Sermon Tone Analysis

We are now in week five of our journey exploring the life of Jesus Christ.

We have looked at His baptism, His temptation in the wilderness, how He called His disciples, and what He had to say about prayer.

We are now fast forwarding quite a bit of time through Jesus’ ministry.

Because Matthew has twenty-eight chapters, and this series lasts only twelve Sundays, there are so many classic stories and lessons that we have to skip over for the sake of time.

So essentially, I am trying to hit some of the biggest events in Jesus’ earthly life, and I am also trying to give you a sampling of how He taught people.

Last week we looked at a small segment of His Sermon on the Mount.

And while very often Jesus taught lessons like that, most of the time He spoke to the people in parables.

Jesus loved speaking in parables because they communicated so much truth in so few words.

Parables gave the interested something to think about for the next several days.

And also, Jesus’ parables oftentimes had several applications for people’s lives.

And even beyond that, people love hearing stories!

Jesus could have given a dry lecture about how God wants to forgive our sins, but instead He told a vivid story about a prodigal son who came back to his father.

And Jesus could have given a dissertation about how different people respond differently to the gospel, but instead He told about a farmer who threw seeds on different kinds of ground, and what happened to the seed.

And in today’s passage, instead of telling the people how precious and how important it was to accept God, Jesus gave them three parables about a field, a pearl, and a big fishing net.

And in case you closed your Bibles, our Scripture reference this morning is in Matthew chapter thirteen, and we’re going to be reading verses forty-four through fifty-three.

So again, Matthew 13:44-53.

“’Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.

So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.’

Jesus saith unto them, ‘Have ye understood all these things?’

They say unto Him, ‘Yea, Lord.’

Then said He unto them, ‘Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.’

And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, He departed thence.”

Let’s pray before we explore this passage.

Just to give you an idea of what I’m going to be preaching about, we are going to break this down into four parts.

First we are going to look at the parable of the treasure in the field.

Second we are going to look at the parable of the pearl of great price, third we are going to look at the parable of the fish in the net, and lastly we are going to look at how Jesus sums up all of His other parables with one final parable.

Parable #1: The Treasure in the Field

Let’s read verse forty-four of our text again.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”

If Jesus were telling this story in Texas in the year 2011, here’s what I imagine He would say.

“The kingdom of heaven is just like a man who goes hunting one day out in the field, and he steps in something sticky, and he looks down to find that he has stepped into a big puddle of oil, and he sees that more oil is bubbling up out of the ground.

Knowing how much oil is worth, he goes to the county deeds office, and searches for hours to find out who’s land he was on when he found the oil.

When he finally discovers the owner, he calls the owner and asks him how much it would cost to buy the land off of him.

The owner says that he doesn’t really want to sell, but he guesses he would sell it for $100,000.

To anyone else this price would seem exorbitant, but this hunter knows about something on that land that no one else knows about.

So the man goes and empties out his savings account, breaks his piggy bank, breaks his daughter’s piggy bank, sells his entire gun collection, and then sells his truck.

When he realizes he’s still $75,000 short, the man decides to sell his house and his land.

With exactly $100,000 in hand, the hunter goes to the farmer, and the farmer officially signs the deed of this field to the hunter.

The hunter began to celebrate, because he had just made the best purchase of his entire life.”

Now looking back at Jesus’ actual parable, notice the different things that the man did.

He found the treasure, and then he buried it so that no one else would find it.

Then he went and sold everything that he had, just so that he could buy the field.

I imagine that most people probably thought that this man was crazy, because what is so great about a little field?

But that day, this man was the smartest guy in the whole country, because he was the rightful owner of a container full of treasure.

So what is the interpretation of the parable of the hidden treasure?

There are actually a couple different interpretations that I believe are both valid.

The first interpretation is that the field is like the nation of Israel, who had been waiting for centuries for the Messiah to come.

And Jesus was saying that now that the Messiah was here, they needed to give up everything so that they could have this priceless treasure.

But the second interpretation is the one that applies to every person throughout history.

