Another parable set he before them, saying, The kingdom of the heavens has become like a man sowing good seed in his field;
The Lord has just finished the parable of the sower. Now He tells a second story about seed — and this time He gives it a name: the kingdom of heaven. What does that phrase mean here, who is the man doing the sowing, and whose field is he working?
The words "another parable" mark a shift. The first parable was never called a picture of the kingdom of heaven. This one is. The difference lies in where the Sower stands.
In Matthew 16 our Lord speaks of building His church, or assembly, as something still future. In the same way the kingdom of the heavens is always said to be "at hand," never come… In the great cycle of parables in Matthew 13 the first is not a likeness of that kingdom, because the Sower is seen here on earth. When He carries on the work in the world from heaven, the kingdom of the heavens is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. While the Son of man is above, this is that kingdom in mystery, as the Gospel shows it. It will be that kingdom in open display, as the prophets show it, when He comes on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
The tense of the verb matters. Some parables in this chapter compare the kingdom to one feature at one moment. This one describes something that happened to it.
In Matthew 13:24 and Matthew 18:2 the words are "become like" or "was likened." These are historical likenesses, which the others are not. They are the form the kingdom took through the rejection of the Lord and His going on high. The rest (Matthew 13:31, 33, 44, 45, 47; Matthew 20:1) were only likenesses of certain special features at particular seasons.
The Lord later identifies the man as the Son of Man and the field as the world. Note the small word "his" — the ground was already His before He sowed anything in it.
The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He sowed it. It was good seed He sowed, and He sowed it in His field; and this is the world. He had a right to this field; it belonged to Him… The world was the field. The field belonged to Jesus, and He sowed good seed in it — something that had not been in it before, something planted that did not grow there naturally.
One nation had already refused Him. The field He now sows is much wider.
As He is the rejected but glorified Son of man, it is no longer the land of Israel, but the world. The needy, the guilty, the ruined world is the very object of His gracious care… Now, from the right hand of power, He sowed the good seed in His field, the world.
That definition also rules out a common misreading — that the field stands for the church.
The Son of man comes to sow the gospel, the word of God, in the world — not in the church. The church has received it already… He does not sow it in the church — that would only repeat what was done before — but in the world.
In the first parable the seed was the word. Here the Lord gives it another meaning.
Here the seed is not, strictly speaking, the word. It is the children of the kingdom, whom Christ brings into the world, and they have their life — their moral existence — from Him. We sow the word. But the great fact here is that the Son of man brings His own into the world. It is a work that He begins.
The verse records one sower and one quality of seed. Whatever spoils the field later comes from a second hand.
In the first of these we see the Lord begin the work. He has done so, of course, without any mixture of evil; the good grain is all good. The enemy does a separate work — he cannot do anything else… But there are two distinct works, and the two stay distinct until the end.
- Field — the world, and it already belonged to Christ. Not the church, and no longer the land of Israel: the guilty world itself is the object of His care.
- Sower — the Son of Man, rejected on earth and now working from heaven. That is why this parable, unlike the first one, is a likeness of the kingdom.
- Seed — not the word here but people. They are the children of the kingdom, brought into the world by Christ, and their life comes from Him.
- Kingdom — "was likened" is history, not theory. This is the shape the kingdom took when men refused its King and He went on high: hidden now, in open display when He comes in glory.
- Purity — every seed the Lord sowed was good; the two works, His and the enemy's, stay distinct to the end.
but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed darnel amongst the wheat, and went away.
Between the sowing and the harvest comes a second sowing — at night, by an enemy, while the guards sleep. Why is the Christian world such a mixture of true and false, and who is to blame?
The parable first settles blame. A hostile hand caused the mixture, and it is new — it began only after Christ sowed.
In this parable of the weeds, Satan was awake and men were sleeping. The result is the mixture of the evil and the good. This is now the work of the devil, mixing evil with good in this world. We can still say "an enemy has done this." Whether we can fix it is another question. But settle this as a first principle. If we see evil and good mixed in Christian profession, this is the work of Satan. And remember: the weeds are not simply unconverted men. There were plenty of those before the Lord came. The weeds are the work of Satan that followed His coming.
The enemy did not force the door. He found it unguarded. Older translations read "while men slept," and that sleep was a failure in Christ's servants.
The Son of Man has sown good seed in His field. Christianity began with many people who were true sons of the Kingdom. Satan soon set to work to corrupt the new testimony. He achieved his purpose by introducing false brothers among the true. This happened "while men slept." Christ's servants grew careless about their Master's interests and dull in their spiritual perception. So they let into the outward fellowship of Christianity men they should never have accepted: unconverted people, sons of the wicked one (Jude 4).
