The Wheat And The Tares

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Gardening is a hobby of many, and a livelihood of many more.  As many gardeners can attest, weeds are the bane of any beautiful flower bed or vegetable garden.  Our reading for today is Jesus’s Parable of the Tares, in which weeds are a large part.  Let’s look at this important parable and lesson the Lord told.

Like many of the parables Jesus told, he spoke this one to the disciples and then later explained the meaning to them.  As Jesus explained, the field is the world.  The one who sowed the seed is Jesus, the Son of God.  The good seed are believers, those who are saved.   The tares or weeds are those who are unsaved, the lost.  And the enemy is Satan.  Tares mentioned in this parable are probably the plant “darnel”, which greatly resemble wheat, but with black grains.  Darnel is easily infected with a fungus, which would make one very sick, and can even be fatal when eaten.

The parable begins with a farmer planting a field of wheat.  During the night an enemy of his comes and sows bad seed, or tares, in amongst the wheat.  The farm workers ask the farmer if they should pull up the tares, but are told not to, as the tares and the wheat look so similar, and some wheat may accidentally be pulled up.  At harvest time, though, the tares will be gathered and burned.  Jesus then goes on to explain the parable, comparing the wheat and tares with the saved children of God and the lost and unsaved people.

Just as the weeds and wheat could be mistaken for each other as they are growing in the fields, so can believers and lost at a first glance.  Saved people and the lost live side by side.  God allows the unsaved to remain on earth for awhile.  Though a weed can never become a good plant, there is always hope that a lost person can be saved.  God does not want anyone to die unsaved (II Peter 3:9).

As Christians we must not be too quick to judge others, calling them tares or weeds.  Some weeds are quite obvious, just like some people are obviously not saved.  But there are others that are not so obvious in either way.  There are some weaker Christians who are truly saved, but have not grown strong or are backslidden.  We may look at them and judge them a tare and want to uproot them.  Then there are some people who are so busy and active in our church, and we look at them and think, “What a wonderful Christian.  They are so busy in Sunday School, this or that organization, etc.”  We think they are a good strong stalk of wheat, when in reality they are not truly saved.  They are imposters and are really a weed.   God will know who is who on the Day of Judgment.

In the passage Jesus described this sowing of the tares as a very deliberate plot of the enemy (vs. 25).  Satan sows his children in with believers.  There are those in our churches who are not true believers, and this is sometimes very difficult to discern, just as wheat and tares are often similar in appearance.  Satan wishes to destroy Christ’s church and to bring down Christians whenever he can.  One way is by planting his weeds in and amongst the good wheat that Christ has planted.  Jesus was very plain when He said this.  The tares were planted by the enemy.  We, though, will often not know the good from the bad.  Some we thought were weeds were not.  Some we thought were wheat were not, either.

Jesus told us that the great harvest day is coming.  On that day His angels will come and sort out the wheat from the tares.  The wheat will be gathered into His garner, while the tares will be burnt (vs. 40-42).  Jesus tells of this coming judgment, and describes it.  The judgment of the unbelievers is not a figure of speech, or just a myth.  When Jesus spoke figuratively He described it as such in His parables.  He didn’t do so here when He describes hell and the destination of those tares who are the unbelievers.

We must not let pretenders influence our faith, those tares who have been sown into the field of wheat.  Instead, we need to let our life, our testimony, and our witness be an influence on them.  As mentioned before, tares could never become wheat, but an unbeliever can always be won for the Lord.