July 27, 2025 • 16 mins
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Matthew 13: 31-35 - 'The smallest of all seeds grows into the biggest shrub of all.'
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hi everyone. Welcome back once again to
Logical Bible study where we take a look at the literal sense
of Scripture. We do a really solid exegesis of
the text of the gospel from today's Mass.
And for today we're looking at Matthew, chapter 13, verses 31
to 35. So here's today's text.
(00:32):
Jesus put a parable before the crowds.
The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took
and sewed in his field. It is the smallest of all the
seeds, but when it has grown, itis the biggest shrub of all and
becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and
shelter in its branches. He told them another parable.
(00:55):
The Kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman took, and
mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all
through. In all this Jesus spoke to the
crowds in parables. Indeed, he would never speak to
them except in parables. This was to fulfill the
prophecy. I will speak to you in parables
(01:17):
and expound things hidden since the foundation of the world.
So we're in Matthew chapter 13, which is often considered the
Kingdom parables chapter. So here Matthew brings together
about 7 parables that Jesus speaks throughout his ministry
and Matthew has brought them alltogether.
Or it's possible that Jesus spoke them on the same occasion.
(01:38):
It's not entirely clear, but they're all about the Kingdom.
And as you probably heard me say, if you've been listening
for the last few days, this is where the science of exegesis is
really important. You've probably heard people
mishandle parables a lot, and it's really important.
When we're studying parables, wewant to find out what was the
meaning Jesus intended. Before we jump to any possible
(02:01):
spiritual applications, we always want to think about what
was the meaning Jesus intended because he usually intended to
make one basic point. So we want to get at that.
What is Jesus teaching about theKingdom with these parables?
And we have two here today, the parable of the mustard seed and
then the parable of the yeast, which actually have both a very
(02:21):
similar meaning. Verse 31.
So Jesus put a parable before the crowds.
Notice he's speaking to the crowds here.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took
and sowed in his field. So a mustard seed would have
been quite familiar to his audience because mustard trees
were quite common in Israel. So Jesus says the Kingdom of
(02:43):
Heaven is like a mustard seed. In what sense is it like a
mustard seed? Well, he's about to explain it.
It is the smallest of the seeds.Now, this is a verse where a lot
of skeptics have said, aha, here's where the Bible makes an
error, because we now know that the mustard seed is not the
smallest possible seed. There are others which are
smaller, but Jesus is not intending to teach botany here.
(03:07):
He's clearly not trying to do that.
He's just using a parable. He's setting up an analogy to
show what the Kingdom of God is like, and he's speaking in
colloquial terms. And he's using hyperbole as
well, exaggeration to make a point which was quite common for
Jewish teachers, and it was in fact the smallest known seed in
Israel at the time. So it makes sense for him to
(03:28):
call it the smallest of all the seeds.
It was the smallest seed they were familiar with.
Now that would be shocking for the Jews to say the Kingdom of
heaven is like a mustard seed because they would have expected
a good image for the Kingdom of God to be like an army.
A big army that immediately wipes out its enemies because
that's what they thought the Kingdom of God was going to be
(03:49):
like. An instantaneous, complete
overthrow of the old order brought about by God and his
Messiah. That's what his audience thought
the Kingdom of God was. So Jesus gives him this parable
to correct their ideas of what the Kingdom of God is like.
It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it
is the biggest shrub of all. So the mustard seed in that
(04:11):
culture grew to around 10 feet tall, which was the largest
shrub like plant. So it starts off very small but
grows to 10 feet tall. So what's Jesus main point?
His main point with this short parable is that the Kingdom of
God is going to start small and then grow slowly over time.
(04:32):
And that was, I mean, that's obvious to us.
But his original audience didn'tget that.
They thought it was going to be instantaneous, straightaway, a
massive worldwide Kingdom. And we now know that this is
true, isn't it? Because the Kingdom of God
started with Jesus and his preaching, but over the coming
years and centuries, the Kingdomof God would spread to the
entire world. So Jesus needs to emphasize this
(04:55):
because if they recognize He's the Messiah, which he is, he
doesn't want them to have the false impression that it's going
to be. He's going to bring about an
immediate entry of the full Kingdom of God.
