The Wheat & Tare

Matthew 13:24-30

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Matthew 13:24-30, Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”

Matthew 13:36-43, “Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”

37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The parables of Matthew 13 are given by our Lord to describe the character of the kingdom between His rejection and His return. These parables describe the church age, our Lord called the mystery form of the kingdom. Christ is still the King.

His kingdom is here. The King was rejected. He will return to establish His prophesied kingdom.

What will be this church age be?

Will the gospel be preached? What will happen to the kingdom in this period? Our Lord knows how to take the natural world and employ with great precision in instructing spiritual truth. V24, Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; This is a parable about the kingdom of Heaven or God.

The kingdom ruled by God from heaven.

What form of it? The mystery form. A parable about God’s rule on earth during this period and He likens this to a man who sowed good seed in his field. Now this man owns the field, his field. He has not borrowed the field.

The field belongs to Him. He sows not mediocre seed, or average seed, but good seed.

Very routine thing in that part of the world. Galilean farmers ploughed their field, cleaned out all the weeds, and turned over. If they were wise farmers, they will avoid all the rocky places so that the seed would find good root and bring forth fruit.

This man sows good seed in his field. Seed that he gained from the crop past, the best of the seed for the crop of this year. V 25, but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. While men slept, this indicates that he had servants to help him. He must have been a wealthy man.

He had a lot of workers working for him with the sowing, and they were sleeping. It isn’t because they were lazy, because it was night. A man who works hard has the right and the privilege to enjoy his sleep. At night his enemy came and sowed tares, in Greek zizania.

They knew it as a darnel, which is the common term for it rather than tares.

sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. The word “among” is in a very strong Greek expression, he sowed them all throughout and then went his way. It tells us he was an enemy. One good way to ruin a man’s crop is to sow his field full of weeds.

Did they do that very often? The Roman government had a law against it which prescribed a certain kind of punishment if you did that. That was a really great way to ruin your neighbour, just over sow his field with weeds.

Exactly that is what this enemy did. He went his way. He was a subtle man who operated in stealth, secrecy and he did an awful thing. As far as some are concerned, zizanion, some associate with zanah in Hebrew, which means to commit fornication. So, this became known as bastard wheat.

Tares/Darnel amazing property is that you can’t tell it apart from wheat. It looks exactly the same until the head finally matures.

With full of envy, bitterness, anger, and hatred, the enemy over sows the field with tares. V 26, But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

It became obvious at one point in the growth that this was not wheat. V27, So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ The servants were shocked to see the tares.

They wouldn’t have been shocked if there were just a few of these darnels because they were common to the area. It’s a grassy kind of weed, and it grows wherever it wants to grow.

They wouldn’t have been shocked if there were a few of them because they always had a few weeds in the crop that they had to deal with. But they were shocked because the whole thing was full of them. V 28, He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’

The servants wanting to defend the crop and theirs and master livelihood said shall we go and gather them up? We can recognize them now because the heads have matured, and we can tell the difference. The colour was even different.

They were a slight grey colour by now. They said that we can tell them apart, we will go through the field and tear them up. It looked very much like wheat when it sprouted up. It even appeared to have an ear that looked like an ear of wheat as it developed.

In fact, you couldn't even readily tell the difference between them until they had both become ripe. But the tares were most definitely not wheat. If the kernels from the tares became mixed up with kernels of wheat, the bread that would be made would make whoever ate it dizzy and sick.

V 29, But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. The master said No! They were so full in the field, and so close to the wheat. V 30, Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”

This is the narration. A very simple story, easy to understand.

But what does it mean?

What the disciples wanted to know? The characters of this parable are as follows.

• Field,
• Sower,
• Seed,
• Plant,
• Harvest,
• Reaper.

V 36, “Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.” He sent the multitude away.

Why did He do that? V 10-11, And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”11 He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

Why? Because of verses 13 to 15.

They do not believe, they do not see, they do not hear, they do not understand. Their hearts are fat, their ears are dull, their eyes are blind. They don’t believe in Me, I will not explain the truth to them and that is why I’m talking to them in parable.

