And he answering said to them, Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it is not given;
The disciples had just asked why their Master taught the crowds in stories instead of plain speech. His answer draws a line straight through His audience. Two questions follow. What are these "secrets of the kingdom of heaven"? And why does one group receive them and not the other?
The turn to parables came after a crisis. The same words that opened the truth to some left others in the dark, like the cloud that once stood over Israel.
The same parable would be just like the cloud of Israel long ago — full of light to those inside, full of darkness to those outside. So it is with the sayings of our Lord. The crisis with unbelieving Israel was so solemn that He did not intend to give clearer light. Conscience was gone. They had the Lord among them, bringing in full light, and they refused Him — above all the religious leaders. He had now broken with them: here is the clue to His conduct. It stayed hidden from the crowd, because they had already rejected the clearest possible proofs that Jesus was the Messiah of God.
The withholding was not random. It answered what the hearers had already done to themselves.
This was a case of "judicial blindness." The Lord quotes Isaiah to show it. That people's heart had grown dull. They barely heard with their ears, and they had shut their eyes. This is solemn indeed. They could not see because they had refused to see.
The word does not mean a puzzle too deep for anyone to solve. In the Bible it means a secret that God has now told out.
The mystery is no longer "hid in God"; God has disclosed it. Always keep this in mind when you read about the mystery: it is now revealed and nothing is left in the dark. God sets the secret out in His own light, and the simplest Christian is expected to receive it. So Christ said to His disciples, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven." All the other mysteries of God are made known in the same way. Could anything more completely clear away the common idea that a mystery is something no one can understand, and that godly people dare not look into?
Revealed, yes — but not to every reader alike. Reading alone will not take it in.
In Scripture the word mystery does not point to what is mysterious, the way people use the word. It presents some distinctive truth that God has disclosed for our understanding. The New Testament holds many such mysteries, and what they contain is there to enlighten the saints. But only those with faith can profit by these divine unveilings. Only the faithful are let into their truths. Only those who have the Spirit of God have the capacity and the power to grasp the mind of God revealed in this way. God wants to bring you and me into His secrets: do we want to know them?
The kingdom itself was no secret. The prophets had already described it. What was new was the shape it took after Israel rejected its King.
We have not had the word "mysteries" before in connection with the kingdom of heaven. The testimony of the prophets about the kingdom had no mystery about it. This comes as a result of Israel rejecting Christ. So notice, in verse 35, that all this stayed secret until now.
So the kingdom took a form no one had foretold. Its King is not on the scene.
While the King is rejected His kingdom cannot be a public affair. When it is public, the kingdom of heaven will be on open display: the thousand-year reign of Christ. Meanwhile the kingdom is in mystery. The rightful Heir is away, so the kingdom is left in the hands of men who are responsible for it. It stands in a world that has rejected the rightful Heir, a world whose every principle is against God.
The disciples did not earn their understanding. They had received Him, and knowledge followed as a gift.
Because of their faith, the Lord would make known to them the mystery of the kingdom of God. Even this was a display of His grace. Many prophets and righteous men in Old Testament times had longed to hear the things they were now hearing, but they never had that privilege. You could say this was the Lord's sovereign grace. He chose to bless those who had done what they were responsible to do: they received Him.
- Given. The knowledge is a gift, not a reward. The disciples received the Person first; the understanding came after, as grace.
- Given as a secret told. In Scripture a mystery is not something too deep to grasp. It is something once hidden that God has now said out loud.
- Given to those with the Spirit. The secret is out in the open, yet only faith profits by it. The power to take in God's mind comes from God Himself.
- Given because the King was refused. The prophets described a kingdom in open glory. Christ's rejection brought in a kingdom in mystery, run by men while the rightful Heir is away.
- Not given, and why. The same parable lit the way for one group and left the other in the dark. That blindness was God's judgment on people who had first shut their own eyes.
for whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall be caused to be in abundance; but he who has not, even what he has shall be taken away from him.
Jesus has just told the crowd the parable of the sower, and His disciples want to know why He now teaches this way. His answer gives a rule that sounds harsh at first: what a person already holds decides what he receives next.
The verse begins with "for". It gives the reason why some understand the Lord's parables and others do not. One writer applies the two halves to two groups: the disciples, and the leaders who had refused Him.
The same parable would be just like the cloud that led Israel long ago — full of light for those inside, full of darkness for those outside... The Lord was among them, bringing in full light, and they refused Him, above all the religious leaders. He had now broken with them, and that is the clue to His conduct... So it was with the disciples. They had already received Him, and now the Lord would give them truth to lead them on. "But from the one who has not" (Israel, who was rejecting Christ), "even what he has will be taken away" — the Lord's presence in person and the proof of His miracles would soon pass away.
One writer passes on another's description of two kinds of hearer:
Whoever has really made the truths he has heard a living possession will always be given more. But the one who has received it only as something dead and outward will lose even what he seems to have, but really has not.
Another writer ties having to use:
What we do not have in the power of faith for real use, we do not have in deed and in truth.
The second half of the verse lands on a nation with a real head start. One writer explains what Israel held, and what it lacked:
To understand this verse we must see these people in the place of privilege God had given them as a nation. As such they had something the other nations did not have. But they did not have this new thing which Christ was opening out. So as a nation they were about to lose the standing they once had before God. Those who had received Jesus as their Messiah, though, were about to be brought into the kingdom of heaven in its heavenly character.
