Matthew's Gospel chapter 13,
and let's read some beginning in verse 24. I want to read verse 24. The
parable, and then the Lord Jesus gives us the interpretation of
that parable in verse 37. Matthew 13 and verse 24, Another
parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven
is like unto a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while
men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and
went his way. And when the blade was sprung
up and brought forth fruit, there appeared the tares also. 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 tarrs? Then said he unto them, Thine
enemy hath done this. The servant said unto him, Will
thou then that we go and gather them up? And he said, No, lest,
while ye gather up the tarrs, ye root up the wheat with them.
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, but gather the
wheat unto my barns. 36 Then Jesus sent the multitude
away, and went unto the house, and his disciples came unto him,
saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. 37
And he said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son
of man, the Lord Jesus. The field is the world, and the
good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are
the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is
the devil. The harvest is the end of the
world, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares
are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end
of the world. The Son of Man shall send forth
His angels. And they shall gather out of
his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and
shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. Who hath ears
to hear, let him hear." A parable is said to be an earthly story
to teach a spiritual meaning. Our Lord Jesus taught many parables. And I don't think I like to preach
from the parables, but I can preach from this one because
He graciously interpreted this one for us. So if He interprets
it, we can preach from it. But the Lord Jesus spoke so many
parables, He gave us a parable to teach us. Something physical
that you and I can relate to that teaches us a spiritual lesson. Remember the story about the
shepherd having a sheep? He had a lot of sheep and one
of the sheep was lost and he went out to find the one sheep
that was lost. And when he found it, he laid
it on his shoulders and brought it back to the fold. And he gave
us that parable to teach us how He saves one of His people. He
goes out and He seeks for them and He finds them and He brings
them back to His people, the four. He told us in Luke 15 about
the parable of the prodigal son who wasted his living, spent
everything he had, his strength, everything was gone. He came
to poverty and then he said within himself, I perish. I know what
I'll do. I'll go back to my father's house.
And the Lord Jesus teaches us that parable to illustrate to
us that we, in and of ourselves, our natures, our works, our deeds,
we're far from the Father. We're in a far country. And we
can return. Through the Lord Jesus Christ,
we can return to our Father. And when we do, He falls upon
us and kisses us with the kisses of His mouth. The Lord used parables
to teach us what the Kingdom of Heaven was like. He did that
so often. This parable here was teaching
us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. And so many places in
the Scriptures, He likens the Kingdom of Heaven to this thing
or that thing. In Matthew 22, you'll remember
this parable. He gave us a parable about a
certain king which made a marriage for his son. Now, we can understand
that, can't we? God the Father has made a marriage
for His Son. And He sent out a message to
them that were bidden, that His oxen had been killed, His sheep
had been slaughtered, come to the wedding. And the servant
went out and bid them to come to the wedding. But they mocked
them. They mocked the servants and
they mistreated them. And some of them they even killed.
And the king sent out his army and destroyed those people, and
he sent out his servant to other people and said, ìGo out into
the highways and tell them to come in to this marriage.î And
they come in and the house was filled. Now that teaches us a
lesson, doesnít it? The Jews rejected the Lord Jesus. They killed His prophets in the
Old Testament. And He sent His Spirit and He
sends His preachers to poor dead dog Gentiles. and they come and
they're married to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what the kingdom
of heaven is like. In Matthew 25, he tells us something
else the kingdom of heaven is like. He said it's like ten virgins. You remember that, don't you?
Five were wise, five were foolish. Five of them took oil in their
vessels, five took no oil. And at midnight, when it was
dark, Those foolish virgins realized they had no oil in their vessels.
Their wicks were burning, and their wicks were going out. And
they said, ìGive us oil.î They said, ìYouíll have to go to somebody
else for that. Youíll have to go to those who sell.î They went
to buy oil, but while they were gone, the bridegroom came. And
they that had the oil in their vessels went into the marriage.