V 16-17, But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; 17 for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

So, He takes them apart from the rest, just the disciples and went back into the house.

What house? The house He came out of. Very likely Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum. They went back in the house. The disciples came and they asked Him to explain to them the parable of the tares/darnels of the field.

Mark 4:10, But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable. Those who also followed them or believed.

So, the only people there are the believers. They are the only ones that get an explanation. God only reveals His truth to His own, and He answers their question. Note the question they asked. They identify the story, He doesn’t.

He doesn’t give it a title, but they did. The title they gave it was the parable of the tares. So, they knew that was the main feature. They knew the story was about those things that didn’t belong in the field and how in the end they were going to get burned up. They knew that. That was the feature that they attached importance to.

They really needed an answer because of the confusion over the form of the kingdom in which they were existing. V 37, He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.

Who is the Son of Man? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of Man.

That is His common title for Himself. He uses that more than any other title to refer to Himself. Jesus uses it because it identifies Him in His incarnation.

• It identifies Him in His humanness.
• It identifies Him as He truly participates in our life.
• It identifies Him to be all that a man could be, the perfect man.
• It identifies Him as the second Adam the representative of the race.

But it is also Messianic. In Daniel 7:13, the Messiah is said to be called the Son of Man. So, He is identifying Himself as the Messiah, God incarnate, in that title. The Jews knew that it was a Messianic title.

Luke 22:69-70, Hereafter the Son of Man will sit on the right hand of the power of God.” 70 Then they all said, “Are You then the Son of God?” So He said to them, “You rightly say that I am.”

They must have known the Son of Man was a Messianic reference. The sower is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the farmer sowing the seed.

What do we understand? The Lord is sowing seed.

Where? In His field. The field is the world. So, the Lord is sowing seed in the world. The world is His field. It belongs to Him. He is sovereign. He is monarch. He is King of the earth.

Psalms 24:1-2, The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein. 2 For He has founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the waters.

Genesis 14:22, But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, the Possessor of heaven and earth,

Deuteronomy 10:14, Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. Jesus holds in His hand the title deed even though He hasn’t really laid claim to it fully as He will!

Revelation 6 when He unrolls the scroll that’s the title deed to the earth and takes back the earth. It is His nonetheless. The Lord is sowing seed in the world which belongs to Him. It’s His field. It’s His kingdom. He made it!

He planted Adam and Eve in it. Satan came along and usurped everything. But it’s still His. He created it and He will reclaim it, and it’s His in the meantime. So, the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, sows in His own field.

What does He sow? V 38, The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The good seed are the children of the kingdom. What this means is that the Lord puts the children of the kingdom in the world. Very simple.

Many commentators have said the field is the church. In the church the wheat and the tares grow together. The field is the world. God sows His children of His kingdom throughout the world.

God is going to put His people all around the world. If you make it the church, you will wind up with such chaos in trying to interpret the parable that it’s hopeless. Because later when the servants say, “Can we pull out the tares?” The Lord says, “Don’t pull them out, let them grow together.”

If that is the church, then we have no right to church discipline. We must right to expose a heretic. We have no right to deal with the sin. That is not what the epistles tell us. The phrase children of the kingdom is a marvellous phrase.

We are children of the kingdom. We are the subjects of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been planted in the world, His world. We are placed within the world’s system. We who genuinely love the King, who genuinely affirm His Lordship, who truly are subjects of His sovereignty are planted in the world.

We are not here by accident, but we are planted by the Lord. In the place He wants us in the world. We are not to be out of the world.

We are not to be off in a monastery somewhere in a cubicle. We are not to live in a holy house in a holy city somewhere. We are not called to isolate ourselves. We have been planted in the world. So, in this kingdom, we are going to be planted all throughout the world. We are there for many reasons.

To be matured by the trouble the world gives us.

1 Peter 5:10, But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.

John 16:33, These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” James said that that trial and that trouble and those things that happen in the world are what mature you and build you up. So the Lord plants us there so we can develop.

