Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's get our Bible and go to the Book of Matthew, chapter 13. We're going to look at the next parable in this chapter.
[00:00:11] Last week we looked at Matthew 13 and the parable of the sower.
[00:00:18] This morning we're going to look at the parable of the wheat and the tares.
[00:00:23] Starting in verse number 24 of. Of Matthew 13:24.
[00:00:34] Verse 24 says this. Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field.
[00:00:48] But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.
[00:00:57] But when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
[00:01:04] So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares?
[00:01:14] He said unto them, an enemy hath done this.
[00:01:18] The servant said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, nay, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
[00:01:31] Let both grow together until the harvest. And in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them.
[00:01:44] But gather the wheat into my barn.
[00:01:48] Now if you'll drop down to verse 36.
[00:01:50] The Lord interprets this and explains it for us. Verse number 36 says this. Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And his disciples came unto him saying, declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.
[00:02:06] He answered and said unto them, he that soweth the good seed is the Son of man.
[00:02:12] The field is the world.
[00:02:14] The good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one.
[00:02:21] The enemy that sowed them is the devil.
[00:02:25] The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels.
[00:02:31] As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world.
[00:02:38] The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend.
[00:02:45] And them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
[00:02:54] Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
[00:03:03] Would you pray with me, Our Lord? Once again we come to you. We're just. We acknowledge the fact that we're needy people.
[00:03:11] Even as we read the word of God. If you do not open our minds and our hearts and teach us your word, Lord, we'll just. We'll watch it and look at it ignorantly still.
[00:03:23] So, Lord, please open the eyes of our understanding that we can see these spiritual truths.
[00:03:28] Guide, I pray the understanding of your people and be our teacher this morning. And I pray especially as well that you would help me to say what your people need and refrain from what I don't need to say. And Lord, we just want this time to be a time of learning your word, learning these spiritual truths, learning the way that we should walk and live for you, and learning the truths of the kingdom of God, as these parables show us.
[00:03:57] So, Lord, we commit the time to you. We ask that your name would be glorified in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:04:04] Now, you'll notice that this parable has some similarity to the parable of the Sower. We're still talking about seed and ground and plants and fruit. And this parable indeed does kind of overlap with a little bit of what we said and saw last week.
[00:04:22] What's interesting about this is the Lord directly interprets every, you know, the elements of this parable in verse 37, down through verse number 40.
[00:04:32] He says very plainly that the sower in this case is the son of man. That's Jesus himself, the field. Unlike the previous parable, the field referred primarily to the heart of man, an individual who receives the word. In this case, the field represents the world.
[00:04:49] So when you see this in this parable, the Lord's talking about the wheat and the tares. He's looking at, I want you to understand, he's not talking about an individual thing. He's looking at the big picture, okay? He's looking at his work, the work of his kingdom from 30,000ft. That's how you know, based upon the word world, the field is the world.
[00:05:13] Again, that's different than the parable of the Sower.
[00:05:17] And it is interesting to note. The field is the world and the sower is the Son of man. That's Jesus. That tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is on purpose. He is right now sowing his world with his people.
[00:05:33] He's sowing his world with his people. In other words, the Lord wants his people in all sorts of places and he wants them to grow and he wants them to bear fruit and, and that fruit to remain. It's very consistent with all the other things we've seen about what the Lord said with regards to fruit bearing.
[00:05:51] Then he says in these verses that the good seed are the children of the kingdom.
[00:05:56] So in the previous parable, the parable of the Sower, the seed represented the what?
[00:06:04] Sunday morning. I know, I know. Coming out of four fourth of July cookouts, everybody's tired.
[00:06:11] The seed in the parable of the sower is the word of God.
[00:06:15] And in this case it's not the word of God. The seed represents you.
[00:06:20] That's what it represents. It represents the children of the kingdom, which is those whose the kingdom is. That's all that's referring to. In other words, Sister Pam, you are in the kingdom of God. It is your. It's God's kingdom, obviously, but you're a part of it. It's your inheritance.
[00:06:34] You are a child of the kingdom. That's what it is. It's me, it's you. As believers in Christ.
[00:06:41] Now you also see the tares. The tares are directly identified as the children of the wicked one. Now what's interesting is the tares, that's kind of a hard word. Tares is not a simple thing to define, but I'll get to that in just a minute.
[00:06:58] The enemy who sowed the tares is identified as the devil himself.
[00:07:03] Again, you're looking at the big picture. This is describing the overall strategy, both of the Lord and of his enemy.
