Salvation is free but it’s not cheap Matthew 13:44-50
The perfect Pastor
The perfect Pastor preaches exactly 10 minutes, condemns sin but never hurts anyone’s feelings. The perfect pastor works from 8 a.m. until midnight, is always on call, and ready to fill in for the church janitor, if necessary.
The perfect Pastor makes $500 a week, wears good clothes, drives a good car, buys good books, and donates $100 a week to the church. He is 29 years old and has 40 years’ worth of experience.
The perfect Pastor has a burning desire to work with teenagers but spends most of his time with the seniors. He smiles all the time with a straight face to express a serious dedication to the church. He makes 15 home visits a day and is always in the office when needed.
The perfect Pastor always has time for church meetings and all of its committees and he is always busy evangelizing the unchurched. The perfect Pastor lives a few miles away.
44 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, 46 who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.
49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 50 and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
In these passages Jesus is using three illustrations from the physical world to help His disciples understand the workings of the spiritual world. And in these verses He’s using three short parables to demonstrate how each and every one of us must respond to His offer of the kingdom. So, I want to deal with the first two parables to emphasize the value of salvation and then conclude with the third as a summary of God’s dealings with us all.
In verse 34 of this chapter we’re told Jesus had two reasons for using parables and first, He said these were stories or illustrations taken from the physical world to help us realise spiritual truth. And then second, He said they were also used to conceal spiritual truth from those who rejected Him because if they didn’t understand the truth then they’d have less to criticize.
So, many of the non-believers would sit and listen to Jesus and enjoy His stories and the way He expounded spiritual principles from the Old Testament but didn’t have a clue what He was talking about.
Let me give you four reasons why parables help us. First of all, they help us understand the quality of heaven. We may not understand everything but when heaven is compared to lost treasure and valuable pearls we know it’s going to be fantastic and well worth looking forward to. Second, parables make those who understand truth both easy to understand and remember. Third, they make truth interesting and reduce it from theological concepts and bring it down to real pictures of life that both grab both our interest and attention. And then fourth, these parables also help us see how the truth of God’s word can be applied to our lives.
I think the strength of parables is that they tell a story that we can visualize and that makes them easy to remember. Now, if I was to ask you; how many can tell me from the story of The Three Little Pigs what the wolf said when he came to the door? He said, “I’m going to ------------ and -------- and------.
How about in Goldie Locks and The Three Bears? First she tasted their food and the first one was ------ ---- and the second one was ---- ----- and the third one was ----- -----.
Now, how many of you studied those stories before you came? No one, because these stories aren’t made of a list of things we have to memorize but they live in our minds.
And in these parables Jesus was using illustrations from everyday life that everyone could understand because He spoke about landowners, farmers, gardeners, bakers, people who found treasure, jewelers, fishermen, shepherds, students and so much more. It was almost like He was looking at the crowd in front of Him and showing everyone how each and every one of them needed to be saved.
I So, let’s begin with the parable of the treasure.
And rather than try to explain this parable by guessing as to what each and every word might represent I think it’s easier to understand the parable as a whole. You have to understand the whole parable and the reason it was given rather than trying to find meaning in each individual word.
So, in the parable of the treasure it tells us that “the kingdom of heaven is like someone finding buried treasure in a field.”
And the very idea of finding buried treasure reminds me of the quote, that says,: “Lord, give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money.” After all, everyone likes the idea of finding buried treasure.
And the people who Jesus was talking to had probably known or heard about someone who had found some. You see, there were no banks or credit unions back then and the land of Israel had been a battle field for a long time and everyone wanted somewhere safe to keep their money, gold, jewelry, non-perishable food, clothing and even some extra pieces of furniture. They wanted to make sure that if the enemy soldiers came; they didn’t take everything they had. So, somewhere in the back of their property or even under their house they dug a hole and they buried everything they considered valuable.
And then there were several deportations to Babylon and Assyria and many of those who had been deported were hoping they’d have and enjoy the things they buried when they came back but many of them died in captivity and then others came along and found their treasures by accident.
When I lived down east I met a few people who had lived during the depression of the thirties and since a lot of them had lost money when the banking system collapsed they still don’t trust banks and they keep all their money in cash; either under their mattress or hid somewhere in the house and that’s what these people did, only rather than keeping it in the house, they took it out and buried it.