We can influence. We are in the world to influence for good the darnels or the tares. Did you know that everybody who is wheat was once tares?

We were all bad seed before we got converted. If you take this in a Calvinistic predestination, we were planted as good seed and we just grew as good seed. No matter what you believe about the sovereignty of God, no matter what you believe about predestination, we were all bad from the beginning.

So, the Lord puts us in the world not only to be perfected and to be matured by the pressure that it brings, but to influence the tares into becoming wheat like we did. Our redemption must be at work.

John 17:14-15, I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

We are supposed to be in the world.

Who are we within the world? V 38, The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The tares are the children of the wicked one. The wicked one, the devil.

V 39, The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. He is the wicked one. He is called that several different places in the New Testament. He is the utterly wicked one!

The very ground of whose being is wretched, he is unmitigated darkness. He is unalleviated error. Anybody who is not a child of the kingdom is a child of the wicked one. There are only two kinds of people in the world, children of the kingdom, children of the wicked one.

If you are not a child of the King through your submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, then you are a child of the devil. Plain and simple. Unrenewed people are functioning under Satan’s control. Ephesians 2 “You are directed, moved, motivated, and guided by the prince of the power of the air who works in the children of disobedience.” If you will not obey the Lordship of Christ, then working in you is Satan.

John 8:44, You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. 1 John 3, John contrasts the children of God and the children of the devil and those are the only two kinds there are.

1 John 5:19, We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Matthew 5:37, But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. If you go beyond or in contradiction to God’s law, it proceeds from the evil one.

The origin of evil is from the evil one. God is not the author of evil. Evil proceeds from the evil one. He is the enemy who over sows in the good field. You see it in creation, chronologically. God sowed children of the kingdom, Adam, and Eve.

Then came the enemy and in the fall he over sowed, and the two continue through all human history.

Satan is the origin of evil. The Lord sows believers, subjects of the King, in the world and Satan over sows his own children. So, the world is intermingled with,

• The subjects of the King,
• The subjects of Satan.

This is how it has been, and this is how it will be in the mystery kingdom. Satan, the enemy when he came and “he sowed among.” Uses a very strong term, everywhere. Satan really has his people everywhere. In some parts of the world, they are the whole area. We would look a long time to find in there some wheat. So, there’s a massive sowing, and he likes to sow them as close to the wheat as he can.

Satan does sow them in the church too.

Matthew 7:23, And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

When we find them in the church, we do have biblical instruction to put them out. The New Testament is clear on that. So, Satan is over sowing what God has done.

• God sows good seed, and
• Satan sows the bad seed.

It goes throughout all human history. When we come to the mystery kingdom, it’s going to be that way. There will be Judases right among the apostolates.

• We exist together.
• We breathe the same air.
• We eat the same food.
• We drive the same highways.
• We live in the same neighbourhoods.
• We work at the same offices.
• We go to the same schools.
• We visit the same GP’s.
• We enjoy the same sports/entertainment.
• We are under the same sky.

The just and the unjust are rained upon in this era because it’s all commingled until the end.

V 39, The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. The disciples were ready to put in the sickle right now. Sometimes when we see the wickedness, the rejection, the unbelief, and the grief that the world causes the church. We just say, “God, would You just come down and wipe it out.”

David cries for God to destroy His enemies! We understand those people under the altar pleading with God to do something. The Lord says, “Don’t be impatient. The harvest waits till the end of the age.” A very important phrase used several times in Matthew.

This speaks of ultimate consummation in judgment or finally when God judges. Do you want us to pull the weeds up? We can see who they are now. They have grown up. We see the manifestation. The Lord says, “No, don’t do that.”

Because if you pull out the tares you are liable to do pull out some wheat also.

Our Lord simply saying if you go about trying to judge the world, without divine insight, you are going to wind up condemning the Christians. Do you know what the church has done throughout its history? The Roman Catholic Church, for example, could well be described by these.

