Matthew 13:31-33

CRITICAL NOTES

Matthew 13:31. Mustard seed.—It is disputed whether the allusion is to the Sinapis or common mustard plant, or to the Salvadora Persica of European botanists. Dean Plumptre suggests that the name was probably used widely for any plant that had the pungent flavour of mustard. Dr. W. M. Thomson remarks that the mustard seed was the smallest of the seeds which the husbandman was accustomed to sow, while the plant, when full grown, was larger than any other herb in his garden (see R.V., “greater than the herbs”). Of the Salvadora Persica Dr. Royle says: “The nature of the plant is to become arboreous, and thus it will form a large shrub, or a tree, twenty-five feet high, under which a horseman may stand, when the soil and climate are favourable. It produces numerous branches and leaves, under which birds may and do take shelter, as well as build their nests; and its seeds are used for the same purposes as mustard.” Proverbial sayings of the Rabbins which take the mustard seed as the representative of smallest objects are collected by Wetstein.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Matthew 13:31

The growth of truth.—These two parables are regarded by some persons as a kind of counteractive to the preceding two. In the parable of the sower we are warned not to expect fruit from every description of soil. In the parable of the tares we are taught that there may be evil fruit even where good fruit is produced. What we seem now taught is that, even so, there is another side to the case. Truth will grow and the gospel prevail, notwithstanding these drawbacks. This will be the case, first, in the world. This will be the case, next, in men’s hearts. So (with many) we understand the two parables now before us.

I. In the world.—On this point the parable of the “mustard seed” is thought to instruct us the most. The truth of the gospel has already been compared to a seed. In that comparison there are more than one “seeds of hope,” as it were. There is one such, e.g., in what we see of the nature of seed, specially of such a seed as that specified now. Proverbially small as the “mustard seed” was, we yet see in it, as we see in all other seed, a thing meant to increase. We see in this seed, indeed, a thing meant to increase in a proverbially remarkable way. So much so, that, in few cases is there a greater difference in magnitude between beginning and end. Witness what was true about it in connection with the “birds of the air.” Not improbably only such eyes as theirs could see it at first. Afterwards even whole flocks of them could find shelter in its branches. That was an exact picture of what was to be true of gospel truth in the world. Utterly insignificant as it might appear at first amongst other influences in the world, it would so grow in time that many of those other influences would be glad of its protection at last. This is to be true, also—here is another ground of hope—from the very nature of growth. How does the mustard seed grow in the ground? Only, as it were—apart from Divine influence—through that which belongs to itself. Certainly it owes nothing, in this way, to the wisdom, or skill, or might of the hand which “casts it” into the ground. All the materials, on the contrary, necessary for its increase, it collects for itself. All the energies, also, necessary for assimilating and transmuting that which it collects, it contains in itself. Given only the soil, in fact, and the requisite heat and proper humidity, and that tiny seed will ultimately build itself up into its farthest subsequent “growth.” And even so is it, again, with that truth of God of which that seed is a figure. God’s creative hand has given it such intrinsic force that it is able to “grow of itself” (cf. Mark 4:28). And nothing is wanting, therefore, on man’s part, except to give it the opportunity for so doing. A great encouragement, indeed, when we remember the magnitude of the task which it has to accomplish; and a sure ground of confidence among all the difficulties and hindrances of the case.

II. In men’s hearts.—Here the other parable, that of the leaven, is considered to teach us the most. And a new figure is supposed to be used because both a new locality and new exigencies are here referred to. A previous parable (Matthew 13:18) showed us what were the chief obstacles to the growth of truth in men’s hearts, viz. want of attention, want of consideration, want of thorough sincerity. In this parable we seem taught how that truth itself is calculated to overcome them. For what does “leaven” do, when “hid” as here, in a collection of meal of the ordinary amount of “three measures”? It begins at once to turn the portion next it into that which is identical with itself. And, having so begun, it goes on, naturally, to do the same in the rest of the “lump,” working through all, and by all, everywhere, till the whole is leavened. The word of God is calculated to do just the same with regard to man’s heart. Once “hid” there, there is a power about it which tends to assimilate all it finds there to itself; and to do this, also, in an increasing degree, till it has assimilated all to itself. And that, also, whatever the nature of the “hand” which “hid” it therein. This is thought to be the reason why we are told here, finally, that the “leaven” was employed by a “woman”—the usual agent to be employed in all cases of this kind. The thing, in a word, for our thoughts to fix on is the “leaven” itself. “The entrance of Thy Word giveth light” (Psalms 119:130).

