Bring Out the Treasure

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Don Filcek; Matt 13:44-52 Bring Out the Treasure

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called
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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Well, good morning,
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Recast Church. I'm glad that you're here. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor, and I just want to start off by welcoming everybody.
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I'm glad that you've taken the time out of your busy week to gather together as God's people, and it is a privilege, and I hope you see it that way, as a privilege to gather together to worship
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God in community. We need relationships with others. We need to connect with each other, need that regular reminder that we are not alone in this calling to honor
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God with our lives. I don't know about you, but I find that during the week, it can get kind of lonely out there.
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I don't know. Anybody experience that? Like, I mean, there are times when you're not necessarily rubbing shoulders with other believers, or things at work aren't going well, or there's the stresses and strains of family life and work life, and trying to honor
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God in real life, like in your commute, for example, or whatever it might be, or driving on I -94, all different kinds of places where it can be challenging to honor
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God. We are made to need community. We need each other, and let me encourage all of you to give community a chance.
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Really, over the next few weeks, we're going to be having these community groups. This is the last week for sign -ups for those, and those are back on the table beneath the clock.
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If you have been kind of toying with the idea, and kind of like, yeah, you and your spouse have been talking about it, maybe you haven't had that time, this is the morning.
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Put your name down on one of those lists. It's a short -term commitment that is going to go about 10 weeks, and it's a chance for you to engage and get to know others.
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There's content oriented around it, and so you can find one that works into your schedule and get connected with other people.
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I am hopeful that this next year is going to be the start of some amazing new relationships and new vital connections in relationship and community together here at Recast.
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We need to grow in faith, community, and service, and that is our growth plan.
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That's what we want everybody to be doing, taking in God's word and believing it and living it. That's growing in faith, connecting with others in deeper ways, and vital accountability relationships and for encouragement, growing in community, and then using the way that God has designed you to serve in your community.
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Maybe in the church, maybe outside of the church, depending on your gifting. That's kind of the growth plan here.
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I'm going to be coming back, as I introduced the sermon this morning, we're coming back to an old series in the book of Matthew.
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I did that several weeks ago, really in preparation for Christmas, and I've just carried it on so that I could finish a chapter in Matthew.
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Matthew has been kind of a pickup series that over the years, over the last seven years, in between, I've taken a few here and there.
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Not that Matthew is filler, Matthew is solid, important material, and it's really understanding who
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Jesus is, but I love from time to time to just get back to snapshots of the life of Jesus and see where he is now.
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Next week we're going to be wrapping that part up in Matthew, and then the following week is going to be, Rob Knoll is going to be preaching in my absence, and then it's going to be on to Malachi for a period of time there.
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So that's kind of where we're going. But this morning, we are again putting our attention to the life of Christ, and particularly
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Jesus teaching us parables of his kingdom. To know what his kingdom is and to see it through stories that he told us.
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Jesus came to be the king of humanity. He brought the kingship of God to us, and it's a radical and different kind of kingdom than anything that's ever come before it.
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There have been kings, and if you realize that, we don't live under a king right now, you know that we've got a president right now, and we're about to change presidents and all of that stuff, and I don't want to get into any of that, but we don't live under a king, but there have been all kinds of kings, and currently are kings, and it's a different kind of dynamic, but the kingdom that Jesus is bringing required some teaching for us to understand what does it mean for him to be our king.
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He came the first time to introduce us all to his kingdom of love and grace, and he's going to come back a second time to bring it all to completion.
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So there's a future, there's a sense in which we understand in our living part of the kingdom now, but there's a significant part of it is going to be realized in the future and completely finished.
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So that's kind of the nature of the kingdom, but in our text this morning, he's going to expand on the parables that we looked at last week.
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For those of you that were here, we saw last week that his kingdom is patient. He didn't come the first time to bring judgment and immediately remove all opposition and just take the throne right away and rule in a political, governmental kind of way.
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There's a day coming when he will indeed be the ruler of all. But that's for the future, that's a time coming when he's going to bring judgment and will indeed remove all opposition.
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But the other two parables were about the explosive and permeating growth and encouraging message that his kingdom is going to be effective.
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It's going to affect the world around us, and then the last point last week was that it's permeating and that's part of our role and responsibility.
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That's why we don't just live in church. I mean, think about it. Why if you become a follower of Jesus Christ and he's your king and he's your everything, why aren't you just always in the worship gathering of God's people?
