Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
Question:
ReplyDelete- Does the field refer to the world, the universal church or the local church?
- Who are the weeds?
- Why did God not try to pull them up until the harvest? Won't the weeds choke out the good plants?
Adding the verses where Jesus explains the parable: Matthew 13:36 - 43:
ReplyDelete36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Questions:
Delete- What is the blazing furnace?
- How is there weeping and gnashing of teeth when people are being burned up?
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120622165130AAR5rUJ (best answer) says:
DeleteThis burning refers to a place called "Gehenna" in the literal Greek translation, or "Hell" in modern English translations. The place "Gehenna" has multiple meanings. It is actually a real place, which was located in the valley below the ancient city of Jerusalem. It was both a place where in old times people worshiped heathen gods and sacrificed their children to the fire, as well as in New Testament times where it was basically a giant garbage dump that was continually on fire.
The context of the parable suggests that the place it is talking about will be like a burn pile on a farm, where all of the weeds are uprooted and then set ablaze so that they can no longer interfere with the growth of the wheat. This is representative of what will happen at the "end of the age" when Jesus returns to gather the faithful. The righteous will be "harvested" into His "barn," while the unrighteous will be uprooted, gathered together, and burned in a mass "garbage dump" like Gehenna.
http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/doctrine/hodgesgn.htm says:
DeleteIn Webster's original dictionary, Webster defined the verb "gnash" as "to grind the teeth, to rage even to collision with the teeth, to growl."
It should be noted that Webster says nothing of sorrow or remorse or regret. To him the term signified anger, rage, pain or anguish.
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament by Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich defines gnashing as "a sign of violent rage." It also mentions that it was a term to describe the chattering of the teeth in chills and fevers.
The article goes on to say that the term "gnash" was used 5 times in the LXX "always as an expression of hate" and in one place (Job 16:9) "it is linked with a desire to destroy the opponent" (p. 641). A similar usage is found in Acts 7:54 where the Jews gnashed their teeth at Stephen.
http://www.postost.net/2015/11/was-gehenna-burning-rubbish-dump-does-it-matter says:
DeleteDid Jesus speak of a “Gehenna of fire” because fires burnt continually in the Valley of Hinnom? If not, what are the implications for our understanding of hell.
I would argue, therefore, that when Jesus speaks of unrighteous Jews being thrown into the “Gehenna of fire”, what he has in mind is not eternal punishment in a post mortem “hell”, as traditionally understood, but judgment on Israel in the manner imagined by Isaiah and Jeremiah and described by the historian Josephus. Whether the city’s rubbish was burnt in the Valley of Hinnom is not greatly significant: the allusion is literary, not topographical.
It is worth noting, finally, that Jewish apocalypticism appears to have conceived of Gehenna as a place of subterranean torment (4 Ezra 7:36; Sib. Or. 1.103; 2.290-92). But these texts are likely to postdate Jesus and, more importantly, have clearly been influenced by the Greek concept of Tartarus: “down they went into Tartarean chamber terrible, kept in firm chains to pay full penalty in Gehenna of strong, furious, quenchless fire” (Sib. Or. 1.101-103). I think we are on much firmer ground if we read Jesus simply against the Old Testament background. Gehenna is a symbol of God’s judgment on his people. Gehenna as a Tartarean place of punishment after death has its origins elsewhere.
http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2011/04/myth-of-burning-garbage-dump-of-gehenna.html says:
DeleteI have long wanted to do a little work to debunk the endlessly repeated myth that the Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) was a perpetually burning trash dump. There simply is no evidence to support the idea, but because it seems a reasonable explanation for the origin of the Hinnom Valley as “hell,” writers and preachers accept and propagate the story.
As with the legend about the rope around the high priest’s ankle, this popular myth seems to have originated in Jewish circles in the Middle Ages.
Thus already in Old Testament times, the Valley of Hinnom was associated with the destiny of the wicked. That the valley was just outside the city of Jerusalem made it an appropriate symbol for those excluded from divine blessing. Isaiah closes his book with these words:
Isaiah 66:24 (ESV) — “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”
It is not difficult to see, from these and other texts (e.g., 2 Kgs 23:10; 2 Chr 28:3, 33:6; Jer 32:35), why Jesus and his contemporaries used the word Gehenna (“valley of Hinnom”) as synonymous with the place of everlasting fiery torment.
My 2 cents:
DeleteBased on the description, what can we know and what do we not know. In my opinion the things that we can know are:
- There will be an end of the age in which Jesus comes back to judge the living and the dead.
- There will be a separation of the tares from the wheat.
