OUR FATHER WILL SEPARATE THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS ON JUDGEMENT DAY

 Continuing on the theme of the kingdom of God and how it operated among human beings, the Lord Jesus told the disciples another parable commonly known as the parable of the wheat and the tares (tares being a type of noxious weed).

Whereas the previous parable spoke of how the good news of the kingdom affected people differently depending on the conditions of their hearts, this parable revealed how the sowing of evil seeds is used by the kingdom of darkness to sabotage the kingdom of God and how this type of sabotage will be handled by God.

Matthew chapter 13 verses 24 - 30 says this;

24 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.” ’ ”

A land owner, careful to screen his seeds to eliminate weeds before planting, had put in his crop for the season and while the overseers were asleep at the switch, an enemy of the land owner came and dumped a bunch of  weed seeds onto the land.

No one from the landowner's side knew what had happened until the seeds started germinating and the crop started appearing but so did the weeds.

The landowner's employees came to him asking if he had indeed screened his seeds properly because the crop was growing alongside a large number of weeds.

The land owner immediately knew that he had been sabotaged by an enemy to destroy his crop. The employees proposed that they could go into the field and pull out the weeds.

To this point, we understand that the seeds are words that planted in mens hearts and in the case of the words of God, a crop ( which represents good men who serve God ) begins to grow from them. 

The saboteur, ( representing the devil and his kingdom ), snuck in under cover of darkness and spread their evil words and as a result, men, corrupted by the ways of darkness, emerge among the good crops as weeds.

The instinctive response to this situation would be to go in among the crop and try to isolate the weeds and pull them out as the employees of the landown suggested.

The land owner, more experienced in these matters, knew that an attempt to remove corrupt men from among the good men while they were growing together would be imprecise and would result in many good men being inadvertently uprooted.

This is especially true where the general code of conduct in the kingdom of God demands that good works be done in secret and so distinguishing the good people from the corrupt people by trying to access their deeds is often difficult.

The Lord determined that the most expedient response to the sabotage would be to let the good men and the corrupt men grow through life side by side in the congregations of church-goers  but when the day of judgement comes and everything is being uprooted, the weeds would be separated from the crop and incinerated while the good crop, after screening, would be moved into the house of God.

Lord have mercy on us.

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