Sermon: The Parable of the Wheat and Tares
#1730B
Martin G. Collins
Given 14-Oct-23; 33 minutes
description: For every pure thing God has created, Satan has manufactured a counterfeit, even passing himself off as an angel of light, having the power to influence his false teachers to pass themselves off as ministers of the truth, even having the power to fabricate false miracles and wonders. The apostle Peter and Jesus's brothers James and Jude warned of false prophets and false teachers, corrupting the church with a new gospel of licentiousness, eliminating all need for law keeping. Sadly, our previous fellowship was torn apart by antinomian heresy, called STP (Slowly Turning Protestant), a vile concoction that Our Heavenly Father and our Savior spit out. Jesus forecast these horrible situations in His parables of the Sower, in which God sowed the pure wheat, while Satan sowed the Darnell, having the capacity to poison the nervous system, causing dizziness and paralysis. In the early growing season, the two plants look identical as their root systems intertwine with each other. Jesus tells the disciples not to attempt to separate the wheat (true believers) from the Darnell (tares) because it is impossible to tell them apart. Additionally, only Christ has been given the prerogative to tell them apart. Consequently, He will have His angels harvest these noxious weeds, burning them in the fire (symbolizing Gehenna or the Lake of Fire). God's church has both wheat and tares, and false teachers have torn away formerly loyal members. We must leave it to Christ to identify the tares, but keeping our Berean mindset, must treat both wheat and tares with respect, remembering Jesus washed the feet of Judas Iscariot.
transcript:
We must be aware of Satan's counterfeits. He has counterfeit Christians who believe in a counterfeit gospel. He encourages counterfeit righteousness and even has a counterfeit church. In fact, he has many. At the end of the age, he will produce a counterfeit Christ.
Please turn with me to Acts 20, verse 28. We must be alert to Satan's deceptions because he is always trying to infiltrate the church to do damage by introducing counterfeit doctrines into the church. It is when God's people go spiritually to sleep that Satan does his most effective deception.
Acts 20:28-32 [here Paul exhorted the Ephesian elders to be aware of counterfeiters] Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
Paul had run into an incredible amount of persecution as well as counterfeit everything, whether it be doctrine or people or teachers, and he called them savage wolves, which meant they were just ravenous for destroying the church and destroying God's people. I Corinthians 11:19 says, "For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved [that is, the true believers and true ministers of God] may be recognized among you."
Please turn over to II Peter 2, verse 1. Here Peter talks about destructive doctrines.
II Peter 2:1-3 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly [and that word in the Hebrew can mean smuggle as well] bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways [I would find that just almost impossible to believe if we had not seen what we saw in the Worldwide Church of God, where God just split it apart because of all of the apostasy going on there.], because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness [that also means lust and greed] they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
It must have been at least 20 years in the Worldwide Church of God where those individuals, in a stealth manner, were trying to change doctrines all those years and slowly turned the Worldwide Church of God Protestant. And that is what that STP was nicknamed, "Slowly Turning Protestant," but it meant Systematic Theology Project. And so, that was their way of changing the God's truth over to Protestant ideas.
Now, God's work began with sowing the seed of the Word of God in people's hearts and much of the seed does not bear immediate fruit, but some are fruitful, as we know very well. Satan opposes the work of God by sowing counterfeit Christians, by encouraging false growth, and by introducing false doctrine. Often it seems like he is winning, but the final exposure of who is true and who is counterfeit will be exposed at the end of the age.
Satan opposes the Kingdom by trying to snatch the Word from the hearts of God's people. But when that fails, he has other ways of attacking God's work. The Parable of the Wheat and Tares reveals that Satan is primarily an imitator.
Please turn over to Matthew 13. To a multitude gathered before Him, Jesus spoke the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares found in Matthew 13, verses 24-30 and also the explanation in verses 36-43 where He exposes the work of the mystery of sin against the church and the extent to which the evil one is allowed to go in his opposition to it and to God's people.
Matthew 13:24-30 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?' And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants 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 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."'"
This parable reveals a slightly different aspect of the same truth taught in the preceding Parable of the Sower. Now in the wheat and tares, the mixed character of the church culminates in the ultimate separation of the religious hobbyists and worse, enemies, from the saints, from the called-out ones. In this parable, there are two sowers, two kinds of seeds, and two harvests, one good and the other bad. On the other hand, the earlier Parable of the Sower depicts four kinds of soils. But in the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, the field which Jesus says represents the world contains all the soils interspersed over its entirety.
