🌱 Parables of the Bible — Unit 8: The Kingdom Parables

Orientation

In Unit 7 we studied the parable of the sower, the parable that teaches us how to hear all the others. Matthew 13 places the sower first in a collection of seven parables about the kingdom of heaven, and then adds six more: the wheat and the tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and the dragnet. Matthew arranges them carefully. The chapter comes right after the religious leaders accused Jesus of casting out demons by Beelzebub (Matthew 12:24), and from this point Jesus begins teaching the crowds in parables.

These parables answer questions Jesus' followers were surely asking. If the kingdom of God has really come, why is evil still growing alongside good? Why does the kingdom look so small? And is it worth the cost of following Jesus? The answers are simple and profound: the kingdom grows mixed with evil until the harvest; it begins small but becomes great; and it is worth everything we have.

I. The Wheat and the Tares: Growing Together Until the Harvest (Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43)

A farmer sowed good seed in his field, "but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way" (13:25). The tare was probably bearded darnel, a weed that looks almost exactly like wheat until the heads form. When the servants discovered it, they asked whether they should pull it up. "No," the master said, "lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest" (13:29–30). At harvest time the darnel would be separated and burned.

Jesus explains that He is the sower, "the field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one," the enemy is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age (13:37–39). Evil has not been driven out of one town or even one home on earth. Even among Jesus' twelve, one denied Him and another betrayed Him.

Careful students should notice an interpretive question. Jesus says the field is the world, not the church, and the parable teaches that God will not separate the righteous from the wicked in this age. In church history the parable was sometimes used to argue that the church should never discipline its members. Most interpreters answer that other passages clearly call for church discipline (Matthew 18:15–17; 1 Corinthians 5), so this parable is not a ban on correction. It is a warning against trying to do what only God can do: to judge hearts and make the final separation. A tare can only be recognized by one who looks on the inside. When I was a boy hoeing corn, I would sometimes find a weed growing right next to a stalk. Trying to cut the weed, how many times I cut the corn too!

The weeds grow not only in the world but inside the church and inside each heart. A woman on a television talk show once explained that she had carried on a long affair with a married man. When someone raised the question of morality, she protested, "I am a Christian, but my personal life and my religion don't have anything to do with one another. God wants me to be happy." Tares can speak the language of wheat. And yet the opposite is also true. When Jesus met the woman at the well in Samaria, a seemingly hopeless wreck of a life, He saw something growing in her: a longing for living water, like a little stalk of wheat struggling for life among the weeds (John 4). Only God sees the heart clearly. I used to think I could tell an honest man from a dishonest one, but after years of lending small sums to strangers and almost never being repaid, I have learned that my judgment is not as accurate as I thought. The Devil can make his tares look so much like wheat that they sometimes look better than the wheat. They just do not make very good bread.

The parable also carries a solemn warning. Tares may attend church, teach, and pray in public. But the harvest will reveal them. "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). A counterfeit bill may pass from hand to hand and buy many things, but when it reaches the bank, it is exposed and taken out of circulation. There is an old legend of a man in ancient China who got a place in the emperor's orchestra by pretending to play the flute. When the emperor announced that every musician would play a solo, the man could not face the music. Pretending may last a long time, but it will not last forever.

So the question is personal: am I wheat? The answer is not found by comparing ourselves with others but by turning to Christ: "Whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved" (Romans 10:13). Remember too that whatever we sow, we will reap. A Salvation Army paper once told of a bitter tenant farmer who learned he was losing his lease. In anger, he scattered the seeds of the worst weeds he could find all over the clean fields. The next morning the owner told him the plans had changed and he could renew his lease after all. "Oh, Lord," he cried, "what a fool I've been!" He would spend years pulling up the weeds he had sown himself.

II. The Mustard Seed: Small Beginnings (Matthew 13:31–32)

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches" (13:31–32). Mustard greens are a favorite dish in Louisiana, but the kind grown in Galilee, black mustard, could grow taller than a man in a single season, from a seed so small it was proverbial. Jesus was not giving a botany lesson on the smallest seed in the world; He used the proverbial smallest seed His hearers knew.

The image of a great tree with birds nesting in its branches comes from the Old Testament, where it pictures a great kingdom sheltering the nations (Ezekiel 17:23; 31:6; Daniel 4:12). Jesus' kingdom began with a carpenter from Nazareth and twelve ordinary men. Today it has spread to every continent. Most interpreters read the parable as a promise of astonishing growth. Some, especially in older dispensational teaching, read the birds as evil and the unusual growth as the corruption of the church. The larger context of hopeful growth parables supports the positive reading, but students should know both views.

Jesus used the mustard seed a second time to speak of faith: "if you have faith as a mustard seed... nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20). As my seminary student told us in Unit 7, "I only began with a mustard seed of faith, but it grew." God does not require great faith to begin. He requires real faith, planted in good soil, and He gives the growth.