He then adds when it has grown, it becomes the biggest shrub of
all and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and
shelter in its branches. Now this is another one of those
(05:19):
verses which some Christians have interpreted in different
ways, because there are some places in scripture, even in
Jesus own parables, where birds represent the ministers of
Satan. If you remember the parable of
the Sowa, it's the birds that come and pick the seeds off the
ground. So in some parables they are the
messengers of Satan. But Jesus does use figures in or
(05:44):
objects in parables in differentways.
He doesn't keep the same usage of the same object, so he often
uses different different usages of things like money and coins.
They play different roles in different parables and also
lamps play different roles in different parables.
It's the same with birds. Here birds is not supposed to be
referenced to Satan. That will be pressing the
(06:07):
metaphor a bit too far. Jesus is not giving a cryptic
meaning to birds here. His focus is on the mustard
plant, that mustard seed being the smallest thing that grows
into a big tree. That's his main focus.
And birds of the natural residents of the plant.
So that's the reference to birdshere.
The birds represent people in this parable.
(06:28):
The birds represent people who will eventually come to lodge in
the Kingdom of God. And it probably has in mind
Gentile people in particular, which of course the Jews were
not fully comfortable with. Jesus has to remind them that
the Kingdom of God will encompass the whole world, not
just Israel. So Jesus here teaches by
referring to the birds that comeinto the the tree, that many
(06:52):
people, including Gentiles, willcome into the Kingdom of God.
Now this parable of the mustard seed has echoes from Old
Testament passages. In particular, in Daniel chapter
4, there's a prophecy of God's Kingdom being like gradually
taking over the whole world. The same image is used, but in
(07:12):
that case it's a rock that gradually covers the whole
world. And so that might be in Jesus
mind here when he's talking about the Kingdom of God
starting small, growing bigger. And there might also be a direct
reference here to Ezekiel chapter 17.
In that chapter Israel is discussed, and in verse 22 of
Ezekiel 17, Israel is described as a tree, and it says in the
(07:36):
shade of its branches every sortof bird will nest, which is
interesting because the Kingdom of God is the fulfillment of
Israel. So maybe Jesus has that image in
mind as well. We often don't get to hear this
Old Testament background, but Jesus certainly knew his Old
Testament, and he might have expected his readers to make
that connection too. Verse 33, he told them another
(07:58):
parable. The Kingdom of Heaven is like
the yeast a woman took and mixedin with three measures of flour
till it was leavened or through.Now that's it.
That's all there is to this parable.
This actually has the same basicmeaning as the previous one.
So yeast or leaven as some translations have it, is
(08:18):
something which is put into bread and it starts quite small,
but then it eventually grows andspreads throughout the whole
loaf. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
In fact, yeast gives the loaf its bread.
Like quality, yeast is a key ingredient in making bread
happen. In that culture, only a tiny
amount of yeast was put in, but the amount of bread that it
(08:40):
makes is quite stunning. So what's the basic meaning
here? The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom
of heaven starts small and growsovertime.
Again, the Jews did not expect that they thought the Kingdom
was going to come in its fullness straight away.
So that's all pretty straightforward.
But there's something else goingon in terms of the numbers which
are used here. So notice that Jesus says it's
(09:01):
like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of
flour. Now we might skim over that, and
in fact most of the time I have.But as I was reading some
commentaries preparing for this episode, I learned something
completely new which I'd never noticed.
So 3 measures of wheat flour is about 60 pounds of flour.
That's a whole lot of flour. And Jesus hearers would have
(09:22):
recognized that that would be enough flour or make enough
bread to feed well over 100 people.
It's a huge amount of flour. So why does Jesus pick such a
large amount of flour? Now the yeast is tiny, isn't it?
The yeast is small, but the flour is large, so the flour
here represents the world. That's why Jesus has picked a
(09:43):
large amount of flour, because the world is large.
So there's an additional elementhere in this parable of
disproportion, a tiny amount of leaven, a tiny amount of the
Kingdom of God is hidden, yet itactively raises a very
significant amount of meal, and therefore the Kingdom of God
actively changes a very significant, significantly large
(10:04):
world. So it's an interesting usage
there that you might not have thought about before now.
Once again, this parable has been misinterpreted by some
Christians because there are some places in the Gospels where
yeast is used in a negative context.
And some have said that yeast isnot Jewish at all because the
Jews were known for making unleavened bread.
(10:25):
Whereas Jesus here is talking about bread that has leaven.
And it is true that in other places, even in chapter 16, in
just a few chapters time, Jesus does talk about leaven in a
negative way. So remember he talks about the
leaven of the Pharisees as a negative thing.
