Matthew 13:43

OLBGrk;

Ver. 40-43. As in the common practice of men, when they have a mind to pick their corn, and have it clean, when it is reaped, to set men to clean the wheat, and to pick out the tares, and, having tied them up in bundles, to burn them, so (saith he) I will do. I will send my angels at the day of judgment, and they shall take out of my church all impenitent sinners, all those who in this world have been scandals, and offences, and mischievous to my people, and who have made it their business to work iniquity. And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. That is, into hell, which, in regard of the severe torments which the damned shall feel there, is often in Scripture compared to fire, as Matthew 25:41, and in other texts, by which is only set out to us the dreadfulness of the punishment of the damned, that is proportioned to, if not far exceeding, that of the burning living bodies in fire. Having thus expressed the punishment of wicked men, he expounds what he means by gathering the wheat into his barn, viz. the taking of righteous men to heaven. Then, saith he, shall the righteous, those whom I have clothed with my righteousness, and who have lived in obedience to my will to that degree, that though they be not perfectly righteous, yet are sincere and upright, so as I have accepted them, shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father: an expression much like that of Daniel 12:2,3, significative of that glorious state of the saints in heaven, which no eye having seen, nor ear having heard, no tongue is able to express. He concludes in the same manner as he concludes the parable of the sower, exciting his hearers to a diligent consideration and belief of what he had said. Our Saviour adding no particular explication of the two parables delivered, Matthew 13:31, the disciples not asking him to explain them, and the evangelist having put the explication of the first parable after them, it is reasonable, that though I omitted the explication of them in their proper place, yet I should add something here for the benefit of those who possibly will not be able so readily to conceive our Saviour's meaning in them without an interpreter as the disciples did, which is thought to be the reason why they asked no explication of them. The one is the parable of the grain of mustard seed, Matthew 13:31,32; the other, the parable of leaven hid in three measures of meal, Matthew 13:33. The scope of both is the same. Our Saviour intended them both to let his disciples know the success that his gospel should have over all the world, that they might not be discouraged at the little success of it at present. To this purpose he compares it, first, to a grain of mustard seed, which, he saith, is the least of all seeds, that is, one of the least of seeds, or the least seed that produces so great a plant; but becomes a tree so high, that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. Though that small seed with us runs up to a great height, and produces a plant which hath branches considerable enough to lodge birds which sit low, yet we must not judge of what grew in those countries by what groweth in ours; there are strange and almost incredible stories told of that plant by naturalists, as to its growth in some hot and fertile countries. Christ by this foretold his disciples, what following ages quickly verified, that the heathen should entertain the gospel, and the sound of it should go to the ends of the earth, notwithstanding its present small appearance. Upon the same score he compares it to a little leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal, till the whole mass of meal was leavened. By these two expressions our Saviour also lets us know the quick and powerful nature of the word; that Christ's words are (as he said) spirit of life, and have a hidden and extraordinary virtue in them. I do not think it worth the while to inquire into the contents of these sata or measures of meal, and why he mentions but three. They are curiosities, the knowledge of which turneth to no account. Our Saviour certainly, by the expression, designed only to hint the small number of the Jews that believed in him, but foretold a far greater harvest. The law should go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, as Isaiah prophesied, Isaiah 2:3; but many people (after them) should say, Come ye, let us go up to the mountain of the house of the Lord.