Matthew 13:31-35
Jesus uses familiar images to help introduce something unfamiliar or off the radar of current consciousness. His audience would have been familiar with the image of a tree being a sign of a Kingdom- described in Genesis. And when Jesus said that the Kingdom was like a mustard seed that grew to be the largest of trees, they must have wondered, or even laughed, because they knew that a mustard plant only grew to be about 2-6 feet tall. Surely this tree/kingdom was not as big as Jesus was thinking! They knew how big these things get, and it had never been that big a thing.
People knew that yeast, leavening, made things rise, grow beyond its size. Yeast was used elsewhere in scripture to represent evil, but using it here to symbolize the good Kingdom is a reversal of thought. The King James Version more correctly translates that a woman tries to hide (not ‘mixed with’ as in other translations) a small amount of yeast in 3 measures of flour – that’s around a hundred pounds! Enough bread was produced from this to feed a multitude! The Kingdom of God is not hidden for long!
And then Jesus intentionally makes further light of the irony of Psalm 78. He speaks of the ‘hidden things of God,’ the acts of God in this Psalm are: the mass exodus of God’s people from Egypt, the mass feeding of His people with bread raining down from heaven daily, the tons of birds landing in their camp for meat to eat. What is hidden about these great truths of God’s deliverance? All creation shouts with the awesome sufficiency of God. All throughout history, God has acted on our behalf, broadcasting these kingdom secrets, even when we live as if we don’t get that channel.
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