In Matthew 13:24-25 Jesus illustrates two sowers of different characters. In the Parable of the Sower, the sower stands for all teachers of God's truth, including Jesus. But in verse 27 here, the sower is exclusively Jesus. He is the owner. And later, in verse 37, He is the Son of Man. So we know exactly who these people are, who these characters in this parable are. The other sower is called His enemy, an enemy, the wicked one, and the Devil in verses 25, 28, 38, and 39. To describe this enemy, Jesus uses the word diablos, meaning the accuser, deceiver, liar, betrayer, one who is against all that is true and righteous.
Now, while the servant slept, the enemy sowed seed in a field that was not his. This does not necessarily mean that the servants were not watchful and therefore to blame for the mixed field. The wording implies that it was the normal time for sleep and that is nighttime. Now, Satan's sly nature is revealed in his choice of the darkness for doing his diabolical work. Also notice that he does not bother to sow the wicked among the wicked—there was no need for that—but the wicked among the good. He already has the world in his grip. He does not need to sow more wicked in them. But his influence overall encourages them to sin and do horrible things.
So Satan sows false doctrine by stealth in a place where the truth is preached, and while the hearts of people are open to receive it. Using false but plausible teachers, he tries to indoctrinate the church with false ideas. This has been going on since the church started beginning with the congregation of Israel and then when the church was started in 31 AD on Pentecost.
Emotional feelings are not conclusive evidence of devotion. They may exist and still there is no true love of God or Christ, no real hatred of sin, and no change of heart in the people that Satan sends into the church, which God allows.
Are the tares easily distinguished from the wheat? Well, you already know the answer to that. We read earlier that they look the same all the way up until the end. Satan's malicious intention in sowing tares among the wheat is to cause problems and confusion and disrupt peace in the church. We certainly saw that in the Worldwide Church of God as it declined. James 3:16 says, "For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there."
So the bad seeds grow to become poisonous seeds that allow only the healthiest of the wheat to survive. Immature wheat and darnel look alike. More specifically, the word tares comes from the Hebrew zizania, designating the weed called "bearded darnel." The plant name that the scientists have given it is "lolium temulentum," a species of rye grass which you are familiar with, the seeds of which are a strong tranquilizing poison. It is interesting that the grass that is used to represent the tares is a tranquilizing poison. When the darnel seed is mixed with wheat flour, it causes dizziness, intoxication, and paralysis. Bearded darnel is the only toxic grain among all the numerous grasses.
Now, the darnel seed, before it comes into an ear of darnel is very similar in appearance to wheat, which is why there is the command that the zizania should be, "Let both grow together until the harvest." And "while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them." So we see that there is even a scientific explanation to why that parable is stated that way. Its root so entwines with that of the wheat that the farmer cannot separate them without plucking up both till the time of harvest. So to try to destroy the darnel would mean destroying much of the wheat.
Separating one from the other would be beyond the servants abilities. And only when the wheat has matured, can the tares be detected. Then the tares are gathered up in bundles in the field and destroyed in fire. And that is quite a finality to those tares.
Now, some who are not in the process of conversion resemble those who are. Just like true Christians, they go to church, they pray, they read the Bible, but they are only religious hobbyists; and Jesus calls them sons of the wicked one in Matthew 13:38. And being tares, they will eventually be destroyed.
Would you please turn over to John 8, verse 44. Now the tares are not originally from the wicked one, but they develop character according to his strong influence. They are led by him and so are his children.
John 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it."
So those who he puts in the church as tares are considered wicked by God. And that is a description of why? Because they are of their father the Devil.
Now no one but the Lord of the harvest could distinguish the superficial from the real, and man's attempt to prevent His judgment for the sake of securing a pure church by attempting to remove the tares has always failed and has only tended to foster spiritual pride and hypocrisy in those who pass judgment on others.
True Christians do not lose their salvation by an occasional unintentional sin, but they very well could for habitual sin, if the sin is a way of life for them. Now, the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, though seemingly extreme, was probably for this life only. Still, it was serious. It teaches that God is not indifferent to His people's sins and that He is the one who removes the tares.
Please turn with me back to Matthew 13, verse 36. So how does Jesus explain this parable concerning the church in Matthew 13?
Matthew 13:36-39 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 [so we know that is Jesus Christ]. 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 sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels."
So the Parable of the Tares exposes the problem of evil intermingled with good within congregations. Just as the same mix confronts nations and communities and homes, it does the church as well.