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Because he wants to send us out into the world. I mean, the majority of your time is spent not here, right?
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Where is the majority of your time spent? Out there. Out there where you are to have an influence and be permeating like a little bit of yeast in a large lump of dough that permeates it and eventually leavens the whole bunch.
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So that was last week, but this morning we're going to look at four more parables and they're going to focus on the immense value of his kingdom, the urgency to share the kingdom like a treasure with the world around us, and at the risk of stealing my own thunder, the primary message this morning is to be generous with the message of the kingdom, to be generous with it.
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It is so valuable. The kingdom of God is so valuable, it is so precious, but it is not to be hoarded.
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It should be brought out of the vault and dispersed generously by God's people. That's the call on us from these texts this morning.
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And the motivation for sharing it with others is found in what is the third parable we're going to be looking at this morning. All people will be caught up in this kingdom.
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Nobody sits this out. You go, wait, Don, are you saying everybody's going to be saved, everybody's going to be brought in? Not at all.
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Every single person you have met, you've never met a person that is not in some relationship to King Jesus.
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Every single person you have met is in some type of relationship with this king.
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Either they are a rebel against this king, and they will face judgment, and they've rejected his treasure, and they've rejected his rule, or they have sworn allegiance to this king and have humbly come under his glorious and beautiful protection.
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So let's open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 13. We're going to read verses 44 through 52.
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If you've got a device that you can navigate over to there, Matthew 13, 44 through 52. If you don't have a
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Bible, I don't want to call you out or make you feel uncomfortable, but if you would just do me a favor and raise your hand, Mike has Bibles back here.
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He'd like to give everybody a copy of God's word so that you can follow along and see right down here in the front,
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Mike, there's one. And that way you can follow along as we read Matthew chapter 13, 44, 44 through 52.
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Recast, this is God's word for us this morning. I just love that we get a chance to read a chunk and see what
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God, and hear what God wants us to hear. This is what he desires to communicate to us this morning. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up.
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Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
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In his joy. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great price, 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.
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When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad.
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So it will be at the end of the age, the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the fiery furnace.
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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood these things?
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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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Let's pray. Father, it is hard to convey in words the grand and immense and glorious value and worth of your kingdom.
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Jesus gave us two illustrations here in this text, two parables to try to convey that it is worth our everything, and even the word everything doesn't quite compare with the eternity and the glory that is awaiting those who are under the protection of your
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Son, Jesus Christ. What we deserve and what we have available to us, words can't express the difference.
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And Father, the joy that I feel in my heart because I am your child and I am saved by you, I can't even express it in words.
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So Father, I pray that as we have a chance to sing some songs to you, to lift up our voices, that we would exalt in joy.
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And Father, that you would keep in our lives intention, joy, and urgency. Father, there is such an urgency about this gospel message that there is a place called the fiery furnace.
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There is a place of torment, and yet there is joy for any who would submit themselves to you in salvation through Jesus.
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So Father, I pray that you would help us to live in joy and take that joy and carry that joy and carry that treasure to others.
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Father, receive our worship this morning as an offering to you of just gratitude and thanks for what you have done.
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Move in us, move in our hearts, remove the distractions and all of the things around us that would pull our attention away from you this morning and speak to us as individuals this morning in this gathering in Jesus' name.
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Amen. You can go ahead and find your seats there. And I just want to thank
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Dave and the team for leading us in worship. I love how often God just orchestrates the music, and I know
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Dave put some effort into that too and orchestrates it to go along with the message, and I love to see that.
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And so grateful for the work that they do. You would not like me to be the one leading you in worship, so glad that they do that.
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I want to encourage you to get comfortable though, and remember if at any time during the message you want to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts there if there's any left, take advantage of that.
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That's not going to distract me. And again, if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, I just want you to feel free to do so.
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You don't need to feel anchored to your seat there. I know that those are not super comfortable. And looking forward to the time when we're in our own building and we've got a little bit more comfortable chairs and the temperature, we can adjust ourselves and things like that.
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So I recognize it's not always super warm this time of the year in here. I see some coats on, so if you need to get up and do some jumping jacks or whatever, you might feel weird.
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I wouldn't. Thinking about this treasure, thinking about this passage, just when you find it, you know it.
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When you find it, you know it. And you never want to let it go.
