Matthew 13:24-43

Chapter 53

Prayer

Almighty God, the day is thine, the house and the Book are thine, and at thine altar do we now bow down ourselves in homage and in expectation. There is a song in our heart as well as upon our tongue, and in the hidden places of our mind are desires we shall never express in words. But thou knowest us outwardly and inwardly; that which is spoken thou dost hear, and that which is unsaid thou dost understand. Behold we are now before thee as sinners, burdened with guilt, stung through and through with remorse, and yet there is in our hearts an expectation, inspired by thy Spirit, that shall be more than satisfied by the fulness of the meaning of the cross. We will sing of mercy and judgment surely of mercy more, for thy mercy has been tender and thy kindness has been loving, and thy lovingkindness and thy tender mercy have been with us all the days of our life. We were born in the mystery of thy power, we have been sustained by the mystery of thy providence, and we are saved by the mystery of thy grace. We know not our beginning nor do we know our ending; we know but imperfectly the present, passing, dying moment, and as for our strength it is as a dying flame. Yet how hast thou nourished us even as a nurse nourisheth and cherisheth her children: thou hast gathered the lambs in thine arms, thou hast gently led thy flock up steep places, and thou hast made thy loved ones to lie down at noon in the place and rest of the shadow. Thou hast found for us wells in the wilderness and streams in stony places, and the bitterness thou hast made sweet, and the darkness thou hast filled with stars.

Thou art very gracious unto us, and herein is the rest of our lives. This is the mystery of our peace when we undertake for ourselves we do bring our whole life into confusion and humiliation: when we obey thy word and rest in thine Almightiness, and yield ourselves with all the unreserve of perfect love to thy purpose and thy plan, then do all things work together for good, then do our souls come into great harvesting, yea they are brought into the Lord's banqueting house, and thy banner over them is love. We will not intermeddle with the things we do not understand. We understand nothing, therefore will we not intermeddle at all. We are here on thy responsibility, we are thy children, we did not form ourselves nor did we ask to be here or to be anywhere in all thy universe thou art our Creator, yea our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and in thine Almightiness will we rest, and we will await the unfolding of thy revelation with all the hopefulness of assured confidence, knowing that all things are under thy control, and that the pillars of thy throne are founded upon infinite righteousness.

Thou dost show us strange things, and things that ought to touch us much as we are passing swiftly through this varying life. Thou dost lead us to the grave and show us the place where our bodies shall lie: thou dost point us to the blue heavens and create in our hearts a wonder what can be within those curtainings of azure. Thou dost bring us into strange circumstances which we cannot disentangle, and into combinations which afflict us with perplexity. Thou dost start the tears into our eyes; there they stand, blinding often, and yet giving us another sight, even into the inner beauty of thy movement and the inner sacredness and grandeur of thy purpose. Help us in all things to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him, and the reward of an inspired patience shall be great.

We give ourselves to thee again and again a poor gift, but all we have. Take us, we humbly pray thee, as the purchased possession of thy Son, the prey taken by the mighty hand that was nailed for a moment to the cross, and receive us, one and all, broken, shattered, stained as we are, into thy family, thy house, glowing with the fire of thy love, thy kingdom, too sacred to be violated by the power of any foe. Rebuke us, but not with judgment; lay thine hand upon us, but not thy rod; when we are foolish, presumptuous, self-confident, defiant, Lord, smite us not with the thunder of thy strength, nor laugh at us with the derisiveness of thine infinite scorn, but lay thine hand upon us gently, turn our faces to the light, and show us how foolish we are and ignorant before thee, point out to us the fewness of our days, the littleness and the perishableness of our strength, and may we, thus chided from heaven, rebuked and instructed by our Father, fall upon our knees, own our folly, and confess our sin, and be received again into the favour we do not comprehend.

Thou art taking the years from us swiftly and silently: we know not that thou art removing them, until behold! the number is one less, and men are old before they have reckoned up their age. So teach us to number our days as to apply our hearts unto wisdom; may we become deeper in our nature, mellower in our feeling, tenderer in our sympathy, larger and broader in our charity, more like Jesus, more like the Son of God in all the beauty of his inimitable perfection, and may men take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus, and have learned of him, and that we now speak with the accent of his very tongue.

The Lord send the blessing of forgiveness upon us all we pray in the name of the one Life, the one Death, the one Blood, the one Priesthood, "God be merciful unto us sinners." Amen.

