Our text this morning in Matthew 13 is the second of... seven parables found in this chapter. As the Lord Jesus, as Messiah King Jesus proclaims the good news of the kingdom, he said the kingdom of heaven is like, and then he told earthly stories that are infused with spiritual truths. In the first kingdom parable we saw last time, the parable of the sower, this morning's text is similar And yet, it is a separate story, and I will say this a few times today, we don't want to try to cross interpret them. That is not something to do with parables. So, let me just say up front, the biggest difference between these parables is in the parable of the sower, it describes what happens when good seed gets planted in good and bad soil. But the parable of the wheat and the tares, which we're about to read, describes what happens when good soil finds itself planted with good and bad seeds. Okay? Now let's read the text together. And you'll note that just like the parable of the sower, there is the telling of the parable, and then Jesus' explanation comes a few verses later. So we're gonna start reading verses 24 through 30, and then skip down to verses 36 through 34. Starting at verse 24, Matthew 13, another parable he put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares? He said to them, an enemy has done this. The servant said to him, do you want us then to go and gather them up? But he said, no, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. And at the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn. Now, skip down to verse 36. Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house, and his disciples came to him, saying, Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said to them, He who sows the good seed is the son of man, the field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sold them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels. Therefore, as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 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 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Let's pray. Heavenly Father. Lord, we are thankful for the opportunity we have to worship you. We are thankful for your word. We're thankful for the message of your word, this parable spoken by Jesus, our Savior. Please give us an understanding of it. I ask you, Lord, to be with me, that I would speak with clarity, that I would lay down the burden of your message, that your people would be willing to pick it up and carry it. have it be impactful in their life to please you. Please be with us as a congregation that in all things we do, we would bring glory to your son. For it's in his name we pray. Amen. Weeds and other undesirable plant life has been a reality since the fall back in Genesis chapter three. Unwelcome weeds invade flower patches and plush lawns and vegetable gardens and farmer's fields and they do it without an invitation. When I was a kid, about eight years old, some of you remember eight year old Jason, When I was a kid, about eight years old, I had an aunt and uncle in Tennessee who made the mistake of handing me a little handheld gardening tool. Now, I'm sure there is a name for this thing that I don't know what it is, but it looked kind of like a hammer. It had a handle on one side, was a pick or a hoe kind of device, and on the other side were a couple of prongs. All I can say is in the hands of an eight-year-old, it was an implement of mass destruction. It was very early in the growing season and I didn't have any experience telling the difference between tomatoes and okra and weeds. My inability to tell the difference just because I couldn't differentiate between them, didn't do anything to quell my enthusiasm in going after them. I just wanted to whack away at the ground, destroy anything that was green. My uncle... quickly realized his mistake before I could do irreparable damage. And then he tried, in spending some time to no avail, to educate me on the difference between good plants and weeds. I couldn't get it. Although I will say, as it turns out, You can distinguish between good plants and weeds using the eight-year-old Jason method of gardening. You just destroy anything you see, yank everything green out of the ground, and everything that grows back is weeds. In this parable, the Lord Jesus shows that that process is unwise, and so it is not the way the wise Lord plans to work His will in this world. Now, as can be done with many of the parables, it's easiest to look at it in three different phases. There's the illustration, the explanation, and the application. Said another way, here's the story, here's what the story means, and here's what the story means for you. The illustration, the story itself here is probably the easiest part to explain. Just a little bit of research makes this really clear. But I will say again, one thing we need to be careful of is doing too much of mixing one parable with another. I know there are those similarities that this has to the parable of the sower. But you just can't take the imagery from one parable and try to apply it to another. It doesn't work that way. So here's the illustration Jesus used. There's a man who owns some property. that he sows good seed in his field. It seems evident that he didn't do this all by hand himself. He has in this story other servants, or think of them as employees, who did the job for him. But he is described in verse 27 as the owner, or the King James Version, I think, says the householder. He is the master of the house. He is the one in charge. And so other men might be doing the actual process of sowing for him, but the work is still his work because he's the owner of the field. He's the master of the house. He's the one who's giving the orders. And in this case, the order was to plant wheat into a field. Unbeknownst to this master, the owner, and his servants. Someone comes in by night shortly after that field is