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When you find it, you know it. And you never want to let it go. It is worth more than all other things you have ever and will ever encounter.
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It's kind of dumbing it down a bit to compare it to finding the winning Powerball lottery ticket in a dumpster.
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How many of us would like that? That'd be pretty cool, right? Find the winning lottery ticket, that'd be amazing.
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But it's better than that. That idea of becoming that kind of wealthy pales in comparison to the kingdom of God.
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To the kingdom of God. I do not think, and I said this in my introduction, I don't think I can use words without sounding overly dramatic or melodramatic to truly convey the deep worth of the kingdom of God.
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I fear that there's all different kinds of reasons why we don't value it, why we don't see it as it is, why this selling everything with joy for the kingdom surprises us, shocks us a bit, scandalizes us a bit.
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I fear that either we do not have enough imagination about the glories of the kingdom that God has yet for us, or maybe we lack a proper understanding of how grave our sin truly is, or we forget how bad the punishment is that all of us deserve, or we've just become too familiar with our own apathetic
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Sunday school views of the kingdom to truly feel deeply in our soul what
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Jesus is going to try to convey to us in these first two parables this morning. The joy, the worth, the value of his kingdom.
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There are really three movements in our parables this morning, and so my outline is simply this, the worth of the kingdom, the worgency of the kingdom, and the work of the kingdom, because we just had to get some alliteration in there.
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Again, I mean really, you guys, alliteration, two weeks in a row, somebody write that down, that's got to be a record, right?
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Glad a couple of you thought that was funny. You're welcome. Okay, I promise not to do that often, but P's last week,
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W's this week, just amazing how sometimes alliteration just writes itself, you know?
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It just does that for you. So let's begin with the worth of the kingdom though, seriously, let's get down to it.
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Verses 44 through 46 are two parables that Jesus is using to express to us one common idea, this main thrust of the value and the worth of the kingdom.
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And have you ever been in a class where a teacher repeats themselves? And you know that there's going to be an exam, and it's kind of like,
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I have the feeling this might be important, because the professor or the teacher just said it twice, and so that's always a cue that maybe you should be taking notes on this one, right?
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Like it's, Jesus, God come in flesh, is teaching, and he repeats himself.
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You go, whoa, okay, he wants us to grasp the intense value of his kingdom.
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He's dropping hints, saying pay special attention to this. In the first parable, he likens the kingdom to a treasure hidden in a field.
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A man stumbles upon it, re -buries it, he then goes out in his joy and sells all that he has to purchase that field with the treasure in it.
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Now, we need to break that down for a minute, because we might not understand how that scenario could be a real world situation.
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It's not something, I mean, you're not out digging around for buried treasure, you probably don't have, you know, X marks the spot kind of maps and stuff like that, and so what is actually going on here would be helpful.
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A couple of simple cultural understandings about that era will help us to bridge the gap between where we live today and where they lived then, so that we can apply it and understand it.
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First, we need to remember that there was no banking system in this ancient time. In the first century, there was no banking, and so people would often bury their wealth for safekeeping.
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If they wanted to store anything, they wanted to keep anything for tomorrow, if they wanted to have a savings, it was going to get buried, and so that was a really common thing during this time.
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We see that in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament. In other parables, Jesus talks about people burying treasure.
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Think about the steward in the parable of the talents. One's given ten, one's given five, one's given one sum of money, and is told to invest it for their owner.
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Well, the stingy one, who gets only one, buries it, right? He says he buries this treasure.
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He doesn't turn a profit, but instead puts it in the ground. We know that in the Old Testament story of Achan, the
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Israelites are coming out, they conquer a city, and Achan takes some of the spoils for himself, and what does he do?
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He buries it. So, we see that as a really common thing in that time. So, buried treasure was routine.
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Further, if someone buried it and died, it would be quite possible for the current landowner to not even know that there was a treasure buried on their property.
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They might go ahead and sell, and that might be sold, that property could pass ownership a few times with nobody even knowing that there was this buried treasure on it.
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But, there's one other question that I had when I was looking at this text that might be in some of your minds. How does someone discover buried treasure on someone else's property?
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It's just over here digging in your backyard and happened to find a box, right? The shovel, I don't know how that got there.
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That would be maybe a question in the back of our minds, but think about it. It would be quite common to be digging around in someone else's property if you're a servant working in their fields, for example.
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A really common situation, a common scenario that I think Jesus is appealing to in this text.