Older translations read "tares"; the ESV has "weeds." Asked what the word means, one commentator corrects two mistakes at once.
The word beyond doubt means "darnel"… The "tare" or vetch is not a harmful weed at all. It is a wholesome grain, useful to the farmer in spring and winter for feeding his cattle. The two plants are as distinct as the two words. Since man began to observe, there is not the smallest evidence that wheat ever turned into either. That is a mere and baseless fancy… Writers old and new make an even plainer mistake. They overlook our Lord's interpretation of "the field" as "the world." To take it as "the church" opens the door to confusion and evil without end.
The enemy did not sow bad wheat. He sowed a different plant — and the difference shows in what it produces.
The enemy cannot do his work by sowing seed of the same kind. He sows darnel in the middle of it, and goes his way… Darnel is a poisonous rye. The Jews thought it was wheat gone bad. Its grain is black and bitter. So it is clear that we have here not just false profession, but error and its fruit. At first it deceives, and looks not very different from the truth. In time it grows into complete opposition.
The enemy leaves as quietly as he came. The field looks unchanged, and the harm stays hidden for a while.
How little men realise the tireless persistence of the enemy of souls! It is while men sleep that he does the mischief. It may not show itself for a time, but he has sown it, and it will soon spring up. Not even the good seed being there holds Satan back… You may not see the weeds at once, but they are still in the ground, and they take up much of it.
Can the damage be undone? One writer says the parable settles that question — and the answer shapes what believers should do now.
In this parable the Lord gives His judgment on the point. The evil Satan did in the field where the good seed had been sown would not be repaired. It would continue until the harvest… Keep this in mind. Our separation from the evil, and our enjoyment of the presence of Christ with the "two or three," is quite another thing from claiming to set the whole thing up again now that the evil has come in. The first is both a duty and a privilege; the second is the fruit of pride.
- Sleep — human carelessness gave the enemy his opening; the servants slept while he worked.
- Sowing — not an open attack, but a false crop: deceptive at first, fully hostile later.
- Silence — he "went his way," so the harm stayed hidden for a time; unseen is not the same as undone.
- Spread — the field is the world, not the church. Reading it as the church, one writer warns, breeds endless confusion.
- Separation, not surgery — no one will repair the mixture before the harvest. Our task is to stay separate from the evil, not to uproot it.
But when the blade shot up and produced fruit, then appeared the darnel also.
The picture is of a field that looked fine until it grew. Verse 26 is the moment the copy can no longer hide. It raises three questions: why the weeds showed up only now, what they really are, and what a servant should do about them.
Some translations call this weed a tare or a darnel. It copies wheat closely enough to pass, and only one thing exposes it.
Good and evil stand side by side. Here is a stalk of wheat, there is a blade of the tare; both grow side by side. They look alike; they resemble one another on the outside. But you will never get any good fruit from a tare. The good wheat will produce the food that keeps us alive; the tare will not. Except in bearing fruit, the two look very much alike.
That likeness is why the Lord points to the fruit and not to the young blade.
I think these tares — darnel is the better word — are very much like wheat. That would be why the Lord calls attention to the fruit.
One writer reads the growing blade as the spread of Christianity itself. On that reading the weeds were not sown late; they only showed late.
Some time later, "when the plants came up and bore grain" — when Christianity began to spread fast across the earth — "then the weeds appeared also." But clearly the weeds were sown almost as soon as the good seed was.
These weeds are not a small fringe group. One writer describes both what they are and how far they spread.
At first you could not tell them apart. Before long the difference was plain. For the darnel are the sons of wicked ones. You find them all over the field, the world of Christian profession. That is Christendom, to say nothing worse, and worse evils appeared early on as well. But these are bad enough, and they open the door to every evil from below. The darnel are those who hold false teaching and those who live lawlessly among the baptised.
Once the two grew together, no one could clear the field. That was not because God had lost control of it.
"When the plants came up ... then the weeds appeared also." This was the successful result of the enemy's work; they came up together. At first there was no outward difference; they were all mixed up together. For the present state of things there was no cure. God did not intend to set the world right at once. Man proved a faithless steward. He was careless, he let the enemy in, and weeds overran the field. But this did not frustrate God's plans.
Some have tried to pull the weeds out anyway.
In fact, the professing church has sometimes tried this — getting rid of those it considers heretics. These ambitious efforts have put many true Christians to death, while the tares carried on as strongly as ever.
This leaves a question about correction inside the church.