The saying is not only about Israel long ago. One writer sets it beside the parable of the talents, where a servant loses the one talent he had:
The end of verse 12 is very solemn: "from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." In another place it reads "seems to have." It is possible to have something that will be taken from you. Where the Lord speaks of the talents, the man with one talent is a servant of the Lord Jesus, yet his talent is taken from him and given to the man who had ten. That talent was light he had; people are responsible for the light they have.
The rule did not end with Israel. One writer applies it to our own day:
But this two-edged sword cuts another way as well. The principle our Lord states here is still at work. The true believers who make up the church have, and in due time we shall have abundance. Meanwhile a Christian world that has fallen away from the faith has not, and will lose even what it boasts of having.
Another writer brings the rule down to one believer's daily life:
If you do not go forward, you will go backward. If you are not making progress, you are falling behind. If you are not entering into what God has given you in His word, you are losing what you already have... Thanks be to the grace of God, this loss is not absolute and final. But we do lose the enjoyment of what is our own.
- Given — The disciples had already received Christ Himself, so He gave them more truth.
- Grasped — To "have" is to make truth a living possession. Truth held only outwardly is what a person merely seems to have.
- Gone — Israel had real privilege as a nation, but not the new thing Christ was opening. Refusing Him, it lost the standing it held.
- Governing — The rule still runs: light is a trust, and people are responsible for the light they have.
- Growing — There is no neutral ground. Not going forward in what God has given is already going backward — losing the enjoyment of it, not the security of it.
For this cause I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear nor understand;
Matthew 13 finds the Lord by the sea, teaching the crowds in stories. His disciples ask why He changed His way of speaking, and this verse gives His reason: the crowd could see and hear, yet took nothing in.
The change did not come out of nowhere.
This is the first time the word parable occurs in the New Testament. The disciples, struck by this way of teaching, asked Him: "Why do you speak to them in parables?" (v. 10). The Lord's answer is telling. It links the parables of the kingdom of heaven directly to the rejection of the king… This was a case of "judicial blindness". The Lord quotes Isaiah to show it: "their eyes they have closed" (v. 15). They could not see because they had refused to see.
That rejection changed God's dealings with the whole nation.
This rejection of Jesus, and the destruction of Jerusalem that followed, cut short all God's dealings with them as a nation for the time. They were set aside, and a new work began. Meanwhile judicial blindness falls on them, and the words of Isaiah the prophet come true. So He speaks to them in parables… Before this the Lord had not spoken in parables. But now He is the rejected One, and Israel is cut off for the time. None understand except those He instructs.
The verse describes eyes that work and still see nothing. So who closed them?
These people the Lord was speaking about had closed their eyes. It does not say God closed them. They closed them themselves, and so they did not receive the light of this new thing.
The order runs one way, and it still holds today.
Matthew 13:13-15 shows plainly that Israel's wilful blindness came before their judicial blindness… In His absolute justice, God has now confirmed that blindness for the whole time that grace is going out to the Gentiles.
The third failure in the verse is not about eyesight or hearing at all. The Greek word carries the idea of assembling things in the mind.
suniemi (from sun and iemi) means "to bring or set together"… It then stands for the soul's built-in capacity to do this. It joins the outward object to the inward sense. It is to weigh a thing, think it over closely, and so grasp its meaning. See Matthew 13:13-14 and the parallel passages.
Which failure gets named depends on who was listening:
Take people who did not have the word of God, whom the gospel would test when it went out to them in due time. For them the question was believing something they had never heard before. In Matthew the words go to a people who already had the word, and for them the great thing was to understand it. This they did not do.
A parable does not hide the truth from everyone. The same words land in two ways.
The same parable would be just like the cloud of Israel in an earlier day — full of light to those inside, full of darkness to those outside. The crisis with unbelieving Israel was so solemn that He did not intend to give clearer light… He kept it from the crowd because they had already rejected the clearest possible proofs that Jesus was the Messiah of God… They loved darkness rather than light. What is the good of a light to one who shuts his eyes?
Sharp intelligence is no help here; the difference lies elsewhere.
The design lies on the surface, so the opened eye can read it. Yet, clear as it is, "the wise and prudent" of this world do not see it… But it is always like this in God's teaching: to grasp the truth we must be taught by God. This is absolutely necessary. The keenest intellect is wholly unable to discern the mind of God.
The Lord had warned them first.
He had also warned them plainly. If they refused to hear Him, He would bring on them the sentence He went on to pronounce… So they were without excuse. No one can accuse the Lord Jesus of unfairness when He chose to begin speaking to them in parables. The Judge of the earth will always do right, even in judgment.
Yet the door stayed open to anyone who would ask.
If people would only admit their ignorance and ask in earnest, they too would be converted and find forgiveness of sins. Those who chose to stay ignorant would remain that way.
- Refusal first. They saw the clearest proofs and turned them down. Their own hands closed their eyes, and God's judgment then sealed them shut.
- Sentence next. They rejected the King, so His plain speech gave way to parables. He did not take the light away; He veiled it.
- Understanding is the issue. The failing word means to put things together and weigh them; a people who already held God's word would not do it.
- Two sides of one cloud. The same parable is light to those inside and darkness to those outside. Only those taught by God take its meaning.
- Still just, still open. No one can charge God with unfairness here. Anyone who admits ignorance and asks gets an answer, as the disciples did.