We are continuing this morning with our look at the parables of Jesus in Matthew 13. Today will be looking at the parable of the tares that the Lord gave following the parable of the soils. The context for both parables is the same. After facing the rejection of the Jews and the direct denouncement of the Pharisees who claimed that he was only performing miracles by the power of Satan, Jesus began teaching in parables as a way of thinning out the crowds of onlookers whose hearts had not been prepared by God to hear his message and turn his attention rather to his disciples whose eyes and ears had been blessed by God as we saw in verse 16-17.
The parable of the soils explained to the disciples why there were so many who had heard the gospel message, who had heard the Lord preach the message of the kingdom and yet were turning away unchanged. For some, it is because their hearts were so hardened by sin that the gospel never had a chance to sprout. For the rocky and weedy soil, though there may have been an initial excitement and response to the message of the kingdom, either the persecution or the temptations of the world proved more powerful and thus the promising growth that initially showed itself was proved to be worthless in the end. Finally, the good soil represented those, like the disciples, who stayed with Jesus to seek a further explanation for this simple illustration; those whose hearts had been prepared and regenerated by the work of the Holy Spirit so that they were able to accept the seed of the gospel and by the grace of God, see that seed grow into a fruit producing plant.
The parable of the soils showed the disciples, and helps us 2000 years later, to understand why there are some who seem to respond to the gospel but in the end, fall away. The settings, the context, the cultures all may be completely different, but men’s hearts have not changed. Without the work of the Holy Spirit regenerating hearts of stone, there can be no response to the gospel.
The parable of the tares among the wheat seeks to answer a different question, but one that may come up when pondering the parable of the soils. The disciples were expecting a kingdom defined by righteousness, a kingdom of holy glory where unbelievers were devastatingly judged, punished, gathered up and burned. As you read the Old Testament prophets, much of the talk surrounding the coming of the kingdom of God and the Day of the Lord centers around the restoration of Israel, headed by the faithful remnant while at the same time the unfaithful Israelites and the unbelieving Gentiles would experience divine judgment.
John the Baptist had even preached, as we saw back in chapter 3, “Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance… The ax is already laid the root of the trees; therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire… His winnowing fork is in His hand, and he will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and he will gather His wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” So, having heard the parable of the soil, it is very possible that the disciples were thinking to themselves, “What are you going to do with the bad soil or worthless plants? There is so much evil in the world, so much sin. How are we going to get rid of all the sinners?”
To answer that question, Jesus gives this second parable concerning unbelievers in this age. The parable is given in verses 24-30 and the explanation comes in verses 36-43 and so that is going to be our passage for today. Let us read this parable and we will take a little bit of time unpacking it, which will hopefully help us to contextualize it a bit more and then we will read the Lord’s explanation of the imagery and see how we are to apply this spiritual truth to our own lives. let us begin with reading the initial giving of the parable with Matthew 13:24-30.
“Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘first gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.”
All of these parables, and we will look at this concept in more depth next week, but all these parables that the Lord gives are focused on the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. It is the theme that binds all of the parables in chapter 13 together. As Jesus first presents this parable, he compares the kingdom of heaven to a man sowing good seed in his field. The man owns the field, he is not, like the parable of the soils, simply a man hired to sow seed. The soil is no longer the focus. This time the parable assumes that it is a wise farmer who has cleared out the rocks and weeds and has spread, not mediocre seed or average seed but good seed.
After a hard-day’s work the master and his servants to go sleep and in the night his enemy comes and sowed tares among his good wheat. The word “tares” refers to what is more commonly known as darnel, a type of ryegrass. To be perfectly honest, I do not know a whole lot about it as most of the sources I read are biblical scholars and not farmers, so I am sure that most of you know more about it than I do. That being said, please be gentle if I get something not 100% right when it comes to the agricultural stuff. What makes this so heinous an act is that in the beginning stages of growth, darnel looks very much like wheat and so it cannot be distinguished until it reaches a more mature growth. Sowing tears in someone’s wheat field was actually a common way of sabotaging an enemy or a competitor in the ancient world. The point being to drastically lesson the fields total yield as the wheat would have to fight for space and nutrients. This practice was so bad in fact that the Romans had very strict legislation criminalizing the act and harsh punishments for those caught doing it. This act of sabotage would have been something the crowds hearing this parable would have been very aware of even if they were not farmers by trade.
