We are continuing in our series on the parables of Jesus, and today we have come to a trilogy of parables which I believe are teaching a similar principle, albeit from differing perspectives. These parables are part of a greater sermon that Jesus taught which is called the Olivet Discourse.
Last week we looked at another parable from this sermon, which comes directly before these three. It is the parable of the sower. If you will recall, in that parable Jesus spoke of four types of soil, representing four conditions of the heart, all of which received the seed which was the word of God, but two failed to produce any real spiritual growth, one produced growth which was choked by weeds and thorns and did not produce fruit, and then one soil, the good soil, which produced varying degrees of fruitfulness.
Now the first parable in this series of three sort of builds on the parable of the sower by using a similar illustration of sowing. Some aspects are similar, and some are different. For instance, in the previous parable Jesus taught that there were four types of soil, indicating believers and non-believers. In this next parable, He teaches that there are two types of seed.
Let’s consider then the parable of the wheat and the tares. Jesus said, ““The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away.”
I have repeatedly explained in our study of the parables that when Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven, He is not speaking of the eternal abode of the righteous, or a place somewhere in outer space where God lives and the saints shall live with Him. But Jesus is speaking of the sovereign reign of God. The Bible says that heaven is My throne, and the earth is my footstool. God is the creator of the world, and He rules over the world. Not all the people in the world have submitted to Him as Sovereign, but one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Until that day, when He is revealed from heaven in power and glory, men are given the gospel, an invitation, that the way to gain citizenship in the kingdom has been offered through Jesus Christ. That invitation was given when Jesus came to earth the first time. Men are given the opportunity to receive Him in this age and be spiritually reborn as sons and daughters of God. And then when the King returns in His glory at the end of the age, those who are His people will join Him to live and reign with Him forever, but those who rejected Him during their life, will be cast out of the kingdom into eternal punishment.
So when Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven, He is speaking of the intermediate age between the first coming and the second coming of the King. It is the age in which we live on earth now. God is on the throne in heaven, and He is over all the earth. He has established His rule and law and proclaimed the good news of the kingdom and invited all who believe to enter. And at the end of this age He will come again to judge the earth and consummate the final age of His kingdom on earth.
The teaching of the kingdom of heaven was nothing new to the Jewish audience that listened to Jesus. But they had a distorted view of what that would look like. They were expecting the Messiah to be King, and to take up the throne of David in Jerusalem, to defeat the enemies of Israel, and establish Israel as the nation of God, which dominates the world, and to whom the world serves. They expected a kingdom on earth, but with Israel as the people of God, and the rest of the world to be in subjection to them, or to be destroyed by the Messiah. They expected that reign to begin immediately upon the inauguration of the Messiah and that it would never end. They did not understand that it would be a spiritual kingdom for a long time, during which both righteousness and evil would be in effect on the earth for what has been 2000 years now, until the day when the Messiah returns to consummate that kingdom.
So when Jesus teaches concerning the kingdom of heaven, He is in effect correcting, if not overturning the stereotypical views of the Jews. And it must have been difficult for them to understand because like most people, they heard what they wanted to hear. That’s why Jesus concluded the previous parable by saying, those that have ears to hear, let them hear. Their hearing was hindered because they did not have spiritual insight.
The disciples, on the other hand, did have spiritual insight, and so after Jesus had given the parable to the multitude, He went in the house, in vs 36, and the disciples asked Him then to explain the parable to them.
The interesting thing which Jesus taught, is that during the present age, as the kingdom of heaven is in effect, there are those who are in subjection to the king, and those that are not. He says in vs 38, the field is analogous to the world. The entire world belongs to the king. Those that have submitted to the King are those illustrated in the previous parable as the good soil. They received the word of God, the seed, the gospel, and that seed sown in good ground has produced spiritual life. And a similar analogy is given in this parable; Jesus says the good seed that was sown by the sower are the sons of the kingdom.
But in the parable Jesus says that there is an enemy of the king, who sowed tares among the wheat while the king’s men were sleeping. In HIs interpretation of the parable Jesus identifies the enemy as the sons of the evil one. These are those who have believed the lies of Satan. They are not concerned about the things of God because they have believed the lie rather than the truth. And so consequently they are doing the devil’s work in spreading lies and deceit amongst the world.
The idea of this happening while his men were sleeping is something that should be elaborated on. There was a book that was written by John F. Kennedy while he was still a young man at Harvard. And the book was titled, “Why England Slept.” It was about how England and other western countries seemed to sleep while Hitler was ascending to power and preparing to take over Europe.