Mat 13:24-43

The Tares and the Wheat

We found that the parable of the sower has its proofs in human history, and being true in human society, we had no difficulty in understanding its application to the kingdom of heaven. Our test inquiry regarding all these parables, is How do they fit the circumstances which are now round about us? Are they little pieces of ancient history, graphic enough as bearing upon the time to which they specially refer, or are they parts of all history, running contemporaneously with human development from age to age, always new, always just written, the ink never dry? The first parable which we have just studied fits the circumstances of today perfectly: let us see whether the second fits them equally well. It should be pointed out that in adopting this method of criticism we are keeping strictly within the limits of the parables themselves, because Christ does actually liken the kingdom of heaven to earthly persons and earthly things. We study the parables at the earthly end. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a sower, like unto a merchantman, like unto leaven, like unto a net, like unto a treasure hid in a field so he gives us the earthly end as well as the heavenly end, and we can thoroughly examine the one and thus enable ourselves wisely to judge the other. Let us follow these same lines of inquiry with regard to the parable of the wheat and the tares.

This parable is an exact picture of all endeavours to do good in the world. We have not got one inch beyond this parable today, with all our improvements and amplifications of service and readjustment of methods. The account which could be given of all educational, philanthropic, patriotic, Christian endeavour is within the four lines, so to say, of this mixed parable. It enters into a good man's heart to publish good ideas or to assist useful reforms: he lectures in public and in private, he freely spends his time and his money in spreading the views and principles which he holds: he establishes schools and publishes literature, he lays himself out in every way to enlighten and benefit the public. Do you suppose that such a man will be allowed to go on without an enemy following him and sowing tares in the wheat-field of his noble and beneficent endeavour? He will be followed by the enemy, the enemy will awaken suspicions, he will question the man's motives, he will assail the man's reputation, he will throw doubt upon the man's integrity, in a thousand ways open to vicious ingenuity he will endeavour to thwart and baffle the purposes of the good man's heart. Is this true, or is it not to-day? Is the good man living and is the enemy dead, buried, gone for ever and forgotten? Do not the light and the shadow always go together? There is no ghostly mystery here: you cannot point to a wheat-field in which no tares are sown.

Take your own education. Your father and your schoolmaster and your friends all have endeavoured to sow the seeds of a good understanding in your mind and heart yet what do we see in your life? Your very education turned to bad purposes, your very training made to add to your efficiency in doing that which is wrong. How came those tares into the field? Your mother did not sow them, nor your father, nor your teacher, nor your most loving friend whence came those tares? An enemy hath done this.

Look at your prosperity, man of business: how riches have been showered upon you. When you were poor and little in your own eyes, men liked you because you were then gentle, sympathetic, approachable: you had a heart that could be approached, and that could show itself in all the tenderness of loving sympathy to those who were in circumstances requiring the medicament of your love and patient care but with your riches there has come what men call presumption, or self-confidence, or haughtiness: you are no longer gentle, simple, tender, sympathetic, accessible. How did these tares come into the field? An enemy hath done this.

It is always the same. No man can preach without having the enemy at his heels; the enemy is as busy as the preacher; the enemy is now preaching to you as certainly as I am endeavouring to preach to you. Some of you are buying and selling, some of you are now wool-gathering, some of you are a thousand miles away, some of you are writing to-morrow's letters, doing to-morrow's business and answering to-morrow's questions, and when all is over you will awake as out of a confused dream that has a kind of religious haze about it. The enemy is working as well as the preacher, he is suggesting all kinds of doubts, difficulties, and suspicions, prompting all kinds of questions that will break in upon an implicit and loving and loyal obedience, directing your attention to little points and to transient accidents the occasion rather than to its solemn purpose which is to lift the soul into the light, and to gird it with the very strength of God. The enemy will lure you into considerations of place and colour, of manner and length of service, and into a thousand little petty, frivolous discussions, and will succeed if he lure the mind away from the sovereign purpose of the occasion which is to make you pray. And at the end of the whole, with broken mind, confused, bewildered head and heart, neither upward nor downward in its look, but halting, we may have to say, "An enemy hath done this." So the parable is not ghostly and magical, but has its base upon the lines of our common consciousness and experience, and as it is awfully true at the one end it may be equally true at the other.