So we can see this. When the Lord forbade His servants to pull up the darnel, He in no way denied the discipline that the Holy Spirit requires in the church (1 Cor. 5). Under the picture of gathering the darnel out of the field, what He forbids is the wiping out of wicked people who profess His name. Experience agrees. How often His disobedient servants have rooted out the good seed, on the plea of getting rid of the darnel! Grace is to reign now.
The weeds can take over a believer's attention. The cure is short.
If we were more occupied with the wheat we should not be so distressed about the darnel.
- Sown early. The weeds went in almost as soon as the good seed did; they were present long before anyone saw them.
- Seen late. Darnel imitates wheat. The difference stayed hidden until fruit came, which is why the Lord points to fruit and not to looks.
- Named plainly. What appeared were not weak believers but the sons of wicked ones. False profession spread right across the field.
- Left standing. No human hand may clear them out. Efforts to do so have killed real Christians, while the weeds grew on untouched.
- Judged at harvest. Grace reigns now, and the field waits for the Lord. Until then, be occupied with the wheat instead of distressed by the darnel.
And the bondmen of the householder came up and said to him, Sir, hast thou not sown good seed in thy field? whence then has it darnel?
The crop is up. The mixture is now plain to see. The workers do the one thing the parable never blames them for: they take the trouble straight to their master. Their question is not a complaint but a puzzle — the field is his, the sowing was his, so where did the rest of this come from?
The men in the story know what they are looking at. They can tell one plant from the other, and the sight shocks them.
At the beginning the servants could tell the good seed from the weeds, and they told them apart perfectly well. It astonished them to find weeds in a field where their master had been sowing. Yet it was not their place to carry out the judgment on the weeds. They worked near the master, caring for the good condition of the field that belonged to him. But only judgment could cleanse that field.
That nearness is a privilege. They belong to the household, so they have somewhere to take their distress.
The household is a circle of even closer intimacy. Those who belong to it are attached to the person of the King. They know what suits Him, and it troubles them deeply to find that in His field He had been wronged. They also have access to Him. They can bring their concerns to Him and receive His assurance that the evil will not win.
The servants' first instinct is to clear the master's name. Everything from His hand was good. The enemy did the damage, not the master.
He truly laid the foundation for the Kingdom. He laid that foundation and sowed the good seed in His field. Now His enemy is at work, sowing bad seed, just as He foretold. Do not think of the devil so much as your enemy. He is that. But he is the enemy of your precious Saviour. As it says, the Son of Man's enemy came and invaded His field and sowed the bad seed.
The question comes late because the damage stayed hidden. The weed in the story looks like wheat.
Satan soon set to work to corrupt the new testimony. He achieved his purpose by introducing false brothers among the true. This happened "while men slept." Christ's servants grew so careless about their Master's interests, and so dull in their spiritual perception, that they let into the outward fellowship of Christianity men they should never have accepted. These are called, not "tares," but "darnel" — a worthless weed very like wheat in its early growth.
Having asked where the weeds came from, the servants offer to pull them out. Their eagerness earns a rebuke.
The servants were eager enough to remove the bad effects, but He reproves them. He warns them about their effort to correct the evils brought into the field. Using the name of the Lord to reform the "Christianised" world only roots up the good as well as the bad, if not more so.
What replaces that ambition is a simpler assignment, with the clearing-out handed to others at another time.
In that field the servants must not take on the job of destroying the weeds among the wheat. Care for the true, not judgment of the false, is their business. Others — the angels — will deal with the children of the wicked one in the time of harvest.
This refusal answers one question, not every question about evil.
Keep in mind that the parable has nothing to do with discipline among God's children. It deals with the evil that Satan brought into the whole Christian era itself "while men slept." Can that evil be cured, and can the era be put back on its original footing? The Lord settles that question plainly and with authority: the answer is no.
- Sown. Only good seed came from the Master's hand. The servants' question takes that for granted, and the parable never takes it back.
- Slept. The weeds got in while the servants slept. Darnel looks like wheat at first, so the damage showed only when the crop came up.
- Seen. These servants can tell the mixture apart, but seeing the evil is not permission to judge it. They are near the Master, so they bring the trouble to Him.
- Stopped. The Master refuses their offer to weed the field. Human hands pulling out the false tear up the true wheat as well.
- Separated. The angels do the sorting at harvest. Until then the servants' work is care for the true, not judgment of the false.
And he said to them, A man [that is] an enemy has done this. And the bondmen said to him, Wilt thou then that we should go and gather it [up]?
The servants ask their master where the weeds in his field came from, and his answer names an enemy. Then they offer to pull the weeds out — and the answer they get has shaped, and damaged, much of church history.