A similar reference was made by many people regarding the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. While America was asleep, the warplanes of Japan were making their descent upon the unsuspecting forces in Pearl Harbor. That same stealthy kind of approach by the enemy is what Jesus is referring to here in this parable. It indicates the way in which the enemy works. He is deceitful. He works by lying, by subterfuge. He takes advantage of darkness, which is an idiom for ignorance. And he works by counterfeiting. The tares look like wheat.
It also indicates that Satan takes advantage of the lethargy and slumber of the church. The job of the church is to be the watchman, to be wakeful, to be on the alert. Peter says, be on the alert, because your adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. But the devil is working while we are sleeping. There was an album that came out years ago by Neil Young, called Rust Never Sleeps. That may be said about the devil. He is working 24/7 knowing that his time is short. But meanwhile, the church seems to be taking a perpetual nap, while the corruption that is in the world is spreading at a frightful pace.
Jesus said the enemy sowed tares among the wheat. Tares look like wheat when they are young, but in fact produce a poisonous fungus which makes a person sick. That sickness is a pretty apt illustration of the nature of the lie of Satan. He promises happiness and fulfillment but in the end it only produces death. And the field which is the world receives the lie of Satan and they become corrupted and poisoned by sin which produces death.
That illustrates an important principle which I mentioned a moment ago. The work of Satan is often a work of counterfeiting the gospel with another gospel. A gospel without power, without conviction, without repentance, without the cross, without judgment. Someone has aptly said, “Where the good seed is sown, there the evil is scattered thickest. False christs and false apostles dog the true like their shadows. Every truth has its counterfeit.” Satan masquerades as an angel of light, and his message is a lie construed to look like the truth.
We have counterfeit churches in which the true gospel is not proclaimed. We have counterfeit ministries in which the Word of God is not taught. We have counterfeit ministers who open up the Bible and who twist it into false doctrine. In other words, the counterfeit is always there in the presence of the true, and it is very easy to be misled by them if we are not students of the Bible, and come to the Lord and ask him to explain His word for us.
In the parable, the servants of the landowner come and ask him “‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ That would seem to be the logical conclusion. But Jesus says the landowner replies, “No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
What that indicates is that there is a danger to uprooting the counterfeit. In an actual field of wheat, the roots of the tares may be intertwined with the wheat. Pulling up the bad would perhaps inadvertently uproot the good. Also, the similarity between the two may be cause for a mistake to be made by the reapers. And so Jesus says let them both grow.
I think it’s a mistake to try to draw too many conclusions from some elements of the story, particularly this element of not uprooting the tares until harvest. I”m not sure that we can draw too many analogies from that and be certain of our deductions. We might be tempted to say that perhaps even a false teacher could lead someone to become a believer. And that may be one way of looking at it. However, what I think the salient point that Jesus is teaching is that the angels of God will wait until the judgment to separate the wheat from the tares. I don’t think that Jesus is saying that we should not identify false teaching or should not call out false teachers. There is plenty of evidence in scripture that indicates that we should call out false teaching and we should warn others concerning it.
But that is not what Jesus is primarily teaching here. I think the primary lesson that He is illustrating is that both wheat and tares will be allowed to grow until the harvest. And at the harvest, it will be clear which are wheat and which are tares, because the fruit will be evident. The point is that there will be a judgment which will determine the sons of the kingdom from the sons of the evil one. Jesus said, “Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”
Jesus expounds on that in vs 40 "So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
I want you to notice that in the parable, Jesus refers to the tares as being burned, and in the interpretation of the parable Jesus again says that that lawless and stumbling blocks will thrown into the furnace of fire. The point being that in both the parable and the interpretation, fire is fire. The fire doesn’t symbolize something that is not fire. So we don’t see the terror of hell which is symbolized by fire, diminished in any way by the interpretation, but actually the reality of hell is reinforced. The fact of a burning, actual fiery hell that lasts forever is clearly illustrated in this message.
But while the judgment at the end of the age is given great emphasis, the main point of the parable is that both wheat and tares are sown in the kingdom, and will be allowed to continue to grow until the day when Christ returns, and at that time will come the judgment.
And another point that is illustrated in the interpretation of the parable is that the deeds of the unrighteous will be the evidence that they never were converted. Jesus calls them stumbling blocks and those that commit lawlessness. And by inference, the deeds of the righteous will be the proof that they are sons of the kingdom, even as the fruitfulness was an indication in the previous parable. Deeds are not the means of salvation, but deeds are the evidence of it, or the evidence that you are not of the kingdom. That should be clear from the parables.
Now there are two other parables that Jesus gives immediately after the wheat and the tares. These two are not interpreted by Jesus. However, I believe the key to a proper interpretation is found in the fact that they come in the sermon before the interpretation of the wheat and the tares. And so I think that positioning indicates that they are part of a trilogy of parables which are teaching a similar principle, only one of which will be interpreted, but the juxtaposition of the other two before the interpretation means that they share in that interpretation.
