Matthew 13:33

Matthew 13:33

(with Luke 13:20-21 )

The Leaven.

This parable, like that of the mustard seed, relates to the marvellous increase of the kingdom of God; but while the last sets forth its outward visible manifestation, this declares its hidden working, its mysterious influence on that world which on all sides it touches.

I. By the leaven we are to understand the word of the kingdom, which word, in its highest sense, Christ Himself was. As the mustard seed, out of which a mighty tree should unfold itself, was the least of all seeds, so, too, the leaven is something apparently of slight account, but at the same time mighty in operation.

II. The leaven which is mingled with the lump, which acts on and coalesces with it, is at the same time different from it, for the woman took it from elsewhere to mingle it therein; and even such is the Gospel a kingdom not of this world, not the unfolding of any powers which already existed therein, a kingdom not rising, as the secular kingdoms out "of the earth" (Daniel 7:17 ), but a new power brought into the world from above; not a philosophy, which men have imagined, but a revelation which God has revealed. The Gospel of Christ was a new and quickening power, cast into the midst of an old and dying world; a centre of life, round which all the moral energies which still survived, and all which itself should awaken, might form and gather, by the help of which the world might constitute itself anew. This leaven is not merely mingled with, but hidden in, the mass which it renewed. For the true renovation, that which God effects, is ever from the inward to the outward; it begins in the inner spiritual world, though it does not end there; for it fails not to bring about, in good time, a mighty change also in the outward and visible world.

III. The promise of the parable has hitherto been realized only in a very imperfect measure; nor can we consider these words, "till the whole was leavened," as less than a prophecy of the final complete triumph of the Gospel, that it will diffuse itself through all nations and purify and ennoble all life.

R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables, p. 114.

References: Matthew 13:33 . H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 340; A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons, p. 64; J. R. Macduff, Parables of the Lake, p. 121; R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 133; Parker, Inner Life of Christ, vol. ii., p. 264.Matthew 13:38 . H. Allon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 227.