Three Kingdom Parables

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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Matthew chapter 13 verses 44 through 52. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

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Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.

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Again the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full men drew it ashore sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad so it will be at the close of the age.

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The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous throw them into the fiery furnace and in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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Have you understood all these things? They said to him yes and he said to them therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.

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In the name of Jesus. So Matthew 13 quite a text if you would the whole thing taken in context is quite fascinating because it's in this chapter as we learned a couple weeks ago that Jesus changes it up in his ministry.

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He begins due to the fact that people are ascribing to his miracles and his speech that he is well engaging in demonic activity that Jesus apparently is raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons by the hand of the devil it himself and that Jesus is really

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Lucifer on earth not the Son of God in human flesh. Well what do you do in a situation like that?

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Well Jesus decided that in order to make it so that they would hear his words but not understand him he chose to begin to speak in parables and so we along with the disciples because you'll note again that in Matthew's gospel it's written as if we're kind of sitting in on the inside conversation.

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We're the 13th disciple listening and getting the inside story. Jesus now is teaching us how to interpret the parables and so in chapter 13

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Jesus gives well seven parables. I'm not going to engage in some kind of weird biblical numerology but I must confess seven parables to start off with that seems like a good number but only two of them have

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Jesus's well handcrafted interpretation designed to help us understand parables our self.

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How do I know that? How can I be so confident? Well at the end of our pericope Jesus asks his disciples have you understood all these things?

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Now the things that he's referring to were the last three parables that we heard today. The parable of the of the hidden treasure, the of the pearl of great price and the parable of the net.

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Jesus says have you understood these things and they said to him yes. So my question for you as the 13th disciple have you understood these things?

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You don't look so confident. That's okay. Let us review if you would the parables that we have already looked at the parable of the soils and in the parables of the soils we learn that well that these seeds that go out are the seeds of the

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Word of God and they hit different soils and then they're all taken away. Then last week we heard the parable of the weeds in the wheat field or the wheat with the zazania in it and Jesus again explains how that works and you're gonna note that Jesus makes it clear that different elements within the parables represent different things and a good way to kind of unpack a parable is to figure out where's

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Jesus in the parable? Where is he listed? Which portion of it is he really there for?

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So that's kind of the idea and so Jesus now without giving us an interpretation is expecting us to be able to kind of unpack these things to get what's going on and so if you would we have these three small parables in rapid succession.

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The first parable only being a verse long, the second parable being two verses long and then the next one again not so long and so let's walk through these and see if we can figure out what's going on so that at the end of it we can say yes we understood these things as well along with Peter and James and John and Bartholomew and the gang if you would.

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So the parable first that we're going to look at is the parable of the hidden treasure. In that parable it says the kingdom of heaven.

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Ah, packed words. Hopefully you've been coming to Sunday school and you're beginning to unpack this concept of the kingdom of heaven.

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A there's a land but the kingdom of heaven now is a people with a king but we are technically landless.

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You can't spin the globe and put your finger down and say aha there it is right there there's the kingdom of God right there and although Jerusalem might be a tempting capital city for you to choose for the kingdom of God today yeah not so much and Rome yeah definitely not so Oslo Minnesota forget about it it's not it's not working so there's no place we can point to that there's king so you'll note that these parables are talking about how things are now the kingdom of God now well they got a king and they got a people so this is kind of the idea of working this so the kingdom of heaven it's like well treasure hidden in a field which a man found and he covered up and then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and he buys that field now when

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I was a younger lad and attended different types of churches I was told that this parable meant this the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in the field that treasure is your salvation and therefore you need to kind of theoretically metaphorically sell all that you have in order to buy that field with your good works in your obedience we've already talked about the fact that I'm still bemoaning the fact that I thought

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I was buying my salvation by burning the Beatles white album I'm still bitter about it that's why I keep talking about it but I assure you that the treasure here is not your salvation that's to kind of miss the point now remember in Matthew 7