A So, in this first parable Jesus said a man found this treasure in a field and we don’t know if he was just walking through or maybe he was doing some farm work but it says he found it and then he hid it where he found it.
Now, we might think, why didn’t he just keep it? But the rabbinical law said, “If a man finds scattered fruit or money, it belongs to the finder.” But, the law also stated that anything that was found by a worker on someone else’s land belonged to the owner of the land but since it was obvious that the treasure didn’t belong to the present owner; because if it did, then he would have dug it up before he sold the property.
So, the only way the finder of the treasure could claim it; was to buy the land. And the scripture says; he sold everything he had and bought the field.
You see, everything in life that he had accumulated was insignificant compared to the value of this treasure. So, he doesn’t give it a second thought but gave everything he had to get more than he could ever wish for.
Jesus said that the man who finds this treasure "for joy over it goes and sells all that he has." Listen, he doesn’t do this reluctantly but he does it with joy. He doesn’t regret it or complain about the sacrifice he has to make. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even consider it to be a sacrifice. He gives everything he’s got because he knows he’s going to get so much more in return.
He did it out of joy. There was a story of gold miners who found gold and lots of it. They christened the stream, Alder Creek, and they headed into town for supplies. They all agreed not to breathe a word about their discovery but, after they bought their supplies and headed back to their gold mine they were shocked to discover half the town was following them. Someone yelled, alright, who squealed, no one was the answer. The people said their beaming faces gave them away. So, Jesus said this man sold everything he had because of the joy he experienced to get more than he could ever imagine.
B And then in the second parable we have a situation that’s similar but it’s also different.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
This man was a business man who happened to trade in pearls and he would buy things wholesale and then sell them to a retailer and make a profit. Pearls were seen back then the way we view diamonds today and it was common for men in this business to look for high-quality pearls for themselves.
There was a good reason pearls were so expensive because finding them involved incredible danger. The best quality pearls come from oysters that live at an average depth of 40 feet. So, a pearl isn’t something you just stumble across as you’re walking along the beach.
In Biblical times pearls were obtained at great cost in human life and there were many who died while pearl hunting. A pearl diver would tie a large rock to his body and jump over the side of a boat and allow the weight of the rock to carry him down the forty feet to the oyster beds. He risked danger from sharks, moray eels and other creatures in order to scour the mud below for oysters and only one oyster in a thousand contains a pearl. And while he’s holding his breath he hopes he won’t drown. So, you can understand why pearls were so valuable.
By the first century pearls had become such a status symbol that people would save them like we do cash. Some were worn as jewelry and some believe it or not were actually dissolved in vinegar and drank for medicinal purposes and some were even worshipped.
There was a lady by the name of Lollia Paulina, who was the wife of the emperor Caligula, who at one event had $36 million worth of pearls all over her. Pliny, the historian says that Cleopatra had two pearls and they were both worth a half a million dollars and that was in the day when money was 20 times greater in its buying power than it is today.
The pearl is an especially appropriate figure for the kingdom because it’s the only gem that cannot be improved by man. All other jewels must be cut and polished by skilled craftsmen before they have any retail value but the pearl is perfect when it is found and it cannot be improved by cutting or polishing.
So, the scripture says, one day this man was making his rounds probably visiting the various pearl divers or those they worked for; when he discovered a pearl that he knew was very valuable.
And then he went and sold everything he owned and bought it. This guy knew value when he saw it. He had spent his life looking for pearls; buying, selling, trading and probably even had his personal savings tied up in pearls but when he saw what he considered to be the ultimate pearl he cashed in everything he had to make the ultimate investment.
So, we have two men from two different backgrounds who sell everything they own to get everything they’ve always wanted.
II And there are lessons from both of these accounts.
Both of them sacrificed everything they had in order to have something that was absolutely above anything they could possibly wish for. The first man finds his treasure by accident while the second finds his after searching his whole life.
The scripture gives us examples of both. In John 4 we have a woman who meets Jesus at a well. She didn’t go there looking for salvation but went there for water like she did every other day but when she met Jesus, the scripture says, she left her water pot and went to tell everyone she knew about Jesus.