[00:07:16] Then you have the harvest.
[00:07:18] The harvest is the end of the world. And that has a special meaning. A lot of people think in this, you know, in our culture, they think the end of the world. Armageddon. Armageddon is actually a place, right? It's a place. The valley of Megiddo in Israel. And it's called Armageddon because that's where a battle will be. But it's not the end of the world as far as like what we think of. Like the earth goes away and everything just goes in, you know, poofs. It's like the reverse of the big bang or something. It's not that at all. The end of the world just marks the end of what? Of this world in which we live. And the beginning and the dawn of the kingdom and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the end of the world in scripture. And then finally you have the reapers. The reapers are defined here as the angels.
[00:08:07] Now I just have three points I want to share with you. I want to show you from this passage. The first thing I want you to see if you go back to the beginning, where the Lord actually gives the parable, verses 24 through 30.
[00:08:18] First thing I want you to see Is the, the comparison or the contrast rather of the wheat with the tares.
[00:08:26] The wheat and the tares.
[00:08:28] Now again, going back to the question of what are tares?
[00:08:33] Tares aren't like a particular plant.
[00:08:36] There's some discussion about what plant it actually refers to. But what we do know is that the tares refer to a plant that is sown among the wheat, right? And it imitates the wheat. Look, if you would, at verse number, verse number 26.
[00:08:57] But when the blade of the wheat, now when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So you get this idea that this wheat has grown and it's.
[00:09:12] They call it the corn. The wheat berry is filling up in the ear and it's starting to kind of lean over, right? It's starting to kind of mature.
[00:09:20] Harvest is approaching. And at that time, not at the beginning, but at this point is when this non wheat plant starts to show itself.
[00:09:33] So it's very. The tares are very, very similar to the wheat and they're hard to distinguish.
[00:09:40] Now the particular plant this refers to is most likely. I mean, this is. I mean, I guess everybody has a different opinion that might study it. But this is a plant called darnel. D A R N E L. It's a plant. It looks very, very much like wheat. It starts green, wheat starts green. And as it matures, it comes up similar to wheat. It's a grass just like wheat.
[00:10:07] And the difference is that when the fruit starts to be produced and born in the ear where you would have the wheat berry, in other words, you've seen wheat berries like this and it kind of goes up, definitely not this big, but magnified five times or whatever. But you see the berries, they come out on either side like that. But the dardo plant, what it does is it has its berries, they come out three at a time on either side, kind of alternating as they go up. But I mean, from a distance they look the same.
[00:10:36] From a distance they look the same, but it's not really known until you get close to the harvest and the darnel starts to produce that berry, its seed, and you can differentiate it at that point. And when the wheat, when the wheat actually gets fully ripe and it browns, right, and it's ready to be harvested, the darnel doesn't brown, it kind of turns black.
[00:10:58] So at harvest time it's easy to differentiate, which is why you see that in the parable.
[00:11:03] But the problem with that is that you can't eat the darnal berry.
[00:11:10] You can't Eat that. You can't eat the tares.
[00:11:13] They look the same as they come up.
[00:11:16] They're practically indistinguishable as they come up. But as the harvest approaches, you see that the fruit is not the same.
[00:11:24] But the darnel, the tare does imitate, at least externally.
[00:11:31] It imitates what the wheat looks like. Remember the wheat, the seed, the good seed, represents the children of the kingdom, and the tare represents children of the wicked one.
[00:11:41] But just like we were talking about last week, we're talking about the fruit of the wheat, right? And the difference between those who bear fruit and. And those who don't bear fruit. Well, in this case, both are bearing fruit, but one is fruit that is profitable for the householder, that is to God, the sower. And one is definitely not profitable.
[00:12:02] But you don't really know it until you get to the end.
[00:12:05] You don't really know it until you get to the end because they match.
[00:12:08] Externally they look the same, but they're not.
[00:12:12] The seed is different. That is where the origin is different.
[00:12:17] The growth looks similar, but in the end, the fruit is different.
[00:12:21] The fruit is different.
[00:12:23] The second thing is that the tares, the darnel, do not bear fruit as the wheat berries. So you can take the wheat berry, like sister Pam likes to get wheat berries, and grind her own meal, right?
[00:12:35] Meal or flour. She grinds her own flour. But if you took these darnel berries, these tare berries, and you were to grind them, what they do is they harbor fungus.