We need to be careful not to letone parable dictate how another
should be interpreted. Sometimes that helps, sometimes
(10:47):
it doesn't, particularly if Jesus is clearly making two
different points, which he clearly is in this parable
involving yeast and some later parables involving yeast.
So we need to be careful with that.
So for his listeners, both of these parables, the parable of
the mustard seed and the parableof the yeast, are a call to
(11:09):
patience and to recognize that the work of growing the Kingdom
is God's. Verse 34.
In all this, Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
Mark's version here says using many parables like these, he
spoke the word to them so far asthey were capable of
understanding it. So Mark here tells us that Jesus
(11:30):
is giving parables which are within the spiritual reach of
the crowd. So he's not giving things that
are too complex. He's using deliberately picking
parables that he thinks at leastsome people in the crowd will
help them understand the Kingdom.
But remember, the purpose of parables is not also involves an
element of hiding some things about the Kingdom and making it
(11:51):
so that not everyone will understand.
We've talked a bit about that onthis podcast.
So every parable he gives can beunderstood.
Jesus makes it so that they can be understood, but only if one
goes away and reflects on it andasks God to enlighten their
mind. And it's kind of like a
spiritual reflection. In order to understand these
parables, Jesus would have expected the crowd to go and do
(12:12):
a spiritual reflection on this. And then we also here in verse
34. Indeed, he would never speak to
them except in parables. This is quite astounding, isn't
it? So Jesus preferred mode of
speaking to large crowds is parables.
Now, he does use other methods of teaching when he's dealing
with small groups, but when he'stalking to the large crowds,
(12:34):
particularly at this point in his ministry, he speaks in
parables. He prefers to use that for the
purposes of concealing and revealing.
Parables can both conceal and reveal, and that's the reason
Jesus uses it with large amountsof people.
Now, Mark's version adds this comment as well, which helps us
(12:54):
out a bit. He explained everything to his
disciples when they were alone, so he'd speak kind of
cryptically via parables to the crowds.
But when he's speaking to his inner circle of disciples, he
spoke much more plainly. He doesn't want to conceal
things from them. They're already in the presence
of the Kingdom of God, and it's going to be their responsibility
(13:14):
as disciples to teach other people the mysteries of the
Kingdom later. So when possible, Jesus wants to
explain or to help his disciplesunderstand the meaning of the
parables. And we see some examples in this
chapter where the disciples cometo Jesus and ask him to help
them understand the parable verse 35.
This was to fulfill the prophecy.
(13:36):
Now, Matthew is once again goingto quote from somewhere in the
Old Testament, but this time it's from a Psalm, Psalm 78.
As Matthew often does, he wants to highlight to his audience
that Jesus really is the Messiah.
There's a whole lot of prophes, passages in the Old Testament
which predict what the Messiah is going to be like.
This is one of them, Psalm 78. And Matthew deliberately goes
(13:59):
out of his way to make that point to his readers.
Jesus is the Messiah. This is what he quotes from
Psalm 78. I will speak to you in parables
and expound things hidden since the foundation of the world.
Now in context, that's not God speaking, that's the Psalmist
speaking, which is ASAP. And it's actually not a prophecy
(14:19):
at all. In context, ASAP is just saying
in the Psalm I'm about to speak to you in parables, which is
what he then goes on to do. But Matthew, through the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit here detects that God has put a
deeper sense in this Psalm. He detects that this is in fact
a legitimate prophecy of what the coming Messiah will do,
(14:41):
which is speak in parables and expound things hidden since the
foundation of the world. Matthew's basic reason for
quoting this from Psalm 78 is toshow that Jesus use of parables
in his ministry is in accord with God's will.
In fact, it's prophesied in the Bible in the Old Testament.
On top of that, this passage from Psalm 78 teaches that the
(15:04):
Messiah is going to use parablesto make things clearer which
have been hidden since the foundation of the world, which
of course is a reference to how Jesus unpacks what the Kingdom
of God is like, which was not clear to them before Jesus time.
Some scholars have also pointed out that Psalm 78 itself is a
summary of Old Testament salvation history.
(15:26):
So by Matthew quoting Psalm 78 and applying it to Jesus,
Matthew might be saying that Jesus is the one who brings
God's plan of salvation to completion.
Interesting, isn't it? When you dive into the text in
this way, there's no catechism references for us to look at
from today's passages, so we'll leave it there.
