The Smith House in Dahlonega, Georgia, has been sitting on a gold mine for more than a century. During renovation of the landmark hotel back in February of 2006, workers discovered the entrance to a four-foot wide hole under the concrete floor in the main dining room. The hole goes straight down nineteen feet to the entrance to a gold mine under the building.
Captain Frank Hall built the house in 1884. As legend has it, the city would not permit Hall to dig for gold on the property, partly because it was too close to the downtown square and partly because he was a Yankee. It would appear that he built the house to cover-up his mining operation until his health failed and he sold the land.
"We never would have known it if we hadn’t chipped up the concrete,” Chris Welch, the owner of the hotel, said.
For many years, the owners have joked with patrons that they were “sitting on a gold mine”. They had no idea just how true a statement that really was.
Kind of makes one wonder doesn’t it: What treasure might there be in your life that you don’t know is there because you haven’t looked for it?
Have you ever looked at a word that you see all the time – like the word “the” – and said to yourself, “That looks like it is spelled wrong…how do you spell ‘the’ again?”
That is what happened to me this week while I was studying these last four parables in Matthew 13. They seem to be simple and straight-forward enough – until you stare at them too long. Then they begin to swim in your vision and they don’t make as much sense as they did when you started.
Let’s look at the first two parables together first, since they are so similar. We find them in Matthew 13:44-46 (read).
Okay, so what do we need to know if we are going to understand these two parables? In the first one, we need to understand who the man is, what the field is, why was it hidden and why was it re-hidden. In the second one, we need to understand who the merchant is and what the pearl is. The man in each parable sold all he had to acquire the treasure/pearl.
There are a couple of possibilities in each case. The treasure and the pearl could be believers and the man could be Jesus Christ. That would mean that Jesus valued those who were to be His so much that He gave up, or “sold”, all that He had in order to purchase us out of the world.
As true as this scenario is, I don’t think that it holds to the parables – for a couple of reasons. First, this is not in keeping with the theme of the other parables in this chapter. Second, this interpretation doesn’t fit with the theme of the last four parables in context together.
The reason I have put these four parables together in one session, even though the first two seem to be a couplet and the third and fourth seem to be able to stand alone is that, if you look at the first word of verse 45 and verse 47, both verses begin with the same word: “Again.” Then, in verse 52, you have Jesus starting off with the word, “Therefore.” That word automatically ties what follows with what comes before. Jesus has strung these four “pearls” together, so we will take them that way.
Okay, let’s look at another possibility for how these parables can be interpreted. You will begin to see what I meant by my illustration at the beginning about the word “the”.
A second possibility for interpreting these parables is for us to follow what we have seen so far and apply that here. What were the seeds and the leaven, the small things that were mentioned in the other parables? The Gospel, correct? Okay, so if the small things so far have been the Gospel, then what are the small things in these two parables? The Gospel, right?
Maybe…maybe. I had this all figured out until I started looking back at the explanation Jesus gave us last time for the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. What was the seed? One seed, the good seed, were “the sons of the kingdom”, and the tares were “the sons of the evil one” (verse 38). Well, this second possibility just doesn’t wash now, does it?
Or, does it? What if I have the right interpretation, but the wrong reasons for it? Beginning to see what I meant by “the” no longer appearing to be spelled right? So, back to the basics of parabolic exposition, okay?
The opening phrase in verse 36 gave me a place to start: “Then He left the multitudes…” These last four teachings of Jesus occur with His disciples in private, as did the explanation of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. The other parables were spoken in public and were shared with the multitudes. We are peeking in on a private session with the Lord and His disciples.
“Peter; Andrew; Bartholomew. Hey, you guys…did you get that one about the wheat and the tares? Me neither. Let’s go ask Jesus. He’ll explain it to us.”
“And His disciples came to Him saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.’”
“We think we get who the wheat is, but who are the tares?”
And Jesus, ever patient and ever desiring that those who seek to know and understand the truth will be able to do so, gives them the clear and succinct explanation that we studied last time.
Now, still in this private setting, Jesus goes on to tell them things about the kingdom that are not yet for the general public to know, things that are important for the disciples to know and understand because, one day, He will be gone and it will be up to them to explain the teachings of Jesus to others.
Jesus alludes to this in the fourth parable about the householder, but we’ll look at that one in a bit.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure…”
“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant…finding one pearl of great value…”
So, the treasure and the pearl are the kingdom of heaven (the thing in the natural parallels the thing in the heavenly). In the first parable, the man stumbles upon the treasure quite by accident. In the second parable, the man is seeking something of value and finds something of greater value than he even expected.
This makes perfect sense in light of what we have understood Jesus’ teachings on the kingdom of heaven to have been so far. In both of these parables, Jesus tells us that the man who discovered these treasures had the same reaction – they gave up everything they had in order to possess that treasure, to gain that precious pearl.
