Most of us can usually distinguish a weed from a good plant. I’m certainly not much of a gardener, but I can usually determine weeds from plants. When the plants are first coming out of the ground, though, it might be a bit more difficult to determine which is the weed and which is what you had planted. In your desire to get rid of the weeds, you might accidentally pull up a good plant. In our Gospel reading for this week, Jesus uses this picture to teach us a truth about His kingdom. Let’s look at what He would teach us.
Many of the lessons that Jesus taught were in the form of parables, little stories that taught spiritual lessons. In this parable, Jesus presented a familiar scene, a farmer who was planting wheat seed on his property. They were good seeds, not a mixture of good wheat and wild weed seeds. However, at night an enemy of the farmer came in and spread weed seeds throughout the field, and when the plants grew, the farmer and his workers noticed that there were tares among the wheat (vs. 24-26).
A tare was a type of weed, possibly darnel. Darnel is a weed that looks very similar to wheat as they grow, and to the average eye could be mistaken for each other. Once they are mature, though, then one can tell the difference. When the farm workers asked the landowner whether he wanted them to pull out the tares, he told them no, not yet, as they might mistakenly pull out the wheat, as well (vs. 27-30). At the time of the harvest, then they can gather the tares and burn them.
After Jesus told this brief parable to the crowds, He then explained to His disciples what this story meant. According to the Lord, the farmer is the Lord Jesus. The world is His field. The good seed are believers, and the tares are the unsaved, as Jesus called them the sons of the wicked one, or Satan (vs. 37-38). The enemy who came and sowed the bad seed is Satan, the devil, and the workers at the time of harvest are God’s angels (vs. 39). Satan, the enemy, is the one trying to destroy the Church, and one of his ways is to attempt to bring it down by infiltrating it with his children, the tares. The true sower of salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ. He, alone, saves sinners.
Ideally the Church here on earth should be filled with true believers (wheat). However, as we see, there are many, many unsaved there, trying to pass themselves off as believers, but who are not. Satan tries to deceive the Church by mingling his children, the unsaved, in with God’s children, the saved. Sometimes it is very difficult for believers to tell the true from the false. The unsaved often speak piously, quoting Bible verses, and seemingly acting like a Christian, but they are really tares, not true wheat. True believers will produce fruitful lives, just like the wheat produces grain. The unsaved, who are only posing as Christians, will produce no lasting fruit, just like a tare, or darnel, which is poisonous when eaten.
Believers (the wheat) and the unsaved (the tares) must live side-by-side in this world. God allows unbelievers to remain for a while. Then at the harvest the weeds will be uprooted and thrown away. When Jesus returns He will instruct His angels to gather the tares, the unbelievers, and they will be bound and cast into the fires of hell (vs. 41-43). The wheat, God’s true children, will be gathered into His kingdom.
There are true and false believers in the Church today. Only God is truly qualified to judge who is who (vs. 40-43). The roots of the wheat and the weed plants were already intertwined before this act of sabotage by the enemy was detected. Weeding out the false plants would have destroyed the good with the bad. God is intent on preserving His people until the harvest. Too much scathing of people’s genuineness of faith may damage the saved before it exposes the lost. As we see, there are pretenders in the Church, and we must not let them influence our faith. Instead, we should be influencing theirs.
In closing we need to know that the day of harvest, God’s judgment of all people, is coming. Do you belong to the wheat or to the tares? Have you asked the Lord Jesus to be your Savior, and are one of His children? If not, then you are one of the tares, and belong to Satan. Though a real weed cannot change and become a good plant, in God’s kingdom a tare has a chance to become wheat any time before the harvest. After that time, though, it’s too late. They will be gathered and thrown into the fire. While there is still time, turn to the Lord Jesus, and change from a tare to wheat, from being an unbeliever to becoming one of God’s children. The day of harvest is coming soon!
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