Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today Bonnie and I are in Redding, California. We have the very blessed duty of being grandparents for the week with our eight-year-old grandson Kaden and our six-year-old granddaughter Zaria. Their parents are away so we get to be all things to a couple of our favorite people. It should be a great week, as long as we get them off to school on time in a rested, fed, and somewhat clean condition – ha, ha.
If you have been connected on the internet with social media in a Christian format, you have no doubt seen many concerns regarding the coming of Jesus and the end times. This thinking is spawned by what many believers perceive the Scriptures say regarding the end times. The Scriptures are foundational for our believing in Christ, they are not words that project thoughts towards what might come. Even the coming of Jesus is a foundational truth in the Scriptures and not merely some coming event. Jesus said that all the things of His discourse in Matthew chapter 24 would be in the generation of the first century church. Jesus came as a man in the fullness of the times and brought an end to the Old Covenant age for those of the Torah/Temple society so that the continued coming of Jesus in the manifest presence of Holy Spirit could bring an end to every tongue, tribe, people, and nation in the ages of the earth. That end would only come because of an embracing of eternal life in Christ. When we embrace the true, the things that are false are destroyed. An opening of grace in our lives destroys the things of law in our lives. The law is not bad, but it is only a shadow of what is truly good. God’s grace is the power of His manifest presence in our lives that transforms our character, nature, way, power, and authority to be as we should be. God’s grace empowers us to take on the true likeness and image of our Father in heaven. The follow is an exert from my book, For His Glory – You Have Been Left Behind.
So much foolishness has been propagated in past years regarding “last days” mania and fear-filled predictions of the Second Coming of Christ. The New Testament has many references to “the end” and “last days”. What were the “last days” and “the end” proclaimed in the New Testament Scriptures? Were they predictions of the end of the world, as we know it? Were they predictions of events to come thousands of years in the future, or were they warnings of something much closer to the people of the day? Was there an exegetical truth to their warnings, or were they simply irrelevant words to their day and prophetic warnings for fifty-plus generations in the future? We are going to look at what Jesus said concerning “the end”. Let’s look at a parable that Jesus spoke to real flesh and blood Jewish people who came to hear His words of instruction.
Matthew 13:24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, “Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” The servants said to him, “Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, “No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
In this parable we see the story of the wheat and the tares. Many people think the tares were just weeds, but the tares were not weeds. “Tares” were darnels, “a type of grass commonly found growing as a weed in grain fields in Europe and Asia. Tares looked like wheat that had not produced a full wheat head. They were simply stalks of straw with a worthless seed head. All of the energy went into producing stalk, but it had not produced any wheat for food for others. These darnels were symbolic of humanity that consumes its nutrients on self-survival and self-exaltation. The Rabbis called these darnels “bastard wheat”. These tares that were sown by the enemy in this parable represented fleshly lives that are bound to being self-seeking, self-responsible, self-governing, and self-ruling in the DNA of their life’s existence. Jesus described the tares as “the sons of the evil one”.
Matthew 13:36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.” 37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
This parable had an exegetical fulfillment in the days of Jesus’ hearers. He said the harvest is the “end of the age”. He didn’t say it was the end of the world. This was the end of the Jewish age. Following the end of this age the “righteous would shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” This must have meant that it was possible to hear and understand this principle at the time that Jesus spoke it. At the end of that age the wheat would be gathered into barns, but the tares would be burned. The false covenant keepers would be consumed, but the true covenant keepers would become food for the nations and seed to be sown in the lands of the earth. You don’t put wheat in barns to collect it! You put wheat in barns to distribute it! God had a plan of filling the earth with the knowledge of His glory (Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14). The tares looked like wheat, but they did not have the substance of wheat. They would be burned, and the wheat would become the hope of the nations! We can receive this as a principle of truth in every generation, but there was a literal fulfillment of this Scripture within a generation of His speaking. The destruction of A.D. 70 burned the tares and left the wheat. Those holding on to the Law were consumed and the grace empowered Church came through a great tribulation to become the overcoming power of life and hope for the world.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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