MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Matthew 13:24-30
The seeds of error.—The explanation of the last parable is, in part, the explanation of this. It teaches us, e.g. what is meant in this parable by sowing the seed, viz. the dissemination of truth. In the same general way, therefore, it enables us to consider this parable as it stands, and without entering, at present, into that copious explanation of it which was afterwards given to the disciples in private (Matthew 13:36-43). So regarded, it will be found to tell us, first, of a remarkable discovery in the field of the “kingdom”; and secondly, of an equally remarkable decision about it.
I. A remarkable discovery.—A discovery which seems to have caused those who made it to stand still, and cry out, “What is the meaning of this?” For truly serious, in the first place, according to what we are taught, was the nature of the appearance they beheld. It was the appearance of one set of plants where other plants had been sown. More than this, according to the interpretation of some, it was the appearance of a noxious plant instead of a wholesome one. Instead of wheat there was darnel—and that a kind of darnel, it is said, which, when taken into the system, produced vertigo and sickness. Instead of profit, therefore, there was the appearance of loss. Instead of food, the development of poison. Equally serious, in the next place, was the time of this appearance. Not till the grain had been formed in the ear (Matthew 13:26), because not till then, so it is said, could the distinction be made—not, therefore, till the harvest was approaching, and so till long after all possibility of prevention was over, was this discovery made. But most serious of all, in the third place, was the origin to which it pointed. That this appearance should be due to any action on the part of the “householder” himself, was wholly out of the question. He had never put anything whatever but “good seed” in his field. The only possible way, therefore, of accounting for this appearance was by supposing that an adversary had caused it. This was the conclusion of the householder himself, immediately that he heard of it. And this is the point, therefore, the great point, on which our final thoughts are to be fixed. In the householder’s own property, where he himself had never put anything but that which was good, someone utterly hostile to him had put that which was evil. “An enemy hath done this” (Matthew 13:28).
II. A remarkable decision.—This was remarkable, first, because a far more obvious course had first presented itself to men’s minds. That first idea had been to go at once and root out the bad seed. To the servants of the householder this appeared the most natural thing in the world. If “an enemy” hath done this, shall not we who are friends go and undo it at once? Therefore it is that they suggest it at once to the householder himself. “Wilt thou then”—that being the case—“that we go and gather them up?” Nothing appears to them, in the circumstances, a more proper proceeding. All they wait for is leave to adopt it. All the more remarkable, therefore, in the next place, is the decisive way in which this proposal of theirs is put to one side. The thing proposed by his servants, on the one hand, is not to be attempted by them at all. “He saith” unto them “nay.” It is as though he would prevent them from taking even a first step in that line. It is not to be attempted by them, on the other hand, because of the fact that such an endeavour would lead, inevitably, to more evil than good. It might, or it might not, remove some of the darnel. With eyes such as theirs, with hands such as theirs, whatever the excellence of their purpose, it would certainly eradicate some of the wheat. What they are to do for the present, therefore—all they are to do for the present—is to let the field remain as it is. Let “both” kinds continue to “grow together” as they do now. And even hereafter—this is what he says to them lastly—when the time of harvest shall have arrived, and with it, therefore, the time for separating the evil from the good without any fear of mistake, and of binding them together in separate “bundles” for those widely different final uses, for which they are respectively meant—he does not mean that separation to be effected by those he is speaking to now. “In the time of harvest, I will say to my reapers”—to my reapers, then, and therefore not to you now—let this division be made. Can anything be more decisive from beginning to end? The parable, thus viewed, may very well teach us:—
1. To moderate our expectations.—What the Saviour thus foretold, and thus found true also in His own case (John 6:70), will be found true in all others. Whether we look at the church at large, or at any particular branch of it, no matter how large on the one hand, or how select on the other, it will never be without “tares.” Often and often their presence is a surprise to the servants. It is never so to the Master.
2. To limit our efforts.—If He permits the “tares” to be sown, let us permit them to grow. Let us refrain, at any rate, from violent efforts to remove them from the field. That is not the task for our hands. Nor yet for our time. To attempt it is only to do harm to the wheat.
3. To encourage our faith.—If the “tares” are never absent all the more wonder at the amount of good that exists. If things are always so mingled all the higher the wisdom and all the greater the power which preserves that which is good! In this sense the very imperfection of the church proves the truth of its message!
