It Is Invaluable, Isn’t It?

It Is Invaluable, Isn’t It?

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Will you pray with me? Each day, at His good pleasure, God’s gracious will is done. He sent His greatest treasure in Jesus Christ, His Son. He, every gift, imparts. The bread of earth and heaven are by His kindness given. Praise Him with thankful hearts. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the texts are the parables that we’ve heard in the Gospel reading. You may be seated.

Jesus and his parables, simple and yet not always clear, at least on first glance. So it’s kind of interesting, Matthew’s Gospel, in a very symbolic way, Matthew puts a certain number of parables that Jesus spoke. Now, he spoke more than the number that Matthew put in his gospel, but Matthew in his great symbolism put seven together. And for the last several Sundays, we’ve been going through them in the readings.

Now, two of the big ones, the parable of the seed and the sower, which is carved in the front of the pulpit, that one, as you remember, when Jesus finished telling that parable, his disciples were somewhat flummoxed. And they take Jesus aside and say, “Jesus, tell us, what does this mean, this parable of the seed and the sower?” Well, he no more finishes that parable and he launches into a different one, the parable of the weed and the wheat. And again, Jesus’ disciples say, “Lord, explain that to us.” And he does.

This morning are the last three parables of that seven-parable section in Matthew’s Gospel. And it’s interesting because when Jesus asks the question at the end, “Do you understand these things?” the disciples go, “Oh yes, we got it.” As if somehow between the parable of the wheat and weeds and the parable of the seed and the sower and these three parables, illumination had occurred. It’s kind of like when you talk to your son or daughter and say, “Do you understand these things?” Where before they would ask you questions and now they just give you, “Oh yeah, I got it.” And you as a parent go, “Right. Right.” Jesus wasn’t quite sarcastic as you and I as parents are, but Jesus did get it. Yes, they understood it.

Parables were never meant for evangelism. Jesus himself said that. Jesus said, and you remember it, “I have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to the little children.” And again, “I speak to them in parables that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see.” So parables were always meant for believers. But like these apostles, you and I can think that we’ve arrived, that we understand them. That would be the same thing as if you were just married a few weeks ago and I were to ask you or anybody else who’s been married more than a few years were to ask you, “Do you understand the depth and the breadth of married love?” No. And you were to say, “Oh yeah, I got it.” Fifty years later, after many scars that you have received and other scars that you have given, all bound up by Christ, now you’re asked, “Do you understand the depth and breadth of married love?” And you say, “Far better than I did when I first was married.” But still, you grow in it, do you not?

Parables were never meant to be an abstract thing. Parables were always to relate to God in a relational way. That’s our God. He is not abstract; He’s relational. That’s why He comes to us through His Word, through baptism in the Lord’s Supper, in a concrete relational fashion, not in an abstract contemplation. He came in flesh and blood. God in the flesh and blood. He’s relational, fleshly, and bloodly. So when he speaks parables, he is speaking to you to broaden the depth and breadth of your relationship to him.

So in these parables, the treasure and the pearl, they’re the same exact thing. The treasure is Christ himself and all of his gifts. The pearl, the one pearl of great price, is Christ and all of his treasures. Now, the text kind of infers that the guy finds the pearl and finds the treasure. I hope that being scripturally based, you go, “Well, that’s not what God said.” And you’re right, because Jesus said, “The Father draws you unto Jesus, and no one can come to me unless the Father draws them.” So the Father drew them to the great treasure, and the Father drew them to the pearl of great price. The Father drew them to the great treasure, just like the Father drew you in your baptism. Just like the Father still draws you through this Word being proclaimed. And just like the Father suckles you at the supper through Himself who is present in the supper—the very bread from heaven.

So we think we’ve got this. Okay, it’s the treasure—it’s Jesus—this treasure in the soil or field and this pearl of great price, right? Well, if it’s relational… then it’s really asking you, what fruit has it produced? Because the fruit that Jesus speaks of in the parable, which is really the mystery in this parable, is upon finding the pearl and upon finding the treasure, what did they do? They went and they sold everything they had and purchased that pearl and that treasure.

Now, in any earthly relationship, you demand, and you will not settle for anything less; you demand total love. You don’t want someone with whom you are in an intimate relationship to love you partially, but then to love someone else partially. You demand they put all of their eggs in your basket, period. And they demand it of you, do they not?

So, yes. How about those things that you hold on to in your life? You see, at our base, we are idolaters. We are tempted to find something else that we fear more than God, that we love more than God, that we find comfort in more than God, more confidence than in God, such as our planning for our retirement, our education, which enables us to achieve another job or a higher pay scale. We love to try to find those things other than God—the pearl of great price and the treasure in the field that we were brought to first and foremost and that we were given first and foremost.

So ever since you were brought to the pearl of great price and ever since you were brought to the treasure that’s priceless, you have been sifted by God. You have been refined by God. You bear the scars of your own sins, and you bear those bound-up wounds by Jesus, the pearl of great price and the treasure. And as you have been sifted, you are forced to see, just like marriage forces you to see parts of you that you really don’t want to see because you want to think you are better than you really are, and God humbles us.

When we’re sifted, regardless of whether we’re married or not, God sifts us to show us what we are at our base so that we let go. Because to sell all we had means what? To cling tighter to the forgiveness of Christ which binds up our wounds, our guilt, which gives us confidence so we don’t have to rely upon our degrees, our pay scale, our retirement. We can rely on Christ and not worry. We don’t have to think, “Because I take vitamins and exercise, my health is good.” We know our health is what God gives us at the time. And if it’s not good, even though we have done everything to take care of ourselves, it’s God to give and God to take away.

Even our marriages and our children, they are not ours; they are a gift. Sometimes they take themselves away from us, and sometimes we force them away. Either way, God binds up the wounds. That’s where the confidence comes—not in whether we did it right or did it wrong. God is our confidence. It’s not our ability to meander the rightness and wrongness of it all. Forgiveness is what reigns.

In these parables, when Jesus said that the fruit produced in these two men, that they sold everything they had, he is saying, as you are sifted by God, as God reveals to you, as he does to me, those things in our life that we love to cling to, he gives us the strength to let go of them, to not put all of those eggs in one basket other than him. Jesus said it in a different way when he said, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.” And again, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

That’s really what these parables are about. He is pushing us, sifting us, purifying us, refining us for us to see what we need to let go of and to drive us to cling to Him who is our priceless treasure so that we have comfort and confidence.

Now, He also wishes to remind us of something. Because you and I are as worthless as a piece of sand. You can’t hardly tell one grain of sand from another on a beach. They all look the same, and that’s every humanity. So what makes you so special is that Jesus divests himself of everything so that he makes you a piece of sand into a pearl of great price. He divested himself of everything—the glory due him, the honor due him, the respect due him. He gave it all up so that you would be the pearl, the priceless treasure for him.

It was written in the Old Testament reading when Moses spoke to the people in Deuteronomy, “You are not a great people. What makes you great is I chose you. You’re not a pearl; you’re a piece of sand. And what makes you great is I made you into a piece of sand. I cover you with my pearlness. And you become priceless to me.”

Now the world and yourself, as you deal with yourself and the world, is always trying to continually draw you back and show you you’ve got to find confidence in something else because that’s faith issued, and it’s got to make sense to your mind, and it’s got to be proven by affirmation of other human beings. Right? Well, the imperfect parent and the imperfect person in a marriage and everyone else included only find confidence in the one who makes us pearls. It is invaluable, isn’t it? Or I should say, He is invaluable, isn’t He?

In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.