And then in John chapter 9 we have a blind beggar who was sitting by the side of the road just hoping that someone who was going by would give him a handout and then when he heard Jesus was going by he called out and was both healed and saved. He got more than he ever dreamed of asking for.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a pastor and an evangelist who set the world on fire with his preaching and he shared in his testimony how when he was a young man he only went to church because it was what his family had always done. And then one day he said, there was a huge snow storm and it was so bad that he couldn’t get to his own church, so he decided to go to a little Methodist Chapel where there were only about fifteen people in attendance.
He said, the weather was so bad this day that the minister couldn’t get to the church and one of the deacons took the service and Spurgeon said this poor man couldn’t preach. The text of his sermon was, “Look onto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”
And since this man didn’t know what to say, he just kept repeating the text over and over again. And then something about Spurgeon caught his eye and in the middle of his preaching he said, “Young man, you look very miserable. And you’re going to be miserable in life and miserable in death if you don’t obey my text.” He shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus. Look, look, look.” And Spurgeon said, “I looked and then and there the cloud was gone and the darkness rolled away and that moment I saw the Son.”
The woman at the well, the blind beggar and Spurgeon weren’t looking for anything when they found everything worth finding.
And then the second parable shows us a man whose business was searching for the very thing he found. He was in the market for pearls and he was looking everywhere he could but couldn’t find the right one but one day he made the ultimate find.
And this is like someone who tries everything they can to fulfill a void in their life and they do their best in education, sports, business and power of every kind but have no success and then one day they hear the gospel and give their lives to Jesus and they recognize that this is what they’ve been searching for their entire life. They find in Him the answer to the deepest longings of their heart and everything else becomes secondary.
In the first parable we have someone who isn’t even looking for treasure when he stumbles upon it and in the second we have someone who has spent his entire life searching for the perfect pearl that he ultimately finds.
And some of us were just doing our own thing and going our own way when God stopped us in our tracks. We weren’t looking for Him but He was looking for us; while others have had a spiritual longing and have spent their lives pursuing God and then one day they discovered their personal faith in Christ and found exactly what they were looking for.
Listen, it says this treasure was “hidden” and maybe many people walked by it every day, but they didn’t know it was there. And the kingdom of God is like that, the message has been preached on television, on radio, in churches and almost everyone has an IPhone or a computer that has the Bible; but they’re oblivious to it.
So, both found of these men found what they wanted and realizing the value of what they had found, they gave up everything they had in order to have it.
Listen, no matter if we find Him when we aren’t even looking or as the result of a lifelong search both of these illustrate how we can all take different paths to the same Saviour for salvation.
Both of these sacrifice everything they have once they recognize the value of what they’ve found and once we recognize that salvation is the ultimate goal of life then we’ll sacrifice anything and everything in time and be rewarded in eternity.
Listen, these both teach us that the kingdom is made personal by a transaction or a trade because both teach us man has to give everything he has to receive something of infinite value. And when we surrender all we have and all we are and receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior we receive His righteousness in exchange for all our sin.
I was in a park one day with my son who was only about three at the time. And as we were walking along he bent down and picked up a Popsicle stick and before you knew he had this stick in his mouth. Well, rather than having him gnaw on a dirty stick I pulled a sucker out of my pocket and said, “Let’s trade.” He took the sucker and I threw the stick away. I didn’t want the stick and he wasn’t really buying the sucker with it but it simply an exchange for his benefit. And that’s what happens to you and I. We surrender our sin and receive His salvation.
The kingdom of heaven isn’t about us giving up something great but it’s a great deal. We’re trading hell for heaven. We’re trading death for life. We’re giving temporary trinkets for eternal riches. We’re trading bondage for freedom. We’re trading shame for joy. We’re trading rejection for acceptance. We’re trading our fear and emptiness for a love that never disappoints.
Listen, salvation is a free gift given which is offered to anyone and everyone, if they’ll only turn from sin and by faith receive it. It’s free to us; but it cost the Son of God His life.
There was a guy in New Hampshire who bought a pack of cigarettes at a gas station with his credit card and somehow something went wrong and he was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars on his card.
