By Pastor Teddy Joseph
As I have been driving through the highway around Stettler and Flagstaff County, I noticed that the harvest has started.
Upon looking at the fields, some look like they never had anything grown there, others had long trenches of straws still in the field while others had straw or hay gathered up in a bundle across the field. I was interested in the process and had an opportunity to be fully immersed in the harvesting procedure.
It was a great experience being able to ride in the combine, grain cart and loading truck. What really caught my eye was how the combine, when going over the wheat, would gather it inside its vehicle and it would shoot out the refuse behind it. The fact that the wheat would be taken back to the storehouse reminded me of a similar passage in the bible.
Jesus gives a parable of a landowner who planted good seed in his field while the landowner’s enemy planted another type of seed. As time passes by, the workers of the master noticed that there were two types of plants growing together.
The servants upon realizing this, asked the master if they should gather them up before the harvest. The master knowing what type of damage would be caused and how much yield and increase they would lose, advised the servants to wait for the plants to fully mature.
You see the master knows that the wheat and the tares are indiscriminate from each other and until they reach full maturity, it would be highly recommended to leave them alone for fear that the wheat would be destroyed prematurely alongside the tares. It was recommended by the landowner that until the harvest came, the wheat and tares would continue to grow alongside and there is a distinction between the two. And, when the harvest comes, there will be a separation where the tares would be bundled together to be burned and where the wheat would be gathered together into the barn.
The interpretation of that parable is that the landowner was Christ Himself. The field was this present world. The good seed that matures into wheat are Bible-believing Christians that have fully matured in Christ and the tares are the children of the wicked one because they continued in their iniquity while claiming to be a wheat.
The enemy is Satan, the reapers are the holy angels, and the harvest is the end of the world. The reason why Christ told them to not pick out the tares from the wheat is because they both have not fully matured and are not distinguishable from each other. A distinction must be shown between the two groups before the return of Christ.
As the bible states, the distinction is based upon how one who calls themselves a Christian, treats the less fortunate such as the homeless, the sick and the imprisoned depicted in Matthew 25:31-46. The distinction is also based on how Christians live a lifestyle that is full of goodness, truth, righteousness love, peace, gentleness, patience, gentleness, faith, meekness and self-control.
Everything they do and are involved in are doing it for Christ, while the other group would do the contrary in the name of Christ; not take care of the less fortunate and not live a lifestyle that attracts people to Christ. They claim to be followers of Christ yet continue to live a life of sin. Just as the farmers work tenaciously throughout the year in order to yield good results at harvest time, all of the heavenly hosts, including God, have been working tenaciously to bring in a plentiful harvest with an abundance of wheat. Let us pray to be accounted as one of them.
~Teddy Joseph is the pastor at the Stettler and Sedgewick Seventh-day Adventist Church.