III. The Leaven: Hidden Power (Matthew 13:33)

"The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened" (13:33). The leaven Jesus described was not packaged yeast but a piece of fermented dough saved from the last baking, the way many cooks still keep a sourdough starter. Three measures of meal was an enormous amount, roughly fifty pounds of flour, enough to make bread for a hundred people or more. It is the same amount Sarah baked when the Lord visited Abraham (Genesis 18:6). A small piece of leaven, worked into that great mass of dough, quietly spread until every part of it rose.

Leaven usually pictures sin or corruption elsewhere in Scripture: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees" (Matthew 16:6), and "a little leaven leavens the whole lump" (1 Corinthians 5:6). A few interpreters therefore read this parable as a warning that false teaching would spread through the church. Most interpreters, however, note that Jesus explicitly says the kingdom of heaven is like the leaven, and that the parable is paired with the mustard seed, a picture of growth. They conclude that Jesus deliberately used a surprising image to teach that the kingdom works quietly, from the inside out, until it transforms everything it touches. The mustard seed shows the kingdom's outward growth; the leaven shows its inward power. The gospel does not usually change a society by force from the outside. It changes people from within, one heart at a time, until whole families, towns, and cultures are different.

IV. The Hidden Treasure and the Pearl: Worth Everything (Matthew 13:44–46)

A man found treasure hidden in a field, "and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (13:44). A merchant searching for fine pearls found "one pearl of great price" and "went and sold all that he had and bought it" (13:46). In a land often crossed by armies, people really did bury their valuables, and sometimes they never returned. One man stumbles on the kingdom by surprise; the other finds it after a long search. Both respond the same way: they give up everything, and they do it with joy.

These parables are the opposite of the thorny ground and the rich young ruler. The young ruler would not sell what he had, and he went away sad. The man in the field sold everything and went away glad. The young woman in West Africa who sold her life for a single coin to lay at Jesus' feet understood the pearl of great price. The kingdom costs everything, and it is worth far more than it costs.

Some readers ask whether the man in the field acted honestly by buying the land without telling the owner about the treasure. Jewish law of the time had rules about found property, and interpreters discuss them, but the parable is not teaching real estate ethics. It uses an everyday situation to make one point: when you discover something of infinite worth, you gladly give up everything else to have it. Another group of interpreters reads the pearl merchant as Christ Himself, who gave up everything to purchase His church. That reading teaches a true doctrine, but most interpreters believe the parallel with the treasure in the field points to the person who finds the kingdom. The missionary Jim Elliot, who was killed in 1956 while trying to reach the Waorani people of Ecuador, had written years earlier in his journal: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." He understood the pearl of great price.

V. The Dragnet and the Householder (Matthew 13:47–52)

The collection closes with a parable from the Sea of Galilee itself. "The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away" (13:47–48). A dragnet was a long net weighted at the bottom and pulled between two boats or dragged to shore, catching everything in its path. Only on the beach were the fish sorted. Jesus explains that the sorting pictures the end of the age, when the angels will separate the wicked from the just (13:49–50). Like the wheat and the tares, the dragnet teaches that the final separation belongs to God and comes at the end. Our task is to cast the net wide.

Then Jesus asked His disciples, "Have you understood all these things?" They said, "Yes, Lord." And He said, "Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old" (13:51–52). This last little parable is a word for every preacher and teacher. The one who understands the kingdom has a storehouse. He brings out the old treasures of the Law and the Prophets and the new treasures of Christ's teaching, and he serves them together. A faithful pastor does not throw away the old for the sake of novelty, nor refuse the new light Christ brings. He brings out both.

VI. Preaching the Kingdom Parables

The wheat and the tares can be preached in movements: the sowing, the growing together, and the harvest, when God will separate. Close with the personal question, "Am I wheat?" and the invitation of Romans 10:13. The mustard seed and the leaven belong together as a sermon of encouragement for small churches and discouraged believers: the kingdom's outward growth and its inward power. The treasure and the pearl call for total commitment with joy, and they preach well beside the rich young ruler, who would not sell what he had. The dragnet can close a series with the certainty of the final judgment and the urgency of casting the net. And the householder reminds the preacher to bring out treasures both new and old. Taken together, Matthew 13 tells the whole story of the kingdom: it grows mixed with evil, starts small and becomes great, works from the inside out, is worth everything, and ends in a harvest.

Closing

A tiny seed becomes a great tree. A pinch of leaven raises a mountain of dough. A treasure hidden in a field is worth everything a man owns. That is the kingdom of heaven. It does not look impressive at first, and it grows alongside weeds that sometimes look better than the wheat. But the harvest is coming, and on that day every counterfeit will be exposed and every faithful seed will bear its full fruit. The only question that matters is whether we have found the treasure, and whether, with joy, we have given everything to have it.

— Dr. Wayne Cook
Chapala Theological Seminary

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