Bible Study series: Matthew 13:10-17. You have to dig for the answers, showing your hunger for the kingdom. You must also have humility.
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In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthew 13:10-17
10 Then his disciples approached and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Because it is granted to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted, 12 for whoever has, it shall be given to him, even overflowing. But whoever does not have, even what he ‘has’ shall be taken from him. 13 For this reason I speak to them in parables, because even though they ‘see,’ they do not see, and even though they ‘hear,’ they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 Then this prophecy of Isaiah will be fulfilled about them, saying:
You shall ‘hear’ with the act of ‘hearing,’ and you shall not understand,
And even though you ‘see’ carefully, you shall ‘see’ and not perceive.
15 For the heart of this people has become dull,
And the ears have become hard of hearing,
And their eyes have shut,
In case they might hear with their ears,
And with their hearts they might understand and might turn
And I would heal them. [Is. 6:9-10]
16 But your eyes are blessed because they see, and your ears are blessed because they hear. 17 I tell you the truth: many prophets and righteous people yearned to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. (Matt. 13:10-17)
Comments:
11-17:
After two introductory points about a Hebrew idiom and the granting to know spiritual truths, let’s tackle this entire pericope (pronounced puh-RIH-koh-pea) or section or unit of Scripture as a whole.
First, yes, there is a Hebrew idiom “hear with hearing” = “hear intently,” but I like what BDAG, considered by many to be the authoritative lexicon of the Greek NT, says: they hear with “the act of hearing.” So I kept it. I put some key words in quotations because there is irony. They seem to hear and hear, but in in reality they do not.
“mysteries”: modern translations say “secret.” The Greek noun is mystērion (pronounced moo-stay-ree-on or mee-stay-ree-on), and yes, we get our word mystery directly from it. It is used 28 times. Now let’s define the term.
BDAG says: In the Greco-Roman world, a mystērion is about mystery religions, “with their secrets teachings, religious and political in nature, concealed with many strange customs and ceremonies. The principal rites remain unknown because of a reluctance in antiquity to divulge things.” In other words, Greco-Roman mysteries were about concealment.
In contrast, in the NT, it will be about disclosure of God’s plan, revealed only in part in Bible prophecies, and now these mysteries were fulfilled and completely revealed in Christ. As God’s plan moves from one age to the next, this is called eschatology (the study or science of last things or a shift in ages that God ordains).
Next, Jesus says that the disciples have been “granted” to know. What does that mean? In these verses, there are several passive verbs (“be granted” or “be given”). This speaks of the divine passive, which is an understated way of saying that God is behind the scenes doing the work.
Some sort of predestination to know, while others sit in ignorance by God’s plan, so that he would not heal them if they really did have hungry hearts (v. 15)? Not quite. This grant or gift to know is predicated or built on the condition of their heart. Originally, God predicted that the majority of Israel would reject Isaiah’s ministry (Is. 6:8-13). Why? They were being corrupted by their environment; they did not drive out bad influences—the Canaanites and their surrounding cultures and their religions—in their lives, so their hearts were becoming dull and sinful. There is a certain class of people who just don’t get it. Do they have hope, or are they doomed by their own thick heads and broken moral compass? Whatever your answer to that double-sided question, God was reaching out to them, so it is not likely that he caused their hearts to become wicked. Instead, their hearts were shutting down because of bad human (and demonic) influences, and then God was letting them go to figure things out—all the while sending Isaiah and many other prophets to speak the truth to their self-deceived hearts. No, God is not the author of corrupt or sinful hearts, but they can get that way on their own. Then God takes them as they are.
With those two acknowledgements, let’s move on to the significance of the long statement in the whole pericope. This statement is about knowledge and ignorance and hunger and complacency, two sets of opposites. What do you know and not know? When does your hunger for God propel you out of your complacency or self-satisfaction?