Notice then the parable of the mustard seed. Jesus said in vs31 "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all [other] seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR come and NEST IN ITS BRANCHES.”
In this parable we see that the birds of the air nest in the branches of the mustard tree when it is full grown. If we use the principle of expositional constancy, then we can deduce that the birds are a picture of the devil and his angels as identified in the parable of the sower. In that parable Jesus says the birds who snatch away the seed is the evil one.
The sower would be Jesus, if we follow the exposition of the previous parable. In this case, the mustard tree would be the church, which springs up from the good seed, which when fully grown becomes a tree big enough to have birds nest in it’s branches.
What Jesus is illustrating here is similar to that of the wheat and the tares. Within the kingdom exists both wheat and tares, both good and evil. And within the church, the offshoot of the seed, exists both good and evil. The devil and his angels find safe haven in the church. We saw that same principle in the previous parable with the idea of counterfeit churches, and a counterfeit gospel. Satan has always found a suitable site for subterfuge in the branches of the church, counterfeiting the truth with a lie.
Another thing that is worth pointing out about this parable is that a mustard seed does not produce a tree that big, but is actually a bush. Jesus seems to lay stress on the fact that this plant grows bigger than the other plants in the garden to become a tree. A mustard seed producing a tree is abnormal growth. And so we can see that what Jesus is teaching is that the church grows abnormally large, and as a result it harbors false teachers and false churches within it. But if we apply the same teaching about the end of the age which we have seen previously, then at the end of the age, the fruit of the church will be evident and will precipitate the judgment of the unrighteous who have counterfeited the gospel.
Now I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the interpretation I have presented of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven, is not the mainstream interpretation. Most traditional commentators have taken the approach that the mustard seed is a picture of the church which will expand throughout the age and throughout the world. They say the same thing about the leaven, that it’s a picture of the church’s rise and prominence in the world. That may be true, or not true, but either way I don’t think that is what Jesus is teaching. Again, besides the principle of expositional constancy, I would point to another evidence for my view as the positioning of these two parables. They are a continuation of the principle being taught in the wheat and tares, which is interpreted after they are all presented, signifying that they all share in that interpretation.
Now that being said, let’s look at the last parable in this trilogy which I think will verify my position even further. Vs 33 “He spoke another parable to them, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened." All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable. [This was] to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: "I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.””
This parable of the leaven is very short and simple. And yet it too is often misinterpreted as a picture of the growth of the church. But the problem with that is that leaven is always presented in the Bible as a picture of sin and corruption. Jesus on at least a couple of occasions preached, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” They were the stumbling blocks which prohibited the Jews from coming to Christ. He was speaking of the corrupt teaching which was being done by them which kept the Jews in bondage. And in the Passover, leaven is a picture of sin, and they were to search out the house for leaven and throw it out, and eat unleavened bread. It was a picture of getting rid of the sinful, corrupting influences of the world.
So if you are consistent with that symbolism, then the woman taking flour and adding leaven to it until it was all leavened is not a picture of the church growing in a good way, but growing in a bad way. The leaven is a corrupting influence which causes the dough to rise. And so the corrupting influence of sin in the church spreads to all the church.
We also see a similarity in the woman hiding the leaven in the dough, and the enemy sowing the tares while they were sleeping. Both indicate the stealthy, subversive nature of the tactics of the enemy to sow bad seed in the church.
The idea of hiding leaven in three measures of meal would have offended any observant Jew. This certainly isn’t a picture of the church gradually influencing the whole world for good. Rather, in the context of increasing opposition to His work, Jesus announced that His church would be influenced by corruption and false teaching and a tolerance for sin.
In the final analysis, we must examine ourselves in light of these parables as to whether or not we are truly sons and daughters of the kingdom, or whether we have been deceived by the lie of the devil and are actually children of rebellion. Jesus said by their fruits you shall know them. Those who have confessed Jesus as Lord have received the righteousness of Christ resulting in being born again spiritually as children of God. And as such, they have a new nature, and their deeds are evidence of that. Those that are in rebellion are still in their sins, and are still carnal, and their lawless deeds are evidence of their nature.
The difference might not be easily seen. On the surface, the regenerate and the unregenerate may look the same. But God sees the heart. And on the day when we all are judged at Christ’s appearing, God will separate the sheep from the goats, the righteous from the unrighteous, and the wheat from the tares.
If you are here today and you have realized in your heart that you have never been born again spiritually through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, then you still have the opportunity to surrender to Jesus Christ today. Today is the acceptable day of salvation. Today Jesus invites you to join His kingdom. I pray that you will call upon Him today and be delivered from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Don’t put it off. Call upon the Lord today and be saved.
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