A few hours later he checked his account online and saw this 17-digit number and then he spent two hours on the phone trying to get his bank to fix the problem. He said the next day he saw a sign at the gas station where he had bought the cigarettes and they reduced their cigarettes to $12 quadrillion a pack. Listen, there’s no way that anyone can purchase salvation because it’s not for sale. It’s free to us but it cost God’s Son His life.
In his letter to the church at Philippi Paul recounts his many personal advantages and achievements before he was saved. He says he was, “Circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as to the law. A Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. But whatever things were gain to me I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”
It’s like Paul is saying, everything I thought that was so important like my religion, my heritage, my family connections and my good works; I now see as being worthless as compared to knowing Christ.
Over the years I’ve conducted around two hundred and fifty funerals and I’ve always tried to drive home the point that life is short but eternity is forever. I like how David said it when he wrote in Ps 103,
As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.
Listen, all the treasure in the world and every pearl in the sea is nothing compared to the joy of knowing Jesus as your Savior. – He is the pearl of great price.
And then in the third parable we have the illustration of a dragnet which shows how everyone will one day come to the place of judgement.
Verse 47 says, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.”
There were three kinds of fishing on the Sea of Galilee.
There was the line and hook where men caught fish one at a time. And then there was a small one man net where a fisherman carried his net into the shallow water looking for a school of fish and when he saw them he would throw the net that opened in a large circle and was weighed at the edges and these weights caused the net to sink trapping the fish; and then he’d pull the cord that surrounded the net and pull all the fish to shore. And then the third method was the dragnet and some of these nets were a half a mile long and they were either drawn between two boats or one end of the net was anchored to the shore and the boat pulled the other end. These large nets had floats on the upper edge of the net and then weights on the bottom and the net formed a wall from the surface to the bottom of the water. And because the net swept up everything in its path it caught everything that was in the water. It caught good fish and bad, weeds, wood, garbage and whatever else was in the water. And when it was all dragged to shore then everything was sorted out. The good fish was kept and the rest were thrown away.
And Jesus said, “this is what it will be like at the end of the age.” When the net is full or when everyone who is coming in has come in which includes some of every kind from every people group in the world; then God will bring history to a close and the angels will come and sort out the good from the bad.
Listen, the dragnet is picture of God’s judgement that’s sweeping through the sea of men and women and bringing everyone to the shores of eternity for the final separation; the believers to eternal life and the unbelievers to eternal damnation. As the net sweeps along many move within the net as though they were free but every once in a while the net touches them and reminds them of its ever encroaching doom but they swim away and think they’ve escaped not realizing that moment by moment the net is getting closer.
I’ve seen people touch the net when a family member or friend dies or their health begins to fail; they’re startled at first but they soon forget and convince themselves they have escaped the inescapable.
Verses 49 and 50 tell of the final destination of the unsaved where Jesus said, “So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 50 and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
One Saturday morning, a 4-year-old boy and his grandpa went out to get a treat at Dunkin Donuts. And as they were driving the Grandpa asked the boy, "Which way is heaven?" The boy pointed to the sky. And then he asked, "Which way is hell?" He pointed towards the floor. And then Grandpa asked, "And where are you going?" And the little guy said, "Dunkin’ Donuts." And it almost seems like everyone we talk to have the same attitude. We’re going where we want to go and that’s all there is to it. But the Bible says, the day is coming when God is going to cast all unbelievers into the furnace of fire where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. And this phrase, “wailing and gnashing of teeth” appears seven times in the New Testament and every time it was Jesus who used it.
Listen, fire has two effects in scripture because for the believer fire is a purifier. We see this with Daniel’s three friends when they were cast into the burning fiery furnace; they weren’t harmed physically but the only thing the fire burnt were the robes that held them. And in Isaiah 6 we see an angel touching the unclean lips of the prophet with a live coal from off the altar to purge his sin and in 1 Corinthians 3:13 we see the believers works are tested with fire and the trash is all burnt away.
But on the unsaved; fire is not a testing but its torture. The fire doesn’t purge sin it punishes it. Listen, there’s probably no teaching harder to accept than the reality of hell but Jesus spoke about hell more than He spoke about heaven. As a matter of fact, He mentions hell 71 times but only mentions heaven 17. Why did He teach so much about hell? Because its real and He knew this teaching would be hard to accept from anyone and His intention was never to scare us but to warn and motivate us.
