The question may be asked, Why are the hearts of some compared to good ground, when the scripture teaches, that all hearts are “deceitful and desperately wicked?” Not because there is anything naturally good therein. Facts only are presented here; the operating cause is not; it is simply the fact of the preaching of the word, and the reception of it.
In some cases there is brutish insensibility, or cold indifference; in others, a paramount love for, or fear of, the world. All this may, in the natural man, be owing to, or at least aggravated by, constitutional and educational differences; but in all cases, without the preparation of the heart by the Holy Ghost to receive the word, there would be unfruitfulness.
While, then, on the one hand, there is no intimation of the grace which prepares the heart (which is quite outside of man's exertion or intelligence) so that it becomes like the good ground, on the other, nothing is said as to the cause of the rejection of the word. Our Lord does say, “They had no root;” but even this is matter of fact rather than the cause. Man is responsible for the reception of the word; and his responsibility comes out prominently here. (ver. 9.) That which the Spirit of God does present is first the preaching of the word, then its reception, or rejection, as the case may be; and this quite distinct from the secret spring which operates to produce reception.
(Ver. 24.) “Another parable,” &c. In the preceding parable we have the word of the kingdom; the good seed has been sown, the gospel has been preached. The kingdom of heaven is now begun. We are carried forward in advance of the moment when the Lord was speaking. The kingdom commenced when Jesus had ascended (i.e. the mysteries of the kingdom); it will only be when He comes again, that the kingdom will be established in power. We have now presented to us three pictures of the kingdom under three different aspects, but all of them external. The standpoint whence we view it is the earth. We have had a parabolic description of the introduction of Christianity into the world. A new order of things was then about to take place, a new dispensation, where the visible glory of God would not be manifested as it had been in the holy of holies within the veil of the temple, but the establishment of a kingdom on the earth to be under the rule of Christ Himself dwelling in heaven. But this kingdom would be marred and spoiled by the enemy; yet would men profess to have Christ for their king. MYSTERIES truly!—man, calling himself a Christian, in league with the world that rejected and crucified the King, condemning the world that did it, yet loving the world, and denying the right and the truth of the King coming again to take what is His own. “Why speakest thou.... in parables?” Because it is not given to the multitude, to those outside, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.
And in the present hour the kingdom of heaven is a mystery to the world. Only those inside, in the house, can know them. Before the multitude our Lord proceeds to give an account of the kingdom, a parabolic and prophetic description of it, right on to the end, when the mysteries will cease, and there will be the open and visible establishment of it in power. The Lord does not speak of the Father's purpose in permitting such an anomalous state of the kingdom to exist. Of this He spoke to His disciples in the house, when the multitude were sent away. There He speaks to them anticipatively of their future position, and calling while yet on the earth, viz., destined for heavenly places. They were told of their existence in the purpose of God before the world was, that they in their corporate capacity were a treasure to Him, yea, “one pearl of great price.” It is only when we are in the house with Jesus, that we can enter into the views of the kingdom unfolded in the last three parables contained in this chapter. But previously (verses 1-33) the Lord sits by the sea-side, outside for the multitude, and He gives them three distinct pictures of the kingdom of heaven, the first of them terminating with the end. It is worthy of notice that the Lord gives us the plain teaching of two of His parables, which is a divine assistance to a right understanding of the others. In the parable of the tares and the wheat, the distinction between the real and the merely nominal professor is preserved. There are real disciples in the marred kingdom, as well as in the field there is wheat. Their entire separation takes place only in the end. In the parables of the tree and of the leaven, this distinction is not noticed; it is the general character of the kingdom. It would seem as if the wheat, the children of the kingdom, bear so small a proportion to the tares, that they fail to give a general character to it: they are apparently lost sight of. In fact the tree exhibits the kingdom of heaven as a great earthly power, and the leaven presents us with its doctrinal character. The position of the children, even their existence, is not noticed in these two.
