The kingdom of heaven parables are a mystical blend of the mysterious and the obvious. The Lord Jesus kindly interprets a couple of them for us, but then leaves the majority untouched. They are a sack full of diamonds, large and small, some of which are beautifully cut but others are still raw and covered with dirt. Yet there has been enough revealed to teach us that they are all diamonds, and they are all valuable. As we have pointed out, when asked why He spoke in parables, Christ replied that it was to reveal things to the elect and to hide those same things from the wicked. Even if there was nothing more than that, this should elicit the curiosity of child of God. Why me?
One of the mysteries about the Kingdom of Heaven parables is the Kingdom of Heaven itself. “Heaven” is readily understood, at least as far as earthly people can see it. And the word “kingdom” is understandable despite our republican form of government. But in putting those words together, the waters get a little murky.
When we begin to study all of these parables together we can piece a few things together. For example, the Kingdom of Heaven is not confined to Heaven; it touches us right here on earth. And the Kingdom of Heaven is not the future millennial Kingdom, when the Lord Jesus shall rule the world in perfect righteousness from the throne of His father David. The Kingdom of Heaven is not the gospel, nor the Church of Lord Jesus Christ; But both the gospel and the Lord’s churches are included in that Kingdom. Clearly, WE are living in the period of the Kingdom of Heaven, as were the disciples in Jesus’ day. The Kingdom of Heaven is when and where-ever Heaven rules. It includes the Heaven of Heavens, but also the world as we know it. It covers angels and human beings, but also demons – both good and evil. It is the rule of Heaven, but there is a hellish rebellion within that kingdom, trying to steal the throne. One of the major lessons coming out of all these parables is that we are living in the midst of a spiritual battle.
Ever since “9-11” there has been a stream of rhetoric about the “evil of terrorism” and the “terror of evil.” On what that terrorism is depends on who defines it. Most of our neighbors picture terrorism as a Christless Muslim on a bloody jehad against peace-loving America. But many Muslims are convinced that we are the evil, and that the jehad is absolutely essential. While other Muslims are as peace-loving as the average American – but how peace-loving is that? We are living in a world of evil and good, but each side calls the other side the evil. This is a world of wheat and tares, growing up together unrecognizable to each other. In fact, these plants, often times, don’t even know who they are themselves. Of course, as a Bible-believing, Christ-trusting, born-again by the grace of God Baptists, we think that we know who are the tares and who are the wheat. In a world-wide context we believe that the Christ-denying, Bible-hating, Satan-worshipper is a tare. Even within these United States we have both wheat and tares. Let’s think about the SOWING, the GROWING and the MOWING of the kingdom.
In the parable, as in life, before the reaping comes the SOWING – the planting of the seed.
In verse 38 Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven rules over our world. “The field is the world.” We are thinking about Heaven’s rule on earth, not the place where the throne of God can be found beyond the farthest star.
Keeping that in mind, please remember the second rule of Bible interpretation: Never, never, never build or base a major doctrine upon what you find in a parable or allegory. Make sure that your doctrines come from the clear declaration of the scriptures. That doesn’t mean that you won’t find important Bible doctrines taught in parables. It doesn’t mean that you have to ignore the doctrines which you find in parables. But they are given to us as illustrations only – as helps to our visualizing of the truth. “The kingdom of HEAVEN is likened unto a MAN which sowed good seed in his field,” – verse 24. Heaven’s dominion on earth includes the scattering of the seed of God on that earth, and . . . “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man” – verse 37. Who is this “Son of man?” That is Jesus’ phrase to describe Himself, and there can be no doubt about that fact. He used that phrase nearly a hundred times. Putting these things together Jesus Christ is clearly unlike any other mere man – like myself. The Kingdom of Heaven is Christ Jesus planting seed in the world. He is the King both of Heaven and earth.
We have already learned from the first parable that the seed which the Lord is sowing is the Word of God. Some of this seed falls on stony ground, some falls on the path, some sprouts among weeds, and some reaches good receptive hearts. But while the Lord openly sows the Truth throughout the world, His enemy is also busy.
According to verse 39 – “The enemy that sowed the tares is the devil.” What exactly is Satan’s agenda? According to what we find in Isaiah and Ezekiel, Satan’s desire is to sit upon the throne of God. He was once one of the more illustrious angels of God, but he has lead a rebellion against Jehovah. He has been striving to maintain and accelerate that rebellion ever since. And since his expulsion from Heaven, the battlefield has primarily been on earth. At least allegorically, unlike the Saviour, Satan does the bulk of his work at night, under the cover of darkness. Like men, Satan loves darkness, “because his deeds are evil.” In other words, he is deceptive, never really telling his victims about the monster that is growing in their hearts. Using this parable as an illustration, the joy of Satan seems to be causing disruption in the kingdom.
Now we come to one of the big questions on the hearts and minds the average American – Why can’t the mighty government of the United States keep the terrorists and illegal aliens out? If God is truly God, why didn’t He post sentries around His field to keep Satan from corrupting things? If God is truly omniscient then He should have known that Satan was going to do this. Since God is God He could certainly rid the world of the tares and keep His wheat field absolutely pure. He must have a Heavenly version of Roundup to kill these tares, so why doesn’t He use it? The people of God have been complaining about things like this since the very beginning of time. David, Job, Asaph, Jeremiah, and even the Apostles like Paul in II Corinthians 9 and Galatians 2. Unfortunately for us, the business of the wheat and tares is one of the great mysteries of life. This is something which belongs to the Lord, and only the Lord. And it would be foolish for me to positively declare why God permits evil and trouble in this world. So let’s just move along and let the parable illustrate what it illustrates.