And then the others come and begin to knock. And he said,
ìI donít know you. I donít know you. And that lesson
was given for this reason, the Master said. I've spoken this
to tell you to be always ready, for you don't know the day of
the hour the Son of Man comes. Many things are said concerning
the Kingdom of God in the New Testament. It was a Kingdom the
Old Testament saints looked forward to. They were looking forward
to this kingdom, the kingdom of heaven is like unto this and
that. And this kingdom, the old saints
in the Old Testament looked forward to a kingdom. Daniel said the
Son of Man, the Son of God would set up a kingdom in this day. And it would be a kingdom that
would reign over all kingdoms and in the end subdue all other
kingdoms and would stand forever. And they said, Oh, let me live
to see that kingdom. Kings saw it. And many righteous
men saw it. And John the Baptist, when he
came preaching, he said, Repent for the kingdom of heaven, the
kingdom of God is at hand. It's right here before us. And
the Lord Jesus preached the same message. And when He sent out
His disciples, He said, Go preach. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. I'm ready to set it up. the Kingdom
of Heaven. This Kingdom is spiritual in
its nature. You have to be born again to
get in it. Except a man be born again, he
cannot see, he cannot enter in the Kingdom of Heaven. As sure
as we are born of our father and our mother to get into this
world, we must be born again, born from above to get into that
Kingdom of God. The Lord Jesus said you can't
see it with the natural eye. You can't say here it is or there
it is. He said the kingdom of God doesn't
come with observation. The kingdom of heaven is within
you. So you're in this kingdom and
the kingdom is in you. And he said this about the kingdom.
He said, the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. That is,
it's nothing physical. It's not fasting, as the scribes
and Pharisees did, as Larry told us this morning. It's not ceremonies. It's not circumcision. It's not
feast days. The kingdom of God is righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. It's a spiritual kingdom
in its very nature. It's Christ in you and you are
in Christ and all that that entails. If any man be in Christ, he's
a new creature. That's the kingdom of heaven,
isn't it? If any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. And Christ
in you is the hope of glory. That's the kingdom of heaven.
And what a mystery it is. How in the world can Christ,
the sovereign Lord that fills heaven and earth, dwell in a
man? How can we be in Him? But that's the mystery of the
Kingdom. That's why He gives us these
parables to explain. And then we're told in the Scripture
there'll be a revelation, there'll be a manifestation of this Kingdom. Paul was writing to Timothy and
he said, I charge you before God in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who shall judge the living and the dead at His appearing and
His Kingdom. When the Lord Jesus comes again,
He is bringing this kingdom with Him. It is going to be manifested
and it is going to be a glorious kingdom full of majesty and brightness. He said He is coming in power
and in great glory. That is the kingdom that is coming
that is going to be revealed. Then shall the righteous shine
forth. And our parable gives us a sense
of what is going on behind the scenes as it regards this kingdom. It's something physical to help
us to understand the spiritual. But the advantage we have here
in this one, as I said a minute ago, in this parable, the Lord
Jesus has interpreted it to us. And we can't see, but we know
what's going on behind the scenes because the Lord has told it
to us. Now let's look at it right quickly. Let's look at it in
verse 24. And then verse 37 and verse 38 explains it to us. In
verse 24, the Lord put forth this parable and said, ìThe kingdom
of heaven is likened to a man which sowed good seed in his
field.î Now what is that? Well, He tells us, look in verse
37, ìAnd He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the
good seed is the Son of Man.î The field is the world, and the
good seed are the children of the kingdom. Jesus Christ, the
Son of Man, is the sower of the good seed. For the last 2,000
years, He's been working in this world, hasn't He? We could say
ever since Pentecost, when He set up this kingdom, He's been
working in this world, and what's He doing? He's been sowing. That is, He's making Christians. The good seed are the children
of the kingdom which the Son of Man has sowed. He's the one
who plants. We tell people all the time to
repent, don't we? We want men to repent. And we
tell them to believe the gospel because they must. And we tell
them you must be born again, and they must. But who brings
this about? Who brings it to pass? Who is
it that makes the means effectual? Who is it that gives this new
birth? Who is it that gives faith and
grants repentance? It's this Son of Man, isn't it?