The second interpretation is that knowing Jesus Christ as your Savior is the most priceless treasure in the world.

In fact, knowing Jesus is worth giving up everything else you’ve ever owned.

Now, of course Jesus does not ask us to sell our cars or our houses for Him, but the principle is that knowing Jesus is worth more than everything else we own combined, and we should be willing to give up everything to be with Him.

So how does this interpretation apply to us in this church?

I think there are two ways that we all can apply this to our lives.

The first way is that we need to realize that knowing Jesus Christ as our Savior is an absolutely priceless treasure.

So often, we forget what a miracle it is that we have been made right with God.

To think, that we were once dead in our sins, and now our sins have been washed as white as snow!

Let us never forget how good it is to know Jesus!

And the second application is that just like the man in the parable, sometimes we need to give up what we have so that we can enjoy Christ.

And before you start throwing tomatoes, I am not talking about giving away all of your material possessions.

What I’m talking about is giving up the little pet sins that we want to hold onto, even though Jesus would rather us give them up.

I’m talking about stuff like cussing, looking at people other than your spouse, drinking, and any other habit that contradicts the word of God.

Will you lose your salvation if you continue doing those things?

No, praise God that He has covered all of our sins.

But following Jesus means that we give up all of the things that we used to think were so important to us but really aren’t.

Because having a treasure as priceless as salvation will make the loss of your old ways of life seem miniscule.

Is there anything in your life that you need to “sell” so that you can fully enjoy the treasure of knowing Jesus Christ?

If there is, I would encourage you to get rid of it now, because the blessings of giving up sin far outweigh the pain of keeping your old ways of life.

Let’s now look at our second parable.

Parable #2: The Pearl of Great Price

For this parable, we need to look at verses forty-five and forty-six of our text.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen the show, “American Pickers.”

Well, the premise of the show is of a couple of guys who drive all over the place to look for people who have a whole lot of junk.

While the vast majority of their stuff would be better served in the dumpster, some of their things are worth good money, and the people don’t even know it.

So these guys will offer the people a little bit of money for their stuff, and then go sell it in their store for at least double what they paid for it.

This is the idea of the merchant that Jesus talks about in these two verses.

This merchant’s entire day revolves around looking for good pearls.

And one day, he hits the pearl jackpot, as he finds the most beautiful pearl he’s ever laid his eyes on.

And just like the man in the first parable, he sells everything he has, and goes and buys this beautiful pearl.

And it’s obvious that these first two parables are very similar to each other.

In both parables, someone finds something extremely valuable, and so they sell all of their possessions so that they can own something that is worth far more than their old stuff.

And so now we need to find out why it is that Jesus told these two nearly-identical parables back-to-back.

I think the main reason Jesus did this is that He was trying to make a point.

Any time the Bible says the same thing more than once, it is done so that we will grasp the importance of the message.

Jesus is trying to hammer home to His disciples that knowing Him is so valuable that it is worth giving up their very lives.

But I think that Jesus was also trying to tell the story from two different perspectives, with one very important nuance.

In the first parable, was the man out in the field digging for treasure?

No, he just stumbled upon it.

But in the second parable, the man spent all of his days searching for a great pearl, and he finally found it.

These two men represent the two ways that people stumble across the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The first type of people are the ones who had never really thought about their salvation before until someone approached them with the gospel, and they immediately realized their need for a Savior, and so they accepted Christ right then and there.

Or maybe they had a dusty old Bible on their shelf for years, and they didn’t open it until they had a major life crisis, and they rediscovered the words of life that they had neglected for so long.

But the second type of people are the ones who search for the truth their whole lives.

These kinds of people are often very philosophical, and maybe they experiment in different religions, or even experiment in stuff like hallucinating drugs.

These people are on a quest for meaning in life, and they won’t stop until they’ve found it.

And then, after searching and searching, they finally come across the greatest treasure in the world, Jesus Christ.

So there are the people who come to Christ because they are encountered with their need for Him, and then there are the people who come to Christ because they searched for years and finally realized that He was what they needed.