I. It was "while men slept" that the enemy sowed his tares among the wheat. The phrase is equivalent to "at night," and must not be further urged. This enemy seized his opportunity when all eyes were closed in sleep, and wrought the secret mischief upon which he was intent, and, having wrought it undetected, withdrew.
II. The enemy that sowed them is the devil. We behold Satan here, not as he works beyond the limits of the Church, deceiving the world, but in his far deeper malignity, as he at once mimics and counterworks the work of Christ.
III. The mischief done, the enemy "went his way," and thus the work did not evidently at once appear to be his. How often, in the Church, the beginnings of evil have been scarcely discernible, and that which bore the worst fruit in the end will have shown at first like a higher form of good.
IV. In the question, "Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?" the temptation to use violent means for the suppression of error a temptation which the Church itself has sometimes failed to resist finds its voice and utterance. But they who thus speak are unfit to be trusted in the matter. Our Lord's answer, "Nay," does not imply that the tares shall never be plucked up, but only that this is not the time, and they not the doers. "Let both grow together until the harvest," pregnant words, which tell us that evil is not, as many dream, gradually to wane and disappear before good, the world to find itself in the Church, but each to unfold itself more fully out of its own root, till at last they stand face to face, each in its highest manifestation, in the persons of Christ and of Antichrist on the one hand an incarnate God, on the other the man in whom the fulness of all Satanic power will dwell bodily. Both must grow until the harvest till they are ripe, one for destruction, and the other for full salvation.
R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 80.
References: Matthew 13:24. A. P. Stanley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 81.Matthew 13:24; Matthew 13:25. C. Girdlestone, A Course of Sermons,vol. i., p. 175.Matthew 13:24-30. R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 122; R. Calderwood, The Parables of our Lord,p. 199; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 470; M. Lucas, Ibid.,vol. xv., p. 355; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 80; J. C. Jones, Studies in St. Matthew,p. 199; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 163; A. B. Bruce, Parabolic Teaching of Christ,p. 38; C. Kingsley, Discipline and other Sermons,p. 274.Matthew 13:24-43. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. ii., p. 235; J. R. Macduff, Parables of the Lake,p. 72.