Only He can make a Christian out of anybody. And listen, when
He quits making Christians, we won't have any. For 2,000 years
now, the Lord Jesus has been making Christians. He's been
sowing the good seed in this earth. And when He quits sowing,
There'll be no more Christians. I can't make Christians. I can
make converts. I have made a few converts. My
convert is about like Charles Spurgeon's converts. You'll see
them out here on the sidewalk drunk somewhere are worse than
that. I can make converts, but I can't
make Christians. I can't birth a man into the
Kingdom of Heaven. That's the business of the Lord
Jesus Christ. The reason the church hasn't
died out and been overthrown by the gates of hell or become
extinct is because the Lord Jesus, generation after generation,
has been added to the church. He makes real Christians. Not us. And aren't you glad for
that? I tell you, the burden would
be too great, wouldn't it? It would be too great. I've often
thought about these modern day soul winners that can go out
and visit ten people and win nine of them. I thought, how
dare you go home? How dare you go and sleep or
eat? If you can truly win people like
that, you better keep doing it. You better go to the hospitals
and schools and everywhere else if you can win people like that.
But we can't, can we? We take the means and God help
us to use the means, but Jesus himself must make disciples. I could ask you this personal
question this morning. Are you a Christian? Are you
a Christian? Have you been born again? Who
made you a Christian? How did you experience this new
birth? Who rebirthed you? That's a good question, isn't
it? Good question for me to ask myself. Who made me a Christian? Jesus did. That's His work, isn't
it? He's the Son of Man that sows
the good seed in this kingdom. No other way to get in it but
for Him to put you there. Our hearts should be praying
daily. Oh God, help us to be praying
this. Lord, sow more seeds. Oh, sow more seed. Make more
Christians. You make them. Oh, there's so
many, aren't there, that need to be saved. And we can't save
them. We just can't save them. But
our hearts ought to be broken. Our hearts ought to be praying
and seeking the Lord. Lord, make Christians of them. Lord, You save them. We can't
do it, but You can. He's the Son of Man who soweth
the good seed in His Kingdom. And something else you'll notice
here in this parable, and the Lord said Himself. What kind
of seed does the Lord Jesus sow in His kingdom? Good seed. Good seed. I like that, don't
you? Good seed. By nature, there's none good.
We know that. By nature, none of us do good.
But when He saves us, when He gives us a new birth, He makes
us good. The good seed are the children
of the kingdom. The reason we can't do good is
because we're no good. But when He saves us, He makes
us good. It was said of poor old Barnabas,
he was a good man. The Scripture seems to contradict
himself, doesn't it? In one place it says there's
none good. And then he turns right around and says Barnabas
was good. Well, none of us are good by
nature, but when the Lord saves us, He saves us where it really
counts. He makes us new in our hearts. He gives us a new nature, a heavenly
nature, His nature. And then when He does that, we
can do good. I tell you, I tried to be a Christian. Oh, for years I tried to be a
Christian. I just wore myself out trying
to be a Christian. And my whole problem was I didn't
have a heart to it. I just prayed when I was scared
of going to hell. When I read the Bible, I understood
none of it. I didn't have a heart to be a
Christian. And this is an encouraging thing when you tell people that
have been trying to do that. Listen, when the Lord saves you,
He gives you a heart. He doesn't tell you to love Him
and follow Him without giving you a heart to do it because
He knows we can't and He knows we won't. We won't pray earnestly,
will we? We won't seek His face because
we don't love Him. But boy, when He saves us, when
He sows us in His kingdom, He makes us good. I mean, the nature
is good. The things we used to love, those
sins we used to love, that bound us, what does He do? He makes us hated, doesn't He?
And the things that we used to loathe and were such a burden
to us, thinking about following the Lord, sitting and meditating
upon Him, Giving ourselves up to Him, oh, that was an awful
burden. But when He saves us, He gives
us a desire for that. He changes our nature. The Bible
says this, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. That's what that word creature
is, a new creation. Old things have passed away,
and behold, all things are become new. And listen, and all things
are of God. All things of that new creature
are of God. Because listen to this verse.
