference to God resisting and opposing and rejecting those who are filled with pride or arrogance, but He is nurturing tor. He gives grace to and He builds within the humble the nature of God. So He says, what we should do is humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. And He says in verse 7, cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. You know, He wants us to take our cares to Him and have Him as our strength and our power. But He says in verse 8, discipline yourselves and keep alert.

Like a roaring lion, your adversary, the devil, prowls around looking for someone to devour.

This is the effect of the tears among the field, in the field and in the church.

You know, they're still there. But what we're told in verse 9 is to resist Him steadfast in the faith for you know that your brethren in the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering. So we all have the same type of struggle. We have the same type of struggle here in Fulton that we have in Kansas City or any other congregation here in the U.S. We have the same struggle as those who you know we can read about some of the physical difficulties that people in Africa or other parts of the world in some of the far eastern countries and some of the terrible weather you know that they struggle with. You know, we may not fully identify with what they're going they're fighting the same spiritual battle that we're fighting. And so you know this points out and this is again identifying of the tears not only those who offend but those who practice lawlessness and those who do not resist what it is you know the attitudes and the influences that Satan has caused to be such a clear part of the way that the entire world is. And so we're told to avoid that. If we don't resist then we will be seduced. We will be seduced by reflecting Satan's attitudes. That's what we can do. In 1 John chapter 2, probably over a page here, in your Bible or in my Bible, 1 John chapter 2, he says in verse 13, I'm writing to you, fathers, because you do know him who is from the beginning and I'm writing to you, young people, because you have conquered the evil one. And he says in verse 14, I write to you, children, because you know the Father and I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning and I write to you, young people, because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

See, our battle is to draw close to God and to resist the influences of the devil. See, it's clear, and yet whenever we read it in Matthew 13 and we read it in a parable where Jesus says, I'm not always going to just make it totally clear who is really growing because it's a personal issue and it's clearly something each one of us have to identify with to be a child of the kingdom. We've got to truly identify with Jesus Christ.

We've got to desire to be like him. He was absolutely perfect in every way.

And we are not. We are striving for that. And yet we don't want to fit into the category of a tear and a child of the devil where we just reflect. We're not even trying. We're not trying to resist because if we do resist, if we do resist, he says in James, if you resist the devil, if you resist the devil, he will flee from you. We just have to be on guard. We have to be reminded.

We have to be studying the Word of God. And of course this says, you know, that if you are, let's see, in verse the latter part of verse 14, I write to you young people because you are strong and you, or the Word of God, abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. See, that's how we overcome. That's how we change and resist sin and resist the devil's influence is by remaining steadfast and certainly filling our minds with the Word of God. So I want to just point out these things because, you know, Jesus gave this parable in Matthew 13. He gave that and then he explained it to the disciples so that they would realize that judgment is upon them now. They need to be working to be a child of the kingdom. They need to be drawing close to the one who could empower them, and they certainly needed to resist. See, it wasn't always going to be just totally removed from them. See, the tears were not removed. Jesus said, no, leave them. I'm going to sort it out later. I'm going to identify who truly is close to me. I'm going to do that at the end of the age. And so if we look back at Matthew 13, see in verse 30, after he's collected the weeds and bound them in bundles and burned them, he said, I want you to gather the wheat into my barn.

See, brethren, that's where we want to be. We want to be gathered as fruit. We want to be gathered as those who are growing closer each day and each week, closer to the one who can sustain our lives for eternity. And be thankful for that. And of course, the explanation up in verse 42 and verse 43 says, I'm going to throw the tears into the furnace of fire where it will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But then in verse 43, the righteous are going to shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. See, that's what we want. That's what we desire. That's what, whenever he talks about having called us and having justified us and having called us to conform to his son, and then he says, I'm going to glorify you. I am going to glorify you, but of course, you know, it's out of my love for you. I don't want you to be disrupted or I don't want you to be damaged by the tears. I want you to be a part of my kingdom. And so he is, you know, quite clear about that, I think, in this parable. And of course, as he says here in the very end of verse 43, he says, let anyone who has ears let him hear. And of course, he was telling his disciples, he told them earlier, a lot of people might want to hear, but they don't. And yet your ears are blessed. Your ears are blessed because you can know what the Word of God says. You can understand how it is that God has entered your life, and then you can recognize how it is, you know, that he wants you to identify with Jesus Christ and the Father. So our ears need to hear, and I would encourage all of us, you know, to listen unto the words of Jesus.