Read Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43
He set another parable before them, saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field,
but while people slept, his enemy came and sowed darnel also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up and brought forth fruit, then the darnel appeared also.
The servants of the householder came and said to him, Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where did this darnel come from?
"He said to them, ?An enemy has done this. ? "The servants asked him, ?Do you want us to go and gather them up? "But he said, No, lest perhaps while you gather up the darnel, you root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the harvest time I will tell the reapers, "First, gather up the darnel, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn."
Then Jesus sent the multitudes away, and went into the house. His disciples came to him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the darnel of the field."
He answered them, "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the children of the kingdom; and the darnel are the children of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.
As therefore the darnel is gathered up and burned with fire; so will it 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 cause stumbling, and those who do iniquity, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
Before looking at the parable itself, it is appropriate to look at Matthew 13 as a whole, because the parables are part of a continuous dialogue by Jesus about the state of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is done at the beginning of the study on The Parable of the Leaven. We also need to look at just what, when and where the Kingdom of Heaven is. This is covered in more detail elsewhere on this website, but in a nutshell the following seems to be the case, based on all the references Jesus made to the Kingdom of Heaven:
1. It is not an Earthly kingdom. Jesus told Pilate "My Kingdom is not of this world". It must therefore be a Heavenly Kingdom.
2. It is a spiritual Kingdom. Throughout His teaching, the many references Jesus gave about the kingdom points to this, especially since it is God's kingdom, and God is spirit, and not a physical being. It is not a physical place, but a state of spritual being or existence, in which those in it are subjects of the rule of God, having submitted their spirits to God's moral code of living and behaviour as taught by Jesus and demonstrated by Him by example during his life on earth.
3. It is not a futuristic Kingdom. Jesus taught the people of His day that the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Anything that is at hand is close by - it is not quite there yet, but it is close by, almost within touching distance. Luke 9:27 says: But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God. Matthew 16:27-28 and Mark 9:1 are different version s of the same teaching. From it we can see that the Kingdom of Heaven would be seen (experienced) by many of those listening to Jesus when He said this, therefore its arrival occurred during their lifetimes (Matthew 16:27-28). Therefore for us in our day, we can truly say that the Kingdom of Heaven has well and truly arrived and is available for us to see and experience today.
4. The Kingdom of Heaven and The Kingdom of God are one and the same. See reference.
The first four parables in Matthew Chapter 13 deal with "Nominalism" in the kingdom of Heaven; this is one of them. These parables, and particularly this one, teach that not everyone who is "in" the kingdom of Heaven is a part of the Kingdom of Heaven or is a "plantings of the Lord".
There are two sowers in this parable - Jesus is not the only one sowing seed, an unnamed person is a sower also. In the Parable of the Sower (Matt 13:1-24) which Jesus told immediately before this one, Jesus indicates that the seed being sown is the word of the Kingdom, that is, the message of the Kingdom of Heaven as taught by Jesus (the sower). However, in the explanation of the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, Jesus does not say that the seed is the word of God, rather, the seeds he sows are the children of the kingdom. And what of the second sower; who is he and what does he sow? The second sower is identified as an enemy (the evil one) of the owner of the field. The seed he sows are children of the evil one.
Note that the owner of the field and the evil one both sow their seeds in the same field. And what is the field? Jesus says the field is the world, however we must not lose site of the fact that this is a parable about the kingdom of heaven. Thus, if is a parable about the kingdom of heaven, but is set in the world, it must be about the kingdom of heaven as it exists in the world. This is confirmed by the fact that the first sower is the owner of the field. Since the first sower sows children of the kingdom into his field, it stands to reason that the field into which they are being sown is His kingdom. As the field is also representative of the world, the field must represent His Kingdom of Heaven as it exists in the world. We identify God's kingdom as it exists in the world by the use of the word "church".
In its young stages, Darnel, or tares, looks exactly like wheat and, in fact, only the expert can distinguish most species of this darnel from true wheat. Later on, the differences are remarkable. The darnel has far smaller seeds than wheat, and it is claimed that these seeds, when ground to flour, are poisonous, due perhaps to a particular fungus which develops in the seed itself. Ground darnel seeds were used in the time of Jesus as a drug to put people to sleep.
There are no "half tares, half wheat" hybrids. A plant is either one or the other. Every plant, be it wheat or darnel, grows from a seed. The sowing of seed is in reality the sowing of the next generation of that plant. The characteristics of the plant from which a seed has come will be the characteristics of the plant that grows from that seed. The seeds that are sown by the good sower into his field are all seeds of the Kingdom. They give birth to a new generation of plants which bear all the characteristics of the Kingdom. For us to be children of the kingdom, our spirits must be born (or more correctly, re-born) from seed of the heavenly kingdom. For this reason Jesus said, "We must be born again", and "He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." 1John 5:12. Irrespective of whether or not we are planted in the Kingdom, if we are not born of the seed of the kingdom, we will never bear fruit of the Kindgom. If our lives aren't outward outworkings of the Kingdom, then we are not children of the Kingdom.
The parable reveals that a seed sown by the evil one within the field of the heavenly kingdom can and will grow up in that kingdom, simply as a result of where it has been planted. It will look for all the world as though it belongs there right up until harvest time, when its true identity is revealed. Irrespective of the environment in which it has been planted, the type or quality of food by which it was nurtured, or the fact that it and the wheat were planted in the same soil of the kingdom and fed the same food, its grew from a tares seed, therefore it will always be tares. For a plant to be wheat, it must grow from a seed of wheat. For a person to be godly, they must grow from a seed of godliness.
Let us not lose sight of where the evil one is sowing his seed - into the field of the first sower, who of course is the Masrer or King of the Kingdom of Heaven. Taking this to its logical conclusion, and given that the field is the Kingdom of Heaven as it exists in the world (church of Jesus Jesus), Jesus is saying that the Devil will plant his own offspring into church of Jesus Jesus. The very purpose for telling the parable in the first place is to warn us not only that Satan will do, but that he will do it in their early stages of growth, at which time they will be undistinguisable from the children of the Kingdom. Furthermore, the original sower, the master of the Kingdom, is not going to weed out these imposters while they are growing side by side with the children of the Kingdom. He is going to wait until harvest time when his angels (messengers) will be sent to bring in the harvest. Up until that time, both the good seed and the bad will have been left to grow in the field side by side because, had the two kinds of plants been separated as they grew in the field, there was a possibility that some of the good plants would be pulled out and destroyed accidentally in the weeding out process, since at that stage the plants appear identical.
At what stage does wheat become distinguishable from tares? When the planting reach maturity. At that time, the fruit of the plants come forth - the wheat plants yield ears of wheat and the tares yeild ears of tares. The two "fruits" are quite different and, unlike the plants that have grown them, are easily distinguishable. Thus, the reapers, whose task it is the bring home the harvest when the life cycle of that planting is over, will have no trouble identifying the wheat from the tares, something thart would have been impossible had they tried to separate the two before fruit had appeared.
So too, God is not going to separate the children of the kingdom from the children of the devil while they are alive and growing together in the field of his Church. Rather, he will allow the true nature of the seed from which each person is growing to be revealed in the fruit of our lives. The fruit of the children of the kingdom will be obedience to the commands of the Master of the Kingdom into which they have been planted and from whose seed they were grown (Matt 7:127-21), the evidence of which will be the way in which treat others (Matt 25:32-46). When our lives have reached their end, the time of harvest will have come, and the angels who come to reap the harvent will be able to see quite clearly which are the wheat and which are the tares by the evidence of the characteristics of the seed from which we were grown.
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