[00:12:49] And if you eat the fungus, it'll make you sick. It's poisonous.
[00:12:54] And so you take this, and so you imagine what happens is all of this comes up, and if you do not separate the two, you end up having wheat that you turn into bread. You grind it up and turn into bread, and now you have poison in. In your bread, all because of this, because these berries of the tare are poisonous.
[00:13:20] So the question I want to pose to you as we go through this is this.
[00:13:26] Why did this enemy sow the tares? Now we know he's an enemy. He doesn't like the householder. Of course, that's referring to the. The Lord Jesus. And of course the enemy is the devil. Now we have this idea of the devil, that the devil's sitting on people's shoulder, tempting us to sin. What I want, what this parable demonstrates is he has something going on far, far more complicated and integrated than that. He is busy with big problems, with big efforts and big strategies.
[00:13:58] He's not sitting on. Listen, I mean, maybe it happens on occasion, because you do have Jesus himself being tempted by the devil himself. But generally speaking, most of the time, what's tempting us is our own lusts, right? That's just the truth of it.
[00:14:12] But what has led us in our temptation and where our lust has led us away are the strategies of the devil that he has implemented on a big scale, right? On the scale of the war, not on the scale of an individual battle. And so he's really not sitting on our. On our shoulder saying, sister Judy, would you. You need to take a swig of that liquor. That's what you really need. He's not doing that. He's. That's. No. He's doing something far more nefarious than that and far more powerful, to be honest with you.
[00:14:45] But why did this enemy, the devil, why is he sowing children? These are people now, children of the wicked one in the world among the wheat. Why does this. In the literal sense, why is this enemy sowing the tares among the wheat? His primary purpose? He doesn't care at all about the tares or what ends up happening to them. He could not care less about the tares.
[00:15:11] He's trying to hurt the wheat. He's trying to. His whole purpose is to spoil the wheat. Let me give you a little bit more information to kind of help us understand what's going on here as far as with these tares. What happens is these tares, these darnel that are very much like wheat, they grow with the wheat, and then they entangle their roots with the roots of the wheat. It's perfect.
[00:15:42] Just like you see in the parable. It's perfectly consistent.
[00:15:45] The householder, who is the Lord Jesus, says, don't root them up because you'll root up the wheat, because the roots are entangled, so you can't just jerk them up and get rid of them.
[00:15:55] But the problem is when you do that, now you have a competition, right, with the Darnold plant, those of you, that garden. That's the whole problem with weeds, right? Is the weeds compete with the thing you want. And so you want to root the weeds out so that there's no competition, either shade for the sun or there's no competition in the nutrients in the soil. But see, that's what's happening here, is the tares are competing with the good wheat.
[00:16:21] And when that happens, the nutrients are not as available to the wheat. And so the wheat becomes weaker.
[00:16:28] The wheat becomes weaker.
[00:16:31] And then I mentioned already the contamination of the wheat and how it will make the bread toxic here's some of the symptoms. This is just for. Just for thought, you know, just for, I guess, trivia for those dads among us who always like a little bit of trivia.
[00:16:47] Symptoms. If you eat this fungus that these tears harbor, the symptoms include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, pupil dilation, impaired coordination, vision and speech disturbances, and sometimes even paralysis and death.
[00:17:06] So I guess if you ate in small amounts, it might not hurt you as bad. But here's the point is it's a serious matter.
[00:17:15] It's a serious matter if you have tares harvested with the wheat.
[00:17:21] You see the tares now follow me. The tares bring with them embedded in the tare. Remember what the tare is now? Embedded in the tare is corruption, is poison. It's in there already. The wheat doesn't carry that.
[00:17:38] Like the tares bring the corruption with them and then it will then corrupt the wheat.
[00:17:49] Think about if you're a farmer and you farm wheat, right? You're a wheat farmer and your enemy sowed these poisonous plants. Not a poisonous plant, but it harbors poison.
[00:18:05] He sowed it in your field extensively, and you harvested it without knowing and sold that made people sick. You know what's going to happen to you?
[00:18:15] Your livelihood is gone.
[00:18:19] Nobody's going to buy your stuff because you gave them bad.
[00:18:23] You gave them bad flower, bad harvest.
[00:18:26] So this was a real thing. In fact, in Roman times, sowing tares among a stand of wheat was a crime like it's actually written down in history.
[00:18:41] And a person could bring a lawsuit against an enemy who did this.