The master does not blame the seed, the soil, or the servants. He names a person behind the mixture:
In this parable of the tares we find that Satan was awake and men were sleeping. The result is a mixture of the evil and the good. This is now the work of the devil, mixing evil with good in this world. We can still say, "an enemy has done this." Being able to remedy it is another thing. But let us settle this as a first principle. If we see evil and good mixed in the profession of Christianity, this is the work of Satan. And remember, the tares are not simply unconverted men. There were plenty of those before the Lord came. The tares are the work of Satan after His coming.
The enemy's method was not open attack but imitation. The weed named here is one that passes for the real thing:
The method was to put a counterfeit seed in the field. The darnel looks, in its seed, like the wheat. When it springs up it cannot be told apart from the wheat, yet it is a poisonous weed. The darnel stands for the lie the devil puts into the field. It is evil doctrine, a counterfeit of the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. The denial of the Deity of our Lord, the denial of the resurrection, the denial of the inspiration of the Bible — all belong to this darnel seed. It makes itself felt at the very beginning of this Christian age.
The servants at once propose a cure. Their instinct is the one men have followed ever since:
The Son of God looked down at His field, which He had sown with good seed, and found it filled with tares. Yet even in that position, we find it is not the wisdom of God to set the world right by plucking up the tares. The servants' offer to go and gather them up follows man's wisdom. Man would set the world right again by plucking up and rooting out heretics, purging out the wickedness as he desires.
Many read the Lord's refusal as a ban on all church discipline. Commentators reject that reading:
Yet this does not make the field the church. The field is the world. Only those who understand neither are so deceived as to confuse the two. So when the Lord forbade His servants to uproot the darnel, He in no way denied the discipline the Holy Spirit demands in the church (1 Cor. 5). What He forbids, under the figure of gathering up the darnel from the field, is the wiping out of wicked people who claim to be Christians. Experience agrees with this. How often His disobedient servants have rooted out the good seed under the excuse of getting rid of the darnel! Grace is to reign now.
The warning was not theoretical. History shows what happens when servants ignore it:
People who claimed to be Christ's servants handed supposed heretics and other spiritual offenders over to be punished by force. They did just what the Lord forbids for the present time. The value of our Lord's warning became clear when the Waldenses and others were persecuted to death. Here blind zeal tried to get rid of the tares, and rooted out at least some wheat. It is not for the servants, but for the angels of the Son of Man, to carry out destructive judgment on Christians in name only.
The Lord's no leaves the servants real work:
The tares are not simply wicked men — pagans; these have not been sown among the good grain. The tares are a particular evil sown by the enemy after Jesus Christ had sown the good seed. So what we may call heresy — corruption of the truth in any way or to any degree — will remain until the harvest. The evil which Satan has produced by a corrupted religion will exist until the end. We should aim all our efforts — not at plucking out the tares, but at gathering in the children of God, bringing together the co-heirs of Jesus Christ.
- Enemy. The mix of good and evil in what calls itself Christianity has one source: not a failure in the seed, but an enemy sowing while men slept.
- Counterfeit. What he sowed imitates wheat: evil doctrine that looks like the real thing, yet is poison.
- Question. The servants' offer to pull the weeds is human wisdom: fix the world by removing the bad people from it.
- Refusal. The Lord says no. The field is the world, not the church. He forbids wiping false Christians out of the world; He never forbids discipline inside the church.
- Assignment. Uprooting waits for the angels at harvest. Grace reigns now, so the servants' work is to gather in God's children, the co-heirs of Jesus Christ.
But he said, No; lest [in] gathering the darnel ye should root up the wheat with it.
The owner's answer holds two things: a "no" to the servants who wanted to clean the field, and a reason that says more about the wheat than about the weeds. Why would the owner of the field leave a spoiled crop standing, and what does that leave His servants free to do?
The weed looks like the crop while it grows. And the servants' plan was not careful sorting: in a real field, weeding means killing.
The weed sown among the wheat is darnel — a worthless weed very like wheat in its early growth... To gather out weeds is to kill them. In the same way, the only way to weed the wheatfield of Christendom is to put to death everyone who falsely claims Christ's name. The Lord expressly forbids this, and for a serious reason: erratic servants would be in danger of rooting up true wheat by mistake.
They asked to do a job they could not do. Two things were missing.
The servants are not capable of doing this. Their weakness and carelessness caused the mixture, and it is such that in gathering out the tares they would root up the wheat as well. To carry out their purpose they would need discernment and the practical power to separate, and both are missing... Their service is with the good. The work of purging Christendom from them was not in their province... The execution of judgment on the wicked in this world does not belong to the servants of Christ. He will accomplish it by the angels of His power.