Because the darnel and the wheat look so similar in the early stages of growth, there is no way of knowing that there is a problem and when the plants begin to mature and it is finally discovered, you are faced with a difficult choice. The first choice, has the slaves of the landowner suggested, was to tear out the weeds in the hopes of allowing the wheat a bit more growth. The problem with this, as the wise landowner points out is that as the wheat and the tares grew together, their roots had intertwined and so pulling out the weed could damage the wheat even further. Better to allow both to reach full maturity and when harvest season comes, pull them all together separating the wheat from the tares.
Now we see in verses 31-35 a few more parables about the kingdom that were likely taught in quick succession to this one without any explanation. As he had done with the parable of the soils, the Lord was hiding the truth of the kingdom from those who had stopped up their ears and shut their eyes to the truth, knowing that the true disciples would seek out further explanation. We will look at those other parables next week as we explore the theme of the kingdom of heaven a bit more. But for this morning we are progressing to verse 36 where Jesus begins the explanation of this parable. So let us read that now. Matthew 13:36-43.
“Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him and said, ‘Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.’ And he said to them, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are the angels. So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Jesus begins by sending a way the crowds or at least retreating from them back into the house so that he can focus on his disciples, the ones who have had their eyes and ears opened by the Holy Spirit, and it is here that they again press Jesus for an explanation of this simple and yet opaque parable. So, let us look at the interpretation starting in verse 37. The one who sows the seed is the Son of Man. That is Christ himself. The title Son of Man was the messianic title that Jesus most commonly used for himself. It identifies him in his humanness, in his incarnation; it points to him as the perfect man, the second Adam as a representative had of humanity.
Jesus is the owner of the field. What does that tell us? First, we see that it is His field. He is the owner, he is the master. Satan may rule over the world for now, but it is Christ who has the ultimate authority over it as sovereign creator and sustainer. We also see that he is the one sowing seed in the world. Jesus is called the Logos, the Word, in the Gospel of John. Jesus is the living embodiment of the Word of God. Jesus is the incarnation of the gospel. He is the foundation of all Scripture, the Old Testament looks forward to his coming and the New Testament looks back to his completed work on the cross and forward to his second coming where all of God’s promises will be fulfilled.
What the Lord sows in the field are the children of God. The good seed are the sons of the kingdom, believers who will grow and produce fruit. In the parable of the soils they were represented by the good soil that grew to produce fruit, in this parable they are represented by the good seed, the wheat that is intended to be gathered up and stored. In both cases they are distinguished as being fruitful, where all of the other growth is set to represent unbelievers. In this parable, the sons of the evil one are the tares and Satan, the devil, the adversary is the one who cast them out into the world amongst the good seed.
The slaves in this parable are not given a direct interpretation and so we must be a little bit more careful with this one. Some interpreters throughout the ages believe that it refers only to the disciples, but as these parables are meant to apply to the entire church age, I am convinced that they are another representation of the servants of God, the church body here on earth. They are not simply called field hands in the parable, hired laborers, but are rather the slaves of the landowner, permanent members of his household who would have a vested interest in their master doing well. And in that and with the focus of the parable I believe that we can see ourselves in them as well.
And this is where we really get into the purpose of the parable. In verse 39 Jesus explains that the harvest is the end of the age and the reapers of that harvest are the angels of God. What is it that the slaves wanted to do? They wanted to get rid of the tares, to bind them up and burn them, to purify the world, they wanted judgment to come down upon the unbelievers. They had a desire to see the field of the landowner produce the best crop that it could. To protect the wheat from the dangers of the weeds.