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He probably has in his mind a servant or someone who's working for a master and discovers a treasure on the master's field.
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Jesus doesn't address the honesty or dishonesty of the illustration, by the way. Did you notice that? He doesn't get into the morality of whether he should have went to the master and said,
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I found this treasure or whatever. But this man, in this story, re -buries the treasure.
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Now, he doesn't run off with it, so I mean, that's a good thing, right? But instead in discovering this amazing treasure, he goes out and joyfully then sacrifices everything that he has.
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Sacrifices everything that he has and buys that field for an amount that is agreeable to the owner.
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It seems like a fair transition in the sense that the owner was pleased with the offering price and agreed and signed and was willing to sell it.
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He doesn't know that there's a treasure buried there that's well beyond the transactional value of what's going on here.
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And notice that the motive for this man who finds this treasure, putting all his eggs in one basket, is his own personal joy.
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His own personal joy. He recognizes that the sacrifice of all other things for this one thing is worth it.
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He doesn't come to the kingdom. He doesn't come to the—remember that the treasure is the kingdom, and he doesn't come to it with a sense of duty.
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He doesn't come to it with a sense of legalism and, oh, I need to follow a bunch of rules and I need to work hard to get rid of all of these things.
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He's not giving up his stuff for the kingdom because he's commanded to, because he has to, or because he feels obligation.
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What does the text say he does it? Why does he do it? Joy. He's motivated and moved by joy.
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He has found the one thing that matters. He has found the one thing that satisfies.
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He has found the greatest of all joys, and this is a joy that makes all other sacrifices seem small.
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Jesus goes on to emphasize this same point of the great worth of the kingdom with a second parable. The kingdom can indeed be like a man who stumbles upon a treasure in someone else's field, but sometimes it's found by someone who's searching for it.
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We see in the second parable someone who's looking for it. The first guy's blindsided by the joy and glory.
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The second guy is looking for joy and glory. He's a merchant.
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He trades in fine pearls. He likely is a student of pearls. He knows pearls. He wants to find good and valuable pearls.
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Knowledgeable about his trade, searching, probably traveling some to try to find it, going from port to port, probably living near the seaside where there's divers going down for pearls, and then one day
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I picture it happening by the seaside. I don't imagine that this pearl made it to the market. I imagine he's standing there on the beach as they're bringing in their haul from the day's work down in the water, diving for pearls, and he sees it.
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He knows it. No other pearl compares with this pearl.
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He'll never see one like it again. He knows it. He spent his life studying these things, and he knows that he has found the most glorious and amazing of all pearls.
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And what does he do? He sells all he has to buy a pearl, this one pearl, the pearl of great value.
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It's interesting to note two distinctions between these two parables that Jesus is, remember, telling us about the value and the worth of the kingdom, but he distinguishes some things in here that I think are worth our attention.
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This guy is searching, as I said. And to break it out of the story into real life, into the depth of beyond just the illustration itself to what he's telling us about our lives,
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I believe that Jesus wants us to recognize that there is only one king. There is only one kingdom.
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It is of infinite worth. But there are various circumstances that lead people to this king.
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Some will be minding their own business, and suddenly they find the kingdom, the kingdom of God.
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A friend takes him out for coffee and explains the glory and beauty of the king, and they believe it and are saved.
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I think some of you in this room were blindsided by glory. You were surprised by it. You weren't even, you weren't questing for it.
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You weren't out looking for it. You weren't like the merchant going from place to place looking, and all of a sudden someone shared it with you, and you were like, something came alive in you.
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And the spirit opened your eyes and opened your ears, and you said, I believe this. This is glorious.
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And you gave your life to the king. But there are others. For some it is a quest.
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It's a journey. It's an effort that they will wrestle with worldviews. They will analyze and study scripture.
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They will evaluate and work through the implications of various world religions, and they will discover finally the beauty and glory of the king above all else.
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By the way, I would contend that in all of my studies of comparative religions, some of you know I have a master's degree in Islamic studies.
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I've taken classes in Hinduism and Buddhism and all different kinds of isms. And in all of my studies throughout the world religions, nothing compares to Jesus.
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There's nothing. There's nothing else out there. He is the pearl of great price.
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He is my treasure to which no other treasure shine. He is the one who is worthy of any and all sacrifice.
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That's my king. I've discovered his love. I've discovered his forgiveness, his grace, his mercy.
