the word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time. We thank you for gathering us together to share this hour. Help us to honor you and to look to your word for wisdom and strength and encouragement. In Christ's name I pray, amen. I'm already starting to cough. Turn in your Bibles again to Matthew 13. We are studying through what the Bible teaches about the kingdom. And as I went through a fairly thorough review last week, I won't be quite so verbose with the review this week. But the Bible teaches us a lot about the kingdom and the things that happened. I do want to spend a little time talking about or rehashing, if you will, what the Old Testament prophets described in the kingdom, because I want to make sure that we're remembering things the way that the Old Testament prophets taught. And I'm going to spend just a few minutes on this. The Old Testament prophets there's there's 14 items that we went through as we did our in-depth study of the Old Testament prophets in the kingdom and these characteristics of the Millennial Kingdom Are important for us to keep in mind as we're going through especially the study that we're having now because in reviewing the parables in Matthew 13, we're seeing distinctions in those parables that clearly indicate that what Jesus is teaching in these parables is not the kingdom time, but this interim time, this mystery age as we've called it. that is occurring between the two advents of Jesus when he came first at Christmas, which we just recently celebrated, and when he comes again during his second advent when he returns for his people. And we're not celebrating that because it hasn't happened yet. But the key characteristics, and there are more than this, we just went through an overview, if you will, when we did our in-depth study, but here's the points that we made. This kingdom is established by God and we see this in the book of Daniel, chapter 2, verse 44, that this was something that God is instituting, that God set out. We know that in Daniel also it teaches that this kingdom is an eternal kingdom, it will last forever. We call it a thousand-year kingdom, And as we illustrated when we were studying this, that the millennial kingdom is kind of the front porch to eternity. That we go through this thousand year period and then judgment happens at the end of that and then we enter into the eternal state. And we'll be talking more about that later in our study. We know that in this kingdom Christ is going to rule directly. There's a lot of prophecies that talk about Christ ruling over the earth, the entire earth on David's throne. We know that it's an earthly kingdom. Zechariah gives us this information clearly, that this kingdom is going to be established on earth following the times of the tribulation. And the land promises that God gave to Abraham are going to be realized in this millennial kingdom. We know that at no point in its history has the nation of Israel ever occupied the entirety of the land that was promised to Abraham in his covenant. We know that Israel, the nation of Israel, national Israel, will be preeminent in this kingdom, that the focus of the world government and world religion will be on the nation of Israel and in Jerusalem in particular. We talked about the millennial temple. that will be established in this Millennial Kingdom. This is a different temple than the third temple that's gonna get set up that is really Antichrist's temple. So we need to keep that in mind. This will be the temple that comes down from David as discussed in Ezekiel. The eighth item has to do with Millennial David. We know that David, all the Old Testament saints, are going to be resurrected at the end of the tribulation, actually. And the Old Testament saints will be present with us in our purified, our glorified bodies. They will also get those glorified bodies and will rule with us. And David will again rule over Israel. under authority from Jesus, David will be ruling over Israel during this millennium. It's an age that's going to be characterized by righteousness. We know that We talked about the effects of the curse will be not completely eliminated, but curtailed so that the influence of the world won't be quite so strong and with so many resurrected saints walking the earth along with mortals, those that survived the tribulation will still exist in the millennial kingdom as mortals. But they'll be side-by-side by a whole bunch of glorified, resurrected beings and that has to have an influence on righteousness. It'll be a time of peace. This is the time that talked about. turning their plows, their swords into plowshares and how there will be no war between nations during this period of time. It'll also be a period of time marked by increased prosperity because the work of your hands, you will be able to enjoy the fruit of your labors. That it won't be a time characterized by slavery and oppression, but you'll be able to work and farm and be fruitful. The land will give up its bounty. much more Ezekiel chapter 47 talks about the the Changes that are going to happen to the physical earth there are Deserts that will be flowing with water and that will help Also to increase the productivity of the land so there's there's changes that are going to be taking topographically in the earth and and maybe one of the one of the characteristics that I think we I know that I gloss over when I review these, is the immediate answers to prayer. God is going to be present in a more real sense in this period of time, and when we pray, when the people that are living in this period of time, the mortals that are living in this period of time, when they pray, God will hear them and answer them directly, immediately. You can go to Isaiah 65 for this. So, keep these things in mind. One of the things that we didn't talk about here that comes up in Revelation is the idea that Satan is bound, and he's bound and chained, and the angels have put him in his place, and he's going to stay there for a thousand years, at which time then, at the end of the Millennial Kingdom, he'll be released and will gather armies in order to have one last battle. And that's an important concept too. One of the reasons why so many of these things happen, this period of righteousness, the period of peace and prosperity, is because of the absence of Satan, the direct absence of Satan. So we can look forward to that. And that's an important concept as we're studying through these Matthew 13 parables. We talked about the background of the Matthew 13 parables, where they're at in the gospel. In Matthew 9 as well as Matthew 12, we read about the Jewish leadership attributing some of Jesus' messianic miracles, things that were prophesied in the Old Testament, attributing some of those to the work of Satan, and especially in Matthew 12, where the entire leadership of the Jewish people at that time rejected the idea that Jesus was the Messiah, and so this offer of the kingdom was rejected in chapter 12, so in Matthew 13 it starts out by saying the same day. So this is after Israel's total rejection of this offer of the kingdom. So that's important to note as we're studying these. We also understand their mystery nature of these parables. These parables are revealing something completely new. This is not something that was talked about in the Old Testament. This intertestamental period, or interadvental period, I should say, wasn't revealed until now. Until the rejection of the offer brought this interadvent period. this interim period, it wasn't revealed. So Jesus is now explaining through these parables some of the characteristics of this period of time. They don't represent the kingdom, and that's an essential thing. I can't emphasize this enough, that these parables don't talk about the kingdom. So many kingdom now and post-millennial theorists or theologians talk about these parables as describing elements of the kingdom. And that's not the case. And one of the main reasons for that is the activity of Satan that is being described in these parables as we'll see. They do represent what's happening in the present age that we're in. this interim age has taught us many things. One of the things that it brings to us is, there are multiple points that we talked about as far as what's happening here, but it is the age that we live in, expecting Jesus' return. imminently. The things that are described in here are describing the experiences that the kingdom's sons will experience in this age. So it's something that was given to us so that we would know that we're living in this age, we know that this is part of God's plan. And I said I wasn't going to spend a lot of time on review and I've gone almost 15 minutes and we're not started yet, so let's keep rolling. These parables in Matthew 13 are taught These lessons in Matthew 13 are taught in parables, which is a different focus than you see in the first half of the book of Matthew. We've talked about that before. And keep in mind the two-fold division of the first four parables were taught publicly out in the open. When Jesus was by the Sea of Galilee and all the crowds gathered, he went into a boat just offshore so that he could teach to the people. but the second four parables are taught in private. After he taught those four parables, they went into the house, and now he's with just his disciples, and they were taught that way, so keep that in mind. Now, we completed the parable of the sower last time, and one of the main points that I wanted to bring out in the parable of the sower is that the parable of the sower does not represent kingdom now theology. It's teaching about that the word, which is the seed, goes out and the seed as it's broadcast lands on four different types of soil, and only one of those four types was fruitful. The change and focus on Israel's evangelical style of building fabulous temples is now changed. There's a different dynamic in the way that God's reaching out to people. So this parable, the sower went out to sow as opposed to building a big temple and expecting everybody to come in. The word of the kingdom in this parable, the seed in this parable is the word. And that enters into people's hearts. This is distinctive from a lot of kingdom now teaching that says that the kingdom is in us. Well, we don't get the kingdom in us. We go into the kingdom. And I mentioned the only one type of the soil is fruitful. In the kingdom, in the coming kingdom, in the millennial kingdom, we know that the word of God is universal and that's not describing what this parable is describing. The fruitfulness of the message in the kingdom will be much more prevalent. And again, I mentioned the activity of Satan as indicating that this is not teaching about conditions in the coming kingdom, because Satan is bound in that time. So now, we're in the parable of the wheat and tare. So if you get your Bibles open to Matthew 13, we read this last time, so I'm not gonna read it again today. And we just barely introduced what was happening here. We're all familiar with the parable of the wheat and tares, that a farmer had planted good seed in his field, a man had planted good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, an enemy came and planted tares amongst the wheat, and once everything started growing up, The servants recognized that there were tears in with the wheat and asked the man, should we go in and tear all these tears out of this field so that the wheat can grow without the tears, without being choked and influenced by the tears? And the man said, no, we're going to let everything grow together so that we can avoid damaging the wheat by removing the tears at that time. Understand a little bit how things grow and and tears and wheat are grasses and and grasses tend to have a very intertwined root system and so once the plants actually come out of the ground and start to grow their root systems are so intertwined that if you try to you know pull crabgrass out of my yard all the time and if you try and pull crabgrass out the roots are so intertwined with the good grass that you're pulling up good grass at the same time you're pulling up crabgrass. It's the same kind of concept because the presence of the tears in this field and we'll go over a little bit what this means but if you try to separate them you're going to damage and either kill or stunt the growth of the the good grass while you're pulling out the bad wheat, and that would hurt the productivity of the field, it would hurt how well the wheat thrives. Now keep in mind Jesus explained this parable, so the meaning is kind of kind of clear to us. This is just the parable, I should have had this up, but the explanation is in Matthew 13, 36 through 43. So here he explains that the man, consistent with the other two parables that we've taught, the man is Jesus. The seed, a little bit different, but it explains the difference here. The seed that we're talking about here are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares represent the sons of Satan, or the evil one. And the field is the world. So we're talking about a picture here of the world where good seed grows, but also where bad seed grows. And if you think about the picture that's painted here, you're looking, you know, I like driving around the country in spring and summer when the fields are growing. I like the wheat fields because everything is so uniform. Of course, we do that with chemicals now instead of going out and pulling the tares. But if you look across a field and see a field of wheat that's nearing harvest, it's just beautiful the way it rolls like a sea. It's just a nice picture. And I remember one time many years ago we were driving from one place to another and we were looking over a field and it was a soybean field. And there's so much volunteer corn in this soybean, it was almost hard to tell whether it was a corn field or a soybean field. And my very witty bride said, it's suck-a-tache. Which was appropriate. But the picture of so many different kinds of plants in a field, that's not what God intended. God intended for us to see these acres of wheat fields. And because of the influence of Satan, because of what Satan's work is doing, these tears are present, these foreign plants are there that detract and take away and stunt the productivity of the wheat. Now, I haven't even kept up with my pages. You know, so that's the simple meaning of this, and this also exists in the church. We need to understand that very clearly. This parable teaches of a situation that even Jesus experienced with the twelve as he taught his disciples. These people who were so close to him, Even one of them was a tear, was unregenerate. So, you know, if Jesus is going to experience this in his close circle, who are we to expect in a church, in the Christian church, that we won't have these influences? Now, there's been a lot of discussion in theological circles about this parable and whether or not the tears are represented or recognized or not. And I don't know. I think the parable here teaches that at some point in time, it's easy to recognize that the tares are there. But early, maybe, maybe not. I think somebody who knows the wheat, I'm sure the man, the owner of the field, could have looked at the young plants and said, this is good and this is not good. But we need to make sure that we are Properly understanding the word of God so that we can discern and understand when false teaching creeps in when the when the tears of this world influence the teaching of the church, you know, so many people come to church just because it's a family thing to do or because they're trying to balance good and bad and and hope they come out on the plus side of the scale, or maybe even just to be entertained. So many of our churches are wonderful places of entertainment. You can go and get a very thrilling emotional experience at so many churches. With my monotone, that's obviously not what's happening here. So we need to make sure that we teach and understand the Bible properly so that we can discern true teaching and false teaching, so that we can recognize as people true and false teachings. So this parable is not teaching about the kingdom. I'll mention that again. And we're gonna go through a couple of reasons why I say that and why I say it kind of clearly. So the parable of the wheat and tares, teach of a time when evil and good exist side by side, even within the Christian church. And they're going to be here, be existing side by side until the end of this age, Jesus said, it says in verse 39, until the end of the age and then we'll separate the wheat from the tares. And the tares are going to be present in such a large quantity that they'll be gathered up in bundles. I mean, we all have seen pictures of gathering a wheat in bundles and tying them up and everything. But the tares are going to be in such numbers that they'll be gathered up in bundles. Now, there's a difference in how the farmer disposes of or treats the wheat and the tares. But the important thing here to see is that it's a significant number. It's a large number. And as we live in our Christian churches, I think the message here a little bit teaches that as time goes on, the presence of the tares is going to increase and increase and increase. As we near the end of the age, the tares, the numbers of tares are gonna be greater and greater and greater, and the influence that they have over Christendom is also going to increase. to the point where evil seems to be, or maybe even does, gain the upper hand in a lot of situations. So the evil is going to progress, and if we look at 2 Timothy 3.13, It says evil men and imposters are waxing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. And he is also talking about this kind of concept of evil people within the church, that they're going to be, that their influence is going to be increasing and increasing as we get nearer and nearer the end of the age. And that's important for us to remember in this time when we so strongly believe perhaps that we are nearing that time. But whether it happens next year or a thousand years from now, we know that as time goes on from the time that Christ was here, even though the church grew and became influential in the whole world, that Satan has also adapted to the influence that the church is having and has changed his tactics. If we look at the first two parables that we've seen, In the parable of the sower, the first tactic that Satan used was that he sent his birds, his evil ones, to come and pluck the seed out of the hearts of men. When that didn't work, and the wheat field grew anyhow, now he's planting within the church and allowing the evil to come up alongside and grow with and influence, that evil is influencing the church in this parable of the tares. So Paul is talking with Timothy and is saying in this letter, if we're going to be faithful to the Bible, if we're going to teach the truth, if we're going to live godly lives in this world, the influence of the world is going to come against us and persecute us. We're going to be persecuted. We can expect that in this world because the presence of evil is still here. and is still strong and is still influencing the things that happen even within the church. You know, some of the worst attacks that I've ever seen, and we've been involved, my family has been involved in Christian work, we were in a Christian school at one time, we've been involved in church plants, and some of the most vicious and personal attacks can come from within, from people that maybe are. I'm not saying they're not Christian, but some of the deepest attacks that we've experienced personally have come from people who have professed Christianity and probably are, maybe are, but the influences that evil in the world has around them Sometimes saying we're all Christians gives us license at times to be cruel. And it happens. And we need to be on our guard. The things that Kurt does here for us opens him up in a lot of ways to attacks from Satan. And we need to make sure that we're supporting and encouraging him as a pastor, as our pastor, as a friend, as a brother, if nothing else. But he and his family, we need to protect them with the prayers that we have, because we know that the influence of the world is all around us. and possibly within us. So the parable of the wheat and tares is not kingdom now, because we know that this influence of Satan, this direct influence of Satan is not present in the coming kingdom, but it is present in this interim age. And the. You know the false beliefs and the things that are taught that are influenced by the the evil. The evil influences that are around us. You know, show us that that good and evil are intermingled, even even within Christendom. You know, it's not just. Not just the tears flourishing, but but good is flourishing too. You know, we don't want to be distressed by what we see in this parable. You know, yes, we know that evil is going to exist. We know that attacks are going to come. We know that persecution is gonna come, both from without and from within. Jesus meant no word about this. It's going to happen. And there's not going to be, we can't expect there to be a separation until the end of this age. And Satan, the time that we're in now isn't represented by a period of righteousness like we talked about the coming kingdom is going to be characterized by. It's the opposite. And it's getting worse. We see that in the world around us. And people who preach kingdom now say that if we just preach and evangelize, the whole world will be saved and everything will get better. I don't think I see