This verse tells us where we got this new creature. Put on
the new man which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness. There's a new creation within
us. And it's created of God. We can't
create anything but trouble, can we? But when He creates in
us His likeness, His image, after His own will, it's not a pasted
on holiness. It's not something you try to
strive to be holy. It's a true holiness that has
been created in us, in our hearts. He changes us where it really
counts, in our hearts. He that soweth the good seed,
the good seed is the Son of Man. Look in verse 25 again. And while
men slept, His enemies came and sowed tars among the wheat, and
went their way. Now, who is this? Maybe we wouldn't
know for sure if the Lord Jesus hadn't interpreted for us, but
He interprets it here in verse 38. The field is the world, the
good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the terrors
are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them
is the devil. Well, here we have somebody else
now. Here we have the Son of Man,
and He's sowing these good seed, and they're good. But here we
see something else, and that's the work of the devil and his
fallen angels. He is sowing seeds too, isn't
he? And it's bad. It's a bad seed. Did you ever wonder where all
these false religions come from? Now we know, don't we? Now we
know. Did you ever wonder where Islam,
that violent religion, comes from? Did you ever wonder how
religion could be set up in this world that cut people's heads
off in the name of their God? Isn't that something? Where in
the world would that come from? What about all these occults
we call them? You see it in the foreign countries
sometimes. These magic witch doctors turning
their eyes inside out and all of this stuff. What about all
these cults, the Jehovah Witness and the Mormons and others that
deny the deity of the Son of God? Where does these religions
come from? We know, don't we? None of them,
as far as we know, originated in the mind even of sinful man. But the devils come, Satan comes,
and he plants a thought He plants a principle. He plants a lust
in the heart. And then he flies away. See,
he's not omnipresent. He's a creature. But boy, he's
swift. He'll run to you and he'll plant
a little thought in your mind. And then he'll fly away to Germany
and plant a thought in somebody's mind. Fly away to Mexico. And
he's flying everywhere. And he has his army of fallen
angels. And they're flying in people's
minds. And they just plant the seed,
you see. Just a seed. And then they can go their way.
And then the sinful mind of man takes that seed and he cultivates
it. And it grows. And the fruit comes
out of it. I wonder, I wonder, and I don't
know this. Maybe if I could study it, I
could find out. But I just wonder where the first
thought was planted in the first mind of Catholicism. I bet you if we could trace it
back, Greg, we could find the very individual where Satan planted
that thought in the man's heart and then flew off and that man
began to cultivate that thought. How he could betray and dishonor
the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that what Catholicism is?
You know the devil put it in the heart of Judas to betray
Christ? He put that thought in there.
Betray Him. Sell Him. Get money from Him.
And Judas began to develop that. When I can do this? And he began
to think about that. I wonder. where the first man
was that Satan put it in his heart and he began to develop
this system today that we know as Catholicism. Boy, if you could
have stopped it right there! If you could have plucked it
up right there and killed the seed there before it got a hold
in the sinful mind. But now, what does Catholicism
do? Look at it now. Look at it. It denies the grace of Christ,
doesn't it? He doesn't believe in the grace
of Christ. Talk to them about justification by grace. They
know nothing about that. He denies the Word of Christ. All they got is their bulls and
their edicts and their traditions and contradictions. He denies
Christ in His offices. We have one mediator. How many
do they have? How many do they tell us of?
But that doctrine, That betrayal was implanted in somebody's mind. And here we know right here who
planted it. Satan. Now an enemy has done
this thing. All of these false religions
in the world are from hell. And they're developed and promoted
and espoused by sinful flesh. And that's the way they came
and that's the way they grow and maintain themselves. But
it comes closer than that, doesn't it? Brother Larry said this morning,
you know, boy, he's going to get a little bit closer. And
it really comes closer, doesn't it? Look up here in verse 19. Look in verse 19 of our chapter.
