Pearl Of Great Price
Pearl of Great Price
1. You've got to be looking.
2. You've got to know what you're looking for.
3. You have got to be aware of the value of what you are
looking for. (Doug and cars, Gucci watches, etc.)
4. You've got to be willing to pay the price.
Difference between wants and needs? Difference between wants and fancies. We like the notion that we want something every once in a while but we may not actually want it.
Question is: "Do you really know what you want in life?"
What is something that you always wanted that you would buy right now if you had the money? Would you be willing to sell everything that you own in order to purchase this thing? Do you really want it if you are not willing to do this? What could you buy today if you were willing to sell all in order to purchase it?
The things that we want are always changing. When people give us gifts, we like them better if they are things that we want. I hated it when I got socks or clothes for Christmas when I was a kid. I wanted fun things. I figured that my
parents could just buy me socks some other time. I knew they would never buy me fun presents at other times. I could always say that I had no socks and they would buy me some. I could never say that I had no G.I. Joe toys and they would
rush out to meet that need. Basically that was because we both knew that I really didn't need those things.
Is it true that God never promised us our wants.
When I am 45 I want to write books and material for youth groups. I want a home in the country, by a brook. A log home. I want totravel and preach and work part-time as a youth director in a small church or a group of small churches. (I think?)
May 18, 1990
How many of you really know what you want in life? If you don't you'll never know it when you come across it.
Your wants change because:
a) You change.
b) There are things in life that to this point you have never seen or experienced.
He was a pearl merchant and he was aware of the value of what he was buying.
How can I relate this to the kids so that they will realize tat they really don't know what they want? Particularly those who believe that God does not hold the answers for their lives.
1. Health. Money cannot purchase, guarantee, perpetuate good health.
2. Peace.
3. Love and Acceptance.
I. There are a different set of rules in God's kingdom.
A real Christian is an odd number:
--he feels supreme love for one he has never seen.
--talks with familiarity every day to someone he cannot see.
--expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another
--empties himself in order to be full
--admits he is wrong so he can be declared right
--goes down in order to get up
--is strongest when he is weakest
--richest when he is poorest
--happiest when he feels the worst
--he dies so he can live
--forsakes in order to have
--gives away so he can keep
--sees the invisible
--hears the inaudible
--and knows that which passes understanding
What a wierd bunch, aren't we?
A.W. Tozer.
The world will never understand what motivates the person who truly lives in God's kingdom. Living on Grand Manan there were a different set of rules.
1. Wave to everyone who meets you on the road.
2. When you are looking for a ride, walk facing oncoming traffic and do not stick out your thumb to indicate that you are hoping that someone will pick you up.
3. You never post "No trespassing" signs on Grand Manan island. Although you may hold the title of the land, everyone who lives on the island would consider it their right to have access.
Mark Monus raised as a MK. Small village in the Northwest territories. Everyone used to help themselves to everyone else's refrigerators.
If you want to get ahead, go to the back of the line.
If you would be the greatest, seek to become the least.
Put others ahead of you.
Bless those who persecute you.
Lend to those from whom you expect to be ripped off.
Gain life by dying to your own self.
Overcome evil with good.
Iwould love for God to move in our midst here in the Moncton Wesleyan Church to the degree that we would be totally unable to make a seminar out of it. In experiences of hiddenness we learn that the ministry of small things is a necessary prerequisite to the ministry of power...... The ministry of small things is among the most important ministries we are given. In some ways, it is more important than the ministry of power...... Small things are the genuinely big things in the kingdom of God. It is here we truly face the issues of obedience and discipleship. It is not hard to be a model disciple amid camera lights and press releases. But in the small corners of life, in those areas of service that will never be newsworthy or gain us any recognition, we must
hammer out the meaning of obedience.
I WONDER
You know, Lord, how I serve You
with great emotional fervor in the limelight.
You know how eagerly I speak for You at a Women's Club.
You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible Study.
But how would I react, I wonder,
if you pointed to a basin of water
and asked me to wash the calloused feet
of a bent and wrinkled old woman
day after day, month after month,
in a room where nobody saw and nobody knew?
He was a man who was looking for fine pearls and he never had encountered
anything this fine before. He may not have even realized that there was something here that was this valuable. How much of a market could there be for something that would cost so much? Previous to this point, he had made his living as a merchant, a person whose business it was to purchase and resell for profit, fine pearls. He was able to do this with his own limited resources. He had never before needed to sell all in order to make a purchase.
If you were going to sell everything that you owned what would that entail?
a) Some things that you could never replace. Things that held sentimental value.
b) Favorite things. Those things that you have become comfortable with and they might be worthless to everyone else but they are treasure as far as you are concerned.
c) Familiar things. Their value is solely in the fact that you are familiar with them. You know how they work. There is no guess work related to them.
Why would anything be worth that price? Why would it be worth that to be a part of God's kingdom?
This merchant came to the conclusion that many never came to.
What he found was worth everything that he possessed and he sold it all willingly. Purchasing with what you have to spend will never cover the bill. This guy was different because he didn't just dip into his savings account and buy something else to add to his collection. He sold everything he had to purchase it. There was nothing that remained.
Have you boiled down your life to ask yourself what it is that you would reject everything else for.
How does one recognize the pearl of great value? They have to make it a careful study. How many coins have slipped through your fingers because you didn't know what they were worth?
1. You have to know what you are looking for. Isaiah said in chapter 55, verses 1,2, "Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me and your soul will delight in the richest of
àfare." (read on)
Did this man live in a day when worth was measured more in the worth of particular items rather than their potential to bring money.
Would you pay 200,000 for the Mona Lisa? No you wouldn't. You would pay 200,000 if you knew that you could collect the difference between the selling price and it's actual worth.
Then the money is the treasure, not the painting. It may be another man's treasure but it is not yours.
Eugene and stamp collecting. Loonies without the bush. etc.
Kingdom parables. The kingdom of heaven is like....... So begin these parables found in God's word. An effort to explain in mortal terms an immortal reality. Another dimension if you please which we know nothing of. Such is the place where angels and demons struggle. The place of spiritual warfare.
What would have been the possibilities for this story?
Rather than selling all he had to purchase the pearl he might have:
a) Sought long term financing in order to add it as the crowning acquisition to his growing collection.
b) Did you ever stop to ask yourself what the really important things in life are? They are inevitably things that money can not buy. The substance of life is totally internal. The building blocks upon which enjoyment of the world that God has made stands. we have a good many dissatisfied people in the world today. Everyone has a complaint. Dissatisfaction is a one word definition of motivation. How many unhappy people do you know? Now I believe that God has not guaranteed that any one of his children should always have a smile on their face, but He has made it possible that they could always have their needs met. It is His plan that in Him all His children would find fulfillment.
Different rules in God's kingdom. People are not concerned with things that others are concerned with.
Man dying in the dessert. Weather beaten shack, rusty pump, dust covered jug with cork in the top, Message, "You have to prime the pump with all the water in this jug my friend.
P.S. Be sure to fill the jug again before you leave.