The Messy Kingdom: Tares Among the Wheat Text: Matthew 13:24-30
Introduction: The Problem of a Mixed Multitude
We live in an age that is allergic to patience and addicted to purity. I am not talking about holiness, which is a biblical requirement, but rather a kind of manufactured, hothouse purity that cannot stand the messiness of real life in a fallen world. This manifests itself in a thousand different ways, from the political utopian who wants to legislate a perfect society into existence overnight, to the pietist who wants a church with no hypocrites, no struggles, and no embarrassing members. Both are demanding something God has not promised in this age. Both are expressions of an over-realized eschatology. They want the glories of the harvest now, without the long, slow, complicated growing season.
Jesus, in His profound wisdom, anticipates this very impatience. He knows that one of the greatest threats to His church will not be the persecutor from without, but the perfectionist from within. He knows the temptation we all face to look at the state of the visible church, with all its blemishes and corruptions, and to either despair or to grab a scythe and start swinging indiscriminately. We see the darnel growing right next to the wheat, and our first, zealous, and entirely carnal impulse is to "do something" about it immediately.
This parable is a direct bucket of cold water on that kind of fiery, misguided zeal. It is a foundational lesson in kingdom patience. Jesus is teaching us that the kingdom of heaven, in its current manifestation, is a mixed field. It is not a sterile laboratory. God's purpose in history is to grow wheat, and He is so committed to the safety of His wheat that He is willing to tolerate the presence of the darnel right up until the final harvest. This is not because He is indifferent to the darnel, but because He is intensely protective of the wheat.
This parable confronts our simplistic desire for a clean and tidy church. It forces us to reckon with the fact that God's kingdom project is vast, cosmic, and patient. It teaches us to trust the landowner's wisdom over our own short-sighted zeal. If we misunderstand this parable, we will inevitably fall into one of two errors: either a cynical laxity that refuses to exercise any form of church discipline, or a harsh, puritanical separatism that is constantly ripping up the field in a vain quest for absolute purity. Both are forms of disobedience. The Lord of the harvest commands us to wait.
The Text
He presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
(Matthew 13:24-30 LSB)
The Good Seed and the Enemy's Sabotage (v. 24-26)
The parable begins with a familiar scene, establishing the good and sovereign work of the master.
"The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field." (Matthew 13:24)
Jesus Himself interprets the key elements for us later in the chapter. The sower is the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom. So, right from the outset, we must establish this foundational point: the world belongs to Jesus. It is His field. He is not some guerrilla fighter trying to carve out a small patch of territory from an enemy king. He is the rightful King, and the devil is the intruder, the saboteur. This is the basis for a robust, optimistic, postmillennial eschatology. Christ is sowing His people into His world with the intention of claiming the entire field.
But this good work is immediately met with malicious opposition.
"But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also." (Matthew 13:25-26)
The enemy, who Jesus identifies as the devil, performs his work under the cover of darkness, while the servants are sleeping. This is not necessarily a rebuke of the servants, but a description of the insidious nature of evil. The devil is a counterfeiter. The tares mentioned here are likely darnel, a poisonous weed that looks remarkably like wheat in its early stages of growth. You cannot tell them apart until the fruit, or the head of the grain, begins to appear. This is a crucial point. The devil's strategy is not to plant thistles or oak trees in the wheat field. His strategy is imitation. He plants false Christians who look, talk, and act very much like true Christians, right up to a point.
The enemy's work is parasitic. He doesn't create his own field; he corrupts the good field of another. This is the nature of all evil. Evil is not a creative force; it is a privation, a twisting of a prior good. The devil cannot create anything; he can only mar, spoil, and introduce counterfeits into God's good creation. And after his cowardly act of sabotage, he "went away." He plants the seed of discord and then retreats into the shadows to watch the chaos unfold, often hoping the saints will do his dirty work for him by overreacting.
The Impatient Servants (v. 27-28)
The servants, upon discovering the problem, are understandably perplexed and concerned. Their reaction is immediate and zealous.