[00:18:47] So everything we read here, in other words, it's described. What I read is, it's described as agricultural sabotage in the news. We've heard a lot about that recently, have we not, with China and all that kind of thing?
[00:18:59] Agricultural sabotage.
[00:19:02] So that's the difference between the wheat and the tares.
[00:19:06] The second thing I want us to see is this.
[00:19:09] I want you to see. I want you to focus on the enemy in this case.
[00:19:13] Again, we can't think of the devil and his work as an individual sort of work.
[00:19:23] Follow what the devil is doing here. Follow one of the primary strategies that Satan uses against God's people and against the work of God. Because the work of God is God's people, right? This, you are the work of God.
[00:19:41] The Lord's not all that concerned with the trees, and he's all that concerned with the flowers and the orbits of the sun and the moon and the star. He's not all that. He's concerned with you. You are his Work. Right.
[00:19:54] And the devil, being the enemy of God, has plans and strategies, grand long term strategies, designed to hurt you and designed to hurt me.
[00:20:07] One of his primary strategies, hear me now, is to put among God's people, his people.
[00:20:20] That's what's being described here. You have a stand of wheat which is all good and profitable and scattered throughout. All this wheat is a poisonous plant.
[00:20:33] And if that plant remains, it's going to harm the wheat. You see. Again, his ultimate goal is to harm the wheat. And for those who are the children of the wicked one, I want to tell you something. A lot of times people that are the children of the devil like described here, don't know they are.
[00:20:52] Do you think Judas Iscariot knew that he was being so controlled and manipulated by the devil? No, he was being driven by what?
[00:21:03] Greed?
[00:21:05] But the devil's in the background, controlling. He was a child of the devil.
[00:21:09] There's other people in scripture that are described as children of the devil. When Jesus talked to the Pharisees, right, in the book of John, he referred to them as ye are of your Father. What? The devil.
[00:21:22] Right. Why? What were they? They were extremely religious people that the Lord was addressing.
[00:21:29] I'll repeat that again.
[00:21:32] He was addressing extremely religious people, calling them the children of the devil. Do you see? They have to be religious if they're going to mingle in with the wheat.
[00:21:41] Right.
[00:21:45] You see, by doing this, by spreading the tares among the wheat, the enemy is able to infect, he is able to corrupt and he is able to stifle the growth and the well being of the wheat.
[00:22:04] In other words, there's multiple layers of harm that can come upon the wheat because the devil has put his people among God's people.
[00:22:18] And you look in the scriptures in various places and you look from Genesis to Revelation, there's this kind of. Those of you that have studied this kind of thing or just reading, you've read the scripture with, with attention to detail.
[00:22:34] What you'll notice is wherever you see God's people, you very often see mixed in with them a group of people who are very, very unsavory.
[00:22:46] Right? You do. We're going to look at them in just a minute. It occurred in Israel. It occurred way back in that time.
[00:22:53] And this is why you see, and we'll see in just a minute. There are many scriptures that deal with this question of false believers.
[00:23:02] There's many scriptures that deal with questions of false believers. Now, I want to be careful when I talk about false believers.
[00:23:11] I just want to be honest with you, because I want to be careful. There are people that have used that truth. This is a scriptural truth, and you're going to see it clearly. But there are people that have used that to manipulate people, to doubt that they're saved.
[00:23:25] Right.
[00:23:27] But they always do that by saying, well, if you didn't feel this way or do this thing or think this thought, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. To get people to cause themselves to doubt. And that's a wrong sort of manipulation tactic to try to. I mean, it's notches on belts, and we had so many saved and all that kind of stuff.
[00:23:49] But nevertheless, there is a scriptural truth where there are tares among the wheat, there are children of the devil among the children of God.
[00:24:00] That is a truth. You think just I've mentioned them already. Think about Judas among the disciples.
[00:24:08] We'll see in just a minute the mixed multitude.
[00:24:11] There's mentions of false brethren. We'll see in a minute false apostles.
[00:24:15] Over and over in different ways, in different terminology. The. The wheat and the tares, all of these things indicate that among God's people there are people who are not God's people, but they look a lot like God's people. They imitate God's people, but the fruit's different.
[00:24:32] Look, if you would, Exodus chapter 12, Exodus chapter 12, and also numbers 11, Exodus chapter 12, and numbers 11.
[00:24:53] Let me ask you a question. How were. How did the children of Israel, how were they delivered out of Egypt?
[00:25:01] Through the what?
[00:25:03] Through the blood of the Lamb. Right.