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I saw my sin and the condemnation that was over me. And I saw his sacrifice and his love for me.
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And I've thrown my whole life over on him. And he's been so gracious and so kind to me.
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He's not merely a good king. He's the majestic, divine, compassionate, powerful, faithful, ever -present servant king who gave himself for you.
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He's not merely a part of my life. He is my everything.
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And I hope that for everyone. I hope that you come to see this glorious pearl.
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I hope that you come to see this great and immense and beautiful treasure and that you make it your own by faith.
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You see, the amazing reality is that Jesus isn't talking about some general salvation as the pearl of great price.
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It's not salvation. It's not the gospel. The treasure is not merely a get -out -of -hell -free ticket.
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That would be pretty good, right? That in itself, I mean, if all that it was was a get -out -of -hell -free ticket, that would still be a pretty cool thing, right?
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But it's more than that. It's so much more because the pearl of great price is
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Jesus who wants a relationship with you. The pearl of great price is him.
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He is the king of the kingdom that he is speaking about. And it's not arrogant for God in flesh to come here and tell us that he is worth it all.
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Because he is. If he's lying, then he's an egomaniac. He's just crazy.
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He's got delusions of grandeur. But what he's saying here is I'm worth any sacrifice that you'll make.
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The second distinction in these two parables is that the first guy has a means to sustain himself, but the second is full of reckless abandon.
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The guy at the end of the first parable, as Dave mentioned in his introduction, the guy at the end of the first parable has some land and some treasure.
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He has some means. But what is the second guy holding? At the end of the second parable, what does the pearl trader have in his possession?
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Sold everything else? What's he holding in his hands? Just a pearl. He has sacrificed all for the one thing.
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I think this second parable ups the ante a bit for us.
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What if all you had was the king? What if that was it? We sang, would that be enough for us?
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Would it? As you sang earlier, if I lost it all, would my hands stay lifted?
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And I would suggest to you that the only reason your hands could ever stay lifted in the face of the loss of a child, a diagnosis of cancer, or all the host of broken dreams that we face on this planet, the only reason your hands can stay lifted ever is that you have found the great.
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You have found the joy and hope that outshines all other pains and all other terrors.
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Paul, who suffered immensely for the cause of Christ, says this. Paul who was beaten, who was shipwrecked, who was left for dead, pelted with stones and rocks, and they actually thought he was dead and drug him outside of the city as a carcass.
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They thought he was done. He says this in Romans 8 .18, For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing.
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It's kind of like he's saying, it's not even worth mentioning the hardships that I've gone through compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.
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I think Paul found the great treasure. And all that he endured in this life faded in comparison with his knowledge of the glory in the coming kingdom of God.
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A more modern example for us is the missionary martyr Jim Elliott. How many of you have heard of Jim Elliott before, read something by him, or this quote that I'm going to give you, some of you are probably already familiar with.
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He died just this past week, marked I think 61 years, 1956. Somebody can do the math for me real quick.
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January 8, 1956. He was speared by a Stone Age tribe in Ecuador with a handful of his other missionary friends.
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And in his journal it was found to be written this phrase, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
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He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
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Jim had found the great pearl of great price and recognized that no sacrifice is too great for the king.
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I want to be clear that I don't believe that Jesus is suggesting by either of these parables that we must buy this kingdom.
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It's not for sale. I mean, the parable is about the worth of the kingdom. What would it be worth to sacrifice for it?
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But it's not about how you obtain it. This is not an obtaining parable. It's about value, about worth.
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We don't actually buy it, but we obtain it by faith and trust in the payment that has already been made for us.
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Jesus Christ, both our king, the treasure, and the one who secured it for us by his death, burial, and resurrection.
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All that these two men in these parables possess, all that they sell and give up, it doesn't represent hard work on their behalf.
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All that they sacrificed was their hope in other things to sustain them. They gave up their comfort and the other things for the joy that they found in this one glorious kingdom.
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The kingdom of Jesus is the sole hope for the one who has truly come under his protection. And it is a priceless hope.
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The worth, the value of the kingdom. The second point is really the third parable that starts really with a sense of,
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I'll go ahead and say urgency. We'll just go there instead of urgency. You knew where I was going anyways.
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It's about urgency. What we're going to be looking at here in contrast is we've got this great joy, this great value, this great worth, but we also have this great sense of urgency in his kingdom.
