Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

What do you value the most?

How do you value your eternal life?

Does the way you live demonstrate that?

Of all the parables of Jesus these two are in what concerns extent some of the shortest in the gospels but that does not mean that they are insignificant to us, small size doesn’t equate to shallow content.

Blaise Pascal once upon writing a terribly long letter to a friend apologised to him for it’s length saying that had he had the time he would have made it shorter.

We know this thing to be true in our own lives, we marvel with the intellect of people who can explain difficult and complex topics in a few sentences.

Jesus is one those people, dare I say, only an infinite and brilliant mind like Jesus could speak like this, so as we approach this passage we would do well to not despise it because of it’s size.

Although brief they are anything but shallow, they are profound and relevant truths for us.

The First Parable

The first of these parables speaks of a man who upon discovering a treasure in the field goes and sells all that he has in order to buy that field where the treasure is hidden.

This might seem odd to us, but in a day and age where people had no access to modern banking services it was normal for families to keep some of their monetary wealth stashed in some hole in their land.

The reasoning is that if their property got ransacked, at least some of their wealth would be safely hidden in a secret location.

This was specially true in Palestine, a region historically plagued by wars, when war seemed imminent people would store their valuables in the field, if you want to call it something you could call it a kind of safe.

Pablo Escobar the famous Colombian drug lord, he was one of the ten richest people in the world for a decade, he was so rich that reportedly he would spend 2500$ a month on rubber bands to hold his money together or that he once burned 2 Million$ just to keep his daughter warm, but due to the nature of his business he couldn’t resort to regular banking so when he started running out of warehouse space he started burying pallets of money in his properties, to this day people occasionally find these hidden treasures.

Back to the parable, we don’t know why he was on the field but he finds it, he puts it back and runs home to sell all he had in order to buy that field and keep the treasure.

This was not that uncommon Jesus in another parable tells us of the servant that being afraid of losing his masters talent hid it in the ground.

The roman historian Josephus speaks of how the Jews would hide their gold and silver in the ground so that it wouldn’t suffer with perils of war.

Although it’s not the point of the parable let me address something here that I fear would cause some of us to stumble with this passage.

Some of you might perceive a ethical problem that is irrelevant to the message of this parable but I want to address it, don’t want you to get stuck here and not move forward.

Some of you might say: “This man didn’t behave rightly!

How can Jesus tell this story?

The man was clearly acting in a deceitful way!” “This man found a treasure that doesn’t belong to him in a field that is not his and then proceeds to hide it again and goes on to buy the field in order to keep it”.

“He should have taken the treasure and given it to the owner of the property”.

Firstly, Rabbinic law in the time of Jesus clearly stated that if someone found something it was his to keep.

“Finders keepers, losers weepers”.

The Jews listening in to this parable would have seen no problem with this

Secondly, the treasure did not belong to the owner of the field.

If it had been his, he would have sold the field after unearthing his treasure.

He did not know that the treasure was there, maybe belonged to a previous owner.

Therefore the owner of the field would have no claim to the treasure besides being the owner of the field.

Lastly, if anything the man in this parable acted in a very righteous way.

Legally he could have taken the treasure and went back home, or at least picked a part of it and bought the field with it.

He didn’t he personally risked all his livelihood to attain this treasure.

That being said, all of this is not the point of the parable.

The point is that he sold everything he had, the point is that he put everything on the line for this treasure.

The Second Parable

The second parable speaks of a pearl merchant that found a pearl that was just perfect and that he sold all that he had to buy it.

This was something very common at that time as well.

In Jesus day pearls would carry the same status as diamonds do today.

They were the most precious stone.

People looking to diversify their assets would buy pearls, they were the perfect commodity.

They were small and they were worth fortunes.

The pearl hunt was an extremely dangerous endeavour, in the Red Sea or in the Indian Ocean, man would tie rocks around their waists in order to descend to the deep sea with only a single breath in order to find a single oyster.On top of that the sea was a scary place full of scary monsters.

Pearls were more valuable ounce for ounce than gold.

The Jewish Talmud speaks of their indescribable value, Egyptians worshipped pearls, Romans would dissolve pearls in vinegar to showcase their wealth, one of the roman emperor Caligula’s wives once went to a party adorned from head to toe in pearls a historian reported that she was carrying 50 Million Sestertius, adjusted for inflation that would be around half billion pound in today’s money.

Cleopatra had two precious pearls and they were worth each something like half a million pounds.

That’s why Paul tells Timothy in the New Testament that Christian women shouldn’t ornate themselves with pearls but they should dress themselves decently.

The heavenly Jerusalem as gates made of pearls.

Jesus in Matthew said not to cast your pearls before swine in other words don’t give precious things to who doesn’t deserve it.

As I said these parables are easy and brief, they are not hard to understand nor do they offer any interpretative difficulties.

But let me draw some biblical principals that I trust should be helpful for us as we try to apply this to our own lives.

I - The Kingdom of Heaven and It’s Value

These pair of parables are like twins, although they are not identical they were born at the same time and

The kingdom of Heaven is compared to a treasure and a pearl.

What is the Kingdom of Heaven?

In the New Testament Kingdom of Heaven is used by Christ or his apostles to refer to a few distinct things (but not different)

As God’s purposes; As God’s rule on earth; Heaven; Our membership of heaven; Kingdom of God is the place where God rules; But most importantly for us today is that the Kingdom of God is described as good news as the Gospel

“Your Kingdom come, your will be done”

That’s what we are talking about in this passage, the value of our salvation, the value of our admission into the kingdom of heaven.

It’s so precious that it gets compared to a hidden treasure or a pearl of great value.

As God’s rule on earth

It’s value

It’s value

Why is it so valuable?

It’s rarity; durability - eternal; It’s source - from God himself; The mediation upon which it rests - On the person and work of the Son of God

Rarity

It’s source

The Kingdom source of joy

Only a fool wouldn’t see the value of this treasure.

The blessings which it communicates

The mediation upon which it rests

Jesus Christ is the rare jewel of our salvation.

The world doesn’t see the value of this salvation, they would rather search for the fleeting pleasures of this life than think about the eternal pleasure of having Christ.

Everyday they neglect the gift of this pearl of great price

Which leads me into my second point

II - The Concealed Nature of The Kingdom

Although the treasure is there, the world cannot see it.

They don’t understand it’s value, they don’t understand why we value it so highly.

Why do we put ourselves under this rigid moral and ethical code and rules.

That’s why Paul says:

or in the 2nd letter

The god of this age blinded the minds of the unbelievers so that the light of the Gospel, they cannot see they are blinded to the richness of this treasure

People are so distracted that they don’t stop to look beneath the surface of their shallow lives.

You look around on your next commute to work, perhaps you’ll feel sorry for them and you will feel something of the feeling of Jesus when he overlooked Jerusalem.

But it’s not just ignorance, it’s wilful suppression of the truth, how many times when you try to explain the Gospel to a friend and that person just looks at you funny like you are crazy.

The

Jesus said that

The parable of the pearl communicates that to us as well, it tells us that although it was not hidden it’s richness is only accessible to those who dive deep to find it

Jesus said

John also says in chapter 1

11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.p 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believedq in his name,r he gave the right to become children of God

Hiddenness

Let’s go to the third point

III - Two Ways of Finding The Kingdom

Why two parables?

Certainly Jesus could have stuck to just one, unless he wanted to teach us something by using two.

I think this is the case

In both cases we have a man, something that is priceless, and in both cases they sell all they have to attain it.

The difference is that in the first case the man finds it by chance and in the second he knew what he was looking for.