The field in this parable is the world, not the church. So this "no" does not stop the church from dealing with evil among its own members.
Yet this does not make the field the church. The field is the world. Those who confuse the two understand neither, and are deceived. So we may see something here. When the Lord forbade His servants to uproot the darnel, He in no way denies the discipline the Holy Spirit demands in the church (1 Cor. 5). Under His picture of gathering up the darnel from the field, He forbids one thing: wiping out the wicked who profess His name.
Another writer answers those who use this parable to keep evildoers in the assembly.
Some argue like this: the tares and the wheat are to grow together in the world, so the assembly may knowingly allow evildoers to stay. That argument sets the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 13 in direct opposition to the teaching of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 5. It cannot stand for a moment.
The danger is not just theory. Religious leaders have often done the weeding themselves, and the result has been the one the Lord warned about.
Some claimed to be Christ's servants and handed over supposed heretics or other spiritual offenders for outward punishment. They did exactly what He forbids for the present time... Our Lord's warning proved its value when the Waldenses and others were persecuted to death. Blind zeal tried to get rid of the tares, and it uprooted at least some wheat.
The reason for the refusal is the safety of the good grain. A spoiled field shows patience, not indifference.
No, says the Lord, "lest you root up the wheat along with them." See here the tender care the Lord takes of His own! He would rather let the tares grow than have one single ear of wheat hurt, or pulled up before it was ripe. He would rather hold back the judgment on the wicked than have the little body of true believers broken up in its infancy... The children of God now stand in grace, and only grace must they show; they have nothing at all to do with judgment on earth.
This "no" does not excuse the weeds or leave them alone forever. Only the timing changes, and the hands that do the work.
Yet the Lord fully recognises the coming of the judgment. It is only delayed, not set aside. In the meantime He allows evil to show itself. At harvest time He will say to the reapers, "Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
(Where these writers say "tares" or "darnel," the ESV renders the word "weeds.")
- Request — The servants asked to pull the weeds out of the field. Pulling weeds means killing them, and the Lord says no.
- Reason — They could not tell wheat from weed, and they had no power to separate them. The wheat would come up with the weeds.
- Restraint — The ban covers the field, and the field is the world. Inside the church, the discipline the Holy Spirit demands still stands.
- Record — When servants took the weeding into their own hands, they uprooted wheat: believers persecuted and killed.
- Result — The judgment waits for the sake of the wheat; it is not cancelled. At harvest the reapers act, and until then the servants show grace.
Suffer both to grow together unto the harvest, and in time of the harvest I will say to the harvestmen, Gather first the darnel, and bind it into bundles to burn it; but the wheat bring together into my granary.
The servants wanted to pull the weeds out; the householder said no, and set a date instead. That "no" raises two questions. Where is this field, and who may do the pulling?
Everything turns on where this field is. One writer says the parable's own explanation settles it, and that missing this has misled sincere people:
Scripture never speaks of the good seed or the weeds as sown in the church. They are sown in the world, for the field is the world. Many good men have gone astray by failing to notice this. The Lord told His servants not to root up the weeds, but to let them grow among the wheat till harvest time. Some have wrongly thought from this that evil men were to be tolerated in the church. This the Lord never said, and it is never contemplated in Scripture.
Why refuse? Because of what weeding a field would actually require:
These weeds are darnel — a worthless plant that looks very like wheat while it is young. To gather out weeds is to kill them. In the same way, the only way to weed the wheatfield of Christendom is to put to death everyone who falsely claims Christ's name. The Lord expressly forbids this, for a serious reason. Erratic servants would be in danger of rooting up true wheat by mistake. Christendom has not heeded our Lord's prohibition. Zealous churchmen, Catholic and Protestant, have from time to time tried to wipe from the earth those they judged to be weeds. In doing so they fell into the very blunder the Saviour warned against. Some of God's best wheat has been destroyed in the process.
How does this verse fit with the command to put a wicked person out of the church? One answer sets three passages side by side and gives each its own sphere:
The first speaks of evil people who claim the Lord's name. They are not ours to wipe out. They live in the field of the world until judgment falls at the end of the age. The second commands the wicked man to be at once put out of the church. The third provides for the day when the professing church approves vessels fit only for dishonour. The faithful soul is bound to separate from them.
