Good and Evil Together Till The Harvest

Roman law had deemed it a punishable crime to plant what was called “darnel seeds” among the wheat fields of farmers. It was essentially bio-terrorism of that day, because the potential for completely ruining the crop of wheat was great. I perfect tactic for a neighboring farmer that didn’t like you.

These darnel seeds were very similar in look and size to an authentic wheat stock, and it wasn’t until the point in the process when the plants were beginning bear grain that the weeds could actually be identified as such. By then, the roots of the good and bad plants were so intertwined that it would be damaging to pull out the weeds.

Jesus uses this familiar image to conceal the mystery of this parable. Remember that this is why Jesus speaks in parables. Not just the first parable, but all parables, so that the mysteries of the Kingdom might remain hidden to the ignorant, and made plain to people of the Kingdom, to those who have ears…those who have the desire to search out the riches of it.

Here are the components of the parable in the order they are mentioned… We have...

A man who sowed good seen in his field

Other men, or servants, who work the field for that man or Master.

An enemy intruder with seeds to sow that are different from the owners seeds.

Two crops appeared in the field

We have a question from the servants to the master about why this is happening.

The master’s servants propose a solution to the problem, which the Master rejects, warns why, and provides His plan and purpose.

Then we have the mention of a harvest, and reapers, and a final destiny for both the wheat and the weeds.

Ok, now let’s go down to the interpretation Jesus gives in v.36 to 43 and see what we can learn. we can line up quite easily what each of the above elements represented.

The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man, that’s Jesus.

The field is the world.

The good seed is Christians (the sons of the Kingdom)

The weeds (or the bad seed) is the sons of the evil one, which could account for all the sons of disobedience, but I think more specifically can be understood as those who oppose the truth of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

The enemy who sowed the evil seed is the Devil.

The harvest is the end of the age

The reapers are Angels.

The first parable, the one about the sower and soils helped us to see that the seed of the Gospel is always good, and that the problem is with the soil, or the heart. It’s the heart that is either good, and able to receive, or bad, and unable to receive.

In THIS parable there is nothing wrong with the soil. It’s so fertile that anything can grow, including the crops that you don’t want. In this Parable, there’s more than one sower, and more than one kind of seed. In this parable, we’re not only told about the growth of the plants, but we’re given a greater understanding of what happens after the harvest.

v 41 - 43 brings into view what I believe is the main point Jesus is making to his disciples, and here’s what I believe that is.

The evil that is allowed to grow among the good must remain for a while. But it will not last forever. The day will come when the wicked will be separated from the righteous. They will perish under God’s judgement, and the righteous in Christ will shine like the sun.

I want to spend the rest of our time just helping you to process this truth.

We learn from the parable that Jesus is the Sower of good gospel seed. He’s the master over the whole process, but he has servants who work for Him. That’s us. That’s the church. God has chosen to sow the seeds of the gospel in this world by using His church - we are partners with God in the work of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5:19-20 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God”

But the spread of the Gospel was never meant to be easy, just as we learned last week when Isaiah was commissioned to preach to a people who would never truly hear him.

v.25 speaks to how the evil operates when we spread the seed of the Gospel in this world.

v25. “While His men were sleeping, the enemy came in and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”

The Enemy does not sleep. We do.

We are weak, with great limitations, physically and mentally. We come to the end of ourselves after laboring, trying to be fruitful, and faithful, and in God’s design we have to rest. The parable shows no indication of laziness on the part of the servants, but simply that after a day of sowing seed in the field they went to sleep, and while they slept the Enemy sowed other seeds.

What I believe we need to do with this is simply see this as an opportunity to completely trust in God who never slumbers or sleeps. We KNOW the enemy is sowing seeds of evil, and God is allowing it.

We also know exactly what the weeds are, because Jesus tells us that they are the sons of the evil one, the offspring of the work of Satan.

Like the darnel that cannot be detected as imposters until much later in the life of the crop, so it will be in the Kingdom. For some it is very clear that they are in the Kingdom, because you can see the fruit. But because we know that the enemy has been allowed to sow in the garden, we should expect that not all who call themselves Christians, and pose as such, are truly born again believers.

This might be surprising to some of you, but God’s purpose in His Kingdom takes time. There’s an actual plan. We talk about God having a plan, but then we forget what a real plan looks like.

There’s a story unfolding, and there are components to the story, and many characters. There’s good and evil. There’s victory and loss. There’s life and death. There’s rescue and redemption. There’s deception and truth. It’s God’s plan, and he chose for it to be this way with the righteous and the wicked living together on this earth, side by side, and there will be struggle, but ONLY until the harvest.

Notice what the servants of the master say to Him when they discover what has been done.

v4 Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?

And this is what we do isn’t it?

God, I thought you were good. Why is there evil. God, what are you doing?

And that’s a safe question to ask by the way. It’s reasonable, and the servants are not looked down upon for asking it. The psalmist would often ask “How long”,

Psalm 13:2 How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Psalm 35:17 How long, O Lord, will you look on? Rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions!

Psalm 74:10 How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?

