VALUABLE DISCOVERY

VALUABLE DISCOVERY Matthew 13:44-46 With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration: the Holy Spirit; the Word of God; G.R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God; Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah; Hugh T. Kerr, John Mulder, Conversions; C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy; J.W. Shepard, The Christ of the Gospels September 25, 2005 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction A rock hound named Rob Cutshaw owns a little roadside shop outside Andrews, North Carolina. Like many in the trade, he hunts for rocks, then sells them to collectors or jewelry makers. He knows enough about rocks to decide which to pick up and sell, but he’s no expert. He leaves the appraising of his rocks to other people. As much as he enjoys the work, it doesn’t always pay the bills. He occasionally moonlights, cutting wood to help put bread on the table. While on a dig forty years ago, Rob found a rock he described as “purdy and big.” He tried unsuccessfully to sell the specimen, and according to the Constitution, kept the rock under his bed or in his closet. He guessed the blue chunk could bring as much as $500 dollars, but he would have taken less if something urgent came up like paying his power bill. That’s how close Rob came to hawking for a few hundred dollars what turned out to be the largest, most valuable sapphire ever found. The blue rock that Rob had abandoned to the darkness of a closet three decades ago—now known as the original “The Star of David” sapphire—weighs nearly a pound, and could easily sell for $3 million. You’re probably thinking that’s one lucky guy—why doesn’t anything like that ever happen to me? When you think about it he was fortunate a couple times over. He didn’t find a buyer at his initial asking price, He put the gem in his closet instead of continuing to try to sell it at an even lesser price, and somewhere along the line someone actually told him how valuable it was without scamming him. The Parables Something very similar happened to a farm worker in the parable Jesus told recorded at Matthew 13:44 – The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry Palestine was a land where the armies of Assyria, Persia, Egypt and Rome had come and gone pillaging and pilfering for centuries. Palestinian Jews had no banks, so to keep their treasures safe, they would bury them in the ground. Occasionally the landowners would die suddenly and the treasures would be left buried in their field. And on rare occasion someone else might find the subterranean safety deposit box . When the fortunate finder made his discovery, though, he had to be careful how he handled the situation. If the land was not his, the rights to the treasure passed to the new landowner. Rabbinic tradition said that if such a found treasure was lifted out of the earth, it would automatically be the possession of the current landowner. But if it was left in the ground, it was still a secret. So when the man in our parable, perhaps a farmhand for the landowner, found the treasure of an unfortunate and involuntary benefactor, he left the treasure buried, went and struck a deal for the land, using all his negotiating skills and all his life savings. Then, with deed in hand, when he re-dug and removed the treasure, it was all his. He is clearly obsessed with having this treasure. How much treasure do you imagine was in that box? Do you picture it something like this? There’s no way to know how much treasure was in it, but we do know it was worth everything to the man. Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like that. When you stumble onto the privilege of being in a right relationship with God and His purpose in your life, it suddenly becomes more valuable than anything else. Jesus told another parable similar to this one. It was the parable of the pearl of great price. This parable is similar to first one in that both of them point to the great value of the kingdom of heaven. This time, though, the “finder” doesn’t’ accidentally discover the valuable commodity. This man is searching for it even though he probably has no idea how valuable his find will be. He is a pearl merchant and he is either himself a pearl diver or he has found the pearl in the marketplace and is taken with it. Like the man in the field, he knows immediately this is the one he has been looking for. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.  [webmasters note: Matthew 13:45-46]  Again we have the picture of a man obsessed with owning this valuable object. Anywhere else in scripture this would be pure lust and idolatry, wouldn’t it? But parables are great media and we can get away with just enjoying the thrill of discovery with these men. The Point of the Parables – The Extreme Value of the Kingdom of Heaven But parables always make one clear point, and here we have a couplet—two mini-stories laid end to end as if to make the point even more emphatic. And the point is clear: The kingdom of heaven is of extreme value to those who find it. You might think that it is a bit of an exaggeration to get so excited about a treasure chest or a pearl. That’s the other thing about parables—their like fables and speak of things in mythical dimensions. But, not so fast there. Suppose you were given a lottery ticket by someone—I know you wouldn’t buy one--and that someone called you frantically to tell you he just learned that it was the $20 million winning number. Then you realized you just sold your old wallet at your garage sale, and the ticket was in that wallet. Any chance we might find you darting from garage sale to garage sale in hopes of finding the buyer? And, assuming you did find him, what would you say? You sly man—you’d tell him how you realized after he left that you really couldn’t part with that wallet. It