Scripture and Commentary, Friday after Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Morning – Psalm37, 1 Kings 17:1-16, 2 Thes. 3:6.

Evening – Psalm 22, Job 11:7, Mt. 13:24-43

Commentary, Matthew 13:24-43

Our Lord continues to preach to the masses in parables.  This was a very common way of teaching in those days, and it still persists in the East today.  We are not to presume that none of the hearers understood Christ’s words.  Surely many understood and believed.  But others just heard stories, interesting, maybe, but unintelligible to them..  The first in tonight’s reading is the Parable of the Tares of the Field, followed by the parables of the Mustard Seed and of the Leaven.  It was not until He sent away the crowds that, at the disciples’ request, Christ declared unto them the parable of the tares of the field (Mt. 13:36-43).  Again, Christ is the Sower and the field is the world. Christ sows the good seed.  But this time the seed is people who believe the Gospel, not the Gospel itself.  The devil also sows his seed, the tares, which are the people who reject the Gospel and Christ.  The two grow together in the current age. But at harvest the two will be separated.  The angels will “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 weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  The harvest is the time when Christ returns and the earth is restored to its original goodness.  In the new earth those who followed Christ in the old era, will live in Godliness, as man lived before the Fall.  In this restored earth God’s people shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, and Christ shall reign in perfect peace, forever.