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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Lessons for All Time: The Wheat and the Tares

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, author Malcolm Gladwell shares a fascinating story.

Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles spent $10 million buying a Kouros, a Greek statue of a young man.

Of course, before you spend $10 million on a piece of art, you want to make sure that you're not buying a fake.

And so the Getty had a team of scientists and lawyers check out the statue.

They said they believed the statue was real.

After buying it, the Getty then showed it to art experts and historians.

And 1 of them immediately said, it's a fake.

1 group of experts were so convinced they okayed a museum to spend $10 million.

In 2018, that's the equivalent of almost $25 million dollars.

How does a museum and its team of experts get taken by a fake?

Well, it's not always easy to tell something fake from something genuine.

It's 1 thing to misread a work of art, but there are times that people turned out to be other than what they claimed.

Hannah Snell was an English woman in the 18th century who faked that she was a man so that she could become a soldier.

She served 3 years in the military without anyone ever discovering that she was a woman and not a man.

Women faked being men on occasion to fight in the American Civil War.

In the late 1980s, a German music producer named Frank Farian put together a new pop band.

He hired 2 dancers named Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan to front the band.

Rob and Fab looked like pop stars, and the band, Milli Vanilli, sold millions of records.

In 1980, they won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Rob and Fab, however, didn't sing on any of the band's recordings.

They didn't even sing at the Grammy Awards.

They mimed everything, while other musicians did the real work in the studio.

It was 1 of the most notorious cases of lip syncing in pop music history.

Sometimes it's hard to know who's fake and who's genuine, or what's fake and what's genuine.

Jesus spoke to this in the parable of the weak and the tears.

We look at this today as part of our ongoing series, Lessons for All Time.

Let's take our Bibles and look at the parable.

Another parable he put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

So the servants of the owner came and said to him, Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?

The servants said to him, Do you want us to go and gather them up?

But he said, No, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

And at the time of the 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." Now this is something that used to happen in Jesus' day.

Someone would have a field of wheat growing and an enemy wanting to cause problems might sneak in and spread the seed of weeds.

The weeds would grow and choke the good seed and cause all kinds of problems for the landowner.

It's thought that the tear, or the weed, mentioned in this parable is darnel, lolium temulentum, sometimes referred to as false wheat, which can be fatal if it's eaten.

So let's take a look at the story, this parable.

It's a short story used to teach a moral or religious lesson.

Not everything in a parable has a parallel or a meaning, But many of the details of a parable are shared so that they might convey some important spiritual truth.

What are the spiritual truths that Jesus is teaching in this parable?

Keep in mind, earlier in Matthew 13, there's another parable dealing with seed.

It's the parable of the sower who went forth to sow.

Here, the kingdom of God, now that's the kingdom of divine grace on earth.

You could call it God's work of salvation on behalf of humanity.

The kingdom of God is compared to a man who sowed seed.

In that parable, the seed fell on 4 different types of ground.

First the wayside, then on stony ground, then there was some seed that was choked by thorns, and then there was the good ground where the seed flourished.

In the parable of the wheat and the tares, the seed is compromised by weeds that threaten it in a variety of ways.

We read that a man sowed good seed in his field.

Well, we do know who that is because this is 1 of those very helpful parables where Jesus explains what the various things mean.

His disciples come to him in verse 36 and they say, "...explain to us the parable of the tares of the field." and so he told them that he is the sower.

He went on to say, The field is the world.

The good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked 1.

The enemy who sowed them is the devil, The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels." That's Matthew 13, 38 and 39.

Now this is a lesson in which Jesus talks about an attack by an enemy, where Satan introduces into the church people who are not converted.

Then Jesus points to the end of the age when angels will separate the true followers of God from the pretenders, from the Milli Vanilli Christians.

So Jesus says this, here's the reality, I sow good seed, but the enemy comes and sows weeds in my field.

The challenge is, when the wheat appears, and then the tares grow among the wheat, you can't necessarily tell the 2 apart very easily.

Now this is a commentary on what we experience in church.

In the church you get the good Christians and then the hypocrites, those who aren't really genuine believers.

Now most of us are going to say, I'm the real thing.

We might humbly suggest that, well, we do have our faults, and well, we could do better.

But we like to think that we are wheat, while the other ones, some of them at least, are tares.

Someone says, let us pull up the tears so they don't damage the wheat, which seems like a good idea.

If there are phonies there, why not uproot them and get rid of them?

The greatest event in all of history, the second coming of Jesus Christ.

What does the Bible say that will be like?

Find out by getting today's free offer, The Second Coming of Jesus.

To receive this free DVD call 800-253-3000 or Visit us online at www.iiwoffer.com.

Find out what the Bible says about the Second Coming of Jesus.

Get the free DVD 800-253-3000 www.iiwoffer.com.

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Lessons for All Time: The Wheat and the Tares

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