The Parable of the wheat and the tares

Sermon notes from Monday 9 October 2017 

Harvest Thanksgiving Mr Trevor Matthews

Matthew 13 verse 24 - 30, 36 - 43

The Parable of the wheat and the tares

I love to preach from the parables.  I don`t need to tell you what a parable is - an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.  No-one goes about building theology from them.  Jesus used them to teach bible truth.  Every parable has a key truth in them.  In this parable the harvest is the end of the world.  A harvest to take place in a future day when Jesus comes again.  That day might be closer than you think.  Things are moving fast in our world.  The end might be sooner than many realise.  Jesus told the story of a farmer that was good.  He obviously employed a number of men and instructed them to go out into the field to make the ground ready for seed to be planted.  The boss goes off to buy the seed, he doesn`t want the cheapest seed he can find, he wants the best seed.  He has one chance in the year, if he gets it right it will be a good result.  He brings the seed home and tells the men what to do.  The men are happy with the crop, they inspected it from time to time and reported back that the crop was good until one day wheat was bursting into full ear.  This field was totally messed up, laced with the wheat the tares were also growing.  These men are alarmed and told the boss "I thought you gave us good seed, how come these tares are coming up through it?"  The boss tells them "an enemy has done this, he has come in the night and planted the seed."  Satan is an angel of light, he works under the cover of darkness to dilute and deceive.  The men asked "do you want us to pull the weeds out, they will ruin the crop?"  The boss said "no let the both grow together until the harvest then separate the tares from the wheat."  We do not know who the enemy was.  That was the story.  Jesus takes his disciples into the house to explain this parable.  Jesus tells them what the story was all about in crystal clear terms so we cannot get it wrong.  

The preparation for the harvest.  The field is the world.  When thinking of this story we are in the field, you and I are in this field.  We are not totally abstract from where we are at tonight.  The scripture teaches us the whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one - how - because of the sin from our parents, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Satan seeks to deceive.  That is a real story about real people who live in our world.  There are 2 types of seed.  The good seed - the wheat represents the children of the kingdom.  In plain simple terms the believers in Jesus Christ, those in whose heart the good seed has taken root and created fruit.  "Being born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever." (1 Peter 1 verse 23)  What does that mean?  We come to an understanding that we are sinners, that we have broken God`s law, that we are transgressors, that we are separated from God because of our sin and we come to an understanding that God loves us.  Maybe we have come tonight feeling down, no one really cares.  Jesus cares about you and cares about you in a way we will never fully understand.  When you understand that love took Christ to the cross to bear the full penalty of your sin, that through him and him alone and his work on the cross, that you as a sinner can be reconciled, pardoned, forgiven.  He comes to live within your life.  The good seed takes root in the heart.  Psalm 19 "the law of the Lord is perfect, it converts the soul."  If we are going to come to know God, to be sure of heaven conversion is essential.  The law according to Paul is the school master, he guides, instructs, shows the way and the law shows how short we are, how far we have fallen in rebellion.  As we see our lostness there is the conversion of the soul.  There are some people who have an intellectual conversion.  You can do a bible course, understand intellectually and still not be converted.  The conversion is a work of the Spirit in the depths of our being, changing us from the inside out.  Nicodemus didn`t understand it either when Jesus told him he must be born again.  Nicodemus said "how can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother`s womb and be born?"  Jesus had to explain to him that it was not physically being born again but a spiritual birth, being born from above, the Holy Spirit coming into these hearts and changing us from the inside out.  Has the good seed taken root yet?  Maybe the good seed has been sown but it hasn`t taken root yet because of the hardness of our soul, the soil being hard.  God wants to change us through the powerful good seed.  The bad seed.  When the man slept his enemy came.  Jesus identifies quickly this perversion.  

The bad seed represents a real pervasion.  Who is the enemy?  The devil.  It is old fashioned to believe in the devil these days people tell us.  He is doing his work today.  He is blinding our minds today.  This seed he sows are called tares.  What are tares really?  The tares are the weeds, specific weeds.  The tares when grown are identical to the wheat.  This is why these men when they inspected the crop had no idea they were there.  The weeds were happy to grow with the wheat.  They were comfortable growing with the wheat.  You will know that one of the names given to Satan is deceiver.  That is his job - to deceive.  If you knew you were being deceived you wouldn`t be deceived.  Satan`s work is to deceive.  His job is to obscure from men and womens mindsets the absolute need for an encounter with Jesus Christ, to come to a place of repentance of sin and know Jesus entering our hearts and lives.  These tares mimic the wheat.  They are not really wheat.  It is possible to be a church member, to sing in a choir, to read the Bible, to have an appreciation of the gospel, be a kind upright member of the community.  Jesus is showing us Satan`s work is to do all these kind, upright things, to allow us to go that far but not to have an encounter with Jesus Christ.

The perplexity - the men couldn`t wait to get in there and pull these weeds up.  The boss tells them no "let them both grow together until the harvest."  Some of us will struggle with the message of the Christian gospel.  They have been through a hard struggle in life.  Someone has done something to us, asking the question "why did God allow that? why didn`t God intervene?"  God allows both to grow together - why -"for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matthew 5 verse 45) They only grow together until the harvest.  We need to remember that some of us we have grievances against God.  There are things we will never understand.  The Psalmist said "fret not thyself because of evil doers." (Psalm 37 verse 1)  We think of so and so and what they have allegedly done, know they have been elevated to political staus or whatever.  Don`t fret because of evildoers.  You will do harm.  There is a day of harvest coming.  We may think people have slipped through the justice system of our country but there is a harvest day coming.  What is the purpose of the harvest?  What do you need in harvest?  The harvest is about bringing in the crops.  No-one can bring in a harvest without doing a work of separation.  That which is not good and profitable.  Jesus tells us at that final harvest there will be a work of separation.  The tares will be separated, the good from the evil.  We read that the angels will gather out of his kingdom "all things that offend".  The earthly kingdom.  What does this mean?  I was in a service one Sunday morning in Ballymena when a man was preaching.  He was a greek scholar and a very able bible teacher.  He said of these words "if we translated this more or less from the Greek text we could read should gather out of his kingdom all those who are offended."  Paul talked about the offence of the cross.  To some people the thought of blood being shed, of Christ bearing the pain and suffering, of me having to trust in the cross and through his work my sins are forgiven that is offensive to them.  Are you offended by that?  That blood was shed for you.  It is the only way sins are forgiven.  Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.  Sin cannot be pardoned any other way.  Blood was shed to pardon your sins.  If I am going to partake of that work on the cross I must come and surrender my life to the one who laid down his life for me.  There are those who are offended.  All the wheat and tares are going to be gathered together.  Why was it so essential to get rid of these tares?  How do you identify these tares?  They had no substance.  The tares look like the wheat.  If the tares mix with the wheat and you bought some wheat and ground it into flour, then took it home and baked bread with it that tare would kill you immediately.  When they ground the wheat and the tare together it made it extremely poisonous.  "None that defileth will ever enter in."  There is no sin in heaven just genuine wheat.

The pleasure in a harvest.  "Gather the wheat into my barn"  What a barn there is.  "In my Father`s house are many mansions."  Will you be gathered in?  Have you got your title deeds to the mansion?

The pain in the harvest - "bind them in bundles to burn them."  There is a pain in harvest - shall cast them into a furnace.  You can have someone who has lived a wild life, is far from God and someone who is religious and upright, they wouldn`t want to identify with that rascal.  On that final day they are going to be in the same bundle. What a graphic picture of the end of the age.  Eternal separation from God for ever.  We need to expose Satan`s dirty work, tricking people into thinking they are alright.