He mentions the devil again. Look at this. When anyone, anyone, any place,
here at Sovereign Grace Church, when he hears the Word of the
Kingdom and understands it not, Then cometh the wicked one, and
catches away, he snatches away, he robs that which was sown in
his heart. Why? This is he which receives
seed by the wayside, unless they should believe and be saved. Look what he says in verse 4.
And when he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside, and the
fowls came. That's the way Satan is described.
and His fallen Spirit. Fouls! They came and devoured
them. And this is what we see is going
on behind the scenes. This is going on behind the scenes. While we preach, Satan and his
fallen angels come to the mind. And how many times do they rob
us of some precious truth? How many times do they steal
from us some precious promises? They do it to the lost, but they
do it to us, don't they? And the seed that was sown there,
they come and snatch it away before we can get it in our heart
and get a hold of it. Satan came to do nothing but
to rob and steal and to kill. That's all he's fit for. He hates
God, he hates Christ, and he hates us. And him and all of
his company of fallen angels do nothing continually but come
to people's minds and robbed them of any hope of being saved
by the gospel. That's all they're fit for. That's
all they're fit for. Now here in verse 27, he tells
us something else. We have the good seed sowed by
the Son of Man. We have all these angels, these
fallen angels and Satan, sowing the bad seed. Now here in verse
27, So the servants of his householder came and said unto him, Sir,
did you not sow good seed in your field? From whence then
hath it turned? He said unto them, Thine enemy
hath done this. The servants said unto him, Do
you want us to go gather up these terns? Do you want us to pluck
them up and get rid of them? And boy, this word, no. Nay,
in verse 29, and he said, Nay, that's not That's a powerful
word. It's stressed. It's almost like
He said, No! And stop. No! Have you ever said that to your
children? I mean, you really wanted to
get their attention. They were about to get themselves
into something. And boy, you stressed it. No! That's what
this word means in the original. No! Why, Lord? Less! You gather up the tares,
you root up also the wheat with them. Well, I tell you, brothers and
sisters, about gathering up tares, it's a good thing the Lord told
us not to do it, isn't it? Because you and I don't have
the wisdom and we don't have the patience to do it. We don't
have the wisdom and we don't have the patience. John and James
Didn't have the wisdom. They tried to pluck up a poor
man that was casting out devils in Christ's name because he didn't
follow them in everything and in every way. And they said,
Lord, we plucked him up. And he said, Don't. No, don't
do that. We would root up young believers,
would we not? Before they have an opportunity
to grow in grace and knowledge. We would root up a weak believer
who hasn't been properly taught and hasn't grown in grace and
knowledge. We would pluck up a true believer
who has fallen into sin and needs to be recovered and not rooted
up. Oh no, we don't need to be rooting
up people, do we? We have to be so careful with
that. That zeal which leads a person to persecute others, and attempts
to root them up, rather than being regulated by the words
of our blessed Savior, may well be a devilish zeal in and of
itself, and may reveal that He Himself is a terror." Isn't that
a devilish zeal that will risk plucking up some wheat in order
to get a terror? That's not Christlike, is it?
Oh, we can discipline, open and profane sins or heresy, but the
Lord is teaching us here that as long as the church stands,
there will be terrors among the weak. And so He would have us
to be patient and prayerful and kind and watchful. And maybe
make sure we're the planning of the Lord. We're the planning
of the Lord. So what does he say in verse
30? He gives them this, let both grow together, together until
the harvest. What is the harvest? This is
a solemn thought and he explains this to us in verse 39. Look
at this again. What is the harvest? The enemy
that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the
world. Isn't that a solemn thought?
What a solemn reality, isn't it? The end of the world. The end of everything we know
naturally. The end of everything we see.
The end of everything we handle with our hands. The end of all
the sounds that we hear with our natural ears. The end of
the world. Not the end of us. Not the end
of humanity. Humanity has a long home. But
of the world and all the works of man, this world system as
we know it, brothers and sisters, is coming to an absolute end. The end of this world. Life is ending for many physically.