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Jesus says where your treasure is there your heart will be also

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I think that it's not a mistake that those concepts occur in the same in the same gospel so who or what is our treasure

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I think the right way of understanding this and thankfully I'm in very good company through Christian history that the treasure here is none other than Jesus Christ himself and you can kind of think of it

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Jesus for us and think of the scandal of the cross if you would that people and fellows back in the day who were crucified were not considered to be upstanding citizens these were people who were the worst of the worst and they were being shamed terribly in their execution and that's why the cross itself is a scandal and so the idea here is

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Jesus's death for our sins Jesus's resurrection from the grave I love the bulletin cover it you know it's a if you'll notice on the bulletin cover it depicts this hidden treasure as a coffin which is oh right in there so think of this treasure is

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Jesus's death and his resurrection for us and this is an amazing treasure and it's currently sitting out in the middle of a field and if you looked at the field you wouldn't even realize the wealth that is there it looks so humble it looks so ordinary it looks so silly if you would what it's a field it's got weeds in it but yet it has this amazing treasure that's kind of the scandal of the gospel itself this wonderful good news that Christ has bled and died for us and so but what do you do then with this idea that the person who has joy and goes sells all that he has and buys the field well let me put a kind of a modern spin on it nowadays here in the

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United States when we say that somebody bought the farm that means that they died let's kind of play on that a little bit so the idea here is that this field is going to cost you everything that you have it's going to cost you your very life everything that you've got in order to acquire this field and you're saying what do

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I do to fulfill this I think a better question would be what has Christ done for you so that you already do fulfill this let me remind you that in the waters of your baptism you died you died to yourself you died to this world you died to all of your sins and Christ uniting you with him in his death he's also raised you from the grave in the waters of your baptism and as our catechism teaches our catechism teaches us very plainly that we are to return daily to the waters of our baptism for the purpose of continually dying to ourself and to our sins that's the idea here so it costs you everything and the good news is that we cost you everything that everything has already been paid for by Christ and done to you for you and given to you and so we can then rejoice in this great and amazing treasure that is

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Jesus Christ and so when we look at the cross -reference that says where your treasure is there your heart will be also we know that our great treasure

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King Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God the Father and he will come again in glory someday to judge the living and the dead and so we have this great amazing treasure that is

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Jesus Christ next parable now at a first look we might think that well what

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Jesus is doing here is just saying the same thing in a different way which is a fine way of teaching but if we pay attention to the details and use a little biblical cross -referencing then we will recognize that this parable is not saying the same thing the emphasis changes so in the parable of the hidden treasure

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Jesus is the treasure in the parable of the pearl of great price the question is which of these characters in the parable are

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Jesus again the kingdom of heaven is like a in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and he bought it hmm now it's important to note we know from cross -references in Scripture that no one seeks

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God all have sinned all have fallen short that's me and you included so we also know from other cross references that Jesus is the one who came to what seek and save the lost so in this case this parable is a slightly different spin the kingdom of heaven well it's like King Jesus behaving like a merchant searching for fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great price went out and sold all that he had the pearl of great price here think of it as our wonderful planet the world itself seen from space it's beautiful blue seas white clouds brown green earth it's just amazing to look at right when you see the photos from space so think of the earth of the globe itself the world as that very thing that is the pearl the great of great value and of course it's of great value think back to the

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Genesis account God speaking the universe into existence in six days and spending an inordinate amount of those days working on the earth itself speaking into existence the seas and the great ocean animals and fishes and beasts of the field and then ultimately making man in his own image and at the very end of his creation he declares it all very good but our sin has thrown some mud on this pearl if you would kind of dirty it up a bit but Jesus recognizes the great value in it and the great value in it is because he is the one who created it and so this merchant this

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Jesus who is searching for us he went and sold all that he had and he bought it in other words he went well and similarly gave up even his own life to purchase us and to redeem us so that we can be his treasured possession it's absolutely beautiful if you think about it and this is exactly what's getting at you know what has gotten that in the heart of our