They proclaimed that they were going to clean out all the ungodly out of the world. By their own definition they were the godly, and so they persecuted the true believers. They went out and slaughtered the true believers.

God didn’t call the church of Jesus Christ to judge the world. God doesn’t want us in a position of political power, destroying unbelievers because we don’t have the discernment to know what’s going to go on in reality anyway.

That is not the church’s function to go around ripping out the tares of the world. We have not been called to do this. We are not to attack the world. God hasn’t given us that ministry.

We are going to grow together, and Satan is going to over sow even in the church ‘because he loves imitation. But it’s not for us to go ripping the tares out. Wherever and whenever in history the church became a political power, it invariably was prone to corrupt that power, to destroy, and become an apostate.

Martyrs of Christ that were slaughtered were slaughtered by quote/unquote “Christians.” They claimed that anyway. Read about the Crusades, one of the most abysmal points of human history. Crusaders, in the name of Jesus Christ in Europe, were going to go to take the holy places of Israel back from the Turks. In the process they massacred people across Europe. In one village alone, they trampled with their horses 3,000 Jews because they said they were apostates.

This is not the age of judgment. What was the Lord Jesus Christ’s attitude toward those people?

How did Jesus treat publicans and sinners? With meekness and love and kindness.

How did He treat Judas? Judas was there in His presence, and He didn’t devastate, He didn’t blow him over with fire.

He was patient. This is the time of patience. He was tolerant. This is the time of tolerance. He was gracious. This is the time of grace. While some people are running put trying to destroy the tares, they may be forgetting the fact that they were once tares themselves. Maybe God knows they need time enough to become wheat.

If we go out destroying everybody, we may be totally out of line with God’s plan. The Lord knows how many people belong in the kingdom.

Acts 18:9-10, Now the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.” He knows who it is to believe. If we acted as a church against the ungodly of the world, we would be interfering with God’s patient, gracious waiting for

those people to come to Him in His good time. That’s not our calling. The spirit of that means we are not too damn the unbelievers of the world either. We are not to pray that God would destroy them. We ought to pray that God will save them.

The only proper attitude. Same was the attitude of our Lord Jesus Christ when the night in which He was betrayed. He took the sop, which was a sign when you gave it to the person next to you that this person was the honoured guest, and He give it to Judas. He was still wooing Judas with love.

Judas and Jesus, an illustration of how it is in the commingling in the age of grace. We cannot act as executioners. We must be lovingly, patiently, graciously tolerant like our Lord was. If we tried to act in judgment, we might be sparing some of that rocky soil stuff and some of that weedy ground stuff because we can’t tell the difference, and we might be uprooting the real stuff.

So, we have a heart of compassion, not a heart of condemnation. The Lord is greatly disturbed by that because the nature of the wheat is that it cannot be changed. We may be next to the darnels, but they can’t change our nature if we are wheat.

But the converse is not necessarily true. Their nature can be changed by the influence of godliness. We are called to be patient. V 39, The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.

Angels are called to judgment. Christians are called to righteous influence. We are not called to judgment. We are not called to condemn the world. Now we want to preach against its sins, and its evils. But we want to love its sinners, evil doers and be gracious and patient with them. We are not God’s executioners. That is not our task.

We have an inadequate knowledge in the first place.

We might wind up making terrible mistakes, as has been done so much in history. So, the Bible is saying God’s going to judge. God is going to judge in the end of the age, and the angels are going to be the reapers. Field = World Sower = God & Satan Good Seed = sons of the kingdom.

Bad seed = sons of Satan Plant = Grow together Harvest = End of Age Reaper = Angels We see this repeatedly in the New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation.

Matthew 16:27, For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

Matthew 24:31, And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The gathering process of the elect, and those to be judged is to be done by the angels. Revelation 14th and 19th chapters angels are God’s agents of judgment, not men. Jesus says to these Apostles in the parable, “You are the sowers. I have got army of angels as reapers.”

V 40, Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. We must wait until the King comes back with His angels for this to happen.

