The tares are the children of the wicked, and “the enemy that sowed them is the devil.” Some people doubt, and some positively deny, the existence of the devil; but one thing is clear, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father, has no doubt on that point. He believes in that doctrine and teaches it: he teaches it to the multitude on the margin of the lake, and to the select circle of his followers in a private dwelling.
Lively and energetic are the remarks of Fred. Arndt on this subject: “Yes, Jesus says, in dry, clear words, ‘The enemy that soweth them is the devil.’ But surely there is not any devil? Who says that? The Son of God, the mouth of eternal truth, who knows the realm of spirits even as he knows this visible world,—who is the highest reason and the deepest wisdom, yea, even Omniscience itself,—he believes it. He holds it reasonable to believe in it. He teaches what he believes. Dost thou know it better than he, thou short-sighted being, thou dust of yesterday, thou child of error and ignorance? He says it, and therefore it is eternal truth. ‘But is it not intended to be taken figuratively?’ Well, suppose it were meant figuratively, we can only comprehend the figures of actually existing things, and the figurative representation of the devil would imply his real being: but here in the text the speech is not figurative; the expression stands not among pictures and parables, but in the interpretation of a picture and a parable.”[16] Whence hath it tares? inquired the servants. Already in those days they had begun to probe the question around which the conflict of ages has been waged—the origin of evil. One thing in the answer of the Lord is fitted to pour a flood of comfort into our hearts when they are agitated by the difficulties of this tremendous problem,—“an enemy hath done this.” Evil does not belong originally to the constitution of man, nor has God, his maker, introduced it. Our case is sad, indeed; for we learn that an enemy whom we cannot overcome is ever lying in wait seeking how he may devour us. But what would our case have been, if evil, instead of being injected by an enemy from without, had been of the essence of the creature, or the act of the Creator? Our condition would have been one of absolute and irremediable despair. What a strong one, who is our enemy, has brought in, a stronger, who is our friend, can cast out—will cast out. Be of good cheer; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
How grand is the view which this picture discloses, when in the interpretation of it we closely follow the Master’s steps! It is, indeed, a parable concerning the kingdom of heaven. The whole world belongs to the King; he has placed his children in it, and commanded them to multiply till they people all its borders. The enemy has introduced among them evil persons, and within them evil thoughts. It is not a part of the omniscient Ruler’s plan to remove, by the ministry of either angels or men, all the wicked at once from his world. For his own purposes, which are only in part discernible by us, he permits the good and the evil to mingle and contend with each other until the fulness of time, as he left the Canaanites in the land to chastise and exercise his chosen people. When the tares prosper, the wheat languishes: when the wheat prospers, the tares languish. Evil men have lived in God’s world ever since sin began: evil thoughts and deeds will be found in God’s children as long as they remain in the body. The angels are not sent to-day to make such a separation as would leave the children of the kingdom nothing to do, or to bear.
If you desire the heavenly to prosper within you and around you, fight with the proper weapons against the devilish: if you desire the devilish within and around you to languish and decay, cherish the heavenly. As David’s house waxes stronger, Saul’s house will wax weaker. When Christ gets more of the world and of our hearts, the devil will get less.
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THE MUSTARD-SEED, AND THE LEAVEN.
In the first two parables the kingdom of heaven is represented in conflict with its enemies; in the next two it stands alone, putting forth its inherent life and power. There we learn the strength of its adversaries, and here we learn its own. There we saw the efforts made to check the progress of the kingdom; and here we see the progress which, in spite of these efforts, the kingdom makes. There the combat is exhibited, and here the victory. Devils and men, conscious conspirators or unconscious tools, did their utmost, as explained in the first pair of parables, to strangle the kingdom in its infancy, or to overpower it at a later stage; but the kingdom, as we learn from the second pair, shakes its assailants off, emerges unhurt from the strife, and goes forward from strength to strength, until it has subdued and absorbed all the world. I have seen clouds gathering at dawn on the eastern horizon, with dark visage and a multitudinous threatening array, as if they had bound themselves by a great oath either to prevent the sun from rising or afterwards to quench his light; but through them, beyond them, above them, slowly, steadily, majestically rose the sun, nor quivered from his path, nor halted in his progress, until by the power of his mid-day light he had utterly driven those clouds away, so that not a shred of their tumultuous assemblage could any more be seen on the clear blue sky. Such and so impotent in Christ’s hands are the adversaries of Christ’s kingdom, although they seem formidable to men of little faith: such and so glorious will be the final victory of the King, although even his true subjects may fret and fear over his incomprehensible delay. The coming of the kingdom is like the morning, as slow, but as sure. As smoke is driven before the wind, so shall the Redeemer in the day of his power drive away all those adversaries, whether within his people or without, that now impiously say, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” Christ’s disciples are on the winning side, whatever may be the present aspect of the world. “He that believeth shall not make haste.”
The two parables which now claim our attention, although closely allied, are not in meaning and application precisely identical. Both show the progress of the kingdom from a small beginning to a glorious consummation; and both indicate that this growth, as to cause, is due to its own inherent unquenchable life, and as to manner, is silent, secret, unobserved. Thus far these two are in the main coincident; but besides teaching the same lesson in different forms, they teach also different lessons. The parable of the mustard-seed exhibits the kingdom in its own independent existence, inherent life, and irresistible power; the parable of the leaven exhibits the kingdom in contact with the world, gradually overcoming and assimilating and absorbing that world into itself. Both alike show that the kingdom increases from small to great; the first points to the essential, and the second to the instrumental cause of that increase: in the mustard-seed we see it growing great because of its own omnipotent vitality; in the leaven we see it growing great because it uses up all its adversaries as the material of its own enlargement.
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