The Hidden Kingdom

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

Matthew’s Gospel, like all Scripture, is structured after the foundational sequences established in the Torah. The basic shape of his book is fivefold, following the legal pattern of the five books of Moses.

Matthew 13 sits within the Hierarchy section of the book, which is itself fivefold. See The Shape of Matthew’s Gospel – Overview. As the Oath/Sanctions step of that sequence, the fundamental theme of the kingdom parables in this chapter is the blessings and curses of the covenant. In general terms, these parables describe the separation of the faithful from the faithless, and the riches that the heirs of the promises would receive.

Jesus could have shared some straightforward morality tales, but instead, His parables teach us that things are not always what they seem. Moreover, as my friend Tim Hall observed, Matthew makes a point of showing us Jesus’ habit of veiling His truths in public while explaining them clearly in private. Our minds have been somewhat dulled to the text by our familiarity with it, but these two factors are quite strange if we think about it afresh. However, once we recognise them as related parts of a single strategy, they begin to make sense.

Things are not always what they seem

When it comes to the kingdom of God, appearances can be deceiving. Who imagined that the promised Messiah would lead the life of a commoner as Jesus did? But also, who imagined that the promised Messiah would then receive the degree of cosmic glory and power that He now possesses? As God’s Everyman, indistinguishable from His disciples, He Himself was a tiny mustard seed planted invisibly in their midst, even in their very hearts (Luke 17:21). Now He is incomparable, enthroned over all creation, and His increasing kingdom provides shelter to all nations. His Gospel was demonised and suppressed, but it continues to spread quietly, even invisibly, as leaven within the nations. The parables of the hidden treasure and the priceless pearl then call us to abandon earthly advantages for a citizenship that makes everything else expendable (Matthew 6:33; Philippians 3:8). All these truths are familiar to us. What is unfamiliar is how this theme of a hidden kingdom is the core of the Bible.

In the Garden of Eden, only humble submission to heaven (priesthood) would bring glorious dominion on earth (kingdom). The lesson of the two trees was that true and lasting kingdom is hidden within priesthood, like Joseph’s royal cup cached in a humble sack of grain. Or, in other words, those who humble themselves will be exalted by God, but those who exalt themselves will be humbled by God (Proverbs 29:23; Ezekiel 21:26; Matthew 18:4; 23:12; Luke 1:52; 14:11; 18:14; James 4:6, 10; 1 Peter 5:5-6).

The issue is that both God and the devil offer us dominion, so it is a game of snakes and ladders. The difference with our game is that it is often difficult to tell the snakes from the ladders by mere appearances. The devil himself appears as an angel of light—or, in other words, a messenger of enlightenment.¹For more on this theme, see Snakes and Ladders. The key to the puzzle is always what God told us, regardless of what we see or hear otherwise. A wise king sees what is unseen, and he does so by heeding God’s Word.

This brings us to the other part of the strategy, which is how Jesus deals with people who are not what they seem.

People are not always what they seem

When Jesus explained the meanings of parables to His disciples, He was following the way in which the Lord interacted with Moses.

Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. (Exodus 33:11)

And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. (Deuteronomy 34:10)

“With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord.” (Numbers 12:8)

When the disciples asked Jesus why He spoke in parables, He pointed them to the ministry of Isaiah, who condemned his hearers for their spiritual deafness, blindness, and hardness of heart.

Then He told the disciples that they were “blessed,” which, as in the Beatitudes, is a covenantal term. It meant that they would be the heirs of the promises, despite the rejection and sufferings they would have to endure to obtain them. Once again, those who appeared to be the most cursed of mankind would turn out to be the most blessed. When their suffering, “commoner” king reappeared, they would be like Him, because they would see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). His spiritual glory was perceived already by faith (John 1:14), but His physical glory would no longer be hidden from their eyes. This was nothing new to them. Throughout His ministry, Jesus had a habit of hiding and revealing Himself again.²See Jesus’ Three Ascensions.

Just as the persecuted apostles would turn out to be the most blessed, the Jewish rulers who weaponized the Law of Moses and despised their own people would turn out to be the most cursed. But the only way to sort out the sheep from the goats was to present truth in a veiled form. Jesus’ words were deliberately provocative, often calculated precisely so that they could be taken the wrong way. But this was a trap. The wicked would twist His words to their own destruction, while the righteous would store them up in their hearts and meditate upon them. The Bible itself is written in the same gloriously infuriating way. Moreover, the very Gospel of Christ is offensive and foolish to the natural man. As Solomon stated: “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 26:12),

This explains the agrarian parables. God hides things in order to expose the hearts of men. The Word exposes what kind of soil a man is. That is what happened in Eden, where that single command exposed what Adam was really made of. But this process takes time, which is why God sends rain upon both the righteous and the wicked until they are full-grown. That is when the wheat and the weeds are known by their fruits. Of course, Jesus already knew the hearts of men, but His judgment was vindicated when men finally revealed who they were by their response to Him. In this way, the Word not only implants the kingdom in hearts, but also exposes the hearts where the kingdom is not.³For more on this theme, see The Meaning of the Sheep and the Goats, “The Puzzle Box” and “The Ministry of Provocation.” This was the judicial wisdom of Solomon, who used a similarly veiled strategy to expose which of the two prostitutes was about to kill another child, this time deliberately.

And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice. (1 Kings 3:28)

As Solomon wrote, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Proverbs 25:2). In relation to the Word of God, even a king must humble himself before it if he wishes to understand it.

The reason Jesus explained the parables to His disciples is that they were His “friends” and confidants (John 15:15). Like Abraham and Moses, they were in on His plans. He knew their hearts and had vetted them already when He chose them.

Of course, that included Judas Iscariot, but he would serve a different purpose. His hidden leaven was not the leaven of the kingdom of God. When it came to Jesus’ enemies, the reverse would be in order. Evil plans hatched in private would be publicly exposed in an apocalypse.

In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.” (Luke 12:1-3)

Covenant, Creation, and Tabernacle in Matthew 13

Tim Hall shared his breakdown of Matthew 13 in the Bible Matrix Skool community with the following infographic.

Tim’s “rainbow” arrangement of the chapter’s key contents is very helpful. The first thing we should notice is the arc’s movement from the land to the sea. In biblical symbolism, this represents the gradual shift of the Gospel ministry from the Jews to the Gentiles.

Notice also that the Bible Matrix rainbow begins with violet (the Transcendence of the invisible God) and ends with indigo (the royal purple of God’s heirs, His Succession). This arrangement places the red at Division (the blood of circumcision, and the sash of a priest—death) and the blue at Conquest (the water of baptism, and the tassels on the hem of Jesus’ robe—life).

Finally, notice the oblique symmetry in the sequence. The Word features in Days 1 and 7. But there is a shift from the natural to the spiritual, from the old treasures of Moses to the new treasures of Jesus. Days 2 and 7 sort the believers from the unbelievers on the Land and then in the Sea. Days 3 and 5 are both doublets, alluding to the land and sea in both Jewish and Gentile contexts. The Day 3 images are obvious, but Day 5 is the step of the “plagues or plunder” that result from disobedience or obedience. Here it is only plunder! At the Day 4 center is Christ, the wielder of the sickle, with references to the warnings of John the Baptist concerning the “Pentecostal” winnowing of Israel (Matthew 3:12), and the true sons of Jacob as the lights of heaven.