Leaving the weeds alone is not the same as doing nothing. The order redirects the work of the Lord's servants in this age:
This is the Lord's verdict. Satan has done evil in the field where the good seed of the word was sown. That evil will remain and ripen there until the end. The Lord plainly declares that the efforts of Christians will not take the evil away. It stays until the day of judgment... We must keep in mind that now, in God's dealings with us and through us, we have to do with grace and not with judgment. We have not to judge the world. Suppose we could say with certainty of someone, he is a child of the devil. That is the very reason he is outside our authority. He is a weed. We have to do with grace. We cannot lay a hand on the evil Satan has produced. But we can act as instruments of grace, for God permits us to sow good seed.
One writer draws attention to what gets bundled and what does not:
"At harvest time" implies a certain period taken up with the various processes of gathering in. Nothing says the wheat must be bound in bundles to be taken to heaven. There is no hint of any special preparatory work about the saints before they are taken up. But there is such a dealing of God with the weeds. The angels are to gather the weeds in bundles before the Lord clears them out of the field.
The small word "to" carries this. Another writer reads it as purpose rather than immediate action: the bundles are tied "ready to burn" or "with a view to burning them," and the burning itself is not mentioned until the Lord explains the parable.
One writer fills out the last clause from the scene in 1 Thessalonians 4:
We know very well what this is, and how many joyful hopes are packed into that short sentence. The scene is pictured for us in 1 Thessalonians 4. The descent of the Lord into the air; the shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of God; the resurrection of the dead in Christ... the change of the living saints throughout the earth; the meeting and the welcome; the "always with the Lord" from then on. All these are the parts and features of what these words picture to us: "Gather the wheat into My barn."
- Field. The Lord defines the ground as the world, not the church. Misuse of this verse starts by swapping those two words.
- Forbidden. He bans the killing of those who falsely claim His name, because zealous hands would tear up real wheat with them — as history has proved.
- Fenced. The two spheres stay in harmony. The wicked stay in the world until judgment, yet the church must put the wicked person out at once.
- Grace. We cannot undo Satan's sowing. Our task now is not to judge the world but to sow good seed as instruments of grace.
- Gathered. At harvest the weeds are bundled where they stand. Only the wheat leaves the field, into the Lord's own barn.
Another parable set he before them, saying, The kingdom of the heavens is like a grain of mustard [seed] which a man took and sowed in his field;
The Lord's third parable in this chapter turns from seed sown in soil to seed that grows far beyond its own size. Readers have long asked what that growth means: the gospel's triumph, or a warning about what Christianity would become in the world?
The Lord tells His followers in advance about the gap between how small the kingdom starts and how big it becomes.
The Lord points out ahead of time the surprising contrast between how tiny it was when first sown and the height it would soon reach. He is not passing judgment here on its inner or moral nature. From the start He shows what the whole world can see once it happens. It is one of "the mysteries (or secrets) of the kingdom of the heavens," but secrets given for the disciples to know.
The chapter itself names the man and the field. The size of the seed matches the size of the start.
The field is the world (v. 38). The man who sowed is the Lord Jesus. The black mustard seed is tiny and unimportant. That makes it a fitting picture of how the kingdom began in its present form, seen from the outside. It began with only a few people. There were the 11 disciples who had followed the Lord Jesus, plus around 120 believers with them in the upper room (Acts 1). Afterwards, we see how the gospel spread and many accepted the Lord Jesus and became part of that kingdom.
Verse 32 says the plant grows larger than all the garden plants and then becomes a tree. That shift is the hinge of the parable. It describes something that never happens in a garden.
The Lord Jesus then describes growth that does not match what happens in nature. The black mustard seed does not grow into a big tree. It grows no further than a bush, and certainly not into a tree in which birds build their nests. Of course, the Lord Jesus knew this very well so He drew this illustration with a special purpose behind it. The teaching lies hidden in the contrast between what happens in nature and what He describes.
Scripture explains its own symbols, and elsewhere a great tree stands for a great earthly power.
This chapter does not explain both of these symbols, but God's book does, and it alone gives us the key to this parable... In Ezekiel 31:3-9 we find the Assyrian power compared to a great tree, a mighty cedar in Lebanon... Assyria is clearly a vast power here, because great nations lived under its shadow.
The same picture fits Christianity as a public movement. It began unnoticed and gained a very different kind of influence.
The mustard tree is the profession of Christianity. It began in the humblest possible way. In time it changed its character so completely that it became a great political force in the earth. Here, as elsewhere in Scripture, the tree is the symbol of worldly power (Ezekiel 17:3; Daniel 4:22).
A few verses earlier the Lord had already said what the birds stand for. He uses the same word in both places.
The Lord Himself tells us, in the previous parable, who the "birds of the air" are, for He uses the same word in both places. As the sower sowed the seed, the birds came and ate it. The Lord explains this. "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart." ... So this, and not the conversion of the world, is what this parable says will result in the present age.
