1. Matthew chapter 13 contains what our Lord referred to as the parables of "the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" (13:10, 11).
2. In this chapter our Lord gave seven parables.  These parables were given because our Lord was rejected by the people of Israel.
3. Because Israel rejected their King, He temporarily rejected them, and therefore the setting up of His Messianic kingdom on this earth was postponed.
4. After His crucifixion and resurrection, the Lord ascended into heaven.
5. In the meantime, the "kingdom" takes another form. The "kingdom of heaven" as it is used in these parables is not the church.
6. It is the sphere of Christian profession. In other words, it is Christendom.
7. We have here in these parables three stages: there is sowing; there is growing; and then there is the harvest.

I. THE SOWING

1. In Matthew 13:37, our Lord said, "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man."
2. But our Lord went on to say that the devil is busy sowing his bad seed (13:38, 39).
3. Our Lord calls the good seed, "the children of the kingdom" (13:38).
4. The bad seed (tares) are "the children of the wicked one" (13:38b).
5. The word "seed" is found 280 times in Scripture. Sometimes it is used in a physical sense, and other times it is spiritual.
6. For example, Genesis 1:11 says, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
7. The word "seed" implies life. In the first parable, the parable of the sower, the seed is identified as the Word of God. Luke 8:11 says, “The seed is the Word of God."
8. In the second parable, the parable of the wheat and the tares, the seed represents people.
9. "The children of the kingdom," are the "good seed" sown by the Lord Jesus Christ (13:38). The tares are the children of the wicked one; sowed by the devil.
10. Notice the devil is our "enemy" (13:39). First Peter 5:8 refers to "your adversary the devil." His name, Satan, means "adversary" in Hebrew.
11. Way back in the Garden of Eden, the LORD said to the devil, "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15).
12. This enmity has been going on ever since.  We see it right from the beginning with Cain and Abel, and we see it all throughout the Bible.
13. And we see it throughout history.
14. And we see it every day. Truett Cathy and his son Dan are Christians. They are Baptists whose Christian values have a major impact on their company, Chick-fil-A Chicken restaurants. The company's official statement of corporate purpose says that the business exists "To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."
15. All Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays because Sunday is the Lord's Day.
16. Chick-fil-A gives a lot of food and money away to various churches, Christian schools, and other Christian organizations.
17. But now they are being viciously attacked by homosexual activists and wicked politicians because they oppose homosexuality! God help America!
18. Dan Cathy, the president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, recently said in a radio interview, "I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, We know better than You as to what constitutes a marriage. I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about."
19. Dan Cathy is right. And his critics are wrong.
20. The harvest of this sowing will be at the end of this age (13:39-43).
21. Our Lord said, "The field is the world" (13:38). The sowing began when the Lord Jesus began to sow men into the world: His disciples, the Twelve, the Seventy, and so on.
22. In John 20:21, our Lord said, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you."  In other words, He is sowing His good seed.
23. This is the sowing of those who belong to God, the children of light, those that have been born-again, children of God whom Christ is sowing out into the world.
24. The field is the world.
25. Christianity is the only religion that is a world religion. Other religions are limited to various regions. But our Lord said, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16:15, 16).
26. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only message that was made for the whole world. It isn’t just for the Jews. The Gospel is for the Gentiles (“Greeks”) too.
27. The apostle Paul said, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16).
28. The Gospel draws men from all over the world. Islam is basically an Arab religion.  When non-Arabs convert to Islam they adopt new Arab names.
29. For example, Lew Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, etc.
30. This is because Islam is basically an Arab religion.
31. Hinduism is an Indian religion.
32. Shintoism is a Japanese religion.
33. Judaism is a Jewish religion.
34. But the Bible says, “For God so loved the world…"
35. Jesus is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
36. The Gospel is not limited to any nationality or any geographical area.   "The field is the world" (Matt. 13:38), and into this world the Lord Jesus sows His seed, born-again children of His kingdom.
37. The second sowing of this parable is when "his enemy came and sowed tares (darnel) among the wheat" (13:25).  The tares are called ''the children of the wicked one" (13:38).

