Tares

Let us look at the parables of Jesus in Matthew chapter 13.  Scofield labels verses 24 through 30 as the “Second mystery, the tares among the wheat.”  In verse 36 Jesus’ disciples ask Him to explain the meaning of that particular parable.  Anyone who has ever heard Dr. Bailey Smith preach more than once has most likely heard his message on this passage. Let me expound from a personal, agrarian point of view.  In my boyhood days, daddy and I would plant fields of corn or grain sorghum to feed my FFA show stock and quarter horses in the winter.  There would be no wicked sower to come and sow wild seed in our dressed corn patch but still the bane of grain growers, Johnson grass, would grow up right along with our precious feed corn.  That wicked sprout looked so much like those grain sprouts that the untrained eye could not easily spot the difference.  In the corn patch it was easier to pull or hoe out the weed because of the width of the rows as long as you got it early.  But, in a wheat field it is almost impossible without pulling up the wheat along with it.  Johnson grass is a fake, a fraud, a poser. It looks the part early on but it bears no fruit and entangles its roots with the good grain until it causes unavoidable damage.

I wonder how many in our churches today are tares.  They can dress it up, sing up a storm and play the part a church member but the reality is they are one of the Johnson Grass gang.  Fake, fraud, living a lie and perhaps, sown by the enemy to bring destruction to the true and faithful through the entanglement of improper relationships or sinful strongholds.  Some may just be lost, unsaved church members.  I recall a night many years ago with Gold City in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  The afore mentioned Dr. Bailey Smith brought his famous wheat and tares message.  At the end he asked each person to turn to the person on their left and right and give a truthful statement of whether they knew for sure if they were saved.  I turned to my right and looked one of my best friends in the eye and declared with assurance that I was saved.  With a sobered expression Channing Eleton looked back at me and said, “I am not sure.  I am really not sure I am saved.”  I told him there was one way to know for sure.  I bowed beside him in the altar and Channing asked the Lord to save his soul.  No one looked the part, acted the part, or prepared more professionally than Channing but he came to a point that could not go no further without a confrontation with the truth.  We have heard stories like this that have happened to pastors, deacons, evangelists, aged church members, preachers kids and preachers wives who have played the part just pretending.  Just ask my wife, a preachers daughter and a preachers wife who was saved just back on November 11, 2012.

Time to examine the field.  Wheat or Tare.  Harvest time is coming.

BroAdamB