really means a lot to you. And you would generously offer to give him double what he paid for it if you could just have it back. Jesus says that discovering the kingdom of God is like that. I’d like to share a couple observations about the kingdom of heaven as illustrated in these parables. First, a quick review: what is the kingdom of heaven anyway? The kingdom of heaven is anywhere someone is trusting and obeying the King. Whenever someone hears the gospel of Jesus Christ and steps out in faith, entrusting his life to the Lord, there you have the kingdom of heaven. Wherever you see someone loyally living out his faith in Christ in spite of opposition from those around him, there is the kingdom of heaven. You see a believer in Christ sharing his personal testimony in the hopes of influencing his friend to be saved, and you know you are looking at the kingdom of heaven. Where you find Christians joining together in faith and love and hope, worshiping and serving their Lord, there you will find the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is precisely anywhere an individual has discovered that submitting to Jesus Christ as Lord means more to him than anything else in life. He’s found the treasure; he’s found the pearl. Some people stumble upon the kingdom and they would tell you the last thing they were looking for was God. Others spend their lives searching religions looking for that real relationship with the living God, and finally they find it, and they know this is the greatest treasure in life. Have you found the treasure? Have you come to the place in your spiritual journey where you have the matchless, life-altering, irreplaceable thrill of knowing that you have come back to God your Maker? If you have, then you know, don’t you? You know the exuberance of the farmhand and the pearl merchant. If you haven’t yet found the kingdom, you are probably wondering what’s so wonderful about the kingdom of heaven? I want to enumerate a couple of the most profound aspects of the kingdom of heaven that are outlined in the New Testament. Forgiveness I am more convinced today than I have ever been that people are hurting badly in the way they think of themselves because they have not been forgiven. At least once a week I run into someone who will admit to feeling like the “worst sinner in the world”, people who are always walking around feeling so guilty, people who are doing their best to hide from God because they feel so ashamed. So many people are under the pall of shame, knowing they have fallen short of the God’s expectations for them. And they are honestly so afraid of God that they will do anything to keep their distance from anything religious just so they don’t run into Him. It’s enough to break your heart, Christian, when you realize how desperately they need to understand that God loves them and wants to forgive them. It would free them so much just to face the truth that God knows all about them—even the stuff they’ve been trying to hide—and He still loves them and is willing and eager to receive them back into fellowship with Him. And how I love to witness the moment when someone does realize this awesome truth and decides to take God up on His offer. The feeling of being forgiven by God virtually erupts from them as they weep and smile and begin to wear a new look—the look of peace. Presence of God But forgiveness is just the beginning of the kingdom of heaven in a person’s life. As a person turns his life over to God through faith in Jesus, He comes to live inside them. That’s right—it’s the Holy Spirit of God, and He enters into the mind and heart of the new Christian. Listen, you think being forgiven changes the life and outlook of a person? Think about what happens when the living God comes in! The Holy Spirit brings with Him so many gifts: assurance, fruit, gifts of service and ministry, power to live for Him and witness for Him, continual reminder of the hope of heaven, ability to pray, to worship, to rejoice and to be at rest in God.. This is such wonderful truth it’s hard for the uninitiated to believe it can happen, but it does! Ask a follower of Christ about it. It’s exactly as the apostle Peter said it would be in Acts 2:38 when he answered the people’s question, “What should we do?” He said, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. When people really understand this they can hardly imagine it—God is not their enemy any more. He has come to them offering amnesty on the basis of the sacrifice of His own Son, AND He wants to live in them through His own personal Spirit! Blessings On top of this, when a person becomes a child of God by faith, as a member of God’s family he becomes heir to so many other spiritual perks that the Bible can only summarize them by saying, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3) May I add this comment? One of the most exciting blessing to come the way of the new believer is the capacity given to him to recognize all the blessings he has in his reconciled relationship with God. Suddenly, the whole range of God’s grace toward him is revealed by the Spirit living within him. This is what 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 means when it quotes from Isaiah 64:4 – “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. What unimaginable favor from God! Christian if you have forgotten that all this is yours from God through Christ, get on your knees and thank Him again from the bottom of your heart! Purpose One of the joys of being in a redeemed relationship with God that we often overlook, but it so beautiful is this: when we come to Christ we reconnect with the purposes of God in our lives. For the first time in his life the new convert can see that life is more than an empty, seamless cycle of work-eat-play-sleep. Once he is back in relationship with the Lord in the kingdom, it all