[00:25:07] Which Pictures salvation.
[00:25:10] Exodus 12:38. Look what it says.
[00:25:14] So they're leaving Egypt now.
[00:25:17] And the Bible says.
[00:25:23] And a mixed multitude went up also with them, and flocks and herds, even very much cattle.
[00:25:32] Mixed multitude.
[00:25:34] So the scripture doesn't define exactly what we're talking about, but what we do know by the term mixed multitude, we know we're talking about a group consisting of more than one type.
[00:25:46] We can agree on that, at least. A mixed multitude means it's not homogeneous. There are different types within that group. All right, look at numbers, chapter 11, numbers 11, verse number four.
[00:26:12] So now they're traveling.
[00:26:14] They're out of Egypt. They've gone through the Red Sea. In other words, the people, whatever the mixed multitude refers to. I don't know that the Bible's perfectly clear on it, but whatever this, two different groups, they look from the outside to be the same, but they're not the same.
[00:26:31] One group is a group of people who believe in the Lord and have seen his works in Egypt when he delivered them.
[00:26:37] And another group is in the same crowd, but they are definitely not believers in the Lord. But yet they're together.
[00:26:45] I want you to watch the effect of the tares among the wheat. Watch what happens. Verse number four. And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting.
[00:27:00] And the children of Israel also wept again and said, who shall give us flesh to eat? Now pause that a second.
[00:27:08] Who fell a lusting in that verse. Verse 4.
[00:27:13] The mixed multitude who was then affected the people, the wheat. And now you got a problem. Now you have God's people by virtue of the influence of the mixed multitude. Now God's people are now sinning against the Lord. And now their relationship to God is being harmed. And it started because the devil sowed tares among the wheat.
[00:27:41] And now the wheat are being harmed in their relationship to God. It is a direct effect.
[00:27:48] You go to Psalm 78. Go there, if you would. As we go, head toward the New Testament.
[00:27:53] Psalm 78, verse 18.
[00:28:04] Psalm 78, verse number 18.
[00:28:13] And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yea, they spake against God. They said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
[00:28:26] Verse number 22. Because they believed not in God and trusted not in his salvation.
[00:28:32] Rain down manna. Verse 24. Man did eat angels food. Verse 25. Where did this. Where did this terrible event happen? Where did it all begin? It began by the tares, not the wheat.
[00:28:47] The tares.
[00:28:49] The tares caused this problem.
[00:28:54] Now you got to remember, that's no surprise, because the tares and the wheat have two completely different natures.
[00:29:02] They're completely different plants.
[00:29:04] They look the same.
[00:29:06] God's people, the children of the devil, look the same. You will find children of the devil in the church.
[00:29:13] They look the same. But the fruit they produce is far from the same.
[00:29:20] And the problem is that fruit often affects the wheat. Now let's look at Matthew, chapter seven. I just want to walk through the New Testament quickly and show you this principle in Scripture.
[00:29:31] Matthew 7, verse 21, Matthew 7:21. Notice what it says.
[00:29:45] Not everyone that saith unto me, lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven, many will say to me in that day, lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you depart from Me, ye, that work iniquity. You see, these are people that are in the church. They're religious, and yet they are banished from the Lord. In other words, they're among God's people. And they come to the Lord at the day of judgment, at the reap the harvest, at the end of the end of the world, like we read in our parable. And they come thinking that they're going to be let in, and they're not. And sometimes we look at these people and we feel kind of sorry for them. But these are children of the devil.
[00:30:30] They're rejected.
[00:30:32] They look the part, but they're not the part.
[00:30:36] Note, all I'm trying to show you is these who are ultimately condemned are mixed in with God's people. Right? Look at Second Corinthians, Second Corinthians, chapter 11.
[00:31:00] Second Corinthians 11, verse 13.
[00:31:16] Second Corinthians 11. 13.
[00:31:18] For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works. That's the fruit.
[00:31:43] See that note? They're called apostles. They're ministers. They're servants of God, ostensibly, but they're not.
[00:31:54] They're among God's people, but they're not over and over. Look at Galatians.
[00:32:00] I'm sorry. Look at verse 26, same chapter.
[00:32:03] Paul met with these people, these children of the devil, in journeyings often in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among. What does it say, false brethren. You know what that meant? That meant people that paraded around as the wheat, but were really tares caused a lot of trouble to Paul. Caused him peril. Right?
[00:32:35] Look at Galatians, chapter 2.