Some may want to question the ethics of the first man for finding the treasure hidden in someone else’s field and, not saying anything to the rightful owner, selling all he has and buying it for what some would say is a discounted price. Some would say this is deceitful and even more than a little bit fraudulent.
That isn’t even the point. The point once again, just as in the parable of the leaven, is not what is good or bad, right or wrong, but simply how things work. In the case of the “treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid,” the point is that the man “hid”, or kept secret, what he had discovered, and was so overcome with elation over what he found quite by accident that he dumped everything else he had in order to do whatever was necessary to replace it all with that new treasure.
There are people who are not seeking Jesus Christ, people who are not really pursuing spiritual truths who, nevertheless, run across the Gospel message and “accidentally” discover something of more worth and value than they can really even comprehend or verbalize to someone else. They don’t say anything, but they “hide” it, keep it secret, for a time. They weigh things in their minds, become “sold” on the message, and they abandon everything in their past to gain their future.
On the other side of that is the pearl merchant, the one who knows he is searching for something of great value. He is like those who are seeking God, seeking spiritual truth, looking for the ultimate answer to their questions. When they find it, again like the merchant, they sacrifice everything their have, even the other “pearls” they own – their philosophies, their presumed wisdom, their spiritual “understandings” – and they give themselves over totally, completely to digging into the Scriptures and discovering everything they can about this God, this Jesus and this salvation.
Now, I don’t know which of these two you were more like when you came to the Lord, but I see myself in the merchant. I had enormous understanding of spiritual things, an overwhelming abundance of insight and a wealth of knowledge. But, when I finally came to the realization that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the real truth, the real spiritual power, I gave up all I had, all I supposed I knew, all I had discovered and earned, and I gave myself over to the disciplined, orderly, methodical study of the Word of God.
In both cases – the man who accidentally discovered the treasure and the man who purposefully sought it out – both were able to recognize the value of what they discovered because both were humble enough to realize that what they saw before them was worth far more than what they had. It was what they needed more than what was already theirs. It was worth risking everything in order to possess.
I speak with so many people who do not think they have need of a Savior; so many people who think the message of the Gospel, the message of the cross, is a fairytale for weak-minded people who don’t have the strength to believe in themselves. And, I speak with so many people who believe that they are good enough to get into heaven on their own and that the message of the Gospel is just a tool that greedy men use to get money from unsuspecting and innocent victims.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is right in front of them – they stumble across the treasure in the field and don’t recognize it for what it is. How many people walked over and around that spot before the man in the first parable saw what he saw? Did the man he bought the field from know it was there? Obviously not, or he wouldn’t have sold the field. Or, perhaps he knew it was there but didn’t recognize its value.
How about the pearl merchant? He pays a fee to paw through a stack of oysters, hoping that he at least finds one or two big enough to cover the money he spent to look. He comes across an exquisite pearl – one worth all that he possesses. In those times, pearls were of more value than any other gem. Not only are they naturally beautiful, not needing the hand of man to embellish them in any way, they have long held enormous value. The historian Suetonius wrote that the Roman general Vitellius financed an entire military campaign by selling just one of his mother’s pearl earrings.
And, in an effort to dissuade Rome from conquering Egypt, Cleopatra once wagered Marc Antony that she could give the most expensive dinner in history. General Antony took the bet. The Roman general reclined as the queen sat with an empty plate and a goblet of vinegar in front of her. She crushed one large pearl from a pair of pearl earrings, dissolved it in the liquid, then drank it down. Dumbfounded, Marc Antony declined his dinner – the matching pearl – and conceded that she had won the wager. Pliny, the world’s first gemologist, writes in his famous Natural History that the two pearls were worth an estimated 60 million sesterces, or 1,875,000 ounces of fine silver. That would be $45,000,000, with today’s price of silver at $12.40 an ounce.
Imagine, if you will, the discovery that you have the opportunity to have as your very own something that you have been searching your whole life for; something that is of greater value than you ever dreamed would be possible for you to possess.
But, it’s going to cost you everything – will you do it? Anyone here ever play poker? What does it mean to be “all in”? To bet everything you have on one hand – win or lose, you’re risking everything. That’s the question, then.: Are you “all in” for Jesus Christ?
As we move on through our passage, the next parable Jesus tells begins with, “Again,” meaning that it is tied to the previous two.
In this parable, Jesus says, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth Matthew 13:47-50).”
Here we have a parable with an explanation, both given together. This makes Christ’s meaning very clear: at the end of the world as we know it, all people will be gathered together and separated. Those who belong to the kingdom of heaven, the righteous, those who belong to Jesus Christ, will be preserved and protected and taken home to be with Him. Everyone else, the wicked, the unrighteous, will be thrown into the furnace of fire. That is the hell that we studied last time. Jesus is reinforcing here that there is a day of separation coming; there is a day of judgment coming – and there are only two destinies to choose from.
What is this dragnet? The dragnet spoken of here could be as much as a mile long. It had weights on the bottom and floats along the top edge. A boat took it out into the water and dropped one edge over the side. The weights sunk to the bottom, stretching the net out and creating an enormous trap.
Men on shore, holding onto ropes tied to the top edge of the net, began to pull, dragging the net toward shore, the weighted edge dragging against the bottom of the lake. Everything in its path too large to pass through the mesh became trapped in the net. If the net became too full, boats would tie off to the top of the net and row toward shore, helping to drag the net.
All kinds of fish and other things were caught in the net. Once the net has been dragged onto the beach, the fishermen sit down and very deliberately pick through everything that was caught in the net, keeping only that which is good and useful. Everything else is trash and is gotten rid of.
Jesus tells us in this parable a truth that He has already expressed and made clear in Matthew 7:22-23: “Many will say to Me on that day, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ’I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”
Just being in church, doing Christian things, saying Christian words, singing Christian songs and exercising spiritual gifts does not make you part of His “catch”. Remember the wheat and the tares – the weeds look deceptively like the wheat until it gets close to the time of the harvest. One will bow its head, the other will not.
What does this have to do with the previous two parables? Jesus is telling us who the righteous are. He wants us to see the man and the merchant and for us to ask ourselves, “Am I like those men?”
When you heard the Gospel and responded to it, whether it was the first time or the thousandth time you heard it, God put His finger on everything in your life and said, “This is mine,” or, “This has to go.”
There is nothing in your life that Jesus Christ does not claim ownership of, nothing that He doesn’t lay claim to, nothing that He doesn’t say either, “This stays” or, “That goes.”
For, you see, He has paid a very high price for you – the highest, in fact. Let’s read 1 Corinthians 6:20: “For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. “ Gives you a warm feeling, doesn’t it? It could be used to allegorize the first two parables and make Jesus the one buying the field or buying the pearl, couldn’t it? We aren’t going to do that, however.
Let’s back up and read the preceding two verses. “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own (1 Corinthians 6:18-19)?” Who is it that is giving up something here? It is we.
What is it we are giving up? Possession and ownership and control of ourselves, even to the point of our natural wants and desires and impulses.
We all know this, but we need to look at it anyway, just to keep it fresh in our minds. 1 Peter 1:18-19: “knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”
“The blood of Christ:” the New Testament speaks of the blood of Christ almost thirty times. Our salvation, our sanctification, our justification, our being declared righteous in God’s sight, all cost Him everything – when we accept that gift, we give Him ourselves in exchange. We truly do become His.
Natives in Africa place shiny objects in empty termite hills in full view of a tribe of monkeys, then move a little distance away and hide in the bush. It isn’t very long before a monkey will venture over to investigate. He will slip his hand into the narrow slit in the side of the termite hill and grab hold of the shiny object. As he tries to pull his hand out, his closed fist jams up against the side of the hole. His fist is too big to pass through the narrow opening as long as he hold onto the thing in his hand. The only way to remove his hand is to drop the prize he is clutching. He tries and tries, but he can’t get the object out.
Now the hunter calmly walks out of the bush, club in hand, and walks toward the monkey. The monkey begins to panic and starts trying to jerk his hand out, all the while clutching the little treasure he has a hold of. The hunter gets closer, the monkey panics, screeching and jumping and chattering and jerking, but all the while maintaining a firm grip on that shiny little trinket.
The little monkey dies, still clutching the thing he treasured more than his life. In death, his grip relaxes, the trinket falls to the ground and the hunter pulls his dinner free of the termite hill.
What are you holding onto that Jesus has told you to let go of? What are you claiming as your own that He has said, “This is mine”? What is it that is making you easy prey for the evil one and keeping you from the life and maybe even the eternity with Christ that He died to give you?
Let’s look at Christ’s final question to His disciples and His last parable in this section. "’Have you understood all these things?’" They said to Him, ‘Yes.’ (Matthew 13:51)."
Jesus wants to make sure they understand what it is that He has been trying to teach them with all of these parables. If they do not, He is willing to invest the time to make sure that they do understand. If so, then there is a responsibility that goes along with that understanding.
These are important things for them to know and He wants to be sure that they’ve got it. Having heard His teaching and His explanations, they feel confident that they are coming away with a good understanding of what it is He has been trying to convey to them. Now for their part.
Jesus closes this teaching time with another parable to illustrate what their responsibility is now that they understand what they have been taught. He tells them what is known as the Parable of the Householder.
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old.’ (Matthew 13:52)."
Was Jesus speaking about the party of the Pharisees known as the Scribes here? No; and the disciples by now understood that Jesus was speaking of scribes in a parabolic way, not a literal way. He was speaking about them, and, by extension, us.
