The Value of the Kingdom

Kingdom Parables • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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The kingdom of God is worth giving up everything we possess. We sometimes forget just how valuable and amazing the gift that God offers us is. We struggle and weigh the benefits against the hardships of giving up our lives for God’s kingdom, when it’s really a no-brainer.

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Good morning, Thank you for being with us today. Over the past month we’ve been looking at a series of parables that Jesus used to teach His followers about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus made different points through each parable He shared with His followers. He taught them the importance of producing fruit from the word of God planted in their hearts. He taught them about how for a season there is an adversary that attempts to sabotage God’s plans in the world, but that a day will come when God’s kingdom defeats all His enemies and there will be no more sin and evil in the world. He taught them about the ways that the kingdom grows in the world, and also in each of their lives.

Today we are looking at how Jesus taught his followers about the value of the Kingdom. If you have your Bible with you, please turn with me to Matthew 13:44-46.

Matthew 13:44–46 CSB

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure, buried in a field, that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. 46 When he found one priceless pearl, he went and sold everything he had and bought it.

1. Finding Treasure

Some people stumble upon a treasure.

In 1992, a British farmer decided to take his new metal detector out for a spin to try and find a hammer he had lost. Instead, he unearthed the largest hoard of Roman coins and treasure ever found in Britain in recent history (a larger treasure was found seventeen years later by someone looking for treasure on purpose). It seems that every few years you hear a story of someone accidentally coming across some sort of treasure or valuable item hidden in a field or buried underground.

In Jesus’s parable, the treasure was found by someone who came upon it by chance. Others may have walked on that same field and never knew that there was a treasure buried under the ground. Sometimes something of tremendous worth can be present and yet not be known to others. The kingdom can be present yet not perceived. (Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, vol. 33A, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1993), 396.)

Some people intentionally look for a treasure.

In June of last year, a ten-year-long treasure hunt came to an end. In 2010, art dealer and writer Forrest Fenn published a poem called “The Thrill of the Chase” which contained clues to a treasure worth over 2 million dollars hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Ten years later, Jack Stuef was the first of hundreds, maybe thousands who had tried to decipher the clues, to find the location of the treasure.

In the second parable, the merchant was looking for a valuable pearl. He knew there was something out there that was valuable enough, if only he could find it. He had surely looked at many pearls in the process of finding the one of great price. He was familiar with pearls, had a basis for comparison, and was able to tell what something was worth.

2. Acquiring Treasure

In both of these parables, once the treasure was found, the finder had to do something in order to acquire it and take possession of it. In other words, there was a cost to making that treasure one’s own. For the one who discovers the treasure, it is so valuable that they are willing to sell everything they have to get it.

Jesus’s disciples had already experienced some of this even at the beginning of their time with Him. They had made a big commitment even in becoming His followers. The disciples left their lives behind them to follow Jesus.

Matthew 4:18–22 CSB

18 As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter), and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 19 “Follow me,” he told them, “and I will make you fish for people.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee their father, preparing their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

A few chapters later, Jesus calls another disciple...

Matthew 9:9 CSB

9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.

The four brothers, Andrew and Peter, James and John, left their family business and their families behind. Matthew left his “cush” government job and followed Jesus. Yes, they had made big commitments just to follow Jesus, but even with them, these parables were a lesson in just how valuable the kingdom of heaven is, and what we should be willing to give up for the sake of acquiring the kingdom. Jesus pushed his disciples even more as He taught them lesson after lesson.

In chapter ten of Matthew, Jesus taught that there was a cost to following Him.

Matthew 10:37–39 CSB

37 The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; the one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.

If you desired to be one of His followers, you had to love Him more than you loved anyone else, you had to NOT JUST be willing endure suffering and hardship but to ACTUALLY endure suffering and hardship for Him.

This brings us to another seeming mystery or enigma about the kingdom of God and about our salvation.

The kingdom of God is offered to us for free, but it costs us all we are.

There is nothing we can do to earn salvation. We cannot do enough good works or be nice enough to deserve God’s forgiveness. Our imperfection compared to what God demands is so great that not even the best of us could come close. That’s why God sent His Son to die for us. The sacrifice was made by Jesus and we are offered forgiveness when we put our faith in Jesus and make Him the boss of our lives. At the same time, someone who truly takes that step of faith cannot remain unchanged by that decision. The realization of our need and of what God has done for us should create in us an understanding of the fact that we need to allow God to change us from our broken and imperfect states, and create in us more and more a wholeness and righteousness that lines up with Christ in increasing measure.

The gift is free but we can’t grab it when our hands are full of other things. We have to give up the things we are holding on to and take the gift that God offers. We need to give up our lives, or lose our lives for His sake. It’s a difficult command to follow, and our sin nature, even though God’s Spirit has freed us from slavery to it, it still fights and resists some of the changes God wants to make in our lives. It is a process of transformation that begins when we trust in Christ and it continues throughout our lives. It’s not easy, but I think that part of Jesus’s purpose in telling this parable was BECAUSE He knew that his followers had already given so much, and would still be asked to give even more, that He shared these two parables to communicate to them that even if they had to give EVERYTHING they had, the Kingdom was worth it.

Here is the great secret that Jesus was teaching His disciples in this parable:

The Kingdom of Heaven is far more valuable than everything else in our lives put together.

Paul writes about this in his letter to the Philippian church in Philippians 3:7-9.

Philippians 3:7–9 CSB

7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith.

In Matthew 13, Jesus is saying, “The Kingdom is worth everything you have.” In Philippians 3, Paul is saying, “Everything I have is worthless compared to knowing Christ and to the inheritance in heaven that God promises His children, the citizens of the kingdom.”

They are basically saying the same thing, right?

Paul says, “Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ...” LOSE ALL THINGS, GAIN CHRIST. That’s the transaction we saw repeated in both of Jesus’s parables. Sell all, lose all for the sake of the Kingdom.

Paul continues...

“Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith.”

And here in Paul’s explanation we begin to see part of the reality of the difference in value of God’s kingdom versus what we possess. Paul equates the worthless things he gave up with the righteousness that he brought to the table, the human effort to be a good person was considered dung. He says, “I’m not coming to the table with my own righteousness that I earned by following the law (because that’s worthless); Instead, I’ve received a righteousness that is through faith in Christ.

So let’s step back right now and consider what we’re reading. Parables had deeper meanings that those who were a part of the kingdom of heaven were supposed to learn from. These two parables reveal something that is true on two different levels...

The parables about the kingdom of heaven can be applied on two different levels: Material and Spiritual.

On the material side… Yes, the kingdom of God is worth so much that we should be willing to give away and leave behind all the earthly goods we possess. The money, houses, valuables, and any material things that we lean on are all on the table and we offer those to God and are willing to give them up for the sake of following Jesus and obeying Him.

Eighteen years ago, Shannon and I were about to graduate from seminary and we knew that God was calling us to go overseas and do ministry in another part of the world, so we took the few belongings we had as a newly-married couple and we sold some of it, we gave some of it away to other poor seminary students, and we kept one small pallet worth of things that had sentimental value to us and left it in storage. We sold our cars, said good-bye to our families, and God sent us to the other side of the world to tell other people about His salvation. I’m not sharing that to impress anyone. Shannon and I are not more special or different from anyone else here. Like so many other followers of Jesus, we were just being obedient to what God was telling us to do at that time in our lives. It wasn’t easy, but we are glad we obeyed. God wants every one of His followers to have the same kind of obedience and willingness to give up everything they possess.

The benefit of being a part of God’s kingdom is greater than any material goