My dear friends, we have begun expounding from the Bible what has traditionally been called the parable of the tares from Matthew's Gospel chapter 13. It's called the parable of the tares right in the text, so that's a legitimate name. The parable of the tares of the field. Now the parable itself is found in verses 24 to 30 of Matthew 13. And very unusually, following the parable told by Jesus, we also have Jesus' interpretation or explanation of the meaning of the parable in verses 36 to 43. So let's hear those verses now. And I apologize. It's been a month since we were in this text. So it's not as fresh in your mind as it would have been if we were picking up from last week. But God blessing us, we shall still enjoy spiritual benefit. Here is the word of the Lord. 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. Now verse 36. Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house, and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, who hath ears to hear." Let Him hear. Amen? Amen. Now, the main point of Jesus' parable, as I've told you in previous installments of this series, could be stated this way, In this present age, the wicked coexist with God's kingdom. In the end, they will be taken away in judgment. For now the wicked coexist or dwell together with the children of God. In the end, they will be taken away. That is, the wicked will be taken away in dreadful judgment to come. Today is the fourth and concluding message in the series I've entitled The Last Harvest. My intention is to deliver this fourth message in the series in two parts, that is two pulpit sessions this morning and this afternoon. We had taken up in previous messages the setting and the symbolism of the parable. In the third message, a month ago, we began taking up the substance of the parable. And the substance of the parable can be arranged chronologically around the parable's crisis or climax. That great crisis in the parable is judgment day. It's what I am calling the last harvest in keeping with Jesus' imagery here. So the arrangement of the rest of the material, which began with before the harvest time or judgment day now continues today with during the harvest time and God willing this afternoon after the harvest time. So before the harvest time or judgment day, as we have already seen, Jesus is teaching us that the righteous and the wicked dwell together in this present age. like wheat and tares were sown together in the field." And more than this, he implies, I think, that there is something new about this situation since he came into the world. Namely this, that both the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the devil will increase simultaneously and there is a growing hostility between them. In other words, according to the doctrine of this parable, things are getting better and things are also getting worse at the same time in different ways, in different places with different people. That is before the harvest time. During the harvest time, which is to say upon judgment day, This parable teaches us that something awful is going to happen to the wicked, represented by the tares. In fact, it goes into some specifics about what is going to happen to them. So that's where we are now. And let me recite the part of the parable specifically that deals with that event of judgment day and what happens to the wicked. Now, first from the parable itself, verse 30. In the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, that is the landowner in the parable, will say to the reapers, gather you together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them. But gather the wheat into my barn." Now in the explanation of the parable from Jesus, we read this, verse 40. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity." Note that well. All things that offend and them that do iniquity. "...and shall cast them." That is the angels. shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." That's right. Amen. That's true. Dreadful, but true. Now, as you can see for yourself, just like I do, the Lord's emphasis, the Lord Jesus' emphasis, in this part of the parable, with its interpretation, is upon what will happen to the wicked, the children of the devil, on judgment day. But before we come to that, I must make the point that the genre of a parable used by Jesus here, although an example of figurative language, is a revelation of reality that Jesus describes in his interpretation of the parable using language of the most literal kind. So the parabolic language is figurative language, but it points to that which is an actual reality, and we see that reality described in literal language that Jesus uses after the parable. Here's what I mean. The tares in the parable are a figure for real people. Flesh and blood human beings. Not figurative people. The tares are figurative, a symbol for real flesh and blood human beings. people born, people who lived in this world, people who did and didn't do certain things, people who show up to Judgment Day unprepared. And the fire that burns up the tares might possibly have been understood in a figurative way except for the fact of Jesus' explanation. When Jesus explains what the fire represents, He says it's symbolic for a furnace of fire. That is, something very real and literal in verse 42. Tares represent people. The fire that burns up the tares in the parable represents a furnace of fire on Judgment Day. The furnace of fire is not symbolic or figurative, but real. to twist Jesus' interpretation of the parable into a mere symbol of something else, instead of what he describes very literally, would be a gross misunderstanding of his teaching. Do you understand what I'm saying? The Lord gave the parable to the masses of people who were gathered around to hear him, partly to obscure the truth. as he explains in another place. But when he was in the house with the very small group of his disciples, he did not speak to them in parables. He spoke to them plainly and told them the literal truth. There seems to be no end to the line of people, however well intentioned they might be, who would argue with me on this point and say that all that the Bible says about hell and the furnace of fire and all that is only symbolic and not real. Well, they're wrong. Because Jesus spoke plainly about these things in literal language here. In the explanation of the parable. By means of this parable of the tares of the field, our Lord is giving a prophecy, that is a divinely inspired revelation to the hearers, of a time, space, historical event that is yet future for everyone, living or dead at this point in the history of creation. This is still a future event. Judgment Day has not occurred, as Jesus described here, for anyone yet. Jesus, in these words, is solemnly revealing to us with divine authority that a particular day is coming. A literal day! When human souls and bodies resurrected to be as one once again, will be gathered together in a particular location. You know, the doctrine of Scripture is both the righteous and the wicked who have died will be raised from the dead and stand in the body before Christ on Judgment Day. So everybody from Adam and Eve through the history of the world will be gathered together in a particular location. And the whole world of human beings that exist on that judgment day will be passing together through whatever minutes or hours the process of Jesus judging all mankind will take. And Jesus is teaching us that this event will have an eventuality or outcome with eternal consequences for every single individual involved in it. I don't know how I can make this more plain to all who hear me. You will be there. In the flesh, no matter who you are, whether you are alive when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven, or whether you have died 10,000 years before He returns from heaven, it doesn't matter. You will be there in the flesh, no matter who you are or what your beliefs or unbelief might be. And I will be there in the flesh. All of us will be there together on that day. And our Lord Jesus Christ will be there. In the flesh. He will be seated upon His judgment throne. Risen from the dead to immortality. Even as He is today. In the flesh. Risen from the dead to immortality. He's in heaven now. And because, friends, all of this is very, very real, even physical, and set by eternal decree for a particular date and time, which is yet future, we must all take this very, very seriously. This is a matter of life and death. We need not be in the dark about all this either. Because our Lord Jesus tells us very plainly what will actually happen. I'm convinced that many people are not disturbed about this kind of message just because they think it's fantasy. They're kidding themselves. As long as you won't believe Christ, then you will remain in your willful and guilty ignorance about this. But those of us who have faith in Christ know these things are so and shall happen. Now, should we have any unbelievers among us, your skepticism about all this does not, will not, and cannot change a thing. I have told you so time and again, and I tell you again today. More surely than the sun will rise tomorrow will these dreadful things actually happen, believe it or not, like it or not. It's not my opinion. It's not one truth for me and another for you. This is the objective, God's honest gospel truth. And I say that on the authority of the words of Jesus Christ Himself. I don't know how to impress upon everybody's mind how serious all this is, more than I'm doing. And I just ask you, has the reality of Judgment Day ever truly gripped your soul? Do you think about this daily as you should? When I was only a young man, maybe even still a teenager, I recall weeping at night on my bed. And the memory is so vivid. I know I, in one instance, I was on my back because the tears were rolling down my temples on the side of my head. Just meditating on a particular verse of Scripture, and I still remember what it was. Romans 14.12, which says, Every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Every one of us shall give account of himself to God. I personally have to give an account of myself to God. When you hear that, and only you can answer this question in your own mind, When you hear that, do you apply it to yourself and tremble inside as you should with a healthy fear of God and a deep-seated interest in how it will go with you on that great day? Do you have any faith at all? Do you think to yourself as I do about myself, I have to give account of myself to God one day? If not, I truly feel sorry for you, my friend. While you remain in disbelief about this, if you do, then you don't know the first thing about the meaning of life. You don't even know why you exist or how you should live. The preacher of Holy Scripture sagely exhorts us in these words. He wrote, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." Ecclesiastes 12, verses 13-14. That is true. The Apostle Paul concurred, adding that Jesus is the judge on that great day. Paul wrote this by the Spirit, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. 2 Corinthians 5, 10 and 11. Note that well, whether it be good or bad, Ecclesiastes says, and Paul the Apostle says, whether it be good or bad, Paul is confessing that he and his fellow Christian preachers knew personally, in their own experience, the terror of the Lord. This is what v. 11 necessarily says. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Do you know it yourself? Do you know anything of the terror of the Lord? May God give you, all of you, a soul-gripping, conscience-arresting, life-changing reverence for Him. May He grant to each one of you, by His grace, a faith-filled zeal to trust and obey Him every day, so that you will be ready for that day when the whole world is summoned into His immediate presence, and you are there with everyone else on one side or on the other of the great divide. I'm alluding to Jesus' prophecy in Matthew 25 when He says, on that judgment day, when all the nations shall be gathered before Him, everyone there will be either on His right side as sheep or on His left as goats. And the goats, the goat people, will be damned and the sheep alone will be saved. You're going to be there in your body. And I'm going to be there. And every single one of us are either going to be on the right hand or the left hand of Christ. I hope you really actually believe these things are true for your sake. Now, as it respects the doom of the wicked, Jesus describes four sequential events in his interpretation of the parable. And here they are. It's simple. The Lord mentions in these words, the commanding, the gathering, the casting, and the suffering. The commanding, the gathering, the casting, and the suffering. The first event Jesus mentions then on that day is the commanding. That is His commanding the angels. In the parable itself, the landowner says, I will say to the reapers, gather ye the tares and so forth. So the landowner is in a place of authority. The reapers are his servants. And at the time of harvest, he summons, it seems, all his laborers. And he commands them to go out into the field and gather the harvest. Specifically, the tares first. So the landowner commands his workers to a specific work out in the field. Now, according to the interpretation given by Jesus, this act of commanding the workers represents our Lord Himself commanding the angels on that great day, the Day of Judgment. Specifically, Jesus says in the explanation, the son of man shall send forth his angels. And this is not surprising since just prior to that, Jesus explained the symbolism of the parable. And he said, the landowner is the son of man and the reapers are the angels. So you put two and two together, it's obvious that by the landowner sending out the reapers, the parable is pointing to the spiritual reality that one day the son of man will command the angels to go forth. So son of man, a phrase the Lord Jesus uses here is one of his favorite ways to refer to himself. And he says, the son of man shall send forth his angels. that's a possessive pronoun. His angels. All the angels belong to the Son of Man according to the teaching of Jesus here. They're His angels. He is their Creator. He is their Provider and Sustainer. He is their Sovereign King. The angels are at the Lord Jesus' beck and call to do His bidding. Not just on Judgment Day, but from the beginning when they were created. Jesus, the Son of God, is the captain of the Lord's hosts, wielding supreme authority with angelic soldiers under Him. He says to this angel, go, and he goes. To another, come, and he comes. And to his servant angel, do this, and he does it. Like the centurion had power over men in the gospel story. Well, this absolute power Christ has to command the angels is a prerogative and proof of Jesus' full deity. In other words, only God owns the angels. Only God has the authority to command them to go hither and yon, and they always, that is the elect angels, always obey him perfectly. This is what Jesus taught us in the Lord's prayer, so-called, that we should pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. The angels are subject like this to God alone in heaven. so that the will of God is done perfectly in heaven through their scrupulous obedience to God. Well, they are also, you could say scrupulously obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ because he is God. Now the language here suggests that on that day, all the elect angels at once will be called to this task. Because the explanation of the parable says that the Son of Man shall send forth His angels. It doesn't say some of His angels. And in the ancient Near East, agrarian economy in a story like this about a landowner and harvest and servants, you need on harvest day all your workers quickly to go out and reap the tares or gather the wheat into the barn. This isn't a half-hearted effort. This is when a big team of workers is needed to accomplish something important in a very short period of time. So there is the strong implication that all the elect angels at once will be called by Jesus to perform this task. When it says He shall send forth His angels then, it certainly implies all the angels, a myriad of angels, as mighty, spiritual, glorious beings among the first of creatures ever created, and creatures of a very high order, will be sent forth by their King, Jesus, like a massive army on that day. And their mission from Jesus Christ will be to arrest every single, impenitent, depraved, mortal enemy of the King of Kings for the purpose of bringing them to perfect justice. That's what's going on here. On that day of judgment, Jesus will send the mighty angels throughout creation. wherever necessary to arrest the rebels and forcibly bring them in the body to stand before their King to whom they have been disloyal, even King Jesus. Now, I do not know whether there are enough angels in creation for each one to lay hold upon one and only one reprobate sinner, as they will do on that day. Scripture isn't that specific. Maybe that is what is going to happen. Maybe the reason God created so many angels is so that on judgment day, there will be a single angel for every single sinner to be cast into hell. I don't know. Maybe one angel instead will have the ability to grab a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand human beings at will. I don't know. But this I do know. When God was determined to kill a host of the Assyrian enemies of His people, He sent, we read in the historic record of Scripture, He sent the angel of the Lord. Singular. The angel. Not an army of angels. And in one night, one night, this one angel all by himself slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. And early in the morning, the record says in scripture, they were all dead corpses upon the ground. 185,000 soldiers. Second Kings 1935, if you want to read it for yourself. Now look, think about what this means for each of us. Not even an army of mighty human warriors, a large army, is any match even for a single angel. My friend, on that last day of this age, when an angel of Jesus Christ is dispatched by Him to come for you on judgment day. For you personally, you will be absolutely helpless to evade or resist that angel. And that is the first thing that's going to happen on Judgment Day, according to Jesus' telling of it here. The Son of Man will send forth His angels. After the commanding of the angels, there is, second, the gathering they will do. In the parable, this is parallel to the reapers going through the fields. discerning the tares from among the wheat, and weeding out those worthless tares, ripping them up by their roots, leaving the precious wheat behind for the time being, since the wheat afterward can be quickly gathered for safekeeping in the barn." That's in the parable. In the correspondent reality on Judgment Day, Jesus describes what will happen in these words. He said, the angels being commanded by him, and I quote here, shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity. Verse 41. Now let me clear up one possible misunderstanding immediately. When Jesus says they will gather out of his kingdom, all those who, who offend and so forth, he's not implying that they're actually in his kingdom already. That's been a prevalent misunderstanding in the history of the interpretation of this passage. It's a, it's a Hebraistic way to say he's gathering them up so that they will not be able to enter his kingdom. so that his kingdom will not have any of these people in it when it's consummated. So there'll be no tares in the barn, to use the language of the parable. Gathering out of the barn, to keep out of the barn, the tares. That's the sense. But Jesus says the angels will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity. This happens at the great separation on that day between the righteous and the wicked. And it is a separation of them described in terms of the ethical difference between them. These are described, these who are gathered up to be cast into the furnace of fire are described in one way here, that is, in an ethical way. They're not described in terms of their profession of faith or lack thereof. They're not described as those who've been baptized in water or who've been formal members of a church. They're described ethically. These are the people, according to Jesus, from the beginning of the world to the end, who, first of all, he says, offend. The angel shall gather out of his kingdom all things, and that's an interesting quirk of the language. It's talking about people. But all things that offend. That is, it's the idea of the rejects. Like the chaff are rejects in the field. The actual Greek term here used for offend is the word skandala. Scandala. We get the English word scandal from this original term. And in its literal sense, the word scandala means a trap or a stumbling block. So let me, let me translate in an alternative way. The text here, the angels shall gather out of his kingdom, all things that are a stumbling block or all things that are a cause of stumbling. That's the sense of the text by the word offend. In this passage, it suggests that these are the people, spiritually, who all they accomplished in this life was to be a cause of stumbling or sinning to other people. There's nothing truly good to commend in them. They were not examples of people who believed God and kept His commandments and thus proved to be spiritually useful to other people to point them in the way of salvation, righteousness, and blessedness because they themselves were in that way. No. These are not the people who are transformed by grace to be truly moral people in the sight of God. These are the stumbling block people. These are the ones who, just like chaff, only take up space for no good reason in this world. who sap the ground of its nutrients without producing any fruit. These are the people who, like chaff, even endanger the productivity of the wheat. These wretched people who are gathered up by the angels first on the Day of Judgment were nothing but useless, fruitless, dangerous stumbling blocks to their fellow human beings. No wonder they don't fare well on Judgment Day. This is the actual spiritual quality of everybody in this world unless you are a sincere follower of our Lord Jesus Christ. The angels should gather up all things that offend. And Jesus proceeds to say, them which do iniquity. Now this is not another group of people besides the first, those who cause offense or stumbling. This is the same group of people described in another way. They are dangerous stumbling blocks to other people because they do iniquity. That's what makes them dangerous stumbling blocks. Another good way to translate the phrase do iniquity is practice lawlessness. Those are both legitimate. Do iniquity, practice lawlessness. In other words, They're not only lawbreakers, when it comes to God's moral law, for all practical purposes, they disregard it. In other words, they live as if they are a law to themselves. Or, they're enslaved to somebody else's rules. whether it's their neighbor or society or whatever, their lives are not practically governed by God's law. They're lawless people. Even though they have a conscience and know better than they live to some degree, And even though providence gives them enough light in society, government, and the events they witness to see that hating is wrong, and stealing is wrong, and sexual immorality is wrong with disastrous consequences, and carnal abuse of God's gifts is wrong, they continue to live in these sins they love anyway. They just think what they prefer to think and make the choices they prefer to make. And what the Bible says and what it means by what it says is really no concern of theirs whatsoever in practical terms. Because God's moral law in Scripture, for example, summarized in the Ten Commandments, these laws do not practically govern their lives in the fear of God. They practice lawlessness. It's their habit, their mindset, their very identity, their way of life. They may even have been privileged to have the Holy Scripture in their possession and to hear the Gospel preached. But they never had a radical repentance from sinning that reached all the way down to their innermost soul. Nor did they ever enter by faith upon a lifestyle of devotion to God according to His revealed will. to be holy as He is holy. And so, in that way, to stand out from other people in the world. They were not ethically distinctive at all. They just continued the status quo of living as the sinners they were born to be. They just went with the filthy flow of this world, whether they chose the path of outrageous immorality, respectable moralism without God, or even possibly a two-faced profession of faith in Christ coupled with a life of spiritual pretense in order to be praised by people. Those who practice lawlessness are all kinds like this. Hitler, Mussolini, and Osama Bin Laden are in this category. Anybody who flaunts social mores and lives in outrageous immorality is also in this category. There are lots of people upon whom the angels will lay hold on that day and gather together like tares who might be upstanding citizens of our community in these houses right alongside the church property. Maybe they're basically secular in their outlook and don't really see any use for going to church. They pay their taxes. And they drive close to the speed limit. And they might volunteer for a charitable organization and so forth. And some of the sinners who will be damned on that day, as Jesus tells us in another place, will be people who claimed to be His disciples. And they will say, Lord, Lord, to Him. Didn't we serve you? And he will say to them, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. I never knew you. I never knew you. Matthew chapter seven. Oh, my dear hearers, examine yourselves. If you are more of a bad example and stumbling block morally and spiritually to other people, more of a hindrance to their following Jesus wholeheartedly than an inspiration and encouragement in this regard, then this applies to you. You're either a sincere Christian who follows Jesus and sets a good example to the help of other people, or you're morally and spiritually a stumbling block to people. If you are sincerely repenting from sin and renewing your godly devotion to Christ daily, then you don't need to worry about a thing. But otherwise, I warn you solemnly that you are just the kind of person to be arrested by the Lord's mighty angels on that day. Jesus is pulling down the curtain that obscures the future judgment day from us in our ignorance, and He's showing us in clear language What is going to happen when such stumbling block, lawless people are gathered together, all of them worthless, chaff people, for the next dreadful thing Jesus describes? the casting of them into a furnace of fire. Well, we have to stop here for time's sake. And God willing, we'll conclude the exposition of the parable of the tares this afternoon.