The inquiry which was made by the servants is the inquiry which is made today. The servants of the householder came and said unto him, "Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?" We have not got beyond that inquiry; it is the puzzle of every honest mind how the tares came to be mixed up with our thinking and feeling, our motive and our service. It is sometimes a mystery to ourselves; we are puzzled to the point of intellectual and moral distraction by the problem of what we call the origin of evil. You cannot go up and down society without putting the very question which the servants of the householder put to their master. Go into an educated company, listen to the conversation, some parts of it bright, pure, noble, elevated and then the bitter word, the unkind suggestion, the harsh aspiration, the uncharitable judgment, the biting or venomous criticism. You say, "Were not all these people educated and well brought up?" Yes. From whence then are these tares? Ay, from whence.

The same inquiry has its place in a higher region we have precisely this experience in the Church. We are puzzled by the tares that are growing in our own hearts. I can see the tares in your life, and you can see the tares in mine but there are tares in all human life, even of the very best kind, and the perplexing inquiry that brings with it a heart-aching and a burning agony, is How did those tares come to be here? Sir, have not these people been to church? Sir, have not these people been bowing down at the altar? Sir, have not these people been to the holy sacrament? From whence are these tares of evil words and unkind deeds and movements and adventures and experiments and tricks of an ungodly kind? The two things do not harmonise. Sir, was not that man praying on Sunday? "Yes." Then how did he come to be doing knavish tricks within four-and-twenty hours of his own Amen? Was not that man singing in the church? "Yes." Then how does he come to be uttering all those discords, those dissonant, harsh-breaking tones of human speech, whilst yet the cadence of his own hymn is trembling and dying in the distant air?

So this parable might have been written yesternight, and we might be reading it for the first time this morning. The teacher that can throw himself over the arch of nineteen hundred years thus, and talk to us in our own language, must have had at least great intellectual prevision and moral shrewdness and breadth enough of sympathy to be more than any man we have ever known. If Jesus of Nazareth were here today, he could not amend this parable in any of its facts and applications. Though nineteen hundred years old, it is not a day old; judged by the necessity of the occasion it is as new as our last action, it is as appropriate as the very last word of wisdom we ever uttered. In this sense is the Testament always new to me. I am not endeavouring to verify faded ink; I ask no chemist to help me to blacken this yellow fluid 'tis black enough, I can read every jot and tittle of it, and I say, if. this Man is as sound in his higher reasoning which transcends my power to follow him in all the entirety of his sweep as he is in those parts which I do understand, verily he is the Revealer, the Builder, and the Glory of the Kingdom of Heaven amongst men.

So far, then, the parable fits human circumstances with exquisite delicacy and precision. Let us go further. The answer made by the householder is the only answer we have today about all vicious and unhappy results. "An enemy hath done this." That is our one and only reply. It goes to the root of the matter, it touches the difficulty on every side and at every point Every man has his enemies, every man's work is watched, and every attempt will be made to mar it. There are men who love to do evil; they are not happy except in the work of destruction. It is easy to do evil they have chosen the light end of the burden. It is easy to suggest doubts and difficulties about human character and purpose and motive: it is easy to sneer, it is easy to tempt. There are men who would spoil your business if they could; the enemy was on your track when you began the business of life; he tried to take away your clients and patrons, he depreciated your goods, he said he would crush you.

Tyndale's translation of this verse opens a new field of criticism. He reads, "An envious person hath done this." Instead of reading "an enemy," he reads "an envious person," and that seems to bring the text nearer and nearer to us, and to make it appallingly English. An envious person beware of envy, it is cruel, it is the sister of jealousy, it is relentless, it will plague your life, it will rob every flower of its perfume, it will bar the light out of every window in your house, your dinner today will be no refreshment to you, but will leave your hunger still gnawing you, if you envy some other man's larger lot. And this is one of the last passions and vices to be overcome; who can fail to envy a fellow-tradesman who is doing better than he is doing? Who can fail to envy the preacher who is succeeding better than he himself is succeeding? And envy eats up its victim; it does not hurt the person who is envied, but it eats like a canker the soul that indulges in it. You have no pleasure in your own house whilst you are envying another man's dwelling-place; all your gardens and fields and horses and estates and servants are nothing to you until you can get that little corner or patch of vineyard outside there, and the want of that will make you a poor man for ever, though you count your money by millions and speak of your lands in miles.