The issue of knowledge and ignorance boils down to irony. Let’s illustrate it. First there is comic irony. I have used the illustration of Hogan’s Heroes, the sitcom of the 1960’s and early 1970s. Col. Klink boasted that there has never been a successful escape from Stalag 13, but the inmates could come and go as they pleased. He was a victim of his self-deception and “self-ignorance” and absence of knowledge. He was a vain man. He thought he knew more than he actually did. He was ignorant.
Then there is tragic irony. Oedipus the king was considered wise, and he was to a certain degree. And now a plague was attacking the city-state of Thebes. Thebans were dying. He thought that he could figure out the cause and threatened anyone who may be it. He learned at the end that he was the cause. He gouged out his eyes. He was the victim of irony because he thought the cause was someone else and he huffed and puffed as king, but he caused his own downfall. He abdicated and left the city. His ignorance was left behind, and his knowledge grew. Therefore, he was no longer the victim of irony—in the end. He reached true knowledge.
So now the simple of heart—the disciples—could understand (after an explanation)—the parables. But not the crowds. Jesus knew that he was on his way to Jerusalem, to be rejected by the religious establishment and the people as a whole, so he intended that he withhold the mystery of the kingdom—himself and his teaching—from them, because their hearts were dull and heavy. They were oppressed by the Romans, so this too distracted their knowledge away from the truth; they fell victim of their own conceit. They insisted on the Messiah being a conquering hero, but he was a mystery, revealed gradually. They were ignorant of God’s plan of a Savior who would save people from their own sins and not the Romans.
So, who qualifies to break the irony? How? The complacent or self-pleased do not qualify. They are happy with the status quo or they are hungry for the wrong thing—the Messianic conquering hero, again. They were living in irony because they were hungry for external deliverance, and not an inward work of God. This is ironical, because many of them went out to seek John’s baptism and the forgiveness of sins, and maybe many received it. However, Jesus was different. He worked miracles. He could deliver the people from the Romans. No, sorry. They were self-deceived.
So who qualifies to understand the ways of God? They humble and hungry. They allow God’s plan to unfold as he wants, not as they want. The disciples would eventually catch on, but some not even until the resurrection, and some not even until after Pentecost. Then their knowledge grew by leaps and bounds, because by faith they allowed God to unfold his plan, and they submitted to it, even when they did not understand it entirely. Eventually they understood the mystery and came to know the truth and leave their irony behind.
One more time: There is no predestination in the sense of God who is hardening hearts on his whim. The people had the precondition of open or closed hearts. The main point of this quotation of Isaiah is that this is the last generation before judgment falls. He will predict the destruction of the temple in Matt. 24. Certain Israelites will accept his Messiahship, but too many will not. So God wants to keep them as they want–to reject his Messiah, so judgment will fall. So he speaks in parables to hide the truth. Only the open-hearted can grasp what they are about.
One final point related to v. 11 and the kingdom of heaven. Let’s define it here since it appears many times in this chapter.
“kingdom of heaven”: Matthew substitutes “heaven” (literally heavens or plural) nearly every time (except for 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43, where he uses kingdom of God). Why? Four possible reasons: (1) Maybe some extra-pious Jews preferred the circumlocution or the roundabout way of speaking, but this answer is not always the right one, for Matthew does use the phrase “kingdom of God” four times; (2) the phrase “kingdom of heaven” points to Christ’s post-resurrection authority; God’s sovereignty in heaven and earth (beginning with Jesus’s ministry) is now mediated through Jesus (28:18); (3) “kingdom of God” makes God the king (26:29) and leaves less room to ascribe the kingdom to Jesus (16:28; 25:31, 34, 40; 27:42), but the phrase “kingdom of heaven” leaves more room to say Jesus is the king Messiah. (4) It may be a stylistic variation that has no deeper reasoning behind it (France). In my view the third option shows the close connection to the doctrine of the Trinity; the Father and Son share authority, after the Father gives it to him during the Son’s incarnation. The kingdom of heaven is both the kingdom of the Father and the kingdom of the Messiah (Carson). And, since I like streamlined interpretations, the fourth one also appeals to me.
