Treasured (Mat 13:45-46)

Let us Pray: Lord God, Heavenly Father, we stand in awe in Your presence here today. You chose us from out of Your great love for all mankind. You sent Your only Son, at great cost to You, to acquire us as Your treasured pearls. We therefore were bought at a steep price. Send the Holy Spirit to remind us that we are pearls of great value to You, particularly when it seems like we are nothing but faux pearls and not the real thing. We pray this through Your Son Jesus, who reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Chosen people: I hope you saw a pattern in today’s readings from God’s word. The pattern is a focus by God onto His people. It started with God redeeming His people out of the slavery of Egypt. The 10 plagues inflicted on Egypt and its gods were an assertion of His authority over all things. But God also wanted His people to know how much He loved them when He said this through His servant Moses - For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.[1]
- If God were here bodily right now, and He said that to your face, how would you feel? Would that perk you up a little bit? We Lutherans believe that a pastor has a Divine Call by God to serve His people. Part of that service is to preach God’s word. Therefore, consider that God *DID* choose you to be His own possession! We can draw this conclusion, because, by His own integrity, He kept His covenant then after the redemption from the slavery in Egypt.
- Additionally, God said something worth repeating from Deu 7:8-9 that indicates God has us in mind - 8 …because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments.
- It was with Abraham that God made the initial covenant that the land in which Abraham settled is the land promised by God to be an inheritance for all his descendants. We can refer to the Old Testament (OT) patriarch Abraham as a “father” because we, by faith, are descendants of his, as the Apostle Paul wrote - 13 For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. 16 For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.[2] Based on what Paul wrote, we therefore are part of the “thousandth generation” to which God referred.
His actions: The Apostle Paul provided us with some additional evidence of God’s love for us to this day. Paul wrote - And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.[3] If God is working all things together for the good of us who love God, that means He’s paying attention to everything going on in our life. Out of the 8.3 billion people living now[4], He not only is concerned for all 8.3 billion, but works all things together for the good of the people who trust in Him by faith.
- That working of good for those who love Him is occurring even in the midst of tribulation, as we see, continuing in Rom 8:35-37 - 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.[5] Again, it is implied that if we conquer these evils, God must be walking alongside us, and even carrying us at times, to get us through the tribulation of this Age. It wasn’t His idea to inflict sin upon the world. We’re the ones who rebelled against Him. But it’s His love that cleansed us from all sin.
Pearl searching: With this background from the OT and Epistle readings, we can focus on one of the parables Jesus told in the Gospel reading. Recall that Mat ch#13 is the 3rd of 5 Discourses from Jesus the Apostle Matthew recorded. The entire chapter is parables which are stories alongside purposes. For instance, when Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven is like…”, he told a story that has a meaning alongside what God’s kingdom is like. Since God lives in a place and dimension that we cannot understand, because we are limited to our experiences with length, mass, and time, Jesus has to explain what His kingdom is like by using stories we can understand.
- Take for example the parable of the pearl of great value that is the basis for today’s theme (Mat 13:45-46). Jesus told a story about a merchant who was seeking beautiful pearls. The merchant found an extremely valuable pearl. He had to have it. He then sold everything he had to get that one precious pearl. After he went all in to get that precious pearl, he paid the price and that pearl was his. That’s one way of many in Mat ch#13 that Jesus explained what His kingdom was like. The challenge now is to determine who in the parable is searching for pearls.
- I need to refer to Dr Jeffrey A Gibbs when answering this question. He is a retired professor of Exegetical Theology from when he taught at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.[6] He wrote a three-volume commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew. His middle volume included the 3rd Discourse of Jesus. He offered two views on this parable.[7]
- The first view is to interpret the merchant as a representation of us. It would then follow that Jesus must be the precious pearl that the merchant found. Gibbs’ referred to this interpretation as the “Discipleship reading” of this parable. He took great pains in research to show this interpretation was the predominant interpretation back to the 2nd century with the church father Irenaeus.[8] The implication with this Discipleship reading is that the parable was “…intended to describe or motivate the reader to discipleship and commitment in following Christ, in seeking God’s grace, or some such understanding.”[9]
  - The problem with the Discipleship reading is Jesus would be teaching us to buy our way into heaven. It would be on us to find Him if His kingdom were like that. I can’t think of any place in the Bible where Jesus instructed us to find Him. In fact, didn’t we read from Deu 7:6 that God chose us and not the other way around?
  - Besides that, Jesus later asked the question, “…what will a man give in exchange for his soul?[10] In reality, if we don’t have anything to give in exchange for our soul, how could we figuratively buy an expensive pearl? Apart from Him, we’re dead in our sins and dead broke from having anything of value (John 15:5).
- As you can tell, I’m with Dr. Gibbs in rejecting the Discipleship reading of the parable of the pearl. So, let’s flip it around. By process of elimination, instead of us finding Jesus, how about Jesus is the one seeking pearls. Gibbs called this interpretation of the parable a “Christological” interpretation. Christology is the study of the Christ, the Messiah. Therefore, a Christological interpretation is one centered on the Christ and not man.
  - Let’s think through this Christological interpretation. If Jesus is still out there today seeking and saving the lost[11], that must make us the pearl of great value! Have you ever thought of yourself as a treasured pearl of great value to God in His kingdom? If not, maybe it would be good to start today in thinking - better yet – realizing you are the treasured pearl in this parable. And since you are the treasured pearl, God’s not willing to let go of you. Paul in today’s Epistle wrote - 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.[12] To tie this parable of the pearl with the parables we’ve looked at the past 2wks, we are the seeds the Good Sower broadcast that sprouted and grew in good soil (Mat 13:23, 43). That makes us His treasured pearls!
All in: Jesus went all in to acquire the pearl of great value. He summed up what “all in” looks like with this - …the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”[13]
- He didn’t leave heaven to be born in the same way you & I were born just to suit His own desires. He did it because He did the equivalent of selling everything He owned, all the riches of His Father’s house, to come to us (Phl 2:7-8).
- He made the ultimate sacrifice by enduring the cross (Heb 12:2) to get this pearl of great value. Before this sermon, we confessed together the Apostle’s Creed. The middle portion, that is the 2nd Article, of that Creed confesses what we believe about Jesus. Martin Luther in his Small Catechism wrote what the 2nd Article means:
  - I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. He did this not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, so that I may be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.[14]
Bad response: Jesus didn’t take all the gold and silver of the world to redeem us. No; He bought us with His own blood, indicating that we are a treasured pearl in His possession. You would think anyone who hears this wonderful parable and its interpretation would love God in response. Nope. At the end of Mat ch#13 is an account of Jesus visiting a synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth. Here He is, the Messiah who was to come, in their presence! Their response was to reject Him in unbelief (Mat 13:53-58).
- The people in the synagogue that day had to have been waiting for the messenger of the Messiah to come as foretold in Mal 4:5 - Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.[15] But the messenger came in the form of John the Baptist as Jesus Himself noted in Mat 11:14 - And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come.[16] You can’t get a higher authority of scriptural interpretation than Jesus, so John was clearly fulfilling the role of Elijah. And well he did; John the Baptist pointed to the Messiah and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”[17] Let’s not make the mistake they made in Nazareth by denying what John the Baptist spoke of concerning the Christ.
Our response: A much better response to being Jesus’ treasured pearl is to treasure Him. Jesus made a contrast between the bad fruit coming from the weeds, such as we talked about last week[18], versus good fruit coming from the good seeds - 33 “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. 35 The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.[19]
- The Apostle Peter wrote about believers in Christ being a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession. He pointed this out from quoting the OT, and then called us to take action as God’s treasured pearl. This is Peter’s exhortation that I think fits well in defining what it looks like to bring out good treasure: 11 Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. 12 Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.[20] May God grant us His Holy Spirit to empower us to bring out the good treasure He has deposited in us, so that we persevere through all difficulties of this Age, and bear good fruit to His glory.[21] Amen!