If these interpretations of these two parables are accepted, one cannot but admire the wonderful way in which experience has fulfilled them.

1. In the world.—Every record of sustained missionary effort has illustrated the parable of the mustard seed. Most of all has the history of the church at large. What was the gospel when this parable was spoken? In the eyes of the world a thing too small to be seen. What is it now? With all drawbacks, with all rivalries, with all corruptions and treacheries, the mightiest force upon earth.

2. In the heart.—The story of the “leaven” has been the story of every converted soul from the first. “Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). That has been the assimilating energy which has wholly “leavened” the “lump” (cf. Psalms 119:11; Psalms 37:31).

HOMILIES ON THE VERSES

Matthew 13:31. Parables of the mustard seed and the leaven.—We are now to see Christianity from the inside, as a hidden life which must put forth its own indwelling strength, and make its own way in the world. A little attention to the two emblems before us will show that this is the central idea common to both. Yet each presents that truth on a different side.

1. The parable of the mustard seed.—When our Lord first spoke of seed He meant by it the word of God. Next, He used it for those men themselves in whom God’s word quickens a religious life. Now you have, instead of numerous and separate corn-seeds in the field, one single seed only, which bears the many branches of God’s great kingdom upon a single stem, to be nurtured from one root. By this last modification of the emblem, are we not carried down to the ultimate fact that, though Christians are many, they are but one after all in the secret source of their life? That the kingdom of the church is a unity springing from the solitary Seed-corn who flung Himself into this world’s soil, and died that He might bear upon Himself the entire spiritual fruitage of humanity as a vine bears shoots and grapes? Here we have, at least, one beautiful and suggestive lesson in the first parable, which is absent or less obtrusive in the other. For the lump of dough, even when leavened, though it may be made into one loaf, possesses no such living unity as belongs to a plant. We measure roughly with the eye the power of growth which resides in a plant by the disproportion we discover betwixt the smallness of the seed and the largeness of the perfect plant. Now of this the mustard formed an excellent, familiar instance. On this point of comparison rests the stress of the parable. Christianity is not only a creation of the Saviour’s own life, it is the work and monument of the most extraordinary spiritual force we know.

II. The parable of the leaven.—Both parables represent progress; but in the mustard seed progress means growth, in the leaven it means change. Again, we have a small beginning and a large result. The real point of consequence is the alteration of the mass into a new character through a foreign substance introduced into the heart of it. What our attention is now to be fixed upon is, that the gospel works upon human society, not merely grows up within it. It grows by altering and assimilating what it finds. It is a regenerating principle, transforming into its own character the nature and the lives of men. One can readily see how a system so many-sided as the kingdom of God should be incapable of exhaustive treatment under any single emblem. Yet the use of this particular emblem must strike us as strange. For it was very closely associated in a Jew’s mind, not with grace but with sin. How came our Lord to employ the same figure which had for ages set forth the permeating power of sin, to set forth the permeating power of grace? Was it for this reason that simply to cast out the old leaven, were that possible, would be inadequate? The gospel is not a merely negative process. There is a new leaven as well as an old. There is need for the new to undo and reverse the action of the old.

Lessons—

1. The source of Christian life is not in me, it is not in my fellow Christian; it is in the Root that beareth both of us.
2. The life of Christ, if it is to do its work upon us, must do it in the way of change and overcoming.
3. It is by individual effort and personal influence that the blessing spreads.—J. O. Dykes, D.D.