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES
Matthew 13:24-30. The parable of the tares.—
I. The origination of the kingdom of God, or of Christian society, in its widest sense, is likened to an act of sowing. Seed does not, as in the former parable, stand for the truth of the gospel, but for the men who receive it. At first one might suspect that our Lord is only playing with the emblem in an arbitrary fashion, making it mean just what He chooses. Not so. The wheat plants are just the seed in a changed form. Somewhat parallel is it with the new life and character that are produced upon the soil of human nature by the accepted truth of God’s gospel. That new life-character in a Christian man is morally a product of the truth he has taken into his being. The place which the Son of man has destined for the ripening place of His plants, i.e. His “field,” is the world. Few words in Scripture have been more stumbled over than this. Let us take it in two distinct senses, both of them, no doubt, intended.
1. The field for the kingdom of Christ is, in extent, the whole world of mankind, and not the limited, bounded area of a single people.
2. In a second sense as well, is the world Christ’s field, wherein His precious plants are to grow and ripen. He sows them not merely in all the wide world, but in this present world, such as it is. That is but a sickly idea of Christianity which treats it like a hothouse plant. But there is a hidden night-sower too. This illustration answers perfectly to the character which Scripture ascribes to the originator of human sin. From the first he is represented as a circumventor of God’s fair designs; a spoiler and blaster of what was created very good; a sower of weeds among corn. For it is characteristic of evil that it can make nothing to profit; can only unmake, mar, and waste. Now the setting up on earth of Christ’s kingdom gave occasion to a new manner of mischief-making, the point of which lay in its mimicry of the new work of God. This was men with the appearance of Christians, speaking Christian words, and growing up inside the Christian community, hardly to be distinguished from others, who yet were in their real nature, men of an unchanged, evil heart, and yielded at the last bitter or unwholesome fruits. It is in perfect keeping, also, with the whole of Christ’s teaching, thus to represent human character in its great contrasts of good and bad, as no isolated spiritual phenomenon, but as somehow reclining against a superhuman background. A Spirit of grace and light regenerating men, if they will, by the word of truth; no less, another spirit of darkness and malice, misleading men, if they will, to the service of a lie. The revelation of this contact of an upper and lower spiritual world with human character, has done nothing to solve the old, dark, hopeless mystery of evil. The question of the servants in the parable, is just the last and deepest question with which the reason of man has at all times approached the eternal God: “Lord, didst not Thou sow good seed in Thy field? Whence then hath it tares?” All we can know, and for practical uses need to know is, “An enemy hath done it.” “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
II. The progress of the kingdom of God.—The interest of the parable passes swiftly on to the close of the history. All that lies between is, so to say, natural development, and, therefore, is in this parable touched with a light finger. What we do gather concerning this growing time, is only the negative lesson that it must be “let alone.” Christ meant the juxtaposition of good men with bad to continue in this world. As a religious community, the church is bound, no doubt, to expel the openly wicked and unchristian from her own membership. That is undoubted from other texts. But she is to strive after no unnatural or forced separation from society.
III. The close of the kingdom of God.—The weight of the passage, as a lesson to individuals in the kingdom of God, lies in the awful severance of false from true at last by unerring celestial servants of the King. The Master’s objection to human weeders was simply that they could not be trusted to discern between the evil and the good. How true has that been found!—J. O. Dykes, D.D.
The parable of the tares.—I. The sowing.—The field originally had no seed in it; it could not produce any seed; it was necessary to sow the good seed in it. In like manner goodness is not innate to human nature; there are not inhering in it any germs of goodness.
1. “He that soweth good seed is the Son of man;” there is not one sound seed in your nature, but it has been deposited there by the Son of man.
2. “The field is the world.” Within the church discipline must be upheld; the bad, so far as practicable, must be separated from the good, believers from unbelievers. That is often taught us in the New Testament; the Apostles cast men out of the communion of the saints. It is about the world, and not about the church, that Jesus Christ is speaking. He does not say, Do not cast bad men out of the church; but, Do not cast them out of the world.
3. “The good seed are the children of the kingdom.” According to the preceding parable, the good seed is the word of God; according to this parable, the good seed are the children of the kingdom. The Saviour here contemplates the seed in its full growth. It is quite right to say, the acorns are the seed of the forest. But it is equally right to say, the acorns are the trees of the forest. In the first stage the good seed are the good thoughts sown in your mind, the good principles instilled into your nature; but in the last stage the good seed are the good men.
4. But another is sowing. “While men slept,” etc. “The tares are the children of the wicked one.” The sowing here, too, begins with evil thoughts and ends with evil men.
5. “The enemy that sowed them is the devil.” Good is not indigenous to our nature, it has been implanted in us by the Son of man. Neither is evil indigenous to our nature, it has been sown in us by the devil.