And tomorrow, we'll continue to look at some parables from the
(15:49):
Gospel of Matthew.
Hi everyone. Welcome back once again to
Logical Bible study where we take a look at the literal sense
of Scripture. We do a really solid exegesis of
the text of the gospel from today's Mass.
And for today we're looking at Matthew, chapter 13, verses 31
to 35. So here's today's text.
(00:32):
Jesus put a parable before the crowds.
The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took
and sewed in his field. It is the smallest of all the
seeds, but when it has grown, itis the biggest shrub of all and
becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and
shelter in its branches. He told them another parable.
(00:55):
The Kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman took, and
mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all
through. In all this Jesus spoke to the
crowds in parables. Indeed, he would never speak to
them except in parables. This was to fulfill the
prophecy. I will speak to you in parables
(01:17):
and expound things hidden since the foundation of the world.
So we're in Matthew chapter 13, which is often considered the
Kingdom parables chapter. So here Matthew brings together
about 7 parables that Jesus speaks throughout his ministry
and Matthew has brought them alltogether.
Or it's possible that Jesus spoke them on the same occasion.
(01:38):
It's not entirely clear, but they're all about the Kingdom.
And as you probably heard me say, if you've been listening
for the last few days, this is where the science of exegesis is
really important. You've probably heard people
mishandle parables a lot, and it's really important.
When we're studying parables, wewant to find out what was the
meaning Jesus intended. Before we jump to any possible
(02:01):
spiritual applications, we always want to think about what
was the meaning Jesus intended because he usually intended to
make one basic point. So we want to get at that.
What is Jesus teaching about theKingdom with these parables?
And we have two here today, the parable of the mustard seed and
then the parable of the yeast, which actually have both a very
(02:21):
similar meaning. Verse 31.
So Jesus put a parable before the crowds.
Notice he's speaking to the crowds here.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took
and sowed in his field. So a mustard seed would have
been quite familiar to his audience because mustard trees
were quite common in Israel. So Jesus says the Kingdom of
(02:43):
Heaven is like a mustard seed. In what sense is it like a
mustard seed? Well, he's about to explain it.
It is the smallest of the seeds.Now, this is a verse where a lot
of skeptics have said, aha, here's where the Bible makes an
error, because we now know that the mustard seed is not the
smallest possible seed. There are others which are
smaller, but Jesus is not intending to teach botany here.
(03:07):
He's clearly not trying to do that.
He's just using a parable. He's setting up an analogy to
show what the Kingdom of God is like, and he's speaking in
colloquial terms. And he's using hyperbole as
well, exaggeration to make a point which was quite common for
Jewish teachers, and it was in fact the smallest known seed in
Israel at the time. So it makes sense for him to
(03:28):
call it the smallest of all the seeds.
It was the smallest seed they were familiar with.
Now that would be shocking for the Jews to say the Kingdom of
heaven is like a mustard seed because they would have expected
a good image for the Kingdom of God to be like an army.
A big army that immediately wipes out its enemies because
that's what they thought the Kingdom of God was going to be
(03:49):
like. An instantaneous, complete
overthrow of the old order brought about by God and his
Messiah. That's what his audience thought
the Kingdom of God was. So Jesus gives him this parable
to correct their ideas of what the Kingdom of God is like.
It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it
is the biggest shrub of all. So the mustard seed in that
(04:11):
culture grew to around 10 feet tall, which was the largest
shrub like plant. So it starts off very small but
grows to 10 feet tall. So what's Jesus main point?
His main point with this short parable is that the Kingdom of
God is going to start small and then grow slowly over time.
(04:32):
And that was, I mean, that's obvious to us.
But his original audience didn'tget that.
They thought it was going to be instantaneous, straightaway, a
massive worldwide Kingdom. And we now know that this is
true, isn't it? Because the Kingdom of God
started with Jesus and his preaching, but over the coming
years and centuries, the Kingdomof God would spread to the
entire world. So Jesus needs to emphasize this
(04:55):
because if they recognize He's the Messiah, which he is, he
doesn't want them to have the false impression that it's going
to be. He's going to bring about an
immediate entry of the full Kingdom of God.
He then adds when it has grown, it becomes the biggest shrub of
all and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and
shelter in its branches. Now this is another one of those
(05:19):
verses which some Christians have interpreted in different
ways, because there are some places in scripture, even in
Jesus own parables, where birds represent the ministers of
Satan. If you remember the parable of
the Sowa, it's the birds that come and pick the seeds off the
ground. So in some parables they are the
messengers of Satan. But Jesus does use figures in or
(05:44):
objects in parables in differentways.
