THE WHEAT AND THE TARES

“Another parable put He forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which 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 blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field ? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up ? But he said, Nay ; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest : and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn.”

Matthew 13: 24-30

I’ll like to focus a bit on this parable. I already explained in my previous post why I will be focusing on this post. You can read about it in the post titled “An Enemy Has Done This”.

Please realise that this was a parable by the Lord. A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. Some get bogged down on whether it happened or the actual people it happened to. I don’t think that should be our focus. I think we should be focused on getting the moral/spiritual lesson in the story. So, in this parable, there was a man with very good intentions who went to his field and sowed good seed. That’s what many of us do. We try to live right, get along with everyone and relatively be good. But that’s not where this parable ends.

This man with good intentions, who didn’t set out to hurt anybody had an enemy. His enemy did not show his face while men were awake. We are not told who this enemy is. All we know is that there was someone who wished him evil and did not identify himself as the enemy. As we journeyed to the conference I talked about in the previous post, we started talking about the difference between evil people in Africa and evil people in other parts of the world. One of us claimed that the evil people in other parts of the world are more brutal than their African counterparts. Another one said the good thing about the ‘brutal’ non-African evil people is that they are not hiding what they are up to whereas in Africa, ‘na who no person dey do person’… Me, I don’t know which of them is more evil; neither do I care to know. All I know is that there are enemies that are not interested in your progress; the earlier you realise that and make the necessary adjustments; the better for you.

This man’s enemy found his opportunity to do evil WHILE MEN SLEPT. The challenge I have with many that claim that they are not concerned about the activities of the enemies is that they are actually asleep. The amazing things that we have winked at because ‘grace covers us’ is something else. Many altars are not on fire. We are the generation that ignore the Lord’s promptings to wake up in the night to pray because ‘God understands’. We sleep and expect God to do both His part and ours. I’m not recommending that we become so focused on ‘enemies’ that we’re afraid of our own shadows. I’m saying that we should be watchful and vigilant because the adversary we’re dealing with has been around the block for some time and he has a few tricks up his sleeves. I’ll need to stop here for now.

Have a blessed and productive day.