Not everyone reads it this way. Many take the growing tree as a promise that the church will fill the earth. Commentators here reply that the church is not what this seed pictures.
Suppose the Lord had meant His church by this mustard seed, which becomes a tree and a roosting place for birds. Suppose the tree really is the church, which is His body. Then this parable would flatly contradict what He and the Holy Spirit teach elsewhere about the church on earth, its mission and its future.
Commentators differ here. Kelly says the Lord is not commenting on moral character at all. Others read the tree and the birds as a clear warning.
The parable of the leaven follows straight after this one. The two work as a pair.
The parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven carry on the parable of the Weeds. They show the bad thing in the Christian world in its two forms: outward worldly greatness and inward spiritual corruption.
- Sown by Christ — the man is the Lord Jesus and the field is the world. The seed is the tiny start: a handful of disciples.
- Grown past nature — a garden plant that becomes a tree is not normal growth. The lesson sits in that gap.
- Grown into power — in Scripture a spreading tree pictures a great earthly power, like Assyria in Ezekiel.
- Grown into shelter for birds — earlier in the chapter the Lord said the birds are the evil one snatching the word away.
- Read it with the leaven — one shows greatness spreading outward, the other corruption working inward. Size is not success.
which is less indeed than all seeds, but when it is grown is greater than herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of heaven come and roost in its branches.
This is the third parable in the chapter, and it follows a tiny seed all the way to a tree with birds nesting in it. Commentators read that outcome as a picture of Christian profession grown into a power on earth.
The seed matters because of its size. One writer ties it to how the whole thing started: a small group of ordinary people in Jerusalem.
The mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds. We saw this when we were looking at Acts chapter 2. About a hundred and twenty disciples of the Lord were together in Jerusalem — fishermen, simple people. What could such a small company do in the world? In men's eyes they were "the smallest of all seeds." Yet they began at once to grow in strength and increase in numbers. They kept multiplying until in time they became a great tree.
The wording is worth a close look. The plant is first ranked with the garden plants, then it crosses into another class altogether. Older translations say "herbs" where the ESV says "garden plants."
In Matthew 13 it says that when it has grown it is "larger than all the garden plants," yet it "becomes a tree." This reads as if its normal class was that of a large herb, but by some mysterious means it became a tree.
Another writer makes that oddity the key to the whole parable.
The black mustard seed does not grow into a big tree. It grows no further than a bush, and certainly not into a tree in which birds build their nests. Of course, the Lord Jesus knew this very well, so He drew this illustration with a special purpose behind it. The teaching lies hidden in the contrast between what happens in nature and what He describes.
The image is not new. In Scripture a spreading tree pictures a kingdom or ruler. Writers use those passages as the key.
In the parable of the tree we see what the kingdom of heaven becomes in worldly greatness. That this is not what God intended is clear from the enemy's work in the parable before it… Turn now to Daniel 4. Here Nebuchadnezzar himself appears as a great tree. The whole power of the kingdom rested in him alone. More cases could be added, but these are enough to show that Scripture uses a tree to picture an earthly power, for good or ill.
Commentators differ on how dark the picture is. Some see the shelter as what any great power provides, with no verdict attached:
The kingdom itself is like a little grain of mustard seed that becomes a great tree. In the Old Testament that is the symbol of something raised high in the world, of a political power… The birds nesting in its branches stand for the protection it gives. Compare Daniel 4:12. This is the public appearance of the kingdom system as it has been for ages: here is no judgment.
Others take the birds as a warning, since the same chapter has already said who they are.
This is ominous. In the parable of the Sower, the birds stand for the agents of the devil (vv. 4, 19). The mustard tree is the profession of Christianity. It began in the humblest way possible. But in time it changed its character so completely that it became a great political force in the earth.
A common reading treats the growing tree as the church spreading across the world. One writer rejects that.
The mustard seed springs up in the field — and do not forget that the field is the world. It roots deeper and deeper in the earth and spreads in this unnatural way, making room for birds. That is the picture of something quite different. It shows us a system rooted in the earth, a system aiming at greatness in the world… The Lord never meant His church to be rooted and grounded in the field, the world.
One writer names the point in history when the change showed itself.
In less than 300 years the emperor Constantine the Great (AD 272–337) made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. That is the very reason why many professed to become Christians without having new life. They were Christians in name only. There was no reality behind it. This is true of many even today.
The same picture appears in a promise, and there the outcome is different.
He used the same picture to assure the believing heart that in His mercy all will be reversed in the day to come. He will plant the tender twig on a high and lofty mountain, the height of Israel.
