The Parables of Jesus: Treasure Hunt
Matthew 13:44-46
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
10-23-2022
Jackpot!
In 2019, a couple in Yorkshire, England was renovating their kitchen and thought they had stumbled across some old electrical wire. It turns out it was a coin. Not just one coin but hundreds of coins dating from 1610 to 1727.
The coins sold at auction for $852,383.00! For 200 years, those coins had just been waiting to be discovered.
Earlier, this month a “demin archeologist” found a pair of Levi jeans in an abandoned mine shaft in New Mexico. They were sold at auction for $87,000!
The couple in England stumbled on the treasure under their kitchen floorboards. The other treasure was found by someone who has spent their life looking for vintage blue jeans.
Sometimes things are worth more than someone thinks. If you have ever watched Antique Roadshow or Pawn Stars, you have seen someone bring an artifact in thinking that it was junk, only to find out it was worth a million dollars. Or someone who brings in something that they thought was worth a lot of money and discovered that it was fake or not worth anywhere near what they thought.
That happened to me when I discovered that I had a first edition of “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White. On eBay, first editions sell for nearly $1,000! I was super excited and thought I had struck gold. Until I figured out that it was a Readers Digest version of the book worth about five dollars.
It comes down to how valuable someone considers the thing to be. I read of two brothers that found an old trunk full of baseball cards in their dad’s attic after he passed away. They knew nothing about baseball cards and took the trunk to a dealer who offered them one million dollars on the spot for the entire trunk!
This morning, we are continuing our series on the parables of Jesus.
We’ve studied the parable of the vineyard, where we learned that whether you came to Christ at two or one hundred and two, the retirement plan is the same, and out of this world!
We’ve studied the parable of the four soils, where we learned that the four soils were like four heart postures toward God - a hard heart, a shallow heart, a busy heart, and a receptive heart.
Today, we will study a parable that shows how the kingdom of God is like a treasure found in a field or a pearl of great price.
Turn with me to Matthew 13:44-46.
Prayer
A Chapter of Parables
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells seven parables in a row - the parable of the soils, the parable of the weeds, the parable of the mustard seed and yeast, the parable of hidden treasure, and the parable of the net.
The parables of Matthew 13 are about the Kingdom of God - the rule and reign of Jesus on the earth and in our lives.
Jesus gives another picture of the Kingdom and this time it is like a treasure.
Let’s look at the parables for today one at a time:
“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.” (Matt 13:44)
In Jesus’ time, there were banks but only the ultra-rich had access to them. It was normal for Jewish people to bury their money or valuable possessions in the ground. In fact, the rabbis had a saying that the only safe place to hide treasure is the earth.
Notice that the man wasn’t looking for treasure. He was going about his daily life’s work. But he stumbled upon the treasure in the field and it was a once-in-a-lifetime find.
“Let me tell you about a story about a man named Jed / poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed / then one day he was shooting at some food / and up through the ground came a bubbling crude / oil that is, black gold, Texas Tea.”
The field didn’t belong to him, he only worked in the field. He doesn’t steal it.
According to rabbinical law, if a worker came upon a treasure in a field and lifted it out, it would belong to his master. But here the man is careful not to disturb the treasure until he has bought the field.
Notice that the result was an extreme joy! In his joy, he sold all he had and bought the field. Obviously, the owner of the field didn’t know the treasure was there or he wouldn’t have given it up so easily.
The second parable compares the kingdom to a pearl:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” (Matt 13:45-46)
This time a wholesale merchant was actively looking for fine pearls.
In Jesus’s culture, pearls were comparable to diamonds in our day.
They were only found in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and off the coast of faraway Britain.
Divers would tie rocks to their bodies, sink down to the bottom, and collect oysters. When they were back in the boat, the oysters would be cut open to see if a pearl was contained in the shell. Good divers would find one pearl for every 10,000 oysters they harvested.
Pearls are the product of dirt getting into the oyster shell and the oyster trying to fight it off by covering it with nacre.
Pearls were considered beyond price. Egyptians worshiped pearls. One Roman general sold a pair of his mother’s pearl earrings to finance a military campaign. Julius Caesar gave a pearl to Brutus’s mother worth 45 million dollars.
Pearls cannot be cut and they are known for their luster, the ability to reflect light.
This pearl the wholesale pearl hunter found was the most amazing specimen he had ever seen. Apparently, he found it on someone else’s property so he went away and liquidated his entire pearl collection, along with everything else he owned to purchase this one magnificent pearl!
Now it might be tempting to teach that from the parables that the Kingdom is a treasure that we need to “buy” through our good deeds. In fact, some churches teach that. But we know that’s not Biblical. We cannot buy or earn salvation but our good works.
So what is the point of the story? John Piper puts it like this:
The Kingdom of heaven is so valuable that losing everything here on earth, including your life, is a happy trade-off!
Five Principles
John MacArthur lists several principles that we can learn from the parables. I want to focus on five.
The Kingdom of God is not visible
The treasure wasn’t obvious. It was buried in a field. The pearl wasn’t easy to find. It was in an oyster at the bottom of the sea.
To the unsaved eye and heart, the kingdom of God is a myth, something made up by man to control the masses. To give up everything for a “made-up religion” seems like the ultimate stupidity to most.
But Paul makes it clear that this is because the kingdom’s preciousness has been obscured by our enemy:
“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor 4:4)
Jesus, in response to Pilate’s question, if He was a king, said,
“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (John 18:36)
It is an invisible Kingdom that is as real as the sun in the sky or the air that we breathe.
The Kingdom of God presents us with a choice
It is not enough to be influenced by Christ. It is not enough to believe that Jesus lived or that He was a good teacher. The call is to surrender your all to Jesus and His Kingdom.
