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.
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and without a parable he did not speak to them,
Jesus taught the crowds that day only in stories. Commentators ask two things of this verse: why He would not speak plainly to the people, and what these stories held that no one had said before.
This verse marks a turning point. Right after it the Lord leaves the crowds and teaches a smaller group indoors.
Notice a change now. The Lord stops speaking to the crowds, who had been in view up to this point. As it says, "All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, He said nothing to them without a parable." But now Jesus sends the crowds away and goes into the house. I want you to notice this, because it divides the parables and begins a new set. The parables that follow were not ones the crowds could see or enter into.
This way of speaking began at a set moment. The same words then did two opposite things at once.
The Jewish leaders had just gone as far as blaming His power on Beelzebub. They could go no further in wickedness. Leaders and people were so far from God that the blessings promised to Israel could not be brought in at that time. From that point the Saviour began to use this puzzling way of speaking. It was clear enough to the devout minority, but completely unclear to the godless mass. Like the cloud in Moses' day, which stood between Israel and the Egyptians, the parables were light to the one and darkness to the other.
A national judgment was coming. Even so, the parables did not remove the crowd's responsibility to receive Him.
The Lord of course knew this national judgment and its far-reaching results in advance. He told His disciples about it beforehand, for their instruction. He did not tell the crowds, except in parables only, because He was still presenting Himself to Israel, in both Galilee and Judea, as the promised King... His ministry in parables about the coming change in no way took away their responsibility to receive Him, since they did not understand.
Speaking in stories also sorted the listeners.
By this way of teaching He tested everyone in the vast crowd who heard Him, to see who wanted to learn. For we read: "He said nothing to them without a parable." Yet He spoke, as Mark alone tells us, "as they were able to hear it." His aim was the good of souls, and all who wanted the meaning had it.
Verse 35 backs the method with a psalm of Asaph. One writer notes what it was quoted for — and what it was not.
Verses 34 and 35 again stress the parable form of teaching. But now the quotation is from Psalm 78, written by Asaph — so we know he was a "prophet". It is not quoted for the blinding of the crowd, who rejected plain testimony when He gave it to them. It is quoted as holding things "kept secret" — hidden from the world's foundation. And so it indeed was, for a kingdom to be set up in this way.
These secrets were not buried in the older Scriptures for someone to dig out. No one had spoken them at all.
Verse 35 of this same chapter tells us what the parables contained. Long ago it had been written, "I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world." These truths about the kingdom of heaven were neither disclosed nor hidden in the Old Testament. They were secrets that God kept back until His Son came into the world. We have the divine nature, and the Spirit of God lives in us. So it is our privilege to understand the divine secrets spoken by the Son.
It also settles what Jesus means by "the kingdom of the heavens" in these parables.
Here the Lord says, "The kingdom of the heavens is like." Suppose He had in view the Old Testament kingdom promised to Israel. Then He could not have said that He uttered things hidden from the world's foundation. For the kingdom in the Old Testament is not a mystery. It is clearly revealed.
- Cause. The parables began after the leaders turned on Him. A national judgment was coming, so He no longer spoke plainly to the crowd.
- Effect. Like the cloud between Israel and Egypt, one and the same word gave light to the willing and darkness to the rest.
- Grace. The method was a test, not a barrier — He spoke as they could hear it, and anyone who wanted the meaning could have it.
- Content. Verse 35 points back to Asaph's psalm. These secrets were never told in the Old Testament. God held them back until the Son came to speak them.
- Consequence. These things were hidden from the world's foundation. So the kingdom in these parables is not the kingdom promised openly in the Old Testament. And the Spirit who lives in believers lets them understand it.