Matthew’s Unique Message #5
The Kingdom of Heaven – A Treasure
Matthew 13:44-45; 52; 25:14-30
CHCC: August 12, 2007
INTRODUCTION:
The Gospel of Matthew records 9 Parables of Jesus that no other Gospels record. All of those Parables tell about the Kingdom that Jesus, the Messiah, brought to earth. For the 2000 plus years since it’s beginning His Kingdom has been known as The Church. Two times in the book of Matthew, Jesus actually uses the word ekklesia which is the Greek word for “Church.” But most of the time, Jesus refers to the Church as “The Kingdom of Heaven.”
Several of Jesus Parables begin with the words “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” Those parables tell us a lot about the Church... what His Church is, and what part we play in His Church. Last time I preached, we saw that the Church is currently a Mix of righteousness and unrighteousness. The 3 Parables we looked at showed that a Day is coming when God will pull His true Church out of the Mix, and from that time, His Church will rule with Him in Heaven.
Today we are going to look at 3 more Parables that start with the words, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”. In all three, Jesus announces that His Church is a Treasure --- a Treasure of Great Value --- and a Treasure that requires Great Sacrifice and Great Risk.
1. A Treasure of Great Value
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. 45"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
You know, it does you no good to find a treasure if you don’t know what you’ve got. Now, I’m the kind who always thinks a treasure might be around the corner. I haven’t ever bought lottery tickets or anything like that, but I used to always play those prize-winning games they had at McDonalds. It used to cost me the price of a coke to get a game piece, but I was thirsty anyway and enjoyed filling up the game board with the pieces I received.
One time, when the game was a version of Monopoly, I was regularly picking up game pieces and had everything except the winning pieces when one day I got my pieces and was in a hurry so I stuffed them in my pocket without opening them. When I got home I opened them and set them on the counter by my side of the bed. I noticed that one of the pieces looked a little different than the rest but thought nothing of it. The next day I was in the car with the game board and noticed that the piece I had seen the day before was a $1,000.00 winner.
I called home and told Susan about the game piece. She said, “I’ll go look for it.” Then came back to the phone groaning and said she thought what was on the counter was trash and had thrown it away. I told her to retrieve it but she said she had taken the trash out to the curb for the trash pick up. I said to get the bag back from the curb, and she came back groaning again, the trash man had just been by a few minutes before I called. There was a $1,000 treasure thrown out with the trash that day.
The Church is a Treasure. But it does you no good if you don’t see its Value. I was talking to an older lady recently who was lamenting the fact that her 3 grandsons (who are in their 20’s and 30’s) seem to have no interest in the Church. They were raised in Christian homes. They went to church as children and teenagers. But for whatever reason, they don’t see the Value of Church in their busy adult lives.
In their case I have a theory about why they may not realize that the Church is a Treasure. When someone grows up in church, they often see the unsavory things that can happen in the life of a church. They might see fights between members, power plays and politics among leaders, cliques and other kinds of exclusionary behavior, and some even witness major traumas like church splits which are demoralizing to just about everyone in the church family. When people see those kinds of things happening in a church congregation, many conclude that if that is what church is all about they want no part of it. My take on these kinds of things goes back to what I preached about the last sermon when we dealt with the wheat and weeds. The enemy sows weeds in with the wheat, and it is those pseudo Christians who have no conscience when it comes to causing trouble in the flock. In fact, they seem to enjoy the tension and turmoil they cause because they aren’t connected in any real way to Christ. To them Church is just another organization to belong to.
Whether we see it’s Value to not, Jesus said His Kingdom holds so much value that it is worth any Sacrifice we might have to make in order to have the Treasure.
2. A Treasure that requires Great Sacrifice
Notice that the man who found buried Treasure and the man who found the pearl both sacrificed literally everything they had to obtain the Treasure. In fact, they didn’t even think of it as a Sacrifice to sell off everything they owned. Matthew 13:44 says, … in his JOY he went and sold all he had and bought that field.
The man who found the Pearl had already Sacrificed … just in his search for the Pearl. Pearl hunting involved immense danger. You don’t just walk along a beach to find them. Oysters generally thrive at a debth of about 40 feet, and it those days there was no scuba gear. Back in Jesus’ day, A pearl diver would tie a large rock to his body and jump over the side of a little boat, allowing the weight of the rock to carry him down to the oyster beds. He risked danger from sharks, moray eels and other creatures to scour the mud below for oysters. An average of only one oyster in a thousand contains a pearl. All the while, he had to hold his breath and hope he wouldn’t drown.
But if you found a Pearl, especially if you found The Pearl, you had it made. Pearls were perceived in the first century in much the same way we view diamonds today. They were the most valuable gem in the world at that time. If you owned a pearl, you owned a fortune.
You can see why pearls were so precious. The Jewish Talmud said, "pearls are beyond price." The Egyptians actually worshipped the pearl, and the Romans copied that practice. And when Jesus compared His Church to a Pearl, this is the point he was making. The Church of Jesus is THE most valuable commodity on earth.