Now let’s go for a general consideration of the kingdom of heaven / God. As noted in other verses that mention the kingdom in this commentary, the kingdom is God’s power, authority, rule, reign and sovereignty. He exerts all those things over all the universe but more specifically over the lives of people. It is his invisible realm, and throughout the Gospels Jesus is explaining and demonstrating what it looks like before their very eyes and ears. It is gradually being manifested from the realm of faith to the visible realm, but it is not political in the human sense. It is a secret kingdom because it does not enter humanity with trumpets blaring and full power and glory. This grand display will happen when Jesus comes back. In his first coming, it woos people to surrender to it. We can enter God’s kingdom by being born again (John 3:3, 5), by repenting (Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:5), by having the faith of children (Matt. 18:4; Mark 10:14-15), by being transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son whom God loves (Col. 1:13), and by seeing their own poverty and need for the kingdom (Matt. 5:3; Luke 6:20; Jas. 2:5). The kingdom has already come in part at his First Coming, but not yet with full manifestation and glory and power until his Second Coming.
5 The Kingdom of God: Already Here, But Not Yet Fully
Bible Basics about the Kingdom of God
Questions and Answers about Kingdom of God
Basic Definition of Kingdom of God
1 Introducing the Kingdom of God (begin a ten-part series)
In v. 12 a modern saying could help: “Nothing succeeds like success” (France offers this idea). If you have success, you have more success. If you have more of the kingdom, then your soul or mind is enlarged to receive more of it. God is looking for hungry and expansive souls, so he can deposit more kingdom riches in them.
As for vv. 13-14, they could be paraphrased thus: “I speak parables to them instead of plain teaching because they have spiritually dull and stubborn minds. The parables do not promote spiritual dullness or stubbornness but they only make it easier to remain dull and stubborn and therefore the dull and stubborn lose what little they have at first” (France, p. 513, n. 15, who got the idea from C. A. Evans).
“I tell you the truth”: Matthew uses this expression thirty times in his Gospel. “Truth” comes from the word amēn (pronounced ah-main and comes into English as amen). It expresses the authority of the one who utters it. The Hebrew root ’mn means faithfulness, reliability and certainty. It could be translated as “truly I tell you” or I tell you with certainty.” Jesus’s faith in his own words is remarkable and points to his unique calling. In the OT and later Jewish writings is indicates a solemn pronouncement, but Jesus’ “introductory uses of amēn to confirm his own words is unique” (France at his comment on 5:18). The authoritative formula emphasizes pronouncements which are noteworthy and will be surprising or uncomfortable to the listener.
I like what Wessel and Strauss say in their commentary on Mark’s Gospel in the parallel passage: Isaiah is the background, and in his ministry he was commanded to preach, even though it would do no good. God had already pronounced his judgment on ancient Israel (Wessel and Strauss, p. 756). And so it is with Jesus’s ministry. He was called to proclaim the good news, but judgment is coming, for Jesus was destined to be rejected by the Jerusalem establishment and then judgement would fall.
I add: Only those who were hungry and perceptive would escape judgment. Many people followed him during his ministry, but would they be insightful and perceptive enough to grasp the gospel told through parables? We know that thousands converted to the Messiah after Pentecost (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7; 21:20). They were the insightful and perceptive ones.
In v. 16 (“But your eyes are blessed because they see, and your ears are blessed because they hear”), this is the divine passive, which is an understated way of saying that God is behind the scenes, working. He is the one blessing your eyes and your hearing. He has to have something–your open heart–to work with; then he gives you more insight and wisdom to understand what he is doing and his ways.
In v. 17, the OT writers wrote about the Messiah, both in explicit terms, which the NT writers quote, or in their types and shadows and patterns. Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross fulfills the animals sacrifices, for example. The OT all points to Jesus, if you know where to look and use proper interpretation.
Messianic Prophecies (a long table of quoted verses)
GrowApp for Matt. 13:10-17
1. How hungry are you for God and his ways? Or do you tend to be your own leader? Are you willing to submit to God, so he can lead you in his good plans?
RELATED
9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel
1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom.
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