Please turn over to II Thessalonians 2, verse 7. No matter how society tries to legislate or separate lawbreakers from the rest of society, the seeds of sin and crime find a place to grow. God's church is similarly affected by Satan's constant attacks. The genuine and the counterfeit wheat are always together in the church. In looking at the church today as the greater churches of God having many organizations, some of those groups are more deceptive than others. Some have more deceitful people in them than others. But all must have some tares.
Now, the servants' perplexity about the sowing of the tares shows that the presence of sin is often a mystery to people.
II Thessalonians 2:7-10 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all powers, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.
So we keep seeing Satan's methods over and over and over again, whether it be in the world or in the church, that he has his counterfeits working all the time. God cannot be blamed for them because He does not sow evil—Satan does. By this parable, Jesus prophesized that the visible church of God on earth would be imperfect.
God's church is spiritual and unified. It only contains saints and it is not limited by the corporate lines man has drawn. However, the visible church is made up of both the wheat, that is, the saints, and the tares, that is, the deceiving unbelievers. God uses the visible church to do His organized physical works. And we see the challenges that are there with the tares being in there doing their work and also the false teachers and false preachers leading people astray.
The spiritual church has baptized members with the Holy Spirit indwelling them who are dedicated and loyal yet have personal defects. It also has within it unconverted people who may recognize the truth, but attend only to enjoy association with God's people. God's people are the nicest and most wonderful people on earth. Why would people in the world not want to spend time with such a nice group? And that happens; and sometimes they stay for a long while and sometimes they do not stay very long at all. But nevertheless, we set an example and do a witness whether or not they stay.
Now, Jesus' intent is to enlighten and warn the saints of this fact, not to expose the tares at this time. God will root out the bad seed when the good seed has matured.
The tares are intertwined with wheat like people in church fellowship are intertwined with one another by relationships, relatives, friendships, and responsibilities. If one is removed by man, there is the possibility that one of those who are directly affected will leave God's church. So God says, leave them alone. He will take care of it, He will do the judging. It is not an area that we judge in. However, there are God-given reasons why a sinning person may have to be removed from the church's fellowship. Sometimes people have to be disfellowshipped for reasons of flagrant sexual immorality or adultery, as in I Corinthians 5. Also people causing dissension and/or heresy must be cut off as well.
In I John 2:19, John wrote about such people saying, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us," but their going showed that none of them belong to us. And in II Corinthians 11:14-15, Paul gives just such a warning, pointing out that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light and that it is not surprising then if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness as well.
We face not only the hostility of mere people like us, but satanic opposition as well.
Ephesians 6:12 [a very familiar scripture to you] For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
So after Jesus sows His seed, Satan does his counterfeit deception against Jesus and the church. He is the enemy and he has his army that goes out to deceive and to plunder, as we saw in what happened with the Worldwide Church of God, sadly. The point is simply that the Devil will insert people wherever, whenever he can, who look like true Christians, though they are not Christians and often even the servants of God will not be able to tell them apart. (I do not know who is a tare. Richard probably does not know who the tares are in the church because they look just like the rest of us, whoever they are. And so we cannot judge what we do not fully know.)
Consequently, although we want a pure church and we will certainly exercise church discipline to the best of our ability in clear cases, we must not think we will achieve our full desire in this age. Even in our exercise of valid church discipline, we must be extremely careful not to discourage or damage some for whom Christ died. The harvest will happen, the wheat will be gathered into God's barn, and the tares will be burned as a result. We should examine ourselves as to whether we are true children of God or not, not whether somebody else is a true child of God or not. In II Peter 1:10, Peter tells us we should be careful "to make [our] call[ing] and election sure."
What is expected of the good seed? The "good seed," "the wheat," "the sons of the Kingdom" refer to baptized members of God's church in whom the Holy Spirit dwells—saints, the elect, the righteous. All those wonderful terms we have.
Please turn over to Luke 22, verse 31. Now it is God's will that Jesus Christ sows His redeemed ones in this world of sin for the purpose of training and testing us to prepare us to be true witnesses for Him. Therefore, He has placed true Christians where He wants us. When Jesus predicts Peter's denial, He tells Peter that he is wheat and as such is to be sifted by Satan.
Luke 22:31-32 And the Lord said, "Simon, Simon! [that is Simon Peter] Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail. And when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren."