Matthew 13:31. Rise and progress of the church.—

I. Compare the insignificance of Christianity at first.—

1. Unostentatious worship.
2. Simple teaching.
3. Social position of Apostles.
4. Small number of disciples.

II. Careful planting of Christianity.—

1. A single seed taken.
2. Designedly sown.
3. In a chosen place.

III. Rapid growth of Christianity.—See history of church in first three or four centuries.

IV. Phenomena consequent thereupon.—Birds come.

1. Men who first opposed come for their own ends.
2. Men for their salvation.
3. Christians lodge there, and draw others, as singing birds attract by their song.—J. C. Gray.

Matthew 13:33.Leaven.—

I. The working of evil.—As our Lord’s eye travelled over the field of common life it rested on one phenomenon, which, habitual and ordinary as it was, nevertheless had a look in it of something abnormal and sinister—the working of leaven. This did not seem at first sight to belong to the more regular processes of nature. Man’s imagination had been long struck here by a likeness to something dark and ominous and evil—this strange disturbance into which the natural substances are thrown by the arrival of this alien matter. What did it express? Was it healthy? Was it not typical, rather, of disease and corruption? It looked so uncanny, so uncomfortable. This mysterious tumult—surely, men said, here is the very picture of what we mean by the nature of sin. They might use it, indeed, for the homeliest affairs, but still it had become to them a type of evil; its working seemed to embody the dreadful character of the mystery of evil, so proverbially it had a sinister significance, and the Bible always, with this one exception, uses it with this meaning. “Know ye not,” saith St. Paul, “that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” So he spoke as if he detected in the Corinthian church the germ of some hateful growth—that sin which they had moving in their midst as a focus of fermentation, a spot of disease spreading and festering till its restless irritation, its feverish energy would be felt everywhere. “Do ye not know well how a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” Or, again, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” So our Lord Himself used the metaphor. Leaven would obviously image that working of the spirit of the Pharisees, that spirit which so insidiously crept in unseen within the very heart of goodness, within the very core of the moral will, and thence it sent its noxious, turbid, infected motions, till, like an evil possession, it permeated the entire man. Beware of that leaven. And then how deeply was this impression intensified by the sacred memory of the Jews’ great feast of deliverance, the Feast of the Passover. There, at that hour of high thanksgiving, in grateful remembrance of the redemption that once for all brought them up out of the darkness of Egypt, the Jew was summoned year after year, to cast out of his house every fragment of the evil leaven that recalled the black days of sin and servitude. Such was the Jew’s natural memory of leaven, and we can well understand what force it would lend to St. Paul’s appeal to this ancient feeling as he bade those Corinthians “Purge out the old leaven that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened,” etc. (1 Corinthians 5:7). Leaven was popularly, was instinctively, a metaphor that suggested the mystery of iniquity, the working of evil.

II. The beginning of good.—But our Lord, as His eyes rested on its familiar use, as He caught sight of this or that woman inserting the little piece of sour dough into two or three large measures of meal, saw a symbol, a type which He might use for the portrait of His own kingdom. This, you say, is the well-known way in which evil creeps. Well, it is a strangely effectual way, it is typically complete; why not turn it to good use?

III. The leaven in the church.—If we turn our eyes to what claims to embody and represent the kingdom of heaven, we need again and again to recur to this parable. For here, too, there is such a huge mass of matter involved that has suffered no change to pass over it; it lies there within the church, sluggish and heavy. How little the surface of this church speaks of the spiritual thrill that is alive within it; how much of it is blindly unconscious of the secret it enshrines! God can be patient as the woman that watches the three measures of meal. A little leaven will at last, if you give it time, leaven the whole lump. Christ is our leaven. That is our sole security, and that security is alsolute.—Canon H. Scott-Holland.