Let us look a little at the tare-field. The good seed is sown by the Son of man, and the field is the world, i.e., it is the place where the kingdom is established. All that is good is the work of the Son of man; all that is evil in the work of the enemy. The tares do not represent all the evil that is in the world, but all the evil in connection with the kingdom. They have been brought into the field (the world) among the wheat, by the arch-foe, for the very purpose of marring the work of the Lord. But although the outward aspect of the kingdom be spoiled, yet the purpose of God in permitting it—nay, strange, but sweet truth, the very purpose of God which was (to speak as men) contingent upon the rejection of the King, and the mysteries of the kingdom—was entirely beyond the reach, if not the ken, of the enemy; for the word of God cannot fail— “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.” Let the external character of the kingdom be ruined, yet in it, though hidden, there shall be found those who are in reality “the children of the kingdom.” But it is a solemn truth that the character which the kingdom takes is from those “who profess and call themselves Christians,” and of these professors so outnumbering are the tares, that the entire aspect of the kingdom is spoiled, and no longer exhibits that which it ought to have exhibited, viz., that which would correspond to the Sower and to the seed. The term professor is used in its most extensive application. The true disciple is symbolized by wheat, evil men by tares. These evil men are not at first visible, but by and by they are developed. “When the blade sprung up, then appeared the tares also;” and this state of things is to continue, for the tares are not to be gathered up, they are to grow with the wheat, until the harvest. So long as the present dispensation lasts, so long will there be evil and wicked men found in connection with Christianity, enjoying the outward blessings and privileges which it confers, and even in some instances professing actual discipleship to Christ. How very soon the tares appeared even during the lives of the apostles! What a character is theirs, as portrayed by Peter, by Jude, and by Paul, who tells us that the mystery of iniquity was working in his time! In the end there will be the full development of it, after the hindrance is removed (2 Thess. 2). It is not intended to assert that “that wicked” will arise out of the professing church, although it may be so, but out of that confused and heterogeneous mass, resulting from the unholy union which now subsists between the world and the professing church.
True, there is a company of real disciples—the children of the kingdom. They are warned of the tares: the doom of Christendom is made known to them, a doom far more fearful than that of apostate man in any other dispensation. The tares will be bound in bundles for the fire. But there is a hope for the children of God, the good seed. They shall escape, and be out of the great tribulation.
These, however, as distinct from the mere professor, are not under consideration in this parable. The territory embraced within the limits of the kingdom, is that which is called Christendom, and it is those dwelling within those limits that give character to the kingdom. It is a mixed character, and such it must remain. The servants to whom the keeping of the field was entrusted fell asleep; and meanwhile the enemy sows tares: when they awake, they essay at once to remedy the evil which had crept in by their unwatchfulness. Nay, says the Lord, “lest ye root up also the wheat.” Behold, here, the tender care that the Lord takes of His own! Rather than one single ear of wheat should be injured or pulled up before it was ripe, let the tares grow; rather than the little body of true believers should be broken up in its infancy, ere the Bride he ready for the Bridegroom, let the judgment upon the wicked be suspended. The true sons of the kingdom must be perfected, whose names were written in the book of life before the world was. The Lord could not come in judgment before these are all secured. Therefore the servants are not allowed to act in judgment. Let the tares alone. The children of God now stand in grace, and only grace must they exhibit; they have nothing at all to do with earthly judgment. Let the tares alone. If they could not keep the tares out, when the field was free from them, much less can they root them out now— “Lest ye root up also the wheat.”
Is not this same care for His people seen in the long respite vouchsafed to the antediluvians? Not only is the long-suffering of God seen, who bore long with the sinners before the flood, and gave them space for repentance, when even every day that Noah worked at the ark, and every plank, and every nail, and every stroke of his hammer, was a warning, and a threatening of the impending judgment; but God could do nothing till Noah was safe in the ark, after He Himself had shut him in: even then there was a respite of seven days (perfect forbearance). But if Noah had been as long again, until he was shut up safe in the ark, so long would judgment have been delayed.
So also in the case of the five cities of the plain. Lot must be provided for before the fiery storm could descend. The Lord said He could do nothing till Lot was gone out of the city, and the little city Zoar was spared for his sake and at his entreaty. For the sake of the righteous the wicked are spared. “Ye are the salt of the earth.” Had there been ten righteous men found in those five cities, they had been spared. And the world is now preserved because the children of God are in it, for “he is not willing that any should perish,” and all these, the true Church, must and will be taken out of it before judgment descends upon it. Then will the tares be not bound merely, but burnt; but the wheat will have been secured in the barn.
We have, then, this fact, that whatever phase the kingdom may present to the world, there will be some. good in it. Nothing is here said as to the amount of good or evil—simply that both are there; that they are really distinct the one from the other; but that this distinction will be made fully manifest only in the harvest.