begins to become clear. Now he understands—all that he does is a service to the King of his life. What a powerful sense of fulfillment awaits those who live for Him! Not only that, but he begins to realize that God has some very specific things for him to do, personally tailored by God to his talents and spiritual gifts. Doing these works becomes the most fulfilling behavior of all—knowing he is serving the King in exactly the way the King wills. Ephesians 2:10 teaches We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Before Christ doing good was very hard, consistently a failure and never enough to please God. Now, he’s assured that everything he does he does in the name of Christ to the glory of God the Father. (Colossians 3:16) Hope And if all this weren’t enough, it only gets better at the end of time. One day this old world and everything in it, including all the works in this world will be burned up. Whether you live to see that cataclysmic event on earth or you physically die and go to be with the Lord, the promise of God to you is that you will never die the second death. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, you are heir to heaven and the eternal presence of the Lord. His Word says there will be no more tears or sorrow, pain or death in that unending existence--Only the pure joy of the Lord, unmixed with the heartaches, evil and temporality of this life. Christians come to understand that this life is just the sidewalk, death is a doorway and heaven will be worth it all. That is a “sampling” of the Bible’s testimony about the kingdom of heaven. We have at least an introduction to why the kingdom of heaven is like finding an incredibly valuable treasure. If you have never entered the kingdom of heaven by trusting Christ as your Savior, please know that you can, and you should. It doesn’t take a super-sized faith—even a tiny amount the size of a mustard seed will do. Come to Him and receive Him by faith, and He will bring you into the kingdom of heaven. Conclusion I want to close in a somewhat unusual way. This week I was inspired anew by something I read. I’ve read it before, and I will read it again. But this week the words of this testimony touched me in a deep and profound way. And I can’t help but think it may prove helpful for someone here this morning. It is taken from the book Surprised By Joy, and was written by one of the most creative and brilliant minds of the 20th century, C. S. Lewis. It concerns his conversion to faith in Christ. He had been an atheist, then he began to believe in God as a theist, but not yet a Christian. An amazingly gifted philosopher and writer, Lewis tells of the day he became more than someone who merely believed in God. This is the story of his fateful bus ride to the zoo at Whipsnade. I’ve deliberately left a few minutes for this reading as it is a bit longer than I normally might read from a book when preaching. I believe you’ll find it refreshing and insightful. Listen in with me to the conversion experience of one of the most brilliant minds ever to set pen to paper. See if in some way you might identify with him. The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington on the top [flight] of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armor, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to pen the door or to take off the corset meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, “I chose,” yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, “I am what I do.” Then came the repercussion on the imaginative level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back—drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle. I rather disliked the feeling. . . . Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. . . .For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was Legion. . . . a philosophical theorem, cerebrally entertained, began to stir and heave and throw off its grave cloths, and stood upright and became a living presence. I was to be allowed to play at philosophy no longer. It might, as I say, still be true that my “Spirit” differed in some way from “the God of popular religion.” My Adversary waived the point. It sank into utter unimportance. He would not argue about it. He only said, “I am the Lord”’ “I am that I am”; “I am.” . . . . People who are naturally religious find difficulty in understanding the horror of such a revelation. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.” To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. . . . Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered with.” I had wanted (mad wish) “to call my soul my own.” . . . . Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even “All or nothing…” As soon as I became a Theist I started attending my parish church on Sundays and my college chapel on weekdays; not because I believed in Christianity, nor because I thought the difference between it and simple Theism a small one, but because I thought one ought to “fly one’s flag” by some unmistakable overt sign. I was acting in obedience to a (perhaps mistaken) sense of honor. The idea of churchmanship was to me wholly unattractive. . . . But thought I liked clergymen as I liked bears, I had as little wish to be in the Church as in the zoo. It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one’s spiritual life. To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters. And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all! The bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing. Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked the organ the least. I have, too, a sort of spiritual gaucherie which makes me unapt to participate in any ritual. . . . I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. “Emotional” is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake. . . .   [Back to Top]