But again, you have to believe that the Treasure is worth the sacrifice or it does you no good. (Hold up a Nickel.) For example, how much would you give me for this nickel? Well, a man named Ed Lee paid 3 million dollars for a Nickel. Sounds like a poor investment doesn’t it? But Ed Lee knew the value of that Nickel. It was what was called “Miss Liberty” nickel minted in 1913.
“Liberty Head nickels (with the statue of liberty on them) were made from 1883 to 1912, but in 1913 they were replaced with the Buffalo nickel. However, 5 Liberty head Nickels were illegally minted in 1913 (possibly by a mint official. The coins surfaced in 1920. When Ed Lee came across one, he recognized its value and bought it for 3 million. Years later, he sold it for 4.15 million --- and was able to retire on the profits.
That story makes me think of the Church. It may not look like much, but if you know its value, it is worth any price you have to pay. That is the value Jesus puts on His church … and I’m willing to take his word on it.
In order to see the church as a treasure, you have to be able to see her the way Jesus does. He sees the church as his precious bride, and he loved her so much he died for her to make her pure and spotless and to prepare her for the day he would wed her to himself. We have to see the church, not just as another organization on the earth like the Lions club, Rotary Club, Masonic lodge, Boy Scouts, garden club, fitness center, neighborhood association, etc. All of these groups, as useful as they may be, are earthbound in their association, their founding, their purpose, their goals, and their work. They all come from the minds of humans rather than from the sovereign will of God. As valuable as they may be, they cannot compare with the value God has placed on his church which He calls his kingdom.
The man who found buried treasure and the merchant who found the Pearl both took a huge Risk by selling everything they had in order to obtain the Treasure. But Jesus told a 3rd parable that makes it even more clear. If we are going to be part of His Church we can’t play it safe. We have to be willing to take Great Risks.
3. A Treasure that requires Great Risk
In Matthew 25, Jesus told a Parable about a man who entrusted his Treasure to His servants. We call it the Parable of the Talents, because one servant was given 5 Talents, one was given 2 Talents, and another was given 1 Talent. A Talent (in Greek measurement) was either a hundred pounds of Silver or two hundred pounds of Gold. In coinage that worked out to 3,000 shekels of silver (a days wage for a field worker was a shekel of silver), or 10,000 shekels of gold, (either way it was a fortune in cash, and certainly something desirable).
The point of the story is that these Servants were supposed to DO something PRODUCTIVE with the Treasure. They were supposed to Invest in ways that would increase its value. Now if you’ve ever MADE any investments, you know there’s always an element of risk.
In the past year or so, I have begun to invest a small amount of money in the stock market, mainly so I can learn how to become a better investor. I’ve invested in a dozen or so stocks and made good money on some, while loosing large percentages on others. My best investments were two stocks that doubled in a few months. My worst investment was one stock that went all the way to zero in a short while. Other stocks just sat there doing nothing. The main thing I have learned from this is to look for quality companies to invest in, and to steer clear of hot stock tips and get rich quick schemes. And, oh yes, “Buy low; sell high.”
Even though the parable refers to Silver, I think our current use of the word Talent has a lot of meaning. In His Church, Jesus gives every one of us Gifts that we are to Invest in order to build the Kingdom of God.
The Apostle Paul wrote about these gifts in Romans 12, 1 Cor. 12, and Eph 4 where we notice that the Lord, through the Holy Spirit has given the church a multiplicity of gifts for the building up of the body of Christ so that the church can do the work of the ministry both in the church and in the world.
I like this quote from Bill Bright: “God has placed in our trust a measure of time, a unique set of talents, and sufficient resources to carry out His will for each of our lives. Our task as faithful stewards is to manage those blessings in order to bring the maximum glory to His name.”
How are you investing Your Talents this year? It doesn’t have to be some BIG task you take on. In fact, I have discovered lately, that the greatest things I seem to accomplish are not big things with months of planning and Herculean effort, but small, spur of the moment things done just because someone came to my mind, and I took the time to act upon it.
Charles Spurgeon said, “The repetition of small efforts will accomplish more than the occasional use of great talents.”
Don’t be like the one-talent man in the Parable who, because of fear, just buried his talent and did nothing. He didn’t plan to do any harm, but his lack of activity brought on a severe rebuke from the master in the end. We should take a lesson from the one talent do-nothing and learn to risk and invest for return.
Matthew 25: 24"Then the man who had received the one talent came. ’Master,’ he said, ’I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26"His master replied, ’You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
WHY didn’t he Invest the money? Because he was afraid to take any Risks. He wanted to play it safe. He thought he’d just sit quietly in a seat somewhere in the back of the room and try not to make any waves, but in doing nothing, he did something the master found reprehensible. In the end, he lost everything: the talent, his position as a steward, and his master’s good will.
CONCLUSION:
We see than that the kingdom of heaven is a valuable treasure well worth what ever it may take to find and hold on to. We must recognize it for the treasure it is. Seek it diligently and use what ever is in our means to purchase it for ourselves. Passivity will never accomplish aquisition of the treasure. Let us diligently seek to make the kingdom ours.