With this parable, the Lord is explaining to the disciples that as the gospel spreads throughout the world, amongst the believers, the elect that will grow and produce fruit will also grow weeds. Zealous believers, like the slaves in this parable, will want to go into the world and rip these weeds out by the roots; to see the world cleansed and all the tares burned. The problem is that we as fallen and corrupted human beings, even though we are given a new heart, are still affected by sin and we cannot be trusted with tearing out the evil from the world. Believers were never meant to be God’s instruments of wrath and judgment in the world, believers were never meant to be the judge or executioner but instead those who extend the truth and grace of God toward all unbelievers, even those who set themselves up as our direct enemies. What did Jesus tell his disciples to do for their enemies in the Sermon on the Mount, “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Pray what? Pray for their salvation.
Now you may be thinking, “Who is going out and trying to bring the judgement of God on the world?” Well, we have an example of it even amongst the disciples. In Luke 9, as Jesus and his disciples were traveling to Jerusalem, they entered a village of Samaritans. These Samaritans rejected Jesus and his disciples, sending them on their way without extending any hospitality. When James and John saw this affront to their master, they said to him, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Now there is more to that story, but amongst other things what it shows was a desire by James and John to act as judge and executioner over these unbelievers who had rejected Christ.
Of course, this mentality did not end with the Sons of Thunder. There have been many throughout the last 2000 years who have sought to tear out the weeds and in doing so have killed many who may have otherwise been fruitful wheat plants. It was not long after Christianity became the dominant religion in the Mediterranean world that the most zealous among them began enforcing Christianity onto the unbelieving world. Not by means of evangelism but through force. Much of the spread of Christianity in Europe, Africa and into the Americas was defined by unbelievable brutality. Often this “evangelism” was merely a pretense for conquest but it was aided by a religious mentality that stands in direct opposition to the parable that Jesus is teaching here. A desire to root out unbelievers and pagans, to destroy all who do not submit to God.
This evil and sinful mentality that persisted the church led to the evils of the Crusades where so-called “Christians” in the name of Christ went throughout Europe and the Middle East murdering thousands upon thousands who would not submit or convert. Think about the Inquisition, where many were tortured and executed in an attempt to root out any “heretics” or unbelievers. And it was not just the Roman church that was responsible for these sort of things. It happened even in the Protestant nations after the Reformation where Christians actively persecuted anyone who did not fit within their theological boundaries.
It was never the churches function to go out into the world ripping out the tares and the weeds. That is not what we have been called to do. The church age is for evangelism and not judgment. We are never to attack the world, to assault evil by force. God has not given us that ministry.
While some people are running to rip out and destroy the tares of the world, they may be forgetting that they themselves were once the same thing, and if not for the intervention of the grace of God they would be still. If we go about destroying everything and everybody in order to create the perfect society, we may be totally out of line with God’s plan. Attacking the world in that way could drive away or destroy those who may have legitimately come to faith in Christ had they been approached with the love and mercy of God.
Now some people have compared the field in this parable to the church, claiming that God has established his church while Satan has also worked to sow tares among the faithful. And to a point, that is true. Satan has his children sown right inside the church walls alongside the faithful wheat. Many tares have even convinced themselves that they are wheat. These are the ones who will call out to Jesus “Lord, Lord” on judgment day and he will say to them, as we read back in Matthew chapter 7 “I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.” The visible church, the men and women who attend every Sunday, who make up the membership rolls contain both wheat and tares. That is a fact that we must recognize, that we must accept.
What this parable does not mean is that we are never to enact church discipline That we are never to put people out of the church if they reveal themselves to be unbelievers. That is not the point of this parable. The field in this metaphor is not the church but the world. Jesus says as much right there in verse 38, “the field is the world.” In chapter 18 of Matthew Jesus will give his disciples a very clear system to follow in identifying and removing unbelievers from the church; however, I believe that this parable does say something about the attitude in which we are to pursue church discipline.