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Old Testament text let me read a few verses from our Old Testament text where God says to his chosen people and that's you and me included for you are a holy people to Yahweh your

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God Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the

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Lord has set his love on you and this is especially true for your note you Norwegians I just want to make that clear but it's not because of that that he chose you for you're the fewest of all peoples but it is because the

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Lord loves you and he is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers you see

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God in choosing you Christ in bleeding and dying for you and seeing value in you in spite of your sin and paying the price so that you can redeem to be reconciled to God he has done this out of his great love for us and so our epistle text in Romans then kind of picking up on this theme is really hammering home the point that it's this love of Christ this love of God that is the thing that we can bank on but in this life we can expect to be knocked around we can expect to experience suffering we can expect to have troubles troubles in our body troubles in our mind troubles in our relationships troubles you know just trouble trouble trouble trouble trouble and sadly the trouble that we experience is not always because somebody else has victimized us no it's oftentimes the trouble that we experience is brought about by our own wretched sinfulness that old

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Adam that still clings to us wants to do his own thing but understand this as Christians though we are promised also experience suffering and persecution which is why then that Paul writes we know that for those who love

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God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose all things you say well yeah but what about this thing that I'm going through what about the fact that my body is failing or our relationships are strained what about all of this how is that going to be worked out for good

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I don't know I just know that God has never lied has he and so he says we know that for those who love

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God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose for those whom

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God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and those whom he predestined he called and those whom he called he justified and those whom he justified he also glorified and this is good news for us brothers and sisters because we know that we too have been called by the gospel itself

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God has sent his gospel out among us and through his gospel he has called us to himself called us to repent of our sins called us to be forgiven called us to bear fruit in keeping with repentance in good works and love towards our neighbor and so all of this

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God has done so then the he goes on to say so what then can shall we say to these things if God is for us who can be against us he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all how will he not also with him graciously give us all things so who shall bring any charge against God's elect and how can anyone bring a charge against any of you you are all forgiven your sins have been bled for died for and then cast into the sea of God's great forgetfulness where he's posted a sign that says no fishing allowed so who is there to bring a charge against you is it not

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Satan that's his name Satan is the accuser who always wants to bring the charges against us but who's going to bring a charge against us

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God is our vindicator God is our forgiver God is our justifier he's called us forgiven us justified us washed away our sins feeds us with his body and blood and over and again assures us of his great love for us so we should not worry about these things so who shall bring a

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God charge against God's elect is God who justifies so who's to condemn Jesus Christ is the one who died more than that who was raised who is at the right hand of God who indeed is interceding for us so who shall separate us from the love of Christ which is a great question how can this pearl of great price be separated from the one who loved it so much that he gave everything including his own life to purchase it and you are part of that pearl

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I'm part of that pearl so who's going to separate us from the love of God well shall tribulation do it no

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I don't think so if you sit there going yeah it will no won't how about distress nope persecution nope famine forget about it nakedness

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I'm not sure how nakedness would separate you from God but okay no that doesn't work either how about danger how about the sword is any of that going to separate you from the love of Christ yeah no this the you're gonna notice that the list gets weirder by as it goes along and so here's what it says for your sake we are being killed all the day long and we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered no in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us and here's the fun part the list that you just saw above does not sound like a great conquering list it sounds like a list of defeat does it not tribulation famine persecution nakedness danger and sword which really is the lot of Christianity and Christians throughout its history is it not this does not sound like victory and yet here's what scripture teaches us to recognize that in these things in persecution famine nakedness danger sword distress that it's in these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us for I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

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Lord and now we begin to understand just how great the treasure

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Jesus is just how amazing his love is for sinners as wretched as me and you what an amazing love this is so brothers and sisters in this difficult life that we find ourselves in know this that none of the tribulation none of the distress persecution or danger that you experience will separate you from the love of God oftentimes we are tempted in the midst of such trials and tribulations to see those trials and tribulations as somehow evidence of God's feelings towards us