- The wheat will join Jesus in the place He has prepared for the wheat.
- The tares will be thrown into a place like a furnace, which will be their final destination.
What we don't know (in my opinion):
- We don't know the criteria for how God will identify the tares - only that the tares are evil. We can say that those "in Christ" are the wheat, but when it comes to identifying who is "in Christ", many of us think we know, but a deeper examination will reveal that we really don't.
- We don't know what the furnace really is. Is it a fire? Is it outer darkness? Is it oblivion? Is it a place?
- We don't know whether the furnace is a place to keep tares, or a place where tares are destroyed. There is weeping and rage (gnashing of teeth), but we don't know if it occurs as the tares are being thrown in, as the tares are being burned up, or whether the tares will forever be weeping and gnashing their teeth.
http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-wheat-tares.html says:
ReplyDeleteThe Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, or Tares, is filled with spiritual significance and truth. But, in spite of the clear explanation of the parable that Jesus gave (Matthew 13:36-43), this parable is very often misinterpreted. Many commentaries and sermons have attempted to use this story as an illustration of the condition of the church, noting that there are both true believers (the wheat) and false professors (the weeds) in both the church at large and individual local churches. While this may be true, Jesus distinctly explains that the field is not the church; it is the world (v. 38).
Even if He hadn’t specifically told us the world is the setting of the story, it would still be obvious. The landowner tells the servants not to pull up the weeds in the field, but to leave them until the end of the age. If the field were the church, this command would directly contradict Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18, which tells us how to deal with unrepentant sinners in the church: they are to be put out of the fellowship and treated as unbelievers. Jesus never instructed us to let impenitent sinners remain in our midst until the end of the age. So, Jesus is teaching here about “the kingdom of heaven” (v. 24) in the world.
In the agricultural society of Christ’s time, many farmers depended on the quality of their crops. An enemy sowing weeds would have sabotaged a business. The tares in the parable were likely darnel because that weed, until mature, appears as wheat. Without modern weed killers, what would a wise farmer do in such a dilemma? Instead of tearing out the wheat with the tares, the landowner in this parable wisely waited until the harvest. After harvesting the whole field, the tares could be separated and burned. The wheat would be saved in the barn.
In the explanation of parable, Christ declares that He Himself is the sower. He spreads His redeemed seed, true believers, in the field of the world. Through His grace, these Christians bear the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24). Their presence on earth is the reason the “kingdom of heaven” is like the field of the world. When Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17; Mark 3:2), He meant the spiritual realm which exists on earth side by side with the realm of the evil one (1 John 5:19). When the kingdom of heaven comes to its fruition, heaven will be a reality and there will be no “weeds” among the “wheat.” But for now, both good and bad seeds mature in the world.
http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-wheat-tares.html (continued)
ReplyDeleteThe enemy in the parable is Satan. In opposition to Jesus Christ, the devil tries to destroy Christ’s work by placing false believers and teachers in the world who lead many astray. One has only to look at the latest televangelist scandal to know the world is filled with professing “Christians” whose ungodly actions bring reproach on the name of Christ. But we are not to pursue such people in an effort to destroy them. For one thing, we don’t know if immature and innocent believers might be injured by our efforts. Further, one has only to look at the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and the reign of “Bloody Mary” in England to see the results of men taking upon themselves the responsibility of separating true believers from false, a task reserved for God alone. Instead of requiring these false believers to be rooted out of the world, and possibly hurting immature believers in the process, Christ allows them to remain until His return. At that time, angels will separate the true from false believers.
In addition, we are not to take it upon ourselves to uproot unbelievers because the difference between true and false believers isn’t always obvious. Tares, especially in the early stages of growth, resemble wheat. Likewise, a false believer may resemble a true believer. In Matthew 7:22, Jesus warned that many profess faith but do not know Him. Thus, each person should examine his own relationship with Christ (2 Corinthians 13:5). First John is an excellent test of salvation.
Jesus Christ will one day establish true righteousness. After He raptures the true church out of this world, God will pour out His righteous wrath on the world. During that tribulation, He will draw others to saving faith in Jesus Christ. At the end of the tribulation, all unbelievers will be judged for their sin and unbelief; then, they will be removed from God’s presence. True followers of Christ will reign with Him. What a glorious hope for the “wheat”!
My 2 cents:
ReplyDeleteThe above article was so good, I see no need to provide more - especially those that make the "mistake" of saying the field is the church.
Although there was one article that said that if you ground up the "darnel" (the weeds that looked so much like wheat) it was poisonous (they called it the "devil's weed").