REAPER

In the parable concerning the wheat and the tares, Matt. 13. 24-30, the Lord Jesus said, ‘Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn’, Matt. 13. 30. The Lord further taught, ‘The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world’, vv. 38-40. Thus did the Lord Jesus describe the scene in our passage today where He Himself is the Reaper, that is, He is the one who actually wields the sharp sickle. That which He cuts down, the other, angelic, reapers sort and consign either to burning or the barn. Again, we have before us two distinct groups of people, both of which are in that sphere of profession known in Matthew’s gospel as ‘the kingdom of heaven’. The one group is of those whose profession is true and who are destined for blessing. The other is of false professors whose end is to be burned.

Because this harvest is discriminatory, the wielding of the sickle is not entrusted to an angel but undertaken by the Lord Himself as the one unto whom the Father has committed all judgment, John 5. 22. The judgment following the harvest, that of the vintage, is not discriminatory in that it is against ‘the vine of the earth’, 14. 18, which is entirely evil and destined in its totality for ‘the great winepress of the wrath of God’, v. 19. The prophet Joel wrote of both judgments, ‘Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great’, Joel 3. 12-13. The Reaper also treads the winepress alone in His fury and wrath, Isa. 63. 3, in the valley of Jehoshaphat, ‘Jehovah judges’, which is the same place as Armageddon, Rev. 16. 16. How dreadful the wrath of the Lamb will be in that day!