Psalm 119:84 How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me?

Master, we thought you sowed good seed. We thought you loved us. We thought you cared about us. We thought you saw us down here, laboring for you…what are these weeds do in the crops?

Church, YES he sees you. He sees the struggle. He sees your labor. He sees the unbelievers, and the hatred against His name, and the strife, and the hostility in your work place, your home, your community.

What does the master say? “An enemy has done this.”

Jesus makes it clear. That bad fruit is the enemy. Not God. Yes he’s allowing it. Yes he’s sovereign over it. But that’s the work of Satan.

This is not the first time we’ve seen an enemy in a garden of God, a garden in which the people of God are the ones tending to it. There in the beginning, in Genesis, God allowed that snake, and in came the fall of man, and He’s been in the garden since… seeking to torment, and trip up, and discourage, and distract, and deceive the people of God. We don’t find evil places and good places, so much as we see varying degrees of wheat mingled with the weeds, and God, in his providence has permitted it to be so.

So, they press the concern further, and offer their own solution… They ask...Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ Gather what? The tares.

This is what we do isn’t it?....if we had it our way, we would try to extinguish all evil right now, to do it in one fell swoop. We think we know more than God.... but notice his answer… v29 No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.

So the first part of the response is a complete negative....NO, and then a warning… a total removal of the weeds is not an option for us…and be sure of this... harm comes to the church and to society when we attempt to take this into our hands. When we play God we cause damage.

Apply this to the home and family. When you have a disobedient child, or an unfaithful parent, is the answer to remove that family member completely? Not usually, though some extreme circumstances warrant it, but there’s always some additional damage that is sustained in the process.

And how about the local church? ...Jesus instructs us in how to handle ongoing and unrepentant sin, or blatant heresy or divisiveness…there’s a reason to remove such people in some circumstances, but as a whole we are not aiming to be a perfect church with no sinners and no problems.

Sure, we may aim for that in our own personal lives, and we should strive for obedience and holiness, but we need to accept the fact that good and bad, evil and righteous, sinful and innocent will not be totally separated in this life.

And where would you begin if you were to take out the weeds? Do you know the heart? Can you see the soul? Only God knows those who are His, and He is patient, more so than any of us, not willing for any of His own to perish, but to bring all of His elect to repentance before the Day of the Lord comes.

Hear his words...

Jesus says in v30 Let both grow together until the harvest.

And in this is a tremendous amount of hope for Christians, while at the same time, a terrible end is pronounced for the wicked and the rebellious who are outside of Christ when harvest comes.

And this is a key to this parable, and to understanding another part of the Kingdom that we are a part of... GROWTH TAKES TIME, and when we begin to get discouraged in the struggle against sin, and evil, we are supposed to remember that God has an appointed end.

The Kingdom is growing, and is meant to grow slow, and it will do so alongside the weeds.

I think we’ve been conditioned to just believe that we’re doomed to always be overrun with evil at every turn, and just think about evil, and expect outcomes of constant evil while we live hopeless lives, and modern media is perfectly content in helping us to do that, but Jesus does not paint a picture of hopelessness for His people here does he?

Yes, there is the reality of the seeds sown by Satan, but what indication do we have that Satan ever ultimately affects the growth of the good seed, or the joy of the harvest? Clearly the people who should be saddened here is not the church, but the wicked who do not repent of their sin.

Look at this description in v39...

The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

Here was the instruction in the parable in v30…at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ 

Every day on this earth there is spiritual harvesting that is happening. Every second or so, a person dies, and the soul departs from the body either to be in the presence of the Lord, or separated from Him.

Though harvesting happens by degrees throughout history, we are looking ahead to a day of one final harvest - the angels of God are involved, there is no escaping it - and there’s only two destinations mentioned here after that great day of the Lord’s return. You are either gathered into the great storehouse of heaven as the fruit of God’s good and gracious work of salvation, or the sickle of God’s justice is wielded by the angel and thrust at the harvest field of the earth, and the sinful soul is gathered as a weed into bundles TO BE BURNED in the fire.

This is a finality. When harvest comes, if you are found to be one of the weeds, the fakes, the faithless, and the fruitless…you will weep and gnash your teeth forever.

Jesus calls it a place in .42…In THAT PLACE. We must see hell as a real place, and in that place there is only torment. Be sure of this, that if you have not trusted in Christ, do that today, because it is only His righteousness, when imputed to the on who believes, that is sufficient to save.

But do not miss this, dear Christian…when that day of harvest comes, and God in his sovereignty sends out his angels with a mission to gather you in, not a single one will be missed. We will all be gathering into the greatest moment of fellowship we have ever experienced, and we will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of our father.

The message of the Gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ assures the saints of this, and we can trust it today.

We may long for a day when sin is not here, when the weeds are gone, but it all must remain in the same field, together, until the time of harvest.

THEREFORE, look to Christ. Wait patiently for that day when God’s vengeance repays the wicked. Discern the fruit of your own life, because there are many who think they know Christ, but are not known by Him.

He who has an ear to hear this message about the Kingdom, let him hear, and may it affect our faith today!