The Wheat and the Weeds

Looks Real, But Is It?

The Sower said, “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.” Matthew 13:30

“For you, Mommy,” the child said, holding out a bouquet of pretty yellow flowers. Mommy graciously received the dandelions and hugged her daughter. The little girl didn’t know the “flowers” were weeds.

The Wheat and the Weeds is part of a collection of parables describing the Kingdom of God (Matthew 13:24-30). The parable has some of the same characteristics as The Sower and The Seed, which it followed: The Sower was the Son of Man who sowed good seed, which was identified as the Word of God in the first parable and as wheat in the second.

The second parable introduced another sower described as the Sower’s enemy. He probably sowed a weed called darnel, a poisonous grass that looked like wheat until the fruit appeared. The Sower’s servants noticed the weeds, which had different heads than the wheat, and said to him, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where did the weeds come from?”

They wanted to pull them up, but the Sower said, “No, because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 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” (Matthew 13:27-30).

Later, when Jesus explained the parable to His disciples in private, He identified the wheat as children of God and the weeds as children of the evil one, the sower of weeds as the devil, the harvest as the end of the age, and the harvesters as angels (vv. 36-43). Were the disciples surprised to hear the wheat and weeds described as people who looked very much alike until they bore fruit?

We may feel overwhelmed by the evil around us and want to pull up all the weeds. But there are too many weeds, and others will quickly grow in their place.

Are you trying to pull up all the weeds you see? Instead, cultivate the fruit of the Spirit, and wait patiently for the harvest when the angel reapers will do their job.

DIG DEEPER:

Whenever I think about condemning people who are doing evil deeds, I think about Saul who later became Paul, the Apostle and writer of most of the New Testament. Read Acts 9:1-28. How did Barnabas relieve the fears of the disciples and help them to accept Paul?

Read John 8:23-59. Jesus later said that the religious leaders were sons of their father, the devil. What was His argument? What did the religious leaders then accuse Him of being?

What does 1 John 3:4-24 say about how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are?

Nancy J. Baker

This devotion is part of a series, The Parables.