[7] Gibbs, Jeffrey A, Concordia Commentary: Mat 11:2-20:34, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO, 2010, pp.711-721

[8] Gibbs, p.712

[9] Gibbs, p.714

[10] Mat 16:26 from NASB95 at https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb95/mat/16/26/t_conc_945026

[11] Reference Luke 19:10

[12] Rom 8:38-39 from NASB95 at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rom%208&version=NASB1995

[13] Mat 20:28 from NASB95 at https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb95/mat/20/28/t_conc_949028

[14] Luther’s Small Catechism, meaning to the 2nd Article of the Apostle’s Creed as published in Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions- A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord, Kindle edition, p.329

[15] Mal 4:5 from NASB95 at https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb95/mal/4/5/t_concl_929005

[16] Mat 11:14 from NASB95 at https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb95/mat/11/14/t_conc_940014

[17] Portion of John 1:29 from NASB95 as part of the full narrative from John at John 1:29-34; quote is from the NASB95 at https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb95/jhn/1/29/t_conc_998029

[18] Reference this author’s sermon entitled “Good Seed” published at https://www.stpaulvernon.net/posts/sermons/good-seed-mat-13-43

[19] Mat 12:33, 35 from NASB95 at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat%2012&version=NASB1995

[20] Full reference is from 1Pe 2:9-12, a portion of which quoted here from the NASB95 at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1Pe%202&version=NASB1995

[21] Reference 2Co 4:7-11

St. Paul Lutheran Church

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