- Seed. The start was tiny: about a hundred and twenty ordinary people in Jerusalem.
- Growth. In nature a mustard plant stays a bush. The tree in the parable is growth no one would expect.
- Tree. In Scripture a spreading tree pictures an earthly power. Nebuchadnezzar appears as one in Daniel 4.
- Birds. Earlier in this chapter the birds snatch away the seed. So some read their nesting as shelter for the enemy's agents. Others see only the protection a great power gives.
- Reversal. This tree grew into something God never intended. The tree He plants in the day to come will be all of His mercy.
He spoke another parable to them The kingdom of the heavens is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until it had been all leavened.
This is the fourth parable Jesus told the crowd by the sea, and one of the most disputed. Two questions decide its meaning: what does leaven stand for, and what is the meal it is hidden in?
Jesus names His subject in the verse itself, and that name limits the picture.
The Lord's parable of the woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal (Matt. 13:33) was not a picture of the church or assembly, but of the kingdom of the heavens, as the verse itself says. So it concerns Christendom — the whole mass of people who profess to be Christian. In this it agrees with the companion parables of the field and the tree. In both of those there are foreign elements too, the tares and the birds, just as here the leaven is hidden in the meal.
Jesus did not invent the image. His audience had lived with a standing command about leaven for centuries.
Exodus 12:15 and Lev. 2:11 are enough to show how the Saviour's Jewish audience must have understood the picture of leaven. For fifteen hundred years God had commanded them to keep leaven out of their houses during their religious festivals. He also forbade them to mix it into any offering made by fire. It is therefore the emblem of what is evil, and the Saviour often used it that way in His teaching. Again and again He rebuked the leaven of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees and of Herod. These stand in turn for ritualism, rationalism and worldliness.
Leaven and seed do not work the same way.
It shows how a doctrine, or creed, makes a certain measured area like itself, until the whole of it is soaked through. That is very different from seed, which carries life in it and bears fruit. Seed is a fitting and frequent picture in Scripture. Leaven is never used that way anywhere else. From the earliest days it stood for a corruption that works and spreads, as at the Passover. 1 Cor. 5 applies it with authority to evil that must be purged out. Leavening works by fermentation. It makes dough rise, and makes it more pleasant to the natural taste.
The measured meal is not background detail. It points back to an offering in Leviticus.
The "three measures of meal" are the "fine flour" of the meal offering. No leaven was ever to go into it (Lev. 2:11). The essential point is that the woman is doing what was expressly forbidden. This at once brings the picture of the kingdom into line with what has gone before. The process of decline we see in the first three parables simply takes on a more decidedly evil character in the fourth. For the meal offering is Christ the bread of life, the food of the priestly people of God. Mixing in the leaven means Christ as that food is adulterated — and it is the woman, the professing church, who does it.
Why did the woman hide the leaven? One writer points to her motive.
The suggestion in Matt. 13:33 is that the woman did not hide the leaven because she wanted a hiding place for it. She hid it because she meant to leaven the meal — and in the end the whole of it was affected.
Many take the leaven to be the gospel spreading through the world. One writer traces where that reading goes wrong.
Nothing is clearer than that "leaven," from its first mention in Exodus 12, has the uniform meaning of evil. The only passage claimed as an exception is Matt. 13:33-34. That argument comes from one mistake: confusing the gospel with the kingdom of heaven. It takes the leaven to mean the gospel and its effects in this world, as if the gospel will keep working until its blessed power and influence have spread through the whole world. But is some special evil meant by leaven? We think not. Any spiritual evil that might corrupt the saints or the church may rightly be called leaven.
In 1 Corinthians 5, leaven must be purged out. So why does the Lord let it run "till it was all leavened"? Two spheres are in view.
The Son of man will, by and by, do in His kingdom what His servants are told to do now in the assembly. In the Gospel leaven is allowed to remain and spread; in the Epistles it is to be purged out so that it may not spread. In the Gospel the leaven is hidden; in the Epistle its presence is known.
- Symbol. Leaven means corruption at work. Scripture uses it that way from Exodus 12 onward, and Jesus used it of the Pharisees, the Sadducees and Herod.
- Sphere. The verse says "kingdom of heaven," not church. It covers everyone who professes the Christian name, like the tares in the field and the birds in the tree.
- Substance. The three measures are the fine flour of the meal offering. That flour pictures Christ as the food of God's people, so leaven in it means Christ adulterated as that food.
- Secrecy. The woman hid it on purpose. It spreads through everything without being seen at work.
- Sentence. In the assembly, leaven is to be purged out. In the kingdom, the Lord lets it run its course until the Son of Man Himself deals with it.