Hell is described as a place of physical suffering. As a place of darkness, misery and pain and where it says, “Weeping and gnashing of teeth, this doesn’t refer to tears of repentance but tears of frustration because the torture never ends. In Luke 16 the rich man asks that Lazarus be sent to warn his brothers but doesn’t bother asking anything for himself because hell is a place without hope.
And there are degrees of suffering because the scripture teaches that people will be judged by their words as well as their works. One writer said, “Hell will have such severe degrees of suffering that a sinner, were he able, would give the whole world if his sins would be one less.”
The suffering will be everlasting. Jesus used the same word to describe the duration of hell as He did to describe the duration of heaven in Matthew 25:46 when He said, “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Both are eternal.
So, this is what it will be like at the end of the age. When everyone who is coming in has come, God will pull the net. He’ll bring history to a close and then He’ll sort out the good from the bad.
Hell, it seems has fallen on lean times. It used to be that the vast majority of Christians believed that hell was a real place where the unbelievers went but churches stopped preaching about eternal punishment because too many people felt uncomfortable. But as one man said, “Not believing in hell doesn’t lower the temperature one degree.”
One of the greatest sermons on repentance was given by Jonathon Edwards who preached in an old church without lights and the title of his message was, ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ and he actually read this sermon from a manuscript and asked the question “why you are not already in hell” and then he then went on to describe God’s anger and told them hell was only a block away.
And the strange thing was, Edwards wasn’t a very emotional preacher but he actually read his sermon word-for-word, as he was hunched over the lectern, rarely lifting his head to look at the congregation -- and they said his monotone voice was guaranteed to put anyone to sleep. But, they say this Sunday these people convulsed as the Holy Spirit convicted them of sin and the dangerous position they were in before God who was holy and just and whose judgement could not be avoided.
Well, that sermon began a revival but six years later on June 22, 1750 which was the anniversary of the day this sermon was preached; Jonathan Edwards was fired by his church for preaching that only believers should be allowed to take communion. The church was revived six years before but now everybody wanted to go back to sleep.
Have you ever bought something on a whim and later regretted it? It’s called “buyer’s remorse.” I bought a food cooker by George Forman and used it once. We still have it in the basement. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’ve bought books that appealed to me when I saw them on the shelf of the store but when I got home I read a chapter or two and they ended up on the shelf. I’ve bought clothes that looked great in the store but they didn’t look all that good when I got home and rather than take them back I hang them in the back of the closet. We all make dumb mistakes but the one people will regret the most is that they heard the gospel and felt God’s tug on their heart and walked away thinking they’ll deal with this another time but as time goes by they forget about their need and get on with the business of life.
The story is told that in the days of the ROMAN EMPIRE, a certain wealthy senator became estranged from his son. When he died unexpectedly, his will was opened and it read, “Because my son does not appreciate what I’ve done, I leave all of my worldly goods to my loyal slave, Marcellus,” and then the will said. “However, because I am a man of grace, I bequeath to my son one of my possessions of his choosing.”
“Sorry,” said the lawyer to the son. “You can only take one of your dad’s possessions. So, which will it be?” And the son said, “I take Marcellus.” You see, he knew when he had him, he had it all.
The gospel message is simply that God looked down from heaven and saw the world full of people He created and saw every one of us running away from Him; and seeing our desperate situation He decided to do something about it. And He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins and now anyone who wants to go to heaven and avoid hell is invited to respond.
There’s a great Old Testament passage in Isaiah, 55:1 and it says, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters, and he that hath no money, come buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.” It says you can buy it but you don’t need any money and yet, there’s a transaction. You say, “Well, what is it? The transaction is this. You give up all you have for all He has and you’ll find that when you accept Him as your Savior, you have more than you’ve ever given.
How do you do that? It’s as simple as the ABC’s.
A – Admit your need
Own up to the fact that you’ve broken God’s laws and need His forgiveness.
B – Believe that Jesus died for you
Believing means placing your faith in Jesus and what He’s done on the cross for you.
C – Commit yourself completely to Him
Surrendering your life to God means that you give Him control.
D – Depend on God’s promises
And God has promised to save anyone who comes to Him and on top of that He’s given us the Bible to be a guide for living a life that pleases Him.