that happening. But if we can allow ourselves to look at things and look at what we have here within this body, it would be easy for us to become perhaps complacent and say we have it pretty good here. We have good strong teaching here. We've got people here who encourage us. We formed a very close and tight-knit community here, and it would be easy for us to become a little bit complacent. But if we look at this parable, what do we see? that Satan came and planted the tares in the field when the servants of the Master were asleep. They had sowed good seed in the field. They thought everything was going to be fine. So we just need to understand that this parable teaches also that we need to be vigilant, that being asleep and accepting Accepting the things that are coming from the world and the influences of this world is something that we shouldn't tolerate. We should be strong in the things that we understand. We need to keep reading the Bible. We need to keep studying and understanding the things that the Bible teaches us so that in our vigilance we can head off some of these false teachings as they come. There's going to be no separation of good and evil until the end of the age at the sheep and goats judgment following the time of the tribulation. You know, Satan sometimes lulls us into this false sense of security. He might lay off for a while in order to get us to drop our guard, but he's always there looking for an opportunity. Satan's our enemy. The parable in the In the interpretation of the parable Jesus gave, Jesus himself identified the enemy as Satan. He is our enemy. And I said last week, you know, we've got that enemy as well. It's not just Satan. But we have three enemies that we got as a result of becoming Christians. The enemies are the world, the influences of the world around us, the distractions that we see, that's an enemy to us in our Christian life. The flesh, the weaknesses of the flesh that we experience as a result of our original sin, that's an enemy to us. And of course, Satan is an enemy. And I've kind of gotten out of sequence of my... So Satan is bound and out of the picture in the coming kingdom, not here. So again, the contrast between what is being described here and what we know about the coming kingdom is clear. And when will this separation of good and evil occur? In Matthew 13, 30, it says, allow both to grow together until the harvest. And at the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up, but gather the wheat into my barn. This is the verse in 2 Timothy, but evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. So the separation again takes place I'm going to pass through this as well. In the interpretation of the separation, Jesus says, the field is the world, and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. So you get a real clear picture of what's going to happen at the end of this age. And the separation of good and evil will be permanent. The tares aren't put in a corner to grow and come back again later. They're completely destroyed and utterly destroyed, burned, so that they can no longer be an influence in the world. So this separation, we talk about it as being the sheep and the goats judgment. It's talked about later in Matthew 25. You know, in Matthew 13, 43, it says, then the righteous at this time, at the end of this age, then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears, let him hear. So Jesus in this parable, in the interpretation of this parable, is very clear. This is not the kingdom. The kingdom comes after this age, after this separation, after At the end of the age, he even says the end of the age. and after the end of the age, then the righteous shall shine forth." We're going to shine, folks. That's the future that we have in Christ. We're going to shine and the righteousness will reign. The kingdom will be marked by this righteousness, and that's what's going to be coming for us. So we know that Satan works in this world. We know that he's active. And that's not a characteristic of the coming kingdom. We know that he's active, but we also know something else, and keep this in mind. God is still working. God didn't leave us once the nation of Israel turned away the kingdom. God is still working in this world. Jesus is sitting in his office of priest, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, interceding on our behalf. to God himself. So we've got that to look forward to. It's coming. It will be here someday. But we need to work in this world with our eyes open, with our minds awake, so that we can see and know and understand the things that this world is doing to Christendom. Let's pray. Father, we thank you again for the time that you've given to us, for your word, for those who study give us messages and give us things, interpretations that we can discern using Your Word. Help us never to get very far away from Your Word. We've talked about this study as being a study of this book that was written by Andy Woods, But it's a study of the Bible, and Andy has written us a guide to interpret the Bible. We're studying what the Bible teaches about the kingdom, not what Andy Wood teaches. And help us to always remember that, that it's not Andy Wood, it's not Mike Bechtel, it's your word, your inspired word that we're here to study. Watch over us all and keep us all open to your teaching and your direction in our lives. In Christ's name I pray, amen.