2 Thessalonians 1:7-10, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, 8 in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, 10 when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.

When is that going to happen?

When He shall come to be glorified in His saints. He will come to be glorified in His saints and when He comes at that time, with His holy angels. He will burn in unquenchable fire all those children of the wicked one. The tares are gathered out and burned. That’s the picture.

V 41, The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Pulling them all in together, like unclean and clean animals in the same ark.

Matthew 25:31-34, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the

foundation of the world

Matthew 25:41, “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire

prepared for the devil and his angels

Goats in the same pasture with sheep, Bad fish in the same net with good fish, Chaff on the same floor as the grain, Vessels to dishonour in the same house as vessels to honour. “are cast into the furnace of fire.” Their reaction to that is “wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Coming an inevitable judgment when the Lord sends His angels, pulls all of them out of the kingdom that offend Him. Anything that is sinful, unbelieving offends Him. All those who work iniquity, and they are all thrown into a furnace of fire.

Fire is the most horrible death that man ever experiences. Fire is the imagery of eternal hell. It speaks of the terrible and everlasting doom of the unrighteous, the sons of Satan. It’s used repeatedly in Scripture.

• Weeds being burned,
• Chaff being burned,
• Barren branches being burned.

Ungodly will be consumed in fire. The lake of fire of Revelation 19, The unquenchable fire of Mark 9,

The everlasting fire of Matthew 25. The consuming burning fire of hell in Malachi 4.

Daniel 12:2, And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt. It’s eternal punishment in hell. The reaction is so frightening. Grinding of teeth and piercing shrieks is what it really says. People think they are going to be in hell, and everything is going to be fine. They are going to be with their friends, and they will love it down there.

This verse tells us that not only is hell a fire, but it tells you what your reaction is going to be. Grinding teeth and piercing shrieks. Painful, eternal, inevitable, inescapable judgment. The Lord is saying to the disciples, “now you wait, be patient, influence, coexist while the plan is working out.

Conclusion.

Finally, the judgment will fall.

V 43, Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Then comes the holy glory. Then comes the anticipated kingdom. Then comes the righteous Shekinah, lighting the face of all the saints for all the ages.

Daniel 12:3, Those who are wise shall shine Like the brightness of the firmament, And those who turn many to righteousness Like the stars forever and ever. V 43, He who has ears to hear, let him hear! You better listen.

Are you wheat?

Or are you Tare/darnel? Are you a child of the kingdom, or are you a child of the enemy? If you are a child of the enemy, then this is a time of patience, this is a time of grace, but judgment is inevitable, eternal, painful. You better check and you better listen.

Application

If you are a wheat and child of God, then you better listen to this.

1. Jesus'plan that His kingdom citizens be sown in this

world and bear His influence on it.

John 17:14-19, I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. If you have heard the message of the gospel, and have believed on Jesus Christ, you are that “good seed”. Jesus has sown upon this earth. I hope you are thrilled with a sense of the greatness of your vital purpose! You bear the life-changing message of Jesus Christ to the lost people of this world. Jesus has left you here in this world for a time in order to bring His influence to bear in it.

2. Jesus'kingdom grows in this world, the devil will

ensure that evil will also be present.

Devil has everything at stake in seeking to frustrate and destroy the kingdom program of Jesus Christ. If that program succeeds, it means his eternal doom. So, the devil seeks to sow his own wicked influences in the Lord's field even in the very places in which the good seed was sown.

As long as the kingdom is being spread in this world, the devil will seek to sow tares where God seeks to sow wheat.

3. It is not our role to remove that evil from the

presence of this world. It is not our job to what Jesus will send the angles to do in the day of judgment. It is not our role to remove evil from the world.

4. Patiently persevere in faith and obedience until the

day of Jesus return. At the time of the harvest, the landowner would send out his reapers to take care of things; but until that time, it was the duty of the servants to continue doing their job. Not to condemn the world, not to blast the world, not to judge the world. That’s God’s business.

But to love them while condemning their sin and loving the sinner.