II. THE GROWING

1. Interestingly, in our Lord's parable, Satan does not set out to destroy the good seed that our Lord sowed.
2. He doesn't flood the field. He doesn't rush in and pull up the wheat. He does not attempt to burn over the ground. What Satan does is he begins to imitate.  He sows tares among the wheat (13:38), and they begin to grow.  Eventually they rise to leadership positions in the church and in Christian schools, etc.
3. Tares look just like wheat but they are poisonous weeds.  Tares in the church look just like true believers but they are “the children of the wicked one” (13:38).
4. Satan has a counterfeit for everything. He sows the world with those who look like real Christians, talk like real Christians, and to a certain extent even live like real Christians.
5. But they are not real Christians. They have never been born again. Our Lord said they are the “children of the wicked one…the devil” (13:38, 39).
6. We often hear about counterfeit money and counterfeit documents and counterfeit watches – but the most dangerous counterfeits are counterfeit “Christians.” The devil has planted them everywhere (13:38, 39).
7. Satan is a master counterfeiter. And Satan often operates in the religious realm. Second Corinthians 11:4 says, “For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.”
8. Consider then:

1. There is “another Jesus” (II Cor. 11:4).
2. There is “another Spirit” (II Cor. 11:4).
3. There is “another Gospel” (II Cor. 11:4).
4. There is the true Bride of Christ, and there is the harlot church (Rev. 17).
5. We must always remember that Satan is very religious (II Cor. 11:13-15). Religion is his specialty.

9. Satan cannot destroy the true church from the outside. Our Lord said in Matthew 16:18 that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against His church.
10. But while the devil cannot destroy the church from the outside, he is very successful attacking it from within.
11. The apostle Paul warned the elders in Ephesus, “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29).
12. In II Corinthians 11:26, the apostle Paul refers to his various perils: "In perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren..."
13. Our Lord referred to these false brethren as “tares among the wheat” (Matt. 13:24, 25).  Satan is the “enemy” and he is very busy sowing tares among the wheat.
14. Remember, none of our Lord’s disciples realized that Judas Iscariot was a traitor.  Remember, in Luke 22:3 and John 13:27 the Bible says that Satan entered into Judas Iscariot.
15. The devil who sows the tares is the Lord’s “enemy” (13:25, 28).  Therefore, the devil is our enemy.
16. I once heard a silly woman call up a Christian radio program and say, “I love everyone.  I even love the devil!”
17. How foolish!  The devil is the Lord’s enemy and he is our enemy.  He is deceiving people and leading them to hell every day.
18. First Peter 5:8 says we are to be “sober” and “vigilant” because our adversary the devil is busy at work. But while men sleep, the devil sows his tares among the wheat (Matt. 13:25).
19. Notice the devil did his work and then “went his way” (13:25b).  The devil is not omnipresent.  He starts things going and then he quietly moves on.
20. Sin needs just a little start, and it will inevitably increase.  Sin is like weeds.  You do not have to water weeds – they grow automatically.
21. The devil sowed his tares and then went his way.  Soon the tares appeared (13:25, 26).  Eventually a discernable difference can be seen (13:27-30).

III. THE HARVEST (13:30).

1. We are praying for a great harvest of souls. But remember, the devil is busy deceiving sinners. Revelation 12:9 says he "deceiveth the whole world."
2. Remember, the devil is busy hindering God's people.
3. The apostle Paul said in I Thessalonians 2:18, "Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us."
4. A number of years ago, a preacher by the name of Wilbur Smith wrote these words: "I believe that in the last days the children of God will be closer to what God wants them to be than at any time in the history of the church. They are growing to the harvest.  And I believe the children of the Evil One will be more diabolical as this age comes to an end, and that with each day that passes we are coming nearer to the hour when it is Christ and Antichrist, when it is God and no God.  The tares and the wheat have always been here. They will come to a head just before the harvest."
5. The harvest will be a joyful time for God's people, but a terrible time for the unsaved (cf. Matthew 13:40-43).
6. Matthew Henry said, "Hell is a furnace of fire, kindled by the wrath of God, and kept burning by the bundles of tares cast into it, who will be ever in the consuming, but never consumed."

CONCLUSION:

1. We are getting very close to the harvest.
2. In Revelation 14:15 we read that an angel will cry out, "Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe."
3. Now is not the time to retreat. Now is the time to get the Gospel out.
4. A preacher told a sad story about a very bad train wreck.  Suffering people, some crying, some with broken arms and legs, some writhing in excruciating pain, lay all around the railroad tracks.
5. A man recognized an acquaintance and said, "Excuse me sir, but aren't you a doctor?"
6. The man replied, "Yes.  I am a doctor."
7. "Well," the first man said. "Why don't you do something? Can't you see all these people in agony? Many of them need assistance?"
8. The doctor replied with tears running down his face, "I would help, but I have no instruments!"
9. The preacher then added this to his story -- "Today a bruised and dying world cries out to God, "Why don't you do something?" and God seems to reply, "I would, but I have no instruments!" (Stephen Olford).