[00:32:38] Galatians, chapter 2, verse number 4. Verse number 4, Galatians 2, verse 4. And that because of false brethren unawares. You see that? Unawares. Unaware. What does that mean? What is unawares? False brethren, unawares.
[00:33:10] That means they came in, they joined the church, and they looked.
[00:33:14] Nobody knew that they were a tare.
[00:33:17] Because again, the fruit hadn't yet come. And it looks like wheat. You know, when it's green, it looks wheat. Look like any wheat grass.
[00:33:24] But they're false brethren.
[00:33:26] They're false brethren. False brethren unawares.
[00:33:30] Brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage. You see, it's going to hurt the wheat, going to confuse them, mess them up doctrinally.
[00:33:43] Second Timothy. Would you look at that with me. Second Timothy, chapter two.
[00:33:49] Second Timothy, chapter two, verse 14.
[00:34:08] Verse 14 says of these things, put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord, that they strive not about words, to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, but shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase into more ungodliness, and there word will eat as doth a canker, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus, those are tares, who concerning the truth, have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already and overthrow the faith of some. So these people are teaching the Bible, spreading religious doctrine. They look like wheat, but they're not.
[00:34:57] And overthrow the faith of some. Now note verse 19 in that. You got to get the context. Now read verse 19 because it sets it in a new light.
[00:35:05] Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure.
[00:35:10] Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his.
[00:35:17] Isn't that striking?
[00:35:19] In other words, the Lord really is the only one. But the Lord knows the difference between the wheat and the tares. You know, the reality is what the Lord is showing us in all these passages is we can't tell.
[00:35:34] You know, it is so stupid for us to try to try to determine whether other people are saved, truly saved or not. You know, what we have to do. We just have to accept their profession.
[00:35:46] Now, admittedly, people do things sometimes that makes us wonder.
[00:35:50] But I'll be honest with you, I have acted out as a believer that if somebody had seen me, probably would have made them wonder about me.
[00:36:00] Can I get a witness?
[00:36:02] It's true. It's true. So that's not going to be a reliable criteria because we can't see the heart. Ultimately we must, as the parable says, we must yield it to the Lord and say the Lord's like, listen, at the harvest, I'll deal with it.
[00:36:18] I'll make sure there's a distinction.
[00:36:21] The Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. And I note that everyone that nameth the name of Christ, it doesn't say everyone that is his, but everyone that, in other words, it implies that there are many people who name the name of Christ that might not actually be his, although they take his name.
[00:36:44] And the Lord says, he just. He addresses the mixed multitude. And he says, if you name the name of Christ, you need to depart from iniquity.
[00:36:54] That's what he's saying. The question is not whether you're saved, whether you're not. If you name the name of Christ, and this is the foundation for the principle of church discipline, the question is not is so and so saved is so and so not saved. If a person calls themself a brother and they act wickedly, we're to withdraw. Right.
[00:37:17] Because they call. Whether they are or not is God's business.
[00:37:22] Our job is to call a spade a spade. Right? All right, let's go to chapter three, verse one. Look at that next chapter over this. Know also that in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. And verse number five messes us all up.
[00:38:02] Because verse number five says all of these people that I'm talking about in the last days are people that are tares among the wheat, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. From such turn away, you see that tares among the wheat.
[00:38:26] Isn't it interesting that the description of the last days is actually biblically applied to religious people?
[00:38:33] It is.
[00:38:34] It's applied to people in churches.
[00:38:37] Now finally, let's go to the book of Jude.
[00:38:44] Jude.
[00:38:51] Look at verse four, Jude four.
[00:39:07] For there are certain men crept in, there it is again unawares, who were before of old, ordained to this condemnation. Now watch the description of these men.
[00:39:19] Ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness. That's sexual immorality.
[00:39:27] And denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you once knew this how, that the Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believe not, that makes multitude.
[00:39:42] Drop down to verse.
[00:39:44] Verse number eight likewise also. Now notice these filthy dreamers.
[00:39:51] This is referring back to this same group introduced in verse 4 and 5.
[00:39:55] Notice the description. These filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
[00:40:03] See what they're doing. They do not like authority.
[00:40:07] They're sexually immoral. That's what you said. Defile the flesh, speak evil of dignity. So they're the slanderers. They're the ones who are in rebellion to legitimate authority. They just don't like authority of any kind. This is the description of these people who have crept in.
[00:40:27] Again, they look the part, they act the part, but they're manifesting these tendencies. Look down at verse number 10.