Paul told the Roman Christians:
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Rom 10:9-13)
The Kingdom of God is the source of joy
Notice that the discovery of the kingdom brings great joy! Many people think that joy will be found in pleasure, prosperity, power, or prestige. Fame and fortune beckon like a siren to dash our souls upon the rocks.
Jesus said it plainly:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life[b] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Mark 8:34-37)
There is no one as excited and joyful as a newly born-again Christian who has discovered salvation through faith, by grace in the Gospel. The joy that radiates from him or her is contagious.
As Louie Giglio has said many times, “Never ever believe the lie that anything is better than Jesus!”
The Kingdom of God may be entered through different circumstances.
The worker stumbled upon the treasure. The wholesaler was searching diligently for pearls.
The Apostle Peter was called away from his nets. The Apostle Paul was knocked off his feet by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.
Lee Strobel fell in love with his future wife at 14 years old. When they married, he was an atheist and she was agnostic.
When she became a Christian, Lee actually considered divorce.
He writes:
“…I did see some positive and winsome changes in her; but at the same time, I wanted to get her out of this cult, because I didn’t want her to change into some holy roller or something I couldn’t relate to. I felt like she was cheating on me with this Jesus guy.”
Professionally, Lee was an investigative reporter and decided to prove to his wife that she was wrong about Jesus. After two years of rigorous study, he came to a decision.
“…I concluded that Jesus not only claimed to be the son of God but backed it up by returning from the dead. And then John 1:12 has this sort of this faith equation: Believe plus receive equals become. Through that, I realized OK, I believe it but that’s not enough I had to receive this gift of grace through Christ. So when I took that step on November 8, 1981. Then, like my wife’s, my life began to change and ultimately I ended up leaving journalism, which had been my life and taking a 60 percent pay cut to go on the staff of a church. God has taken us on all kinds of unexpected adventures ever since.”
He is the author of over forty books, including the now classic, “The Case for Christ,” (5 million copies sold), and has sold nearly 14 million books worldwide.
In the church we attended in Mississippi, I had a friend who was a funeral director. He was an atheist and didn’t want to hear about God.
What finally broke through? He had to prepare a young boy for a funeral. Before the funeral, the family came in to view him and my friend stood in the back and watched as his father took his wife and children’s hands and began to pray.
It was at that moment, Marvin saw what he was searching for. In the midst of soul-crushing grief, there was faith and hope, something he didn’t have.
With tears running down his face, Marvin surrendered his life to Jesus right there, right then. The family never knew. But a few weeks later he was baptized and told the story.
The Kingdom of God is priceless and worth giving up everything for.
Martyn Lloyd Jones was a precocious child, brilliant with a curious mind.
He graduated high school and began medical school at the prestigious St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at 16 years old.
At age 21, he earned a bachelor of medicine and surgery, with distinction.
He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians.
Sir Thomas Horder noticed Jones’ extraordinary ability to diagnose illnesses and asked him to be his junior house physician. One of his patients was King George V.
He earned his doctorate from London University at 23 years old.
He opened a practice on Harley street, where the most wealthy patients sought out medical help.
He was at the very top of his profession but he was unhappy and frustrated that he could heal people’s bodies but not their souls.
It was at the age of 25 years old that he discovered the pearl of great price:
“For many years I thought I was a Christian when in fact I wasn’t. It was only later that I came to see that I had never been a Christian and I became one.”
After his conversion, he made the decision to leave the medical profession for the Gospel ministry. People couldn’t believe that he would give up everything he had achieved to become a preacher. The only question was where to serve.
Once, when he and his wife and some friends, were leaving the theater, he noticed a salvation army band playing and a man preaching on the street. The friends they were with turned their noses up at this sight but Martyn said, in an instant, he knew that “these were my people.”
Martyn and his wife moved to Wales and took a church in a small, economically depressed village. There were only 93 people in the church when he started.
He just began to exposit the Scriptures Sunday by Sunday, which he called “logic on fire.” First, the church secretary got saved. Then one of the deacons. Then the most violent man in town, who had gotten mad at his dog and cut him into pieces, got saved. Then the town witch committed her life to Christ.
After sitting under Martyn’s teaching for two years, his wife got saved!
This was the beginning of a nearly 50-year ministry career that took him all over the world and his recorded sermons are still changing lives today.
When asked at the end of his life about his decision to give up everything to preach, he responded, “I gave up nothing; I received everything. I count it the highest honor that God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the Gospel.”
If you visit his tomb, it has his name and the dates of his life, and then Paul’s words to sum up his life:
“For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (I Cor 2:2)
This was the cry of Paul’s heart.
Paul wrote to the church at Philippi:
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” (Phil 3:7-9)
When I made the decision to quit graduate school, quit my job, leave my friends and my church, to work at a little Christian residential program in North Carolina, I drove away with this song blasting through my speakers;
“We will abandon it all / for the sake of the call / No other reason at all / but the sake of the call / wholly devoted to live and to die for the sake of the call.”
Jim Elliot wrote this in his journal, before he went to Ecuador and was martyred while trying to share the Gospel with the Indians:
“He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
You are the Treasure
There is another to look at these parables. Jesus is the treasure hunter and you are the treasure! He gave up everything, including His life, in order to redeem you, and buy you back, from the hand of satan. And He did this with great joy!
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
Charles Spurgeon wrote:
“So did Jesus himself, at the utmost cost, buy the world to gain his church, which was the treasure which he desired.”
Can you sing with the hymn writer
“I have found the pearl of greatest price,
My heart doth sing for joy:
And sing I must, a Christ I have;
O what a Christ have I?”