First of all, we should never see church discipline as a purging, a way of cleansing all sinners from the church. Because if that were the case, we would have to empty out the church immediately and nobody would be allowed in. The church is the only organization in the world that I know of that requires you to be a sinner before you become a member. The church should be seen by all as a group of sinners who are working alongside one another, striving together to pursue righteousness in the service of their Master. Who come together not to chide or scold one another for every sin but instead lift each other up in times of difficulty or failure. The church is to be defined by a love that covers a multitude of sins, and a spirit of charity that we are to have with one another is one of forbearance, of patience, of kindness, and love so that we are not being contentious or judgmental, trying to bring church discipline to bear at the drop of a hat.
The purpose of church discipline is not to purge the church of sin, to rip out anything that may look like a weed, but to reclaim those brothers and sisters who have fallen into serious sin in a prolonged way. The only sin, in the end, that should see a person removed from the church is impenitence, that of conscious refusal to repent of an obvious sin that has been brought to their attention by the whole church. And, in putting the individual out of the church, Jesus tells us to treat them like a Gentile and or tax collector, to treat him like any other unbeliever. What was Christ’s attitude toward the tares of the world? How did he treat the publicans and the sinners? Not with distain or a desire to see them burn but with meekness and with love and with kindness.
When it comes to denouncing false teachers and heresy, we are to do so not with a desire to see them be ripped from the world and burned, but rather only with a desire defend the truth and the faithful believers, with the hope that the false teachers might recognize their error and repent. It is not the role of the Christian to destroy the enemies of God no matter who they might be. The church is called to preach and teach against sin and all unrighteousness, to refute all lies about God and his gospel; but in doing that, its purpose is not to judge souls but to win them; its purpose is not to punish but to convert sons of the evil one into sons of the kingdom.
We are to have a desire to see God’s justice in the world, but it is not our place to try to bring it on our own in any way. We are to pray that God will bring justice, but we are never to pray for him to destroy unbelievers. It should always be our desire and our prayer that God save them, that he will redeem them, even the worst of sinners. That is the attitude that Jesus had even while hanging on the cross. As he looked down upon the men who had just committed the worst sin imaginable, murdering the perfect Son of God, what did he say? “Father forgive them.”
Finally, we come to the climax of this parable. Though we are commanded not go into the world and rip out the tares; when harvest comes God will sort the wheat and the tares and deal with them accordingly. In verse 39, Jesus explains that “the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.” God will do the separating and it is his angels who will execute his judgment upon believers and unbelievers alike.
God is going to judge at the end of the age. We see these promises throughout Scripture. In the Old Testament is called the day of the Lord, in the New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation we see the promise of this day. God will send out his angels to gather the unbelievers, and as we read in verse 42, “they will be thrown into the furnace of fire; and in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” No one will escape the perfect, righteous judgment of God. The punishment that unbelievers will face will be an eternal punishment in hell that is defined by weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Grinding of teeth and piercing shrieks is the literal translation. A frustrating and excruciating pain we can only begin to picture as a lake of fire.
That is what awaits the unrighteous and if we truly understood the extent of that punishment I do not believe there is a soul on earth, no matter how wicked they were in life that we would wish it on. As we read in Hebrews 10, “it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” We are to never wish the judgment of God upon anybody for any reason and we are never to try and meted out on his behalf.
And just as the punishment of God is promised upon unbelievers so in verse 43 we see the promised reward for the children of the kingdom. “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” When the fullness of the kingdom is made manifest, when God glorifies the saints they will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
Jesus ends this explanation with the phrase, “He who has ears, let him hear.” Are you numbered amongst the wheat or the tares? Are you a child of the kingdom or are you a child of the enemy? But at the same time if you are one of the tares know that this is a time of patience and a time of grace on the part of God but it will come to an end, and there will be no second chances. If you are a child of the kingdom then you had better remember the command of your king. You exist in a world that is full of tares, full of evil and unbelieving people. But you are to be salt and light. It is not your job to condemn or to judge the world that is God’s business, it is your job to spread the message of the gospel, to love the lost to the point of being willing to die for them as Jesus did.