He doesn't keep the same usage of the same object, so he often
uses different different usages of things like money and coins.
They play different roles in different parables and also
lamps play different roles in different parables.
It's the same with birds. Here birds is not supposed to be
referenced to Satan. That will be pressing the
(06:07):
metaphor a bit too far. Jesus is not giving a cryptic
meaning to birds here. His focus is on the mustard
plant, that mustard seed being the smallest thing that grows
into a big tree. That's his main focus.
And birds of the natural residents of the plant.
So that's the reference to birdshere.
The birds represent people in this parable.
(06:28):
The birds represent people who will eventually come to lodge in
the Kingdom of God. And it probably has in mind
Gentile people in particular, which of course the Jews were
not fully comfortable with. Jesus has to remind them that
the Kingdom of God will encompass the whole world, not
just Israel. So Jesus here teaches by
referring to the birds that comeinto the the tree, that many
(06:52):
people, including Gentiles, willcome into the Kingdom of God.
Now this parable of the mustard seed has echoes from Old
Testament passages. In particular, in Daniel chapter
4, there's a prophecy of God's Kingdom being like gradually
taking over the whole world. The same image is used, but in
(07:12):
that case it's a rock that gradually covers the whole
world. And so that might be in Jesus
mind here when he's talking about the Kingdom of God
starting small, growing bigger. And there might also be a direct
reference here to Ezekiel chapter 17.
In that chapter Israel is discussed, and in verse 22 of
Ezekiel 17, Israel is described as a tree, and it says in the
(07:36):
shade of its branches every sortof bird will nest, which is
interesting because the Kingdom of God is the fulfillment of
Israel. So maybe Jesus has that image in
mind as well. We often don't get to hear this
Old Testament background, but Jesus certainly knew his Old
Testament, and he might have expected his readers to make
that connection too. Verse 33, he told them another
(07:58):
parable. The Kingdom of Heaven is like
the yeast a woman took and mixedin with three measures of flour
till it was leavened or through.Now that's it.
That's all there is to this parable.
This actually has the same basicmeaning as the previous one.
So yeast or leaven as some translations have it, is
(08:18):
something which is put into bread and it starts quite small,
but then it eventually grows andspreads throughout the whole
loaf. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
In fact, yeast gives the loaf its bread.
Like quality, yeast is a key ingredient in making bread
happen. In that culture, only a tiny
amount of yeast was put in, but the amount of bread that it
(08:40):
makes is quite stunning. So what's the basic meaning
here? The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom
of heaven starts small and growsovertime.
Again, the Jews did not expect that they thought the Kingdom
was going to come in its fullness straight away.
So that's all pretty straightforward.
But there's something else goingon in terms of the numbers which
are used here. So notice that Jesus says it's
(09:01):
like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of
flour. Now we might skim over that, and
in fact most of the time I have.But as I was reading some
commentaries preparing for this episode, I learned something
completely new which I'd never noticed.
So 3 measures of wheat flour is about 60 pounds of flour.
That's a whole lot of flour. And Jesus hearers would have
(09:22):
recognized that that would be enough flour or make enough
bread to feed well over 100 people.
It's a huge amount of flour. So why does Jesus pick such a
large amount of flour? Now the yeast is tiny, isn't it?
The yeast is small, but the flour is large, so the flour
here represents the world. That's why Jesus has picked a
(09:43):
large amount of flour, because the world is large.
So there's an additional elementhere in this parable of
disproportion, a tiny amount of leaven, a tiny amount of the
Kingdom of God is hidden, yet itactively raises a very
significant amount of meal, and therefore the Kingdom of God
actively changes a very significant, significantly large
(10:04):
world. So it's an interesting usage
there that you might not have thought about before now.
Once again, this parable has been misinterpreted by some
Christians because there are some places in the Gospels where
yeast is used in a negative context.
And some have said that yeast isnot Jewish at all because the
Jews were known for making unleavened bread.
(10:25):
Whereas Jesus here is talking about bread that has leaven.
And it is true that in other places, even in chapter 16, in
just a few chapters time, Jesus does talk about leaven in a
negative way. So remember he talks about the
leaven of the Pharisees as a negative thing.