Scribes were men who were so versed in the Law that they had become the lawyers of their day. They not only copiously hand copied every “jot and tittle” of the Law, they discussed the details of the Law and the finer points of the Law among themselves. No one knew the Law better than they.
Clear back in 458 BC, when the Israelites were given permission by Cyrus, the king of the Persians, to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city and the temple, we find that the scribes were important men in the life of God’s people.
The man that Cyrus gave the commission to was a man named Ezra: “This Ezra went up from Babylon, and he was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given; and the king granted him all he requested because the hand of the LORD his God was upon him … For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel (Ezra 7:6, 10).”
When you read the book of Ezra, and the corresponding book of Nehemiah, you find that Ezra opened the Book of the Law to the people, many of whom and never heard any of it before, and read it to them for most of an entire day. He and his fellow scribes and some of the priests well versed in the Law taught the people what it meant. There was a revival in the land!
Jesus is telling His disciples here that, just as the scribes have been well taught about the old ways, the old laws, there are new scribes, ones taught about the kingdom of heaven. The same responsibility that falls to the scribes of the Old Covenant now falls to those who are scribes of the kingdom of heaven, the scribes of the New Covenant. It is interesting to note here that “Old Testament” and “New Testament” literally mean, “Old Covenant” and “New Covenant.”
Jesus says that those who are instructed in the knowledge of the kingdom are like a “head of household.” What does the head of a household do? Provides for the health, the well-being and the nurture of those within the household.
This parable applies to all Christians in a general sense. Peter, one of the disciples there that day, listening to these parables and receiving these instructions, would years later write these words: “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15).”
But, in this case, in this setting, I believe Jesus is speaking very specifically to the disciples and all those who would follow them as leaders in Christ’s family down through the centuries. More particularly, He is speaking about those who will be duly prepared in the things of the kingdom as the traditional scribes have always been prepared in the things of the Old Covenant.
He is speaking about pastors and teachers and elders and others in positions of spiritual leadership within the Church, the Body of Christ, the family of God.
In Acts 20:28, when Paul is saying good-bye to the Ephesians and charging the elders that he is leaving behind with how to take care of the household of faith in Ephesus, says this: “"Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”
To “bring out of his treasure things new and old,” is to review the Old Covenant, understand and convey its truths, revealing the sinfulness of man, the holiness of God, and the disparity between the two, and to comprehend and communicate the treasures of the New Covenant, which is God’s answer for the dilemma revealed by our understanding of the old.
Jesus uses an interesting word when He says, “brings forth.” The word is ekballō, and it means, “to expel, fling, drive, cast or throw.” The word-picture here is that there is to be an energy, a force behind the action, almost as if there is back-pressure behind it and it cannot help but come out. It is the same word Jesus uses back in Matthew 12:35, where He says, "The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.”
It means there is a natural, exuberant outflow of what is inside to the outside. It cannot be contained. It permeates everything in the disciple’s life. It flavors and colors everything. God is always part of any subject under discussion. God’s Word always applies to anything we are experiencing or thinking or feeling or desiring.
Looking over these four parables in context with one another, we have questions we need to ask and answer.
1. Are we like the men who find a precious treasure, whether accidentally or intentionally, and are we joyful and excited about our discovery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
2. Do we understand the real value of it, the worth of it?
3. Are we willing to give up everything else to possess it? Do we stand with Paul who, looking back at all he had been and all he had done, said, “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish [ read that, “dung”] so that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:7-8)?
4. Are we willing to say to God, “I turn myself completely over to You, surrendering all, keeping nothing back”?
5. Will I accept with praise everything God puts in my life that my flesh cries against because my spirit knows it is what is best for me because He desires for me?
6. Am I a true disciple of Christ, or am I one of those He speaks of who will lay claim to being His because of all the things we did in His name, but to whom He will say, “Depart from Me; I never knew you”?
7. Is there an excitement in my heart and my life about the Good News of the kingdom? Can I keep it to myself, or can I not wait to share it with someone else because I know what value it really is?
Perhaps other questions came to your mind as we were going through this study today. I realize that we have covered a lot of ground. I felt it was important to take these all together because the context is critical if we are to understand and to be changed by what Jesus had to say that day.
It’s time to be very, very honest with God and with ourselves: Am I compromising or am I sold-out on the treasure that Christ has purchased for me?
Remember; there are only two things on the menu – two kingdoms, two masters, two agendas, two purposes, two loyalties, two ways of life, two destinies.
Maybe you’re camped over a gold mine and don’t even realize it because you’ve never really looked. Or, maybe you’re a little monkey, holding on to some shiny trinket.
Three passages I want to share with you as we close: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Joshua 24:15; 2 Corinthians 6:1-2.
It’s all a matter of choosing, and choosing today.
Let’s pray.