"The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’" (Matthew 13:27-28a)
Their question is a good one, and it is the perennial question of theodicy: if God is good and sovereign, why is there evil in the world, and more pointedly, why is there hypocrisy and wickedness in the visible church? The Master's answer is simple and direct: "An enemy has done this." God is not the author of sin. He does not create the darnel. He permits the enemy's sabotage for His own wise and sovereign purposes, but the moral responsibility for the evil lies squarely with the enemy.
The servants immediately propose a solution born of zeal, but not of wisdom.
"The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’" (Matthew 13:28b)
This is the cry of every zealous but impatient reformer. "Let us purify the church! Let us root out all the hypocrites! Let's have a perfect fellowship, right now!" This is the spirit behind Donatism, Anabaptist separatism, and the kind of censorious, finger-pointing pietism that fractures churches. The desire is for a good thing, a pure church, but the timing and the method are all wrong. They want to do the angels' job before it is the angels' time.
The Wise Landowner (v. 29-30)
The landowner's response is a stunning rebuke to all forms of puritanical utopianism. His wisdom is rooted in His supreme value for the wheat.
"But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest...'" (Matthew 13:29-30a)
Here is the central lesson of the parable. The master forbids the premature separation because he knows two things the servants do not. First, he knows their limitations. The servants, in their zeal, cannot perfectly distinguish the wheat from the darnel, especially when the roots are intertwined beneath the soil. In their attempt to create a pure field, they would inevitably do catastrophic damage to the true crop. It is far better, in the master's economy, to let a hundred hypocrites remain in the visible church than to wrongly cast out one true child of God. The Lord's priority is the preservation of His wheat.
Now, this does not mean we suspend all church discipline. The New Testament is clear that we are to deal with open, scandalous, and unrepentant sin (1 Cor. 5). That is like pulling up an obvious thistle. But this parable is about the deeper problem of discerning the heart. It is a warning against making ultimate judgments about a person's salvation based on our fallible observations. We are called to judge the fruit, but the final judgment of the root belongs to God alone.
The Great and Final Harvest (v. 30)
The landowner's patience is not an endorsement of the tares. It is simply a matter of timing. There is a day of reckoning coming, and it will be precise, final, and executed by competent hands.
"...and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ” (Matthew 13:30b)
The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. On that day, there will be a perfect and final separation. Notice the order. First, the tares are gathered. The judgment begins with the house of God, and the false members are removed. They are bundled for burning, a terrifying image of eternal judgment. Their destiny is the furnace of fire. There will be no mistakes. The angels will not accidentally toss a stalk of wheat into the fire, nor will they let a single stalk of darnel slip into the barn.
Only after this perfect separation is the wheat gathered into the master's barn. This is the final ingathering of the saints, the presentation of the church to Christ, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. The barn is a picture of eternal security, blessing, and fellowship with the landowner. The patience of the present age will finally give way to the purity of the age to come.
Conclusion: Living in the Messy Field
So what does this mean for us, living in the field before the harvest? It means we must cultivate the virtue of kingdom patience. We must resist the urge to play God. We are called to be faithful farmhands, not angelic reapers.
This means we must be gracious and long-suffering with the institutional church. We should not be surprised or scandalized to find sinners in the pews. Where else should they be? The church is a hospital for the sick, not a museum for the perfect. Yes, we must pursue holiness. Yes, we must practice biblical discipline when necessary. But we must abandon the utopian dream of a perfectly pure church on this side of glory. To demand it is to demand what Christ Himself has forbidden.
This parable is also a profound comfort. Our security does not depend on our ability to perfectly police the boundaries of the church. It depends on the landowner's fierce, protective love for His wheat. He would rather tolerate the presence of His enemies than risk the slightest harm to one of His beloved children. He knows who are His, and He will lose none of them.
Finally, this parable is a solemn warning. To the darnel, to those who are in the church but not of Christ, it is a call to repentance. Your camouflage will not last forever. The day is coming when the fruit will be manifest, and the angels will come with their sickles. The patience of the landowner is not permission; it is an opportunity. It is the kindness of God, meant to lead you to repentance.
Let us therefore be about our business. Let us preach the gospel, love one another, bear with one another's faults, and trust the Lord of the harvest. He knows what He is doing. The field is His, the crop is His, and the harvest will be glorious. Our job is to be faithful until He comes.