Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements:

I am so glad to be back in this church today

It feels like the first time in forever!

I want to thank everyone for their prayers for me

I was about as sick as I had ever been

We are looking at doing another fellowship opportunity with Salem Oct 30th.

Chili cook off

Hayride

Maybe a trunk-or-treat

Pastoral Prayer

INTRODUCTION

We are picking right up where we left off a few weeks ago in Matthew chapter 13 in the Kingdom parables.

This morning we are going to talk about the parable of the Wheat and Tares.

Does anyone remember the parable that we studied a few weeks ago?

It was the parable of the soils.

And the soils represent four different kinds of hearts.

The Hard Heart

The Shallow Heart

The Worldly Heart

The Fertile Heart

And the only heart that produced a crop was the fertile heart

Jesus tells the parable of the Wheat and Tares right after the parable of the soils.

The problem in the parable of the soils was the soils.

The problem in the parable of the Wheat and Tares is the seed.

And though there are four kinds of soils, there are only two kinds of seeds that produce two kinds of plants: The Wheat and the Tares

This parable introduces us to an enemy who is trying to stop the work of God.

There will always be spiritual opposition to the good things that God is doing in this world.

When God brings a person from death to life, one of the first things that person will experience is opposition

When God births a new church, opposition will come

When you start reading your Bible, praying, and getting serious about your walk with God, opposition will come.

When God begins saving souls, the enemy will do everything he can to put an end to it.

In this parable today, Jesus demonstrates one way the enemy opposes the work that God is doing and that is by sowing unbelievers in the midst of Christians.

And these unbelievers are often undetectable and slip into the church under the radar and into our lives.

And once they get into our lives and the church, they begin to influence the church, and pull us away from God’s mission and our personal walk with Christ!

They cause division and strife and all sorts of problems that hinder and eventually stop the work of God.

THIS IS THE PARABLE OF THE WHEAT AND TARES

Matthew 13:24-30 “Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “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.

“But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.

“The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have tares?’

“And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’

The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ “But he said, ‘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.”

And then skip down to verse 36 and Jesus will explain the parable to us

Matt 13:36-43 “Then He left the crowds and went into the house.

And His disciples came to Him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”

And He said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.

“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.”

We are going to focus on the parable itself this morning.

And all throughout this parable there is a comparison between two kinds of plants.

There is the wheat and there are the tares.

All of us know what wheat is.

But we may not be familiar with the tares.

Tares look almost identical to wheat.

The DIFFERENCE: One produces grain and the other is a weed

Wheat represents the saved

Those who have been regenerated, who are in covenant with God, who have forsaken the way of this world and committed their life to Jesus Christ.

The wheat represents fruit bearing Christians

Tares represent the lost who pretend to be saved, or who think they are saved

These are the unregenerate, those who have not been born again, those who do not submit to the rule of God.

Those who do not produce any kind of spiritual fruit

The point of using wheat and Tares in the parable is this: We can not easily tell them apart.

In fact, no one humanly speaking can be absolutely sure if someone else is saved or lost.

But we make a terrible mistake if we think everyone who professes Christ truly belongs to Christ.

WHY?

The enemy hinders the work of God by sowing counterfeit Christians among true believers

Matthew 13:24–25 (NASB95)

Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “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.

What is the plot of the enemy in this parable to oppose the work of God?

He sow tares among the wheat!

He plants lost people among saved people.

Most commentators today that I have read believe that this parable does not refer to the church, but to the world.

They says its primary teaching point is to explain the presence of evil the world today which will be eradicated in the final judgment.

I disagree and I want to explain why.

What is the point of the devil’s plot is to sow lost people in the world if every person of this world is already born a lost sinner.

That thought really doesn’t make any sense to me.

We know this world is lost.

And it is not Jesus sowing seeds among Satan’s field but Satan sowing seed’s among Jesus’ field.

Secondly, lost people who have nothing to do with God and look nothing like the people of God.

They live totally different lives!

They talk differently

They act differently

And they serve God, not themselves!

The point of Jesus using Tares and Wheat is to make the point of a an imposter among the people of God.

So, I believe that the primary teaching of this parable is a warning about Satan’s devices to sow counterfeit Christians among believers to hinder the work of God.

And that includes the church!

God raises up believers from the world, converts them, and brings them into the church.

God does the majority of His work through the church.

God’s people have been gathering together and laboring for the Kingdom of heaven for 2,000 years and Satan would love for nothing more than to stop the church!

As the church grows through conversion, the Kingdom of God also grows.

Ands to stop this growth, Satan brings lost people into the church under the radar and once they get inside the church, they can begin to influence the church.

They begin to serve in positions where they can highjack parts of ministry.

They teach Sunday school classes that water down the gospel and the need for repentance and faith.

They begin to make the church look like the world and do the things the world does.

They trivialize sin and holiness, and place great emphasis on things that will attract the world.