II. The growing (Matthew 13:26).—The difference between the wheat and the tares became manifest only after a period of growth. “The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?” etc. Here is brought into proximity the human method and the Divine method of dealing with sin. Good men and bad are wonderfully mingled in the world; you cannot destroy the bad without seriously damaging the good. They are mingled in the family; you cannot kill the father without hurting the mother. They are mingled in society; you cannot shoot the tenant without injuring the landlord, etc.
III. The reaping.—“Let them grow until the harvest.” “The harvest is the end of the world.” Good will continue to grow better, and evil to grow worse, till the harvest time. I do not know that evil will continue to grow in bulk, that is, by the multiplication of bad men. I hope not. But it will grow in intensity, in bitterness, in subtlety, in poisonousness (2 Thessalonians 2:6-10). When good and evil shall have fully ripened, then will begin the process of separation: “The Son of man shall send forth His angels,” etc. “Bind them in bundles and burp them.” Is there here an intimation that in eternity sinners shall congregate together according to their sinful propensities—that misers shall be gathered to misers, drunkards to drunkards, adulterers to adulterers?—J. C. Jones, D.D.
Matthew 13:25. The tares.—No weed is so troublesome to the Syrian farmers as a kind of wild rye-grass, which they call zuwân. It grows abundantly in cornfields, and is so extremely like wheat in its earlier stages that even a farmer’s eye cannot tell the difference with certainty till it is shot. Then the peasants know it by its blacker heads. By that time, however, they find it hazardous to pull it up by hand, because its rootlets are too closely twisted about those of the corn. When harvest comes it is necessary to pick out the stalks with care, and finally to winnow its pickles from the seed; because this weed is really a bitter intoxicant poison, so strong that even a pickle or two, ground among the flour, will cause in the eater giddiness and nausea. One sees what a truly Oriental refinement of revenge it would be deliberately to oversow a neighbour’s field with such a weed the night after he had been sowing his wheat. One sees how exquisitely this atrocious piece of mischief sets forth the malice and cunning of the devil.—J. O. Dykes, D.D.
Sowing tares among the wheat.—We are not without this form of malice nearer home. Thus, in Ireland, I have known an outgoing tenant, in spite at his ejection, to sow wild oats in the fields which he was leaving. These ripening and seeding themselves before the crops in which they were mingled, it became next to impossible to get rid of them.—Archbishop Trench.
Matthew 13:27. Ministerial watchfulness.—Our Saviour here shows the servants’ care; to teach us that ministers ought to be watchful. Wherein doth this watchfulness consist?
I. In a daily watchful visiting of their fields and flocks.
II. In a rejoicing when the wheat thrives, i.e. when they see the Lord to bless and prosper His own word and give an increase to that which they sow.
III. In a sorrow for the springing up of tares.—These servants come (and certainly not without grief) and tell their master that there are tares amongst the corn. Thus faithful ministers, when they see errors, heresies, hypocrisies, and formality in religion to begin to spring and spread itself among their flocks, must seek unto God, and do all that lies in their power to redress it.—R. Ward.
Matthew 13:28-30. Human intolerance and Divine patience.—I. What men would do.—“Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?” It should always be remembered that there is an arrogance of virtue, as well as the sauciness and presumption of vice. Men may have pure intentions, but their proposed methods of giving effect to their intentions may corrupt them. It is of the essence of pride and effrontery, for men to propose to do God’s work in their own way.
II. What would be the result of such impatient action?—“Nay, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them.” Men may not only do evil that good may come, but good, and evil may be the result, and, if judged by this, may be condemned as tares. The intermixture of good and evil by the conditions of life and the relations and institutions of society is a problem and a difficulty. If we could cut down evil as the mower cuts the grass, if its forms all grew together, the field of the world could soon be cleared. But this intermixture of good and evil forbids rashness and haste. Besides, every man, perhaps, is a tare to some other man in some aspects of his character. None are all wheat in human judgment, and not so even in fact. If we would remove all the tares, we must remove one another off the face of the earth, or consign one another to certain conventional hells, social, political, or sectarian. The truth is, though we are no better than we should be, yet we are unquestionably better than we think each other to be. Hence comes the grand function of the church—preferring one another in love, nurturing the feeblest virtues, feeding babes in Christ, helping each other on to the perfect stature of men in Christ Jesus.
III. What the Master does.—“Let both grow together until the harvest.” How Godlike is this large patience, like the firmament of heaven, serene and vast, while the storm of men’s passions rages beneath. And yet the very largeness and fulness of this patience irritate us. There are certain crimes committed by certain men which perhaps no human law can touch, and we feel as if God ought to come out of His hiding-place and smite or brand the criminal as in the case of Cain. But if the man we think of was branded, he would perhaps be the wrong man, or, not knowing the whole circumstances of the case, we might overwhelm the most urgent extenuations.—Jos. Shaw.