[00:40:36] But these speak evil of those things which they know not. But what they know naturally as brute beasts. In those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them. For they have gone in the way of Cain and ran greedily. So that's hatred. And ran greedily after the era of Balaam for reward, love of money, and perished in the gainsayings of Kori. You know what that is? Murmurings, disputings.
[00:41:04] These. Look at what it says. These are spots in your feasts of charity, fellowship meals.
[00:41:11] You see it?
[00:41:13] Where are these people?
[00:41:16] They're in the fellowship hall, eating the fried chicken, right?
[00:41:23] Nobody knows.
[00:41:25] But behind the scenes they're doing these things. Things.
[00:41:29] Poisoning the wheat, corrupting the wheat.
[00:41:33] Notice when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth without fruit. We talked about that last week. Twice dead, plucked up by the roots. Look at verse 14.
[00:41:52] And Enoch, also the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, behold, the lord cometh with 10,000 of his saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince. That's convict, right? Convince all that are ungodly among them.
[00:42:08] So you have this mixed principle, this mixed multitude. Again, when the Lord comes, he's all going to set it right. That's what we're reading. He says this of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. They. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts. And their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage.
[00:42:38] This is all descriptions of Tares, right?
[00:42:42] Now here's the problem with Tares, and we're getting to the end quick. Here's the problem with Tares is that Tares live by the flesh. Flesh, the natural man. That's all they are. Because they're not children of God. They're not children of the kingdom, right? They're just natural men. They're unconverted, they look the part, they say they're the part. But they're not. And so how do they live? They don't have the spirit of God. In fact, if you go down a few more verses, it says, these are sensual, having not the spirit. You see that? What verse is that? Brother Devin.
[00:43:18] It's in there somewhere.
[00:43:21] He'll catch it in a minute.
[00:43:23] These are people who live. Listen, they're in the church.
[00:43:27] They name the name of Christ.
[00:43:29] They say they're saved.
[00:43:31] Number, verse 19.
[00:43:33] But they don't have the spirit of God. And they live and they act in pursuit of fleshly interests, pride, money, you know, position, all of these things. You say, why.
[00:43:47] Why do we see this in churches so often? Right?
[00:43:53] We talked to a lady yesterday at. When we were not where we were evangelizing.
[00:43:59] And immediately. Not Sam, who was I with, Ben.
[00:44:03] And we walked up to her and she immediately just shut us down.
[00:44:07] Yeah, I used to go to church, but I don't go. I just listen to stuff online. I don't go anymore. And I tried to probe and it's like. But some people, like, they have seen some mess. You know why?
[00:44:19] Because the devil has sown tares in the church. People who operate and live by the flesh, because that's all. They don't have the spirit of God.
[00:44:28] And they do such great harm to the name of Christ.
[00:44:31] Such great harm. And I listen, I know the children of God can act out. I mean, I get this. I get this.
[00:44:39] But what I'm talking about are the children of the devil, they do such great harm to the people of God because they're not real. They're acting by the flesh.
[00:44:51] They're influencing the church in a way that's ungodly. They're doing ungodly things behind the scenes.
[00:44:58] This is a strategy of Satan. You know, we'll see as we get ready. As we close here, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the wheat and the tares.
[00:45:15] The Lord reserves that prerogative for himself and only himself.
[00:45:23] Now, I want to show you one more thing. Go back to our parable, if you would, in Matthew 13.
[00:45:39] This is one of the reasons we around here. No, forget that in the Scripture the Lord preaches righteousness.
[00:45:50] Because if we read Jude and you see yourself in that description, that's you, right?
[00:46:01] That's you. I don't care what kind of profession you have.
[00:46:05] I don't care. I don't care if you've been baptized.
[00:46:09] If your life is characteristic of a tare, you're a tare, right?
[00:46:18] And if you're not a tare and you're maybe a wayward child of God, mark it down, God is going to deal with you and bring you back to himself.
[00:46:28] If not, you're a tear. It's that simple.
[00:46:35] I want you to see one thing. In Matthew 13, verse 28, he said unto them, an enemy hath done this.
[00:46:45] The servants said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? Notice he says, but he said, nay, no.
[00:46:55] Why does the householder tell them don't rip them up? In other words, in the church, you know, in the church or in churches or whatever, you see people who are acting like tares, people who are manifesting all these descriptions we've already read, right, false brethren, all these wicked things. And you know there's sometimes a tendency just go rip them out.