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Like the parable of the weeds that we saw a few weeks ago, this is a parable about separation and division.
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One that makes our culture quite uncomfortable. Our culture is increasingly shy of categories.
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Have you noticed that? We don't like to categorize people any longer, and so it's very uncomfortable for our culture to label things.
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Even to the degree of male and female is something that our culture can't seem to label very well. Jesus didn't get the memo to be politically correct, and so in verses 47 -50 he tells a parable about the division that will occur among humanity and in his kingdom in the end.
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He says, And when it's finally brought into the shore, the fishermen sit down, and what do they naturally do?
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Check out their haul. And they sort it. They sort it according to edible and inedible, useful and unuseful.
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The kingdom of heaven involves a sorting. If there's any message that Jesus was emphatic about and clear about and just kept harping on, it was the idea that there's a coming judgment.
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He did not pull any punches when it came to talking about a judgment to come. And in verse 49 he makes his parable explicit, that he's speaking about the separation of the evil and righteous in the end times.
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He doesn't leave it to our guesswork. He doesn't leave it up to us to try to figure out on our own.
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He says this is about the end times. This is about the evil and the righteous being separated in a final judgment.
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And he even repeats himself here in verse 50. If you just happen to glance up at verse 42, he actually states this exact verbatim verse twice.
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He said it at the end of the parable of the weeds, and then he says it exactly word for word at the end of this one about the dragnet.
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Verses 50 and verses 42, exactly the same. The urgency is found in our understanding, though, of what is at stake in this dragnet, this parable.
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And Jesus needs to be direct to us. The kingdom is not a subject for tiptoeing through the tulips and seeking to be politically correct and just really seeking to make sure we don't offend anyone.
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How many of you know that the gospel offends? Have you ever offended somebody with the gospel? Let me just say, let me be careful to say that I would discourage you from being offensive.
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And if it is you that is offending, then stop it. You can be offensive, okay?
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But if the message is offending, that's a different story, right? It's going to challenge, it's going to try to correct us.
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The Bible, people want to stand over the Bible and judge it, but the Bible wants to stand over us and judge us.
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And that's where all of us have to come under this and take it on and let it translate us, let it figure us out, tell us where we're at.
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He's not being politically correct. But there's a destination in our text that is imaged as a fiery furnace.
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It's a fiery furnace. It's a terrible place reserved for those who reject the king and will refuse his treasure, will refuse to come under his protection, will refuse humility to come to him and say,
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I need you and I can't do this on my own. This place is a terrible place and we call it hell, it's called
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Hades, it's called the lake of fire. It's further defined as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's a place, that phrase, weeping and gnashing of teeth, a mourning, a sorrow, a deep frustration and angst, but beyond that, a grinding kind of pain, a jaw -clenching kind of pain.
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And I don't want to pour this on any thicker than I need to because, personally, I don't like to make people uncomfortable, but if I'm going to be faithful to what
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Jesus is teaching here, then we should be uncomfortable. We should never be able to flippantly talk about hell.
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We should never be able to unemotionally talk about hell.
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If we believe that that's a real place, that's a terrible thing. And he is here saying that there is an urgency, deep urgency, because a judgment is coming.
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And there will be two categories, righteous and evil. When a new king comes into power, he usually cleans house, sets up a new administration.
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And if he's going to bring in, I said this when we were going through the book of Revelation, but really the book of Revelation, there's a lot of tumult and there's a lot of, well, it's apocalypse, right?
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So there's just catastrophe and all of this stuff going on. And I said this many times at the start of those sermons in that series.
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What needs to change for this to be a place of peace? What needs to change for our world to be set right?
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Some will tell you the answer is education. Some will tell you the answer is politics. Some will tell you all different kinds of answers.
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And I would suggest to you that judgment is needed. That justice is needed and that judgment is needed and that the opposition to God will one day finally be removed by him.
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And that's the way and the pathway to peace. Because we're rebels in our heart.
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And so the human rebellion problem needs to be dealt with before we'll ever have a kingdom of peace, a kingdom of righteousness, a kingdom of love and perfection.
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And that's what Jesus is talking about here. Sorting out to bring about his final kingdom.
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And it's important to note that the kingdom of heaven will indeed capture all. It's going to capture all.
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This net is going to grab all sorts of people. Some for judgment and others for delight. But the net in the case of this parable is the image of the kingdom.