Thus again the parable becomes quite our own. The inquiry is ours, the reply is ours, the parable is true to circumstances as we ourselves know them; therefore it may be true in any larger application which the parabolist himself may attach to the meaning of his graphic similitude, An enemy hath done this, Here is a young man who has been befooled, tempted, led off into downward paths; both his feet are fastened in cruel snares, the disappointment of a lifetime culminates in him. What do you think about the case? An enemy hath done this. This is not the handiwork of a friend, there is no nobleness here, this is not the spirit that would save the world, this is enmity incarnate. An unsuspecting mind has been poisoned by some deceiver, its faith has been broken, its sweet and trustful prayer has been turned aside, a bar sinister has been drawn upon the escutcheon of its integrity, the old frankness has gone, the open face, the ringing voice that had no wrinkle in it, that was spread out in ingenuous and beauteous simplicity all is changed. The very eye is altered, the tone is ambiguous, the movement is shuffling, the whole air throbs as if troubled. How do you account for it? In no words more incisive than these an enemy hath done this; it is bad work you should know the character of the man who did it by the results he has brought about. It was no angel that gave the look to that eye that is now in it, it was no angel that altered that sweet tone of childhood into the muffled noise of a man who wants to utter a double meaning in every speech he makes. An enemy hath done this.

Let us be frank with ourselves. He may come to us in the guise of a teacher, he may have come visored as a friend, but by his results let his true character be known. He was an enemy, his enmity is incurable avoid him for the future. A generous soul has been dwarfed and impoverished of its noblest impulses, the soul that always had a frank "yes" broad as an opening day to every appeal made to his charity has become soured, suspicious he asks questions now which never would have entered into his mind in earlier days; he calculates, he counts, and reckons and estimates and puts down. How do you account for this change?

It is easy to see where the enemy has been working upon a man: the tares cannot be hidden. It is easy to me to know instantaneously whether a man is going down or going up we feel it. There are some impressions too delicate for speech, but still they have their influence upon the mind. Let us take care. It is a sight to cry over with rivers of tears to see the men we loved and all but worshipped grown all over with tares. They used to be so noble, kind, sympathetic, generous, helpful the world could never be cold to us so long as they were in it. Day by day the tares grow in number and strength till we know not what the end will be.

So far the parable closely identifies itself with our consciousness and experience. Let us see if it continues this closeness to the very end. The appeal of the householder is the most solemn appeal which any man can make today under similar circumstances. What was the appeal of the householder? The servants said, "Shall we go and gather up the tares?" The householder said, "No till the harvest." That appeal cannot be altered: it is magnificent in its sublimity, it is grand in its heroic patience. He will have no violence, he will not have the wheat injured. Let both grow together till the harvest. Ay, there is a final day, there is an hour of separation, there is a crisis in which the good are separated from the bad, the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares. The confusion is not everlasting: the work will be given up to the holy angels, they cannot mistake the good for the bad, or the bad for the good: the discriminating process shall go on steadily until every tare is out and every grain of wheat shall be saved for heaven's garner.

Let us remit our case to the harvest. Do not be answering the fool and the enemy now, and thus wasting opportunities which ought to be usefully employed in endeavouring to do good, but wait till the harvest. Then shall all qualities be tested, then shall every man have his proper place and standing before God. It suits impatient men to be going to work now in this matter of discrimination. Our impatience is our littleness. It is the hindrance of every ministry, spiritual, moral, educational, commercial and there are fussy people who want to be doing something now, as they suppose their activity to be: they want to expel. O thou fool, if I begin the work of expulsion, it will be by throwing thee out from the topmost window of the church. Expel? It is not mine to anathematise or excommunicate, or open the door that any man may go out. My appeal is till the harvest. I am not a judge or an overseer invested with the responsibility of final criticism, I want to be a teacher, a friend, a helper, to see the very best side of every man, and to encourage that best side in continual and useful growth.

Leaving the parable for a moment, and not attempting to follow all its lines out, lest by mixture of metaphor I should fail of my immediate purpose, let me appeal to myself, and through myself to those who hear me, and who may need the appeal, to cultivate with a more ardent diligence the growth of the wheat. There is wheat in every one of you. Take that road of hope. And every one of you has his enemies that want to sow tares in his soul. What I say unto one I say unto all Watch. And some of you by the grace of God have been too much for the enemy, too wakeful: you have disappointed him to a degree which inflicts upon him the severest mortification. Some of you are nearly all wheat: I would to God I were myself. Let there be no violence in your education, no forcing, no dragging out with a hand that is unaccustomed to the process, but let there be solemn, quiet waiting, knowing that the harvest will come, and God will do what is right in the end of the age.