Leaven as a symbol of Christianity.—

I. Christianity is really alive.—“Careful investigation has shown that the process of fermentation entirely depends upon the presence and growth of certain living organisms forming the ferment” (Roscoe). Christianity is itself a living, breathing presence, not a mere dull, dead thing; a life not a book; a Person, and that Person our Friend and Saviour, our Reconciliation and our Rest, our Hope and our Victory. The rule of God is not like a set of parchment laws stored in the archives of a government library; not like a telephone dependent upon the skill and activity of the worker; not like an empire directed by an absentee ruler; no it is like leaven, it is alive.

II. Christianity is at work as well as alive. It is characteristic of leaven to show an almost insatiable greed of activity. It is a type of stupendous increase. “The globular or oval corpuscles which float so thickly in the yeast as to make it muddy, though the largest are not more than one two-thousandth of an inch in diameter, and the smallest may measure less than one seven-thousandth of an inch, are living organisms. They multiply with great rapidity by giving off minute buds, which soon attain the size of their parent, and then either become detached or remain united, forming compound globules. Yeast will increase indefinitely when grown in the dark” (Huxley). In no point is the Teacher’s simile better sustained by facts than in the unspeakable and irrepressible activity of the gospel. It is a living force.

III. Christianity, like leaven, works in a congenial and much assisting sphere.—It is hid in meal, the material which has an affinity for it and upon which it is specially fitted to act. The leaven is placed where it is wanted, where it can work, and where it can work with success. Leaven is not better suited to work in meal than Christ in men’s hearts for their salvation.

IV. The most distinguishing feature of leaven is that it leavens the meal in the midst of which it is placed.—So the most characteristic effect of Christianity is that it christianises men; it assimilates them to Christ by filling them with the life of Christ. He puts His life into each part of a man.

1. The life of His thoughts into his thinking.

2. The life of His love into his heart.

3. The life of His righteousness into his conscience.

4. The life of His obedience into his will.

V. The leaven moreover is hidden in the meal, and all the work it does, it does secretly.—Christ’s best, most real, and most powerful work is always unseen.

VI. But it advances victoriously and totally.—“Till the whole is leavened.” It is so in:

1. The individual.
2. Nations. Christ speaks of a woman as putting the leaven into the meal. Does He thereby indicate that Christianity is to be propagated by the winning forces of tenderness, and sympathy, and fulness of grace, so characteristic of woman, rather than by the rougher forces of this world, the sharpness of swords and the strength of States?—John Clifford, D.D.

Similitudes used in opposite senses.—The appropriation by Christ to His kingdom of a similitude which had previously been applied in an opposite sense, may be illustrated by many parallel examples in the Scriptures. Of these, as far as I know, the different and opposite figurative significations of the serpent are the most striking and appropriate. A similar example occurs in the parable of the unjust steward; it teaches that the skill of the wicked in doing evil should be imitated by Christians in doing good (W. Arnot, D.D.). In different passages the lion is used as a figure of Satan, but also of Christ; the serpent as a figure of the enemy, but also of the wisdom needful to the Apostles; birds as a figure of believing trustfulness, but also of the devil catching away the Word.—J. P. Lange, D.D.

Reformation from within.—There are two ways in which you may revolutionise any country or society. You may either pull down all the old forms of government, or you may fill them with men of a different spirit. A watch stops, and somebody tells you it needs new works, but the watchmaker tells you it only needs cleaning. A machine refuses to work, and people think the construction is wrong, but the skilled mechanic pushes aside the ignorant crowd, and puts all to rights with a few drops of oil. “Your bread is unwholesome,” says the public to the baker, and he says, “Well, I’ll send you loaves of a new shape;” but the woman of the parable follows the wiser course of altering the quality of the bread.—M. Dods, D.D.

Inwardness.—The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul.—H. Bushnell, D.D.

Christianity as leaven.—Sir Bartle Frere speaking of the gradual change wrought by Christianity in India, says in regard to religious innovations in general, “They are always subtle in operation, and generally little noticeable at the outset in comparison with the power of their ultimate operation.”