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And it captures everyone. Jesus is your king. Jesus is your neighbor's king.
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Jesus is everyone's king. But it is either for your blessing by faith and trust that he is your king or he is your king for judgment because of neglect and rejection.
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But he is in relationship to everyone as their king. Whether they acknowledge it or not.
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John MacArthur on this passage paints an appropriately dark image of this dragnet in a way that John MacArthur can.
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Those of you who know him. He said this, The dragnet of God's judgment is moving silently through the sea of mankind and draws all men to the shores of eternity.
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Believers to eternal life and unbelievers to eternal damnation.
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And in this doctrine of hell, we should find our greatest marching orders recast. Our friends and neighbors and coworkers.
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Some members of our families destined for a place of burning while we possess the glorious treasures of the kingdom.
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So Jesus ties these two together in his final parable in verse 52 by explaining the work of the kingdom.
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Where is the place where our joy intersects with this urgency?
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Where does our joy intersect with a doctrine of judgment? By explaining the work that we have to do.
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In verse 51, he confirms that his disciples, he checks in with them. Are you guys tracking with this? Yeah, we're getting it,
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Jesus. Awesome, because he said they were going to because these things are spiritually discerned. So he just pings them.
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You getting it? Yeah. But in this final parable, he speaks of his disciples as scribes who have been trained for the kingdom of heaven.
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The word scribes there, or really the phrase been trained for is a word that comes from our concept of discipleship.
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Being a disciple, a life student of someone or of something. And so it might put this verse into better perspective if we substitute disciple in here and understand
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Jesus to be saying every scribe who is a disciple of the kingdom of heaven. Not every scribe, but every scribe that's a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is who he's talking about.
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And he's describing you and me. If we've accepted Jesus as our king, our master, our teacher, if we're following him, if we're in a discipleship relationship where we want to honor
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Jesus with our lives, then that's us, and he's talking to you and me. And all of his disciples are like the master of a house who brings out his treasure and shares it, both old and new, bringing out all of the treasure that you have to bear in the lives of people.
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Scribes were the teachers of law, by the way, who studied it and carefully worked through it with a fine -tooth comb to be able to help others apply it and understand what they were supposed to do with it.
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And in this sense, Jesus is calling all of his followers to a ministry of teaching others the glories of the kingdom, to express the great worth and the great value that has been pressed on you and in you by the glory of the salvation that you have in Jesus Christ.
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The urgency of judgment on others and the joy of what we've found are brought together in a call to be generous with the treasure that we have been given.
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Jesus is teaching them new things, and they are to be conveyors of this new message of the hope found through King Jesus.
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But they are not to let go of the old in this process. You see, they may have been attempted to apply the parable of the treasure and the parable of the pearl as a call to sell off.
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What are we supposed to sell off, Jesus? Do we sell off all of the Old Testament teaching? Are we to get rid of all of that and now just run with your new teaching that you're giving us today?
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Jesus is saying, bring all of the scriptures to bear on those who are lacking the treasure. Show them from the Old Testament.
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Show them from the New Testament. Show them from old things that you've learned. Show them from the new that God is revealing to you. God forbid that we hoard this treasure of the kingdom for ourselves.
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The dragnet is sweeping through humanity, collecting all for judgment.
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Car accident here, cancer claims another there. Let's not keep the treasure to ourselves.
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If you've come to know Jesus as your treasure, let the joy of your treasure and the urgency of the situation mingle this morning to produce within you a plan of action in sharing your faith with others.
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If you feel poorly equipped to share your faith with others, would you be willing to let me know that? Maybe through a comment on the connection card or just, that would be the best way for you to communicate that to me.
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I would love to just get a tally. If there were a number of people who really the reason that you're not out inviting others, the reason you're not out sharing with others is a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge, or just a lack of accountability, let me know that.
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I'd be ready to start as soon as possible an evangelism class if that's the issue. If it really is that you feel like you are not equipped to do it and that's really what's holding you back, it's not fear, it's not this, it's not that, it's that I just don't know what to say, let's work through that together and get one of these, maybe the next cycle around we can get a group together who's going to do that or at least a group together that would pray for the lost in our community.
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Let's look into that. Let me know. Let me know if that's what's holding you back from sharing your treasure.
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You have treasure. If you are in the kingdom, you have it. Some of you, that's the problem. You're like, I don't know if I've got...
