Last week was New Years, and because it was the start of the year, we took a little detour into the Gospel of John. We looked at John 15 and the analogy that Jesus gives there in regard to Him being the vine and us being the branches. We got to see this incredible picture of good branches or people that really believe in Jesus’ salvation from sin and how these good branches receive His life as it flows from the vine into the branches. His life allows us to live spiritually. Ephesians 2 tells us that us, that we who were once dead, are now made alive in Christ. Because His life flowed into our dead branch and brought it to life. But now that we are alive spiritually, now that we have this relationship with Jesus, now that our branch is alive and connected to the true vine, now we’re supposed to “BEAR MUCH FRUIT”.
And Jesus spelled out for us exactly how we can do that. It’s not some seventeen-part church methodology and growth plan. It’s back to the basics, its Jesus’ plan for growth. Jesus said simply ABIDE IN ME, or get close to me, or stay with me, or don’t leave me when things aren’t going your way. He said essentially, STAY WITH ME, and I will abide in you, or stay with you as well. And Jesus said that if we abide in Him, and if we hold onto His words, then we’re going to bear fruit.
All of our daily choices, actions, words, plans, everything will begin to be transformed by Jesus’ proximity, and influence, when we are abiding in Him. And each one of those little transformations are another step of discipleship with Jesus. Each one of those will be a fruit sprouted on our healthy branch because we are rooted in and abiding in Jesus. It’s not complicated, but it’s absolutely the foundation of the way forward for us as Base Church in 2023. We get close to Jesus, and I believe that Jesus is going to transform things.
So that’s how we started the year last week and today we are going to back into the Gospel of Matthew. Let’s read our passage.
Read Matthew 13: 24-43
You know from our last time in Matthew 13, to our look at John 15 last week, to coming back into Matthew 13 today, there’s definitely an agricultural theme going on. We started with the Parable of the Sower at the beginning of the chapter, then we went to the vine and the branches, and now we are at the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares.
We’re going to do what we did earlier in this chapter and look at these middle paragraphs first and then we will deal with the parable and the explanation of the parable afterwards.
First off, let’s understand verses 34 and 35. This is Matthew reminding us once again what he shared in the first parable. That it was prophesied that Jesus was going to be teaching like this. Remember what we discussed earlier in the chapter, that Jesus’ change in teaching style was really in light of the rejection and problems coming from the Scribes and the Pharisees. These guys had been trying to cause problems for Jesus at every turn, and so Jesus at this time, switched from His normal teaching style, into these parables. Teaching in a way that His people would clearly understand about Him and His Kingdom, but other people, like these troublemakers, were just going to a hear a farming story and maybe wonder why He was talking about these things. Matthew is just reminding us about this again as it is in fact a fulfilment of prophecy. They were told that He was going to teach like this.
And then right before these verses you have two brief parables as well. The parable of the Mustard Seed and the Parable of the Leaven. And there’s actually some debate about the point of both of these parables. Let me read them again.
Read Matthew 13:31-33
Generally, these verses are taken in a very positive light. We see the tiny mustard seed, which Jesus says in verse 32 is the least of all seeds, this tiny seed is planted into the field, and it becomes a tree. A tree large enough to even allow birds to come and build nests in its branches.
And when we consider this picture and we think of the Kingdom, it’s a beautiful analogy. Jesus came here and gathered 12 guys together, 11 of which who would be part of the initial movement of the church. And from these tiny beginnings, the world has been turned upside down, the message has spread far and wide, it has been carried for the last two thousand years, generation to generation, to reach us right now. That’s crazy when you really stop to think about it. The tiny seed, the small beginnings of the movement, has become this mighty tree through time and growth.
And then you have the Parable of the Leaven and there you see a little leaven placed into three measures of meal. And for us that probably doesn’t mean anything and maybe doesn’t sound like much. But from the best that I can find, this is estimated to be enough to make bread for about 100 people. That’s a lot of dough. But if we see this parable in a positive light, then what we see, is this little bit of leaven effecting and leavening all of this dough. Leaven is yeast, it’s what makes bread rise when it’s baking. But again, we see small beginnings, a little bit of leaven, leavening a whole bunch of dough, just like a little seed growing into a tree.
Most people take these two parables as pictures of the growth and the strength of the Church and the Kingdom. And I think that’s a completely accurate and healthy way to look at these parables. But we also have to consider the context and their placement right in the middle of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares.
We’re going to read that parable again in a minute, but the main point of the parable is talking about corruption. And some take it as being in the church, or just more generally in the world, but it’s talking about a corruption of people that kind of look like they are followers of Jesus, but really aren’t. The beginning and end of this passage this morning is talking about this corruption and then you have these two parables, right in the middle, that we just looked at.
Again, most people look at these in a positive light and I would be perfectly ok with that because they still very much make sense taken that way. But some view these parables as an extension of the talk about the corruption. Because a mustard seed is supposed to turn into a plant, and not a tree, so maybe something kind of unnatural is happening, some have considered if these birds that the unnatural tree is housing are the same birds that were swooping down and taking away the seeds from the Parable of the Sower.
But I’m not sure if we really need to get super detailed in the breakdown. It’s perhaps possible that both the positive view and the corruption are both present, because as the supernatural growth from the seed into the tree happens, then maybe some corrupted, like perhaps the birds, are like “oh, wow, look at that tree, I want to get a piece of that” and come nest into the tree, but aren’t actually part of it.
And then like the birds, these little bits of leaven nesting into this massive pile of dough begin to have effects on the whole dough. Leaven was usually portrayed as a negative thing in most bible analogies. But the leaven doesn’t stop the dough from accomplishing its purpose, there’s still positive here, bread can still be made, but it’s there and it has an effect. And whether we see just the positive, or the negative, or maybe the mixture of the two, we now have to see the overarching picture of the Wheat the Tares. So, let’s read the beginning again.
