Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

Trunk or treat Wednesday night with Calvary

Trunk or treat Friday night

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I have 3 daughters and it seems that at some point in their lives they all go through the “why” stage.

No matter what you say, when you say it, or how you say it their response is always the same....WHY?

And so what happens is you are constantly breaking down everything you ever say

And their young right, they are trying to understand and make sense of the world but the world can be complex.

Even for an adult it can confusing and mysterious at times

And so what I find myself doing a lot is taking big complex issues and making them as simple as possible

Right?

Like their brains can’t handle the complexities and intricacies of it all and so if you say words and use examples they don’t understand it will only lead to more why’s and you’ll never reach an end and they will never understand

Well, we can think of parables as Jesus doing the same thing for us

So as we spend time in this series what we will see is Jesus taking big ideas, kingdom, theological, deep ideas and telling a story to communicate it in a simple way for His audience to understand

So each week we will look at one of or sometimes even multiple parables and talk about what Jesus is communicating to us about the kingdom of God

And we are seeking understanding.

So, I’m going to do my best to break down everything we talk about in a way that’s simple and easy to understand

So we ready?

I’m gonna read our passage this morning and then pray and then we can get started

Matthew 13:44–46 (NIV)

pray

So Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a man who finds treasure hidden in a field

Back in this day this actually would happen from time to time

Have you ever seen the people on the beach with metal detectors?

Back then they didn’t have banks or safe’s or anything to really store valuable items so they would bury them but often either not return or die before they could and their treasure would be left wherever they buried it

According to Rabbi Law “if a man finds scattered money, it belongs to the finder” but Jesus doesn’t tell this story to emphasize the legality of it but rather to point to the worth of the kingdom of God

Most commentators would say there was a good chance this man was employed to work this field.

He was probably rather poor because if he had to sell all he had to purchase a field there was a good chance he didn’t have much

And then, in a very similar way, Jesus tells of a man who went out looking for treasure, this time the treasure is identified as pearls

This man was a merchant, probably somewhat wealthy, but He goes out intentionally looking for this specific treasure

And so Jesus paints this picture of what the kingdom of God is like and the point I think that’s trying to be made is that it doesn’t matter who you are and how you find Jesus because when you do the reaction and results are the same

The reaction is...You’d give it all away and the results are...you get the treasure.

So both find treasures and these treasures that are found are seemingly worth selling everything in order to possess it

And this is what the kingdom of God is like

Jesus is teaching here the value of the kingdom

There is nothing worth more than Jesus

And there is nothing worth more than membership into the kingdom of God

So there are a few things I want us to realize in this parable

It’s not as if these treasures didn’t cost them something

In fact, you could argue that the treasures they found cost them everything

Jesus explicitly says that they sold everything

Both men, whether they had a lot or had a little, they gave it all away for the kingdom of God

Following Jesus is going to call us to give away of ourselves

If following Jesus is always comfortable for you then there’s a good chance you aren’t following Jesus

Following Jesus calls us out of our comfort zones

It calls us to courage

It calls us to faith

It calls us to give of ourselves

So the cost is great

But also notice what it says about how he does it

It says “in his joy”

When we realize the true kingdom of God, the joy of it all will be motivation enough

We are overcome with the gospel, overwhelmed by the gospel, and therefore overjoyed by the gospel

Not happiness but joy

When we understand that we’ve been invited into the kingdom of God by the King himself then the joy of that will motivate us to move past the mundane

It would be like being invited into the “augusta national golf club.”

If you are unfamiliar, it’s a golf club out of Agusta GA where they hold the Master’s every year.

It’s comprised of only about 300 people in the world.

Some of them are Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Roger Goodell, Peyton Manning, Condeleezza Rice, and so on.

There is no application into this club, it is by invitation only and the initiation fee is thought to be somewhere between $250,000 and half of a million dollars with annual fees of around $30k a year.

It is one of the most exclusive and sought after clubs in all of the world and being invited into the kingdom of God would be like someone inviting you into the augusta national golf club and then paying all of your fees.

There is an overwhelming joy found when Jesus is found but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost

It’s not that following Jesus won’t cost you something, it’s just that following Jesus could never cost you enough to make following Him not worth it.

When we understand the fullness of who God is

The evilness of who we are

And then the grace that we have been given

Then there’s nothing that can shake or overcome the joy that comes from that

There is nothing that could ever cost us enough to not follow Jesus

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again and again

Jesus people should be joyful people, in fact they should be the most joyful people

In our joy, we give up all we have to chase after Jesus

Notice also the urgency of both

I guess it’s somewhat implied but it reads as if they did not waste any time

They found the treasures and I believe immediately went away and sold all they had to posses it

It’s not as if they found the treasures and sat around and thought about it.

They immediately went into action

There’s an encounter Jesus has with one of his disciples and the disciple says “Lord, first let me go bury my father” and Jesus replies “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

It wasn’t that Jesus was being insensitive He was merely stating the urgency behind following Jesus

We don’t have time to play games with God

There is eternity at stake and lives at stake

There’s joy at stake, hope at stake, life at stake

When we understand the beauty of the gospel then it should challenge us to become proactive agents of that very gospel

We don’t see a need and sit around and hope someone else fills it

We don’t huddle up on Sunday mornings to get our feel good moment of the week and then do nothing else for the kingdom of God

We don’t hope and pray for our marriages to change, kids to change, community to change, and then do nothing else about it

We are in a constant spiritual war and it’s a place where the complacent get overtaken

We can not be complacent about the gospel of Jesus Christ and I would argue that if that is your stance then there is a good chance you don’t truly understand it

The kingdom of God is like finding a treasure and then doing everything you can as quickly as you can to obtain it

Because there’s nothing worth more

This second parable likens the kingdom of heaven to a pearl

Now it could have used a number of valuable items here but it uses a pearl

I believe it to be intentional, and I believe that to be so to show us the perfection and completeness of the Kingdom of God

A pearl is not like a gold nugget, a nugget needs to be refined, broken down, and all the impurities taken out

A pearl is a finished product, it’s the final prize

We do not add anything to the gospel and kingdom of God we just simply get to enjoy it and expand it

So it’s not as if God is just waiting for you to get saved and then once you finally make that decision and get accepted into the kingdom of God that now everything is perfect and as it should be

The kingdom of God is perfect with or without you it’s just preferred to be with you

It’s Christ’s desire that all should enter the kingdom of God and that none should perish but that doesn’t mean that we should think that the kingdom is dependent on us

The kingdom was established, inaugurated and made complete and perfect through Jesus and Jesus alone