planted. They sneak in under cover of darkness and they sow tares in the field. And this devious underhanded act is the only way to describe someone who would do this is to call him Jesus as an enemy. In verse 25, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. So the householder, the owner, plants the field with wheat, the enemy comes in by night and sows, Jesus says, tares. Now, if you have a copy of this morning's bulletin, there's a really helpful picture for you on page two. The tares here are known as bearded darnel. Some translations call these weeds, which is basically accurate, but it does not give a clear picture of what's happening here. I like that the New King James Version uses the word tares because it identifies a specific kind of weed, and it also allows me to try to cleverly call this the terrible parable. But if you have bearded darnel growing right beside of wheat, they look basically identical. As they sprout up, they come up to the same height. They have the same color. These pointy little leaves and sprouts are virtually identical, except that the average size is a couple of millimeters difference. Nothing you would notice just by glancing at. The only time you really start to notice the difference is when that head of wheat fully matures. The bearded darnel also gets a head, but it looks slightly different. And then as the wheat matures and it dries in the time before the harvest, it starts to turn brown. Meanwhile, the tares stay green. And so you look out in the field and you recognize that, hey, some of that wheat's not doing what it's supposed to, then you know that ain't wheat. Unfortunately, the greatest difference is that the bearded darnel, the tears are actually poisonous. They aren't just inedible, they are dangerous. The symptoms of eating tares sounds like the warning that comes in a pharmaceutical commercial. It might cause dizziness, slurred speech, vomiting, diarrhea, I mean, it's bad stuff. And so I don't want you to imagine this as it happened just overnight. The enemy came in at night and sowed these tares among the wheat. That happened overnight, but there is a considerable amount of time that passes in this story. Monks pass between verses 25 and 26. Verse 26 says, when the grain sprouted and produced a crop, The tares also appeared. They became apparent, but it's fairly late in the season that they become apparent. You couldn't tell the wheat from the tares until they grew to almost full height and started developing those heads. The problem is with this field, there's not just a few tares, it's full of tares. The servants would not have been shocked if they had looked out and they noted a few green spots where there were some bearded darnel in the wheat. That would have been expected. In fact, I think most farmers would have been shocked if they didn't have any bearded darnel among their wheat. You plant the wheat, you inspect it a few months later, and just like any of us who have planted anything, you expect to find weeds. but the sheer number of tears makes it obvious that something's up. Seems like the servants worried that the problem was early on in the planting in the seeds that they sowed. So in verse 27, the servants come to the owner and said to him, sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tears, right? Maybe, maybe somebody sold you bad seed. Maybe that's where the problem was. Even though the seeds of wheat and bearded darnel look similar, there's just kind of a little tail that comes off the bearded darnel that makes them look different. But the owner here realizes, probably after inspecting the field, that given the extent of the tears, if the problem had been the seed, they would have noticed that already. They would have noticed that early on. And so in verse 28, he said to them, an enemy has done this. And the servant said to him, do you want us then to go gather them up? The master is wise enough to recognize that some enemy, he does not say who, but you kind of wonder in the story if he would have known who, some enemy came in and sowed the weeds in the field. And so he's wise enough to identify the problem and also resist the first instinct of the servants, which is to go through the field, yanking out all the tares from the ground. By the time you identify the wheat and the tares, they've already been growing together for months so that below ground, their root system has gotten intertwined with each other. If you go yanking up all the tares out of this field, you might as well let an eight-year-old with a garden hoe loose on the field. They're just gonna destroy everything. So verse 29, know lest when you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. And at the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn. Here's the plan. Don't do anything right now. But when the time comes, when the wheat is ready, when it's time for harvest, we're gonna go through and we're gonna yank up the tares and at that point it wouldn't matter whether you pulled up the wheat in the process because the wheat's gonna get pulled up anyway. So we'll bundle up all that bearded darnel and we'll throw it into the fire and then we'll go through the field again collecting the wheat and gather it into the barn. Now that's the whole story. Before getting into Jesus's explanation of this, I want you to remember what we've said in recent weeks. Because of the rejection of the people as a whole, Jesus began teaching in parables as an act of judgment. This is intended to reveal truth to believers and conceal truth from unbelievers. So verses 24 through 30, that is all that the public as a whole gets to hear. They don't get any of the explanation of this. The closest they get to any explanation is how Jesus starts in verse 24 when he says, the kingdom of heaven is like. Now, do you suppose that they walked away from this with some questions? Like they're generally gonna have more questions than answers. And Jesus only taught them in parables according to verse 34 later on. And yet even though the crowd walks away with questions, the disciples also have questions. They have the same questions the crowd did. And so they ask for an explanation starting in verse 36. Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And when they're alone now, the disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. Like you're gonna have to explain this one. How in the world is the kingdom of heaven like a field full of wheat and weeds? I don't know about you, but I'm glad they asked, and I'm glad Matthew records the explanation, because without Jesus' explanation, I would mess that all up. I wouldn't get it. In fact, let me just say, it seems a great number of commentaries and preachers through the centuries have just ignored a portion of Jesus' explanation here. Even with the explanation, we might still be left with some questions, but there are things we should have no question about. When you go through Jesus' explanation, he gives seven distinct and simple parallels between the parable and the kingdom of heaven. Here's how the kingdom of heaven is like a field full of wheat and weeds. seven distinct parallels. First, Jesus is the master. Verse 37, he answered and said to them, he who sows the good seed is the son of man. In this parable, The sower is Jesus Christ himself. Now the interesting part about him being the sower in this story is, did the sower do the sowing? Well, nah, he has servants. He's got help. but they're acting on His behalf. And when they were sowing, then He was sowing. In fact, this fits what the Apostle Paul has to say about this work of declaring the Word of God. In 2 Corinthians 5.20, Paul says we are ambassadors for Christ. as though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, or in Christ's place, be reconciled to God. To spread the Word of the Gospel is Christ's work. And even though He does it as a Master through His servants, make no mistake, it is His work. He's the one who does it. The kingdom of heaven expands through the process of Jesus sowing the good seed through the work of his servants. Second, the field is the world. Verse 38, I got this really clever point. The field is the world from the words of Jesus. I'm gonna belabor this a bit. Because it's important and it is very often ignored. Jesus has the ability to be as completely clear as he wants to be and he says in this very simple statement, the field is the world. Now I want to belabor that because the majority of interpretations in history suggest for this parable, and most of the sermons I've ever heard in my life on this parable, will tell you the field is the church. But it's not. The field is the world. I understand the temptation to apply this parable that way. So let me give you an example. If the field is the church, then this parable means that within the church there are some that are wheat and some that are weeds. There are some who are believers and there are some who are pretenders that look like believers. And let me just ask, is that true? Course it is. That is undeniably true. That parallel works, but that's not what Jesus intends in this parable. The field is the world. The problem with just grasping at some parallel and saying, oh, that works, so that must be it. is that it starts to break down when you really get to the application of it. So, for example, if the field is the church, if this is describing believers and unbelievers in the church, then the teaching of this parable is going to essentially be leave the unbelievers alone until the end of the world. Well, what's the rest of the New Testament teach? Right, there would be no church discipline of any kind if this parable is saying that the field is the church. We talked a couple of weeks ago in our rules of interpreting parables that one of those rules just should be patently obvious. One rule for interpreting parables is that when Jesus explains it, his explanation is right. we don't get to argue about whether Jesus means what he says he means. And in this case, when we get to the end, we're gonna see how it makes sense that the world, not the church, has to be the field in this parable. But for now, it makes good sense that the field is the world because Jesus, who's Jesus in this parable? He's the master. He's the owner. He does have a special relationship with his church, but Jesus is the heir of all things. He has property rights to the whole world, the earth, and all its fullness belong to the Lord. Jesus is the master owner of the whole world, and the field is the world. Third, The good seed, in verse 38, the good seed are believers. He says the good seed are the sons of the kingdom. The good seed that grew into wheat. They are the children of the kingdom. The seeds are people. These wheat growing in the field is people. Now this is another place where we should stress not to let one parable's meaning influence another, because last time in the parable of the sower, we explained that the seed was the word of God. Now this time, the good seeds are the children of the kingdom. Parables stand on their own. This is people, and it is the people of the kingdom. Now please keep in mind the church and the kingdom are different. The church of God is a description of any individual local assemblies who gather together in order to carry out the Lord's commission in a specific place. The kingdom is referring to something much bigger. Every believer who submits their life to the Lord Jesus as king are citizens of his kingdom. And in the future, the Lord Jesus is gonna rule and reign over all the earth. So the kingdom is yet to come fully according to scripture. And that fits Jesus' parable here. There is this future aspect of the kingdom that appears to be in view since it relates to, as we'll see in a moment, the end of the world. So fourth, Jesus says the tares are the children of Satan. The tares are the sons of the wicked one, he says in verse 38. It seems unfair to a lot of people to label unbelievers as Satan's offspring, but that is precisely what the word of God does, and it is not subtle about it. This is what John the Baptist was saying when he looked at those who were rejecting his message and called them a generation of vipers, right? You sons of snakes. In John 8, 44, Jesus says, you are of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father are what you wanna do. And Acts 13, 10, Paul and Barnabas encounter a man named Elymas, and they call him a son of the devil. In Ephesians 2, Paul says that unbelievers are sons of disobedience and the children of wrath. In 1 John 3.10, it says that in this, the children of God and the children of the devil are made known. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. We have this idea that there are people who are on the fence. in regard to Jesus. They're not believers, but they're just not sure. Y'all, there's nobody on the fence. There is no fence. There is no in between. In the world which Jesus has defined here, there are wheat and there are tares. There are children of the kingdom and there are children of the devil. There are two different kinds of people. You are one or the other. You are not on the fence in regard to the Lord Jesus, and every moment you spend telling yourself that you are on the fence or you are thinking about the gospel and belief, you are in reality spending that moment in rejection and rebellion against him. Fifth, the enemy is Satan, verse 39. The enemy who sowed them is the devil. God is not the author of evil in this world. God made a world that was good and right and perfect, and Satan sowed disobedience into it. Adam and Eve followed His lead, and since that time, Satan has been sowing terrors in the field of God's world ever since. 2 Corinthians 4 verses 3 and 4 speaks of the world and says, if our gospel is veiled, if it's hidden, it is veiled from those who are perishing, in whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. Satan, just like the enemy in Jesus' parable, is determined to ruin the harvest of Christ. He is real, he is powerful, but this parable reassures us that ultimately he's gonna lose. Sixth, in verse 39, the harvest is the end of the age. This is another example of how we have to avoid cross-interpreting parables and illustrations. At another time in John chapter four, Jesus tells his disciples to look up at a crowd of people who are walking towards them and recognize that the harvest is ready. That's awesome, but that's not this parable. In this parable, the harvest is not as some churches would have it be the end of service when they try to get people to walk down the aisle to harvest them. The harvest is not the world waiting to hear the gospel. The harvest isn't the end of the year or even the end of your life when you stand before God. In this parable, the harvest is the end of the age, or as the KJV says it, the end of the world. The harvest is the end of time. This would possibly have been the most mind-blowing part of this explanation in the heads of the disciples. They wanted, they expected, they demanded a Messiah who was going to set up an earthly kingdom immediately. But Jesus tells them, oh, there's an end of time. This is not the time. The time for this is not right. They never really get this out of their heads. even after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, which should have surely told them God was working in a way they didn't expect. The book of Acts opens with them asking, right? When they had come together, they asked him saying, Lord, will you at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel. Like, now can we crush them, right? Can we call down fire on unbelievers now? Can we go pulling up the tares and burning them right now? And then gather the wheat. They are impatient, but Jesus even then said, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons. There is a time, there is a season, there is a harvest. God's plan for ultimate resolution is going to come, and in this parable, the harvest is at that end of the age, the end of time. And then seventh, the final descriptive, In verse 39, the reapers are the angels. It's here in verse 39 that Jesus really begins to expand on the explanation. As he makes all these parallels between the story he told and the kingdom of heaven, he isn't just going to leave it as, well, the harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels, but instead he adds, start reading with me in verse 40, therefore, As the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 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, and will cast them into the furnace of fire, and there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. There is a coming day. at the end of days, that the Lord Jesus will return. And he says he will send out his angels. He returns with his holy angels. And the apostle Paul even records it as he writes to the church in Thessalonica in 2 Thessalonians 1, 7 through 10. This is how he describes it. You who are troubled, rest with us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. When he comes in that day, to be glorified in his saints and to be admired among all those who believe because our testimony among you was believed. Paul's description of that day includes Jesus returning with his angels in flaming fire. There is judgment, there is wrath on those who have rejected him, but that is a blessed day for the saints. Jesus gives the same explanation in this parable. The reapers, the angels, gather together the tares and burn them, and gather the wheat to bless them in verse 43. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. The righteous, the saved, the wheat in this parable, will shine in reflecting the righteousness of Jesus Christ and God the Father. Daniel says in Daniel chapter 12 verse three that the wise will shine like the brightness of the sky and like stars glorifying God forever. And then Jesus ends this with that statement again. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Whoever can understand it, understand it. Do we understand it? Well, let's talk about the application because while this is not a parable about the church and tolerance of unbelievers and terrors within the field of the church, the field here is the world and there are wheats and terrors abiding at the field. their continued growth together is by the householder's design and approval. This parable seems to speak to the idea that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. We are surrounded by unbelievers, and surprisingly enough, Jesus says, that's okay. Stop stressing about it. It is not our job to root them out, nor is it our place to try to isolate ourselves from them. Jesus, remember, he did not teach this parable alone by itself. We don't want to cross-interpret parables, but we don't wanna forget what he just taught. He's already taught the parable of the sower, intended to tell the disciples that their job is to declare the good news of Jesus far and wide, and instead of being discouraged by all the ways it might not work, all the ways that it might be rejected, to just trust that there are prepared hearts, that it will be embraced, it will grow. That lesson, that it's our job to spread the gospel, that's already established. And now here's this additional lesson. Should we spread the gospel and declare war on evil? Should we spend a portion of our time trying to reach sinners and another portion of our time trying to fix society by uprooting unrighteousness wherever we see it? Is it our job to advance the cause of Christ in our society? If that's our job, are we going to accomplish it by trying to weed the world, destroying evil wherever we find it? What's the answer to that? According to this parable, all our attempts at digging up weeds ultimately would hinder the harvest. In this parable, The enemy is a threat, but the enemy is so wise that he has demonstrated the threat this way by making the unconstrained servants of the landowner a bigger threat. Apparently, the enemy in this parable did not try to destroy the harvest himself. He hatched a plan to get the master's servants to be willing to destroy the harvest. And if left unrestricted, the servants would do the enemy's job for them. Like a whole gaggle of eight-year-olds let loose on a vegetable garden. In Luke 9 verse 54, two disciples of Jesus kind of look out and they see the weedy wickedness of this world. They see some folks who are impeding the ministry of Jesus, and James and John ask, Lord, do you want us to commend fire to come down and to consume them? Like, Lord, we know what we're supposed to do now. Let's get rid of those weeds. Jesus rebuked them. Their concern, their focus was in the wrong place. Think about this. Think about this in this parable. Where is the focus of the servants in Jesus' story? The servants were worried about the weeds. The master was concerned about the weeds. What are you worried about? Listen, the Bible is clear in the expectation that yes, evil is going to grow. It is gonna grow worse and worse. When you look out in the world, do you see that expectation fulfilled? Does it worry you? Does it get all of your attention? Because if it does, all I can tell you is, friends, do not get preoccupied by the weeds. When you look at the world and you see this confusing amalgamation of believers and unbelievers, you see the world as this field full of wheat and weeds, it is no cause for alarm. Remember, the Lord of the harvest has said, the kingdom of heaven looks like this. It's not shocking him, it's not falling outside of his expectations. There is no place in this world where there is all wheat and no weeds. So should we isolate ourselves? Pretend that there are no terrors around us? Should we pick up a sword and try to usher in a godly kingdom by force, right? Is it our calling to go out into the world and start uprooting sin wherever we find it? No, it's our job to be in the world and to reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and to proclaim his gospel message. And in part of that, we can tell the world this message. We can tell them, look, there is a harvest coming and you have to be ready for the reapers because look at what Jesus says. You have to ask yourself whether you are bringing forth fruit for the householder, for the owner, for the master, or whether you are one of the enemy's terrors, whether you're a child of the devil, whether you are awaiting the moment of your destruction when you'll be collected and thrown to the fire. The primary message of this parable is to encourage the disciples of Jesus that when you see yourself surrounded by the wicked world, it is a result of the enemy at work. Do not get distracted by that. Trust the Lord's plan, that he knows what he's doing. Simply trust and obey him, knowing that he has a plan for the harvest where he's going to sort out the wheat from the weeds, and it's his job. You know what, the interesting thing is, the servants here weren't told to do it now, and Jesus doesn't even say, but you'll get to do it later. He says, no, when it comes to later, I'll send the angels out to do that. It's never gonna be your job. But there is a message here for unbelievers too. Do not assume that because you have surrounded yourself by disciples of Jesus that your unbelief is going to be overlooked on the day of judgment. Maybe you feel secure because you have laid down roots and you are surrounded by wheat, but the harvest is coming and Jesus knows the difference and he says, the weeds will be yanked up and thrown into the fire. If the desire of your heart is to avoid that day of judgment, You must turn from your sin and trust the Master Jesus. Look to Him for forgiveness and for salvation.