We need to be careful not to letone parable dictate how another
should be interpreted. Sometimes that helps, sometimes
(10:47):
it doesn't, particularly if Jesus is clearly making two
different points, which he clearly is in this parable
involving yeast and some later parables involving yeast.
So we need to be careful with that.
So for his listeners, both of these parables, the parable of
the mustard seed and the parableof the yeast, are a call to
(11:09):
patience and to recognize that the work of growing the Kingdom
is God's. Verse 34.
In all this, Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
Mark's version here says using many parables like these, he
spoke the word to them so far asthey were capable of
understanding it. So Mark here tells us that Jesus
(11:30):
is giving parables which are within the spiritual reach of
the crowd. So he's not giving things that
are too complex. He's using deliberately picking
parables that he thinks at leastsome people in the crowd will
help them understand the Kingdom.
But remember, the purpose of parables is not also involves an
element of hiding some things about the Kingdom and making it
(11:51):
so that not everyone will understand.
We've talked a bit about that onthis podcast.
So every parable he gives can beunderstood.
Jesus makes it so that they can be understood, but only if one
goes away and reflects on it andasks God to enlighten their
mind. And it's kind of like a
spiritual reflection. In order to understand these
parables, Jesus would have expected the crowd to go and do
(12:12):
a spiritual reflection on this. And then we also here in verse
34. Indeed, he would never speak to
them except in parables. This is quite astounding, isn't
it? So Jesus preferred mode of
speaking to large crowds is parables.
Now, he does use other methods of teaching when he's dealing
with small groups, but when he'stalking to the large crowds,
(12:34):
particularly at this point in his ministry, he speaks in
parables. He prefers to use that for the
purposes of concealing and revealing.
Parables can both conceal and reveal, and that's the reason
Jesus uses it with large amountsof people.
Now, Mark's version adds this comment as well, which helps us
(12:54):
out a bit. He explained everything to his
disciples when they were alone, so he'd speak kind of
cryptically via parables to the crowds.
But when he's speaking to his inner circle of disciples, he
spoke much more plainly. He doesn't want to conceal
things from them. They're already in the presence
of the Kingdom of God, and it's going to be their responsibility
(13:14):
as disciples to teach other people the mysteries of the
Kingdom later. So when possible, Jesus wants to
explain or to help his disciplesunderstand the meaning of the
parables. And we see some examples in this
chapter where the disciples cometo Jesus and ask him to help
them understand the parable verse 35.
This was to fulfill the prophecy.
(13:36):
Now, Matthew is once again goingto quote from somewhere in the
Old Testament, but this time it's from a Psalm, Psalm 78.
As Matthew often does, he wants to highlight to his audience
that Jesus really is the Messiah.
There's a whole lot of prophes, passages in the Old Testament
which predict what the Messiah is going to be like.
This is one of them, Psalm 78. And Matthew deliberately goes
(13:59):
out of his way to make that point to his readers.
Jesus is the Messiah. This is what he quotes from
Psalm 78. I will speak to you in parables
and expound things hidden since the foundation of the world.
Now in context, that's not God speaking, that's the Psalmist
speaking, which is ASAP. And it's actually not a prophecy
(14:19):
at all. In context, ASAP is just saying
in the Psalm I'm about to speak to you in parables, which is
what he then goes on to do. But Matthew, through the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit here detects that God has put a
deeper sense in this Psalm. He detects that this is in fact
a legitimate prophecy of what the coming Messiah will do,
(14:41):
which is speak in parables and expound things hidden since the
foundation of the world. Matthew's basic reason for
quoting this from Psalm 78 is toshow that Jesus use of parables
in his ministry is in accord with God's will.
In fact, it's prophesied in the Bible in the Old Testament.
On top of that, this passage from Psalm 78 teaches that the
(15:04):
Messiah is going to use parablesto make things clearer which
have been hidden since the foundation of the world, which
of course is a reference to how Jesus unpacks what the Kingdom
of God is like, which was not clear to them before Jesus time.
Some scholars have also pointed out that Psalm 78 itself is a
summary of Old Testament salvation history.
(15:26):
So by Matthew quoting Psalm 78 and applying it to Jesus,
Matthew might be saying that Jesus is the one who brings
God's plan of salvation to completion.
Interesting, isn't it? When you dive into the text in
this way, there's no catechism references for us to look at
from today's passages, so we'll leave it there.
And tomorrow, we'll continue to look at some parables from the
(15:49):
Gospel of Matthew.
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