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I must not be loved by God because if I were loved by God I wouldn't be going through this instead this text teaches us no you trust the love of God and don't listen to or look at these experiences to teach you what

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God believes about you you want to know what God believes about you you look at the cross that's what you look at you want to know what

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God believes about you he believes that he loves you and that he forgives you and you never let your circumstances take your eyes off of him there for you period and now our third parable which is terrible which is absolutely awful because you'll note that as we just read that Christ has paid the price for this pearl of great price the entire world there is not a person who is not bled for died for in Christ all sins have been atoned for in him and yet and yet there are people who do not want to be forgiven how foolish is that people who when confronted with their sins and told to repent and trust in Jesus basically tell you to go pound sand get out of my face

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I've got more important things to do than listen to you ranting and raving about this great love of Jesus leave me alone

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I like my sin go away hmm so we read again the kingdom of heaven well it's like a net thrown into the sea and it gathered fish of every kind that's the thing about nets they kind of catch everything you always love the fellows here in our congregation who go fishing and they go fishing for catfish or they go fishing for walleye and they know what to put on the hook in order to catch different types of fish always amazing to me

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I haven't done any fishing since I've arrived here but net fishing totally different thing you throw a net out you're gonna get everything you're gonna get tin cans you're gonna get you know car parts you're gonna get dead fish live fish ugly fish cool fish stuff that you can't even identify as a species on the species chart it's all in there right that's the idea behind net fishing so when it was full the men drew it ashore sat down sorted out the good into containers and threw it away the bad so will be at the end of the age the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous so where's

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Jesus in this Jesus is the one who sends the angels on the last day because we know from our cross references that we confess in our creeds that he will return in glory to judge the living in the dead on that day when

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Jesus comes he sends out his angels and his angels kind of have one big drag net and they grab all of humanity into the net take it to a place and kind of you know right you over there you over there and kind of sort everything out right that's the idea so we'll be at the end of the age the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and the evil they will be thrown into the fiery furnace in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth absolutely tragic by the way we live in a day when there are those who continue to say that hell does not exist their thinking goes something along the lines of this if there is an all -loving

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God like there is described in scripture how could an all -loving God send people to an eternity in hell and I assure you of this scripture is clear it is not

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God's will that any should perish clear text but that all should repent and have eternal life so despite this great treasure of Jesus despite him giving everything that he has to purchase our sin purchase us out of slavery to sin death and the devil there are those who persist in sin and unbelief and who do not want to be forgiven who do not want eternal life do not want to live forever on the new earth so Jesus has basically said fine have it your way and so he is created an eternity for them that is eternal death and the way scripture describes it is terrible this is eternal existence as wretched people under the wrath of God there's no way around it

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Jesus taught that this place exists and the good news for us is that he loves us and doesn't wish for any of us to end up there and so texts like this remind us again of the great love of God remind us again of our own sin and our unbelief and call us over and again to repent of our sins to be forgiven and to trust in Christ our great treasure that he has paid the price for the sins of the world so that we do not have to be separated and thrown into the fiery furnace because that is not what

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God wills for us so continue to trust continue to have faith continue to look to Christ on the cross continue to look to your baptism to the

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Lord's Supper to the absolution that tells you that you are in Christ and forgiven and pray for those and share the good news with them those who are on the broad road that leads to destruction because through his word

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God calls men out of hell and brings them to eternal life

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Christ has done everything necessary and given it all to us and for us let us never shirk from preaching the truth so Jesus's questions have you understood all these things have you in the name of Jesus if you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungs Vinger Lutheran Church you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungs Vinger Lutheran Church 1 5 9 5 0 470th

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Avenue Northwest Oslo Minnesota 5 6 7 4 4 and again that address is

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Kungs Vinger Lutheran Church 1 5 9 5 0 470th