Ends in death. But you know something? God has
appointed this world to have an end. Boy, that end is quickly
approaching, ain't it? The end of the world. All the tares will be harvested
and burned in the fire. There will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth. And you know a man is not exercising
wisdom if he don't think on that. If we read such a solemn thought
that there are going to be multitudes of people that are gathered and
burned And we don't meditate upon that and think about that
honestly and earnestly. A man would be a fool not to
do that, wouldn't he? Knowing that's coming. And then
he said, and then he said, the wheat. The wheat shall be gathered
unto Christ's barn and to the Father's house. And you know
something? Every believer should live in
the lively hope of that. Let every unbeliever meditate
That awful destruction that is coming. But let every believer
live in the hope that he is going to be gathered into Christ's
barns, into the Father's house. I heard some fellows last night
on the radio. I went over to pick up Jade and
I was listening to this radio program and they were talking
about heaven and hell. And these two guys on the radio
were disproving it and he had people calling in. And he said
he used to be a Christian. Now he's not an atheist. He believes
in God, he said, but he don't believe the Bible. He believes
God's a tyrant. They called him in and said,
well, God loves people and because of that, you know. And he said,
well, nobody has called in to explain to me how a loving God
can, well, he called it putting a poker to them. He said, nobody
can explain to me how God could do that in Him being a loving
God. And you know, he never got a call to explain that. Everybody
kept calling in and said, well, we know God is love, and not
the first person. I thought, I wish I had a phone.
I wish I had His number and the time just to call in and say,
here's your answer. Here's your answer. You cannot
eliminate one attribute of God and replace it with another.
You have to have a whole God, not just to love, but God is
holiness. God is holy. That's it, isn't it? That's it. That's why He can talk so freely
of gathering the tares and burning them. That's awful for us to
think about. How can He do that? Because He's
holy. That explains it. If men don't
want to believe that, then they'll have to remain willingly ignorant. But He's holy. That's what the
cross is about. That's what the cross is about.
That's why the righteous can get a new heart and a new spirit
and go up to heaven to be with Him. And that's why the wicked
shall be burned with everlasting fire. God is holy. He's holy. And then verse 43. He says this in verse 43. Then,
then, the wicked's going to be cast into a furnace of fire.
There's going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then, then. Oh, there's a now. But thank
God there's a then. There's a then. Here the righteous are so often
in obscurity and for the most part the world has no idea who
or what they are. The world don't know what we're
doing here this morning and they don't care. Let the world come
in that back door and they'd mock us, wouldn't they? They'd
laugh at us. There's a now and there's going to be a then. Everything seems so dark sometimes,
doesn't it? With these old bodies housed
in these frames of clay, they're finally going to die and they're
going to put us in a dark, damp grave. That's now. But thank God there's a then.
There's a then. Then the righteous shall shine. I love that, don't you? The righteous
shall shine. We don't shine very much now,
do we? Let your light so shine, but how dim our lights are. But
I'm telling you, there's coming a day when the righteous shall
shine. They'll shine as the sun in its
strength. No wonder they don't need a light
in that city. They're going to have the glory
of their Lord upon them, and they're going to shine. They're
going to shine. Daniel said this. They that sleep
in the dust of the earth." Well, that's a lowly, contemptible
place, isn't it? But He said, "...they shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt. And they that be wise shall shine
as the brightness of the firmament." That's bright, isn't it? One
man. One righteous man in that kingdom
after the resurrection shall shine more brightly than the
sun that lights this entire world that we live in. Shine as the
firmament. And they that turn many to righteousness
as the stars forever and forever. Those stars are way off. They
tell us some of them are millions of light years away. They must
be bright. to give this light that they
give of the night. But I tell you what, they won't
outshine the saints. Not in that day. They shall shine
in the kingdom of their Father. Aren't you glad for such a hope?
Aren't you glad that the Lord gave you such a hope? That He
planted you never to be plucked up? That He delivered you from
the kingdom of Satan? the kingdom of darkness, and
translated you into His kingdom, and says to poor and lowly you,
someday you're going to shine. You're going to shine. Oh, for that day. Lord, bring
it to pass. Let's pray.