Read Matthew 13:24-30
This is a really interesting truth for us to consider. In this picture of the Kingdom of God, we basically have the Sower again and he has tossed out good wheat seed onto the good ground in His field. But then He went to bed and while He was sleeping, the enemy, or really Satan, tossed seed for tares all throughout the same field. And when everything started to grow, the farmhands on the field are like what’s the deal? Didn’t you just put down good wheat seed?
The farmer responds to the farmhands and is like, this wasn’t from our seed, this is the work of our enemy, he’s trying to sabotage our field. But obviously what happens now is that this wheat field has a mixture of this other plant growing in it as well. And it’s interesting, because if you see wheat and this tare plant, side by side, they are very similar to the point, that they can’t really be told apart, until the grain of the wheat is fully sprouted. And when it’s sprouted it actually still looks somewhat similar, but it is definitely different.
And so, the farmhands ask if they should go pull out all of the tares. But the farmer is wise, and He knows that even if the farmhands mean well that they will probably still harm some real wheat by mistake in the process. So, He tells them to let it go and in the end it will be dealt with at harvest time. Because at that point, it will be clearly evident which is which. The good wheat will have good grain, or good fruit if we want to tie it into last week, and all of this wheat will be gathered into the farmers barn, but the tares will be seen for what they really are and they will be bundled up and burned.
So, let’s hear Jesus’ explanation of this.
Read Matthew 13:36-43
Jesus says that He is the one sowing the seed into the field of the world. The good seeds, or the wheat, are the sons of the Kingdom of God. The true believers in Jesus for salvation. The tares are the sons of Satan, and we live in this world and obviously these people groups intermingle. Jesus says that there is going to be a harvest at the end of the age and His angels are going to separate out the sons of the kingdom and the sons of Satan. And the un-sugarcoated truth of Jesus’ teaching here is that the sons of Satan, which is anyone that has not turned from their sin and believed in Jesus for salvation, that these people will be cast in to hell, while the sons of the Kingdom will then be with God the Father in His Kingdom and shining forth like the sun.
Then Jesus says, HE WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR!
Listen, Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat the reality of these things. There is the incredible opportunity to turn our back on sinfulness and believe that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again for our sins. And if we do that, and we believe that, then we will one day stand gloriously in what the book of Hebrews calls, the city of the living God, or God’s Kingdom, or heaven. We will get to be in the presence of God Himself for the rest of eternity. So, Jesus said if we have ears, we better be listening to this.
Because if we don’t, then He very clearly told us what’s coming. And this isn’t the first time He’s told us about this. Let’s look back together at Matthew 7 again.
Read Matthew 7:15-20
Jesus has told us numerous times, that His people will bear fruit. We’re told that these fruit are really the only way to see the reality of someone’s salvation. Like we talked about earlier, these fruit are every single part of life, from big to small that begins to change and be transformed in line with God’s character and God’s word. It’s when we get close to Him and follow what He has to say, that’s when the fruits begin to fill up our branch that is fed by His life from last week. These fruit are the only true way of identifying Jesus’ people. In other places, Jesus says things like you will know my people by the love that they have for one another. But again, that’s a fruit of the change that is happening when following Jesus. It’s still a fruit.
So, we see this reality of the future for those in the Kingdom and those that aren’t and it must be taken seriously, because it’s gravely serious and all of eternity is at stake. But what about right now?
For one, turn to Jesus if you haven’t, the future is horrible for those that don’t. Jesus said that if we have ears, we better be listening to what He has to say.
But secondly, we can see the fruit in other people, but we’re not perfect in our evaluations of others. It’s a good indicator for us and can help guide how we interact with people, but Jesus said that if the farmhands go out, and start trying to tear out all the tares themselves, that they are bound to hurt some wheat in the process.
This isn’t to say that we ignore things, or that we put on the blinders on. We still have to pay attention, we can still evaluate fruit, and even as the church, sometimes seeing these things leads us to having to deal with serious sin, even at the church discipline level at times, when it’s needed to guide someone back to health. But we aren’t making the final determination of people’s salvation, God does that. He said, when the time comes, that He and His angels will separate the wheat from the tares and so that’s His business.
But know this, there are some people, or some tares as we saw in the parable, that are truly enemies of God and of the church, some might actively try to cause problems from the outside, and some might even come inside to try to stir up issues. That’s something that we may have to deal with at some point.
Remember Jesus, in Matthew 7, just said, to beware of false prophets, to beware of people that are wolves in sheep’s clothing, people that are tares in the midst of the wheat. They might look the same in a lot of ways, they may say a lot of the same things, but again they might also be real enemies of the cause of Christ. Some of these might just be regular people stirring things up, some of these might also be huge names of church leaders and such that are actively leading people away from the truth.
Jesus told us about the wheat, about His people, but He also wants us to know about the tares. There are sons of the Kingdom and also sons of Satan.
Let us please listen and be on the Kingdom side of all of this, but while we’re there, as we just talked about, it’s not our place to pass final judgement on someone, but we must be cautiously aware of the corruption that Satan has spread into the field and the danger that it sometimes brings. We have to be paying attention.
And this just brings me back to last week again as all the more reason that we must be abiding in Christ as we move forward as a church. We need to be standing and walking in His presence. We need to be filled with His words. We need to be living for His purposes. We need to be regularly around His people. He told us last week that if we abide or stay with Him that He will absolutely stay with us. That sounds like a much safer place to be than just wandering aimlessly with the enemy out and about trying to plant tares in the wheat field.