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We're talking about the great worth of the kingdom that you have. From the youngest, newest believer, I don't care if you gave your life to Christ last night, you have treasure to give this morning.
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All of us, everyone has this treasure. If you have bowed the knee to the king and given him your allegiance and have accepted the salvation that he offers through his sacrifice.
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I would encourage all of you that at the minimum, it is a pretty easy thing to ask and invite people to church. In our culture, that's not that tough.
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I often will ask people that I get to know, hanging out in the coffee shop or whatever, I'll just ask them, what church do you attend?
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Some of you might find that as a highly offensive question. I've never had anybody like, why would you do that?
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More often than not, it's like, I don't attend a church. I don't really go, or I used to go here, or I used to go there, or whatever.
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But it always opens up a great conversation. It's a very easy inroad to a conversation with somebody.
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And then at the bare minimum, you know what you can do? Hey, I got a church right at the school down here. You can, 10 .30
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on Sunday mornings, come and check it out. I will pledge to you to do the best that I can to bring the treasure out.
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If you bring them here. Jesus Christ is the treasure that we remember each week when we come to communion.
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When we come to communion, we're remembering that we deserved weeping and gnashing of teeth. But instead, he took our weeping in his eyes on that cross.
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His teeth ground in pain as the wrath of his father was poured out on him. The wrath that we deserved, he took for us on himself.
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He took the punishment that I deserved so that I could go free. What kind of a king does that?
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What kind of a king would take the punishment for his subjects? Pretty loving.
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He's full of grace. He's full of faithful, steadfast love. And nobody who puts their trust in him will be disappointed.
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If you place your trust in him, and know what I'm talking about, and have experienced that, and you relate to those opening comments that I made, if you have it, you know it.
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And nothing compares to it. If that's you, then come with joy to one of these tables this morning.
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Man, I would love to see some fist pumps, and some yes, and some amens, and some enthusiasm. This table, when we come to this and we remember it, often
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I was raised to think of it like a funeral ceremony. Something somber and really serious, and you were supposed to be really angry at yourself, or you were supposed to feel really bad or something.
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Maybe, Dave, did you go to the same church as me growing up? Some of you know what I'm talking about. And you were raised to think, oh, this is serious time.
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Well, it is serious. Serious rejoicing. Serious delight.
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Serious grace and mercy pouring out from our Savior's side. His love lavished upon you.
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The glory and beauty and great worth, the pearl of great price giving himself for us.
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You don't come to the table to get saved. You come to the table because you are saved.
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You come to the table not making sure that you've got everything in order so that you're worthy of this.
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You come to this because you're not worthy of this. If you feel like you've got it all together, and you feel like you've got it all locked down, then maybe you should skip this this morning.
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And just pray and ask God to give you a humble heart. This is a table where we recognize that, wow,
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I messed up again this week. God, and your grace keeps coming day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, on into eternity when you will finish your kingdom.
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If you're here, and you may be searching, you may be seeking, and you're kind of going, I don't quite know if I can call him my king.
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I would encourage you not to make you stand out. That's one of the reasons we do communion the way that we do. We don't want to pass a plate and have you go, oh,
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I don't know, I don't want to take it, and then everybody watches you or whatever. Just stay where you're seated. Take in the song, listen, and just contemplate and consider what's stopping you from embracing him as your king this morning.
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If you've got questions you're wrestling with, I would love to talk with you. I'll be out by the door.
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I would love to get pulled from the door and just talk with you if you would want to interact about that and just find out more about a relationship with Jesus Christ as your king.
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What a treasure is found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us. I hope you leave this place with a mingling of joy and urgency.
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You have the treasure. Others stand under judgment. So go out,
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Recast, this week, and bring out your treasure. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you so much for the treasure that you have given to us in Jesus. Wow, he is the pearl of great price.
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He is the treasure. I'm at a loss for words to express gratitude and thanks for the salvation
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I have received through him, the penalty and the, wow, I feel like a man who was drowning and just rescued in the nick of time.
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My doom was secured by my own sin, my own selfishness, my rebellion against you, and you saved me.
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Father, I pray that you would help each one of us to realize and to reflect on that this week with great joy. We are not worthy of the sacrifice that you made for us, but you did make that sacrifice nonetheless because of your great love for us.
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Father, give us a sense of urgency and allow those two things to come together in a way that blends to motivate us, to move us out, to share more with others.