Think about the GROWING which follows the sowing.
The Lord Jesus said that the wheat are the children of the kingdom. Or to put another way, they are the children of the King. The seed may have fallen among thorns and stones, but it has sprouted and prospered. Some of the seed fell in good ground and has produced “thirty-fold, sixty-fold and even an hundred-fold.”
The tares, as Christ tells us in verse 39, are the children of the wicked one. As Jesus told some of his Jewish neighbors, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” The tares are all the people of this world who are not the children of God. They are made up of Buddhists and Muslim, Hindus and Mormons, Catholics and even a lot of Baptists. We are all of our father the Devil – until we are born again by the grace of God. We are all tares until the seed of God is planted in our hearts. And this fact changes the complexion of the tares and the terrorists.
We, as a nation, seem to be on the verge of war with someone all of the time. Recently, it has been Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and now it’s North Korea. And as a professing Christian nation we expect God to be on our side in battle against Baghdad or Babylon. The question is whether or not we have a right to expect that. The atrocities carried out by the Muslim terrorists on September 11, 2001 were certainly horrific. And many of us will remember the images of that second airplane until the day we die. We’ll remember where we were and what we were doing when we learned the news. There were, something like 2,500 people, who very quickly were swept into eternity.
We live in a country with many of the blessings of one of the Lord’s wheat fields. We have the gospel of Christ in every corner, from sea to shining sea. We have freedom to wear anything from turbans to carbines. These days we may have to pass through a metal detector, but we can go virtually anywhere. We can vote Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian or even Communist if we choose. We can go to sleep at night and not have to worry about a bomb under our porch or even a cross burning on our lawn – unless we want to worry about these things. We can send our kids to public school or we can teach them at home. We have just about the best that the world has to offer. We have stores that stock just about everything under the sun. And then we can use the internet to buy what we don’t want to go to the store to purchase. There is probably not a better place in all the world to live, than right where we are. Does this prove that we are wheat, while Cuba, Iraq and Korea are tares?
Perhaps we should start comparing atrocities. The most recent statistics that I have read indicate that we kill about 1.2 million unborn babies a year in the United States. That number has remained stationary for several years now. 12 million babies over a decade is certainly a number to be compared with the worst genocides. Does the fact that we do it with medical instruments in nicely sterile clinics instead of with bombs and nerve gas make our atrocities any less horrible than someone pre-defined as a terrorist? If every mother’s tummy had a television screen for those babies to watch during their nine month hibernation, and if those babies were all tuned to FOX news or CNN watching news reports on the battle with abortion, who would those babies say were the real terrorists in this world? Wouldn’t they fear the face of some of our most recent presidents for permitting partial birth abortions? Wouldn’t they fear a few movie stars, urging scientists to “harvest” those babies for medical research?
Or if a hundred hours of prime-time television, or Hollywood, or 10 hours of pay-for-view cable were used to determine whether our country is wheat or tares, what would the angels of God conclude? Should we use our politicians to measure our tares-ism? What about our judicial system that sets confessed murderers free on technicalities, but throws others into prison for 20 years for third-strike shop-lifting? And then there is an educational system that forbids the Ten Commandments but commands the teaching of Hindu mantras and Devolution.
In Jesus’ parable His servants asked if they should go into the field and pluck up the still growing tares. Graciously, the Lord told them to wait, and others would take care of it at the last judgment. We may not know the difference between tares and wheat, but the Lord certainly does. Why doesn’t God pour some Round-up on His fields and fry the tares right here and now? Perhaps it’s because there would hardly be a stalk of grain left in His field. Perhaps because some of your children would be poisoned with that divine herbicide. Perhaps you yourself are not one of the Lord’s wheat as yet. There are a lot of tares who think that they are really wheat. Maybe they can yet be saved?
This brings us to the end of harvest and the MOWING of the grain.
“As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear” – Matthew 13:40-43.
The Bible clearly teaches that there is a day of judgment ahead. It will be judgment for all the peoples of the world, no matter what their speech or religion. It will begin, not with where they were born, but with whether or not they were born again. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It will begin with the Lamb’s Book of Life, not the FBI’s most wanted list. “And I saw a great white throne, and the One sitting on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled; and a place was not found for them. And I saw the dead, the small and the great, standing before God. And books were opened. And another Book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of the things written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead in it. And death and Hades gave up the dead in them. And they were each judged according to their works. And death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death. and if anyone was not found having been written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the Lake Fire.”
God’s judgment will not begin with whether you’ve gone to church or to a mosque. It will start with whether or not you have repented of your sin and if you are trusting, loving and serving Jesus Christ. “He hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
This business of wheat and tares is extremely important. You need to make sure that you are wheat. You need to make sure that you look like wheat. You need to be sure that you will be gathered with the wheat before the judgment begins. Is the seed of God producing fruit in you to the glory of the Lord? Repent before God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.