So faith is a major aspect of our fight against Satan and his wiles and his counterfeits. All of God's saints should watch and pray that Satan and his tares do not deceive us. God bought us with a price and gave us His Spirit, making us new creations in Him and heirs of His Family with potential eternal life.
Please turn over to Matthew 13, verse 40. Therefore, He expects us to bear fruit in our corner of the field of this world.
Matthew 13:40-43 "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!"
We are warned not only against his infusion of his own people into the church, but also against the visible church's bureaucratic growth, which confuses money and size and structure with spiritual fruit. That happened also with the Worldwide Church of God. It became very large, it was very wealthy, and it had impressive structure, especially that auditorium, if you have ever visited that there. In the Auditorium there were words printed on the marble, beautiful, I think it was either gold or silver, which said, "Dedicated to the Great God." And it is interesting that when they took those letters down that the imprint from the sun was still etched into the marble, and I could not help but think that there is something to that. I just do not know what, but it is kind of an interesting thing. God was not going to be erased or whatever it was, but it is no longer used for the right purpose anymore.
Now we are warned against the infusion of evil into the lives of even the believing people. In other words, we are to beware of the church becoming secular, that is, of becoming like the world around it. The secular church is a church that is conformed to the world, as the mainstream contemporary churches are. They are characterized by the world's wisdom, the world's theology, the world's agenda, and the world's methods. And when the church becomes worldly, it may still be trying to do God's work, but it will be trying to do it in the world's way. (And that is exactly what happened to the Worldwide Church of God. It became worldly and did things in the world's way. They tried so hard to go to Protestantism.) The secular church puts its faith in the media and money rather than God and His power to preach and teach the gospel.
How does it happen so subtly? It is always the curious thing. Well, like I said about the Worldwide Church of God, it went on for over 20 years; that those minor changes became major changes and eventually sent them into apostasy. Like the unbelieving world before us, many professing Christian churches use the Bible's words but give them new meaning, pouring bad secular content into spiritual terminology.
Sin becomes dysfunctional behavior. Salvation becomes about self-esteem and superficial euphoria. Jesus becomes merely a good man, devaluing Him as our Savior and Redeemer. The secular church may rightly tell people how to have happy marriages and raise nice children but not how to get right with an offended God. They miss the point. They miss all the major points. (And of course, by secular church, I am referring to worldly churches.)
It is the function of the church to work with Christ to prepare His bride and preach the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God, providing hope to a condemned world. Our task is not to pull up the false but to plant the true. And this is not about discipline within the church. We are not policemen, we are shepherds, so we oppose Satan and we expose his lies, but we must also sow the Word of God and bear fruit in the place where Christ has planted us.
Please turn over to Matthew 7, verse 15. There is an exception to not knowing who the tares are. We can know who the false prophets and teachers are. We are going to read verses 15 through 20. You are very familiar with this because it is stated twice: You will know them by their fruits.
Matthew 7:15-20 "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
We have already heard what happens to the tares. God's judgment is clear. He will gather them together and burn them.
Spiritual unity among true Christians is one thing but religious uniformity among secular churches is quite another. It is difficult for most people to tell the false from the true today but at the end of the age, the angels will separate them.
What must we know to combat Satan's stealth tactics of camouflage tares? We must expect that there are some hypocrites, narcissists, and other deceived persons attending God's church. Hopefully very few. God's truth never made a hypocrite. Nor is there a hypocrite on earth whose principles and practices it does not condemn.
The tares' work is of the world and not the work of God's church, any more than traitors are of patriotism or counterfeiters are of honest money practices. All hope of removing them entirely would be fruitless and unsuccessful. Any attempt to remove them altogether would injure true Christians causing confusion, discord, and hard feelings, especially among new and young Christians. Christ will separate them at the proper time.
In the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, Jesus refers to those who may be suspected of hypocrisy, but against whom it cannot be proved; to those who so successfully imitate Christians as to make it difficult or impossible for anyone to distinguish them. We may suspect or doubt the conversion of someone on occasion when he or she does something seemingly un-Christian, but we cannot pass judgment on him or label him a tare because we do not know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether he or she is. We should err in favor of them, assuming that it may be a rare show of weakness on which he is working to repent and overcome.
We should not declare that person is a tare. We may have our suspicions but we still do not know for sure. We must not judge someone on supposition. God will judge everyone according to his works, having full knowledge about each and every one of us.
Psalm 135:14 For the Lord will judge His people, and He will have compassion on His servants.
We are so thankful for that, are we not?
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