[00:47:16] Why doesn't the householder just say rip him out?
[00:47:20] Out of concern for the wheat.
[00:47:22] His chief concern is the wheat.
[00:47:25] He doesn't want to do anything that's going to harm the wheat because the wheat is what is precious to him. Now think about that. You are you the children of God, the children of the kingdom, you are the wheat. And God's primary concern is your well being. And so what he does is he lets out of concern, out of for you and for me. He lets those bad elements remain because he doesn't want to hurt you.
[00:47:52] Because we can't tell who's who. We don't know everything that's going on.
[00:47:58] And this is also why in a church we have to have a policy and a principle of being long suffering, patient. That's exactly is not God being long suffering with the tares. He's not ripping them up. He could, but he's not. You know why? Because he's showing long suffering and patience and graciousness in dealing with the problems that inevitably come up. He's telling us this is a fact of life. If you think there's going to be a church that doesn't have tares, you haven't been around the devil long enough.
[00:48:29] This idea, this ideal where some church where there's not going to be any elements like that doesn't exist.
[00:48:35] The devil is at work, right?
[00:48:40] Sometimes we have this idea we want to deal with things harshly and rashly and severely.
[00:48:46] Well, I mean, I feel that. But our primary concern must be the what?
[00:48:51] The wheat, the children of God. Sometimes things come up and you got to deal with it hard, right? And that's fine.
[00:48:58] But as a general policy, the Lord wants the wheat to be taken care of.
[00:49:06] He is concerned. Listen, he is concerned about your well being. As his people, he doesn't want any. Even if he has to tolerate the bad, he's willing to tolerate it. That doesn't mean you don't preach about it. That don't mean you don't deal with it. But he's willing to do that because he cares for you and he wants you to, to grow and bear fruit.
[00:49:30] Because we know that in the end, and this is the last point, and it'll be brief, the Lord is going to separate the wheat from the tares.
[00:49:39] He's going to separate the wheat from the tares.
[00:49:45] His primary concern is the well being of the wheat.
[00:49:49] He doesn't want to further harm the wheat more than they've already been harmed by the tares already.
[00:49:59] If you'll look in Matthew 13 at the interpretation in verse number 41, the son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend. We're talking about the tares now and them which do iniquity.
[00:50:18] Remember, in Matthew 7 it says, Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Here's what it's saying. He's going to take out those tears and he describes them as all those things that offend. You know what that means? That doesn't mean hurt your feelings.
[00:50:32] It means he's going to take out all of those tears that have caused God's people to stumble.
[00:50:42] We're talking about church hurt. We're talking about people getting upset because they were treated badly at a church where they should have been loved and cared for.
[00:50:53] They have been offended. They have been made to stumble by those wicked tares, right?
[00:51:01] You know what the Lord's going to do? He's going to deal with that thing he said. Also all those that do iniquity, right?
[00:51:09] Because that's characteristic of the tares.
[00:51:12] And he's going to bundle them up, cast them into a furnace of fire.
[00:51:19] Matthew chapter seven.
[00:51:22] Listen, I look at this crowd and I see wheat.
[00:51:28] But God sees wheat and tares.
[00:51:31] Truth is, I'm just trying to be honest with you here.
[00:51:35] There's probably some tares among us.
[00:51:39] I. I don't know who they are. I have no way of knowing.
[00:51:43] The Lord knoweth them that are his.
[00:51:48] This is why it is incumbent upon us, each one of us as individuals, to look at what God says in his description of the tares and say, is that me?
[00:51:59] Be honest, is this me?
[00:52:02] Or do I have God in me? Really, is this me?
[00:52:09] I mean, this is a scriptural truth. Examine yourself whether you be in the faith.
[00:52:15] Because for sure, the Lord wants you to be the wheat, not the tares.
[00:52:19] He wants you to pass from death unto life. So where do you stand with God?
[00:52:23] I also want to talk to you guys who are the children of the kingdom, who are the wheat.
[00:52:31] But you have been harmed by tares in churches.
[00:52:37] The Lord's telling us that exists. He has answers for that.
[00:52:41] It wasn't the Lord who did that, no matter what people profess. It was the enemy who's seeking to derail you and destroy you and your faith and your walk with God. That's his goal, to destroy you so that you will never bear fruit for God.
[00:53:02] It should be no surprise that he's sent spies in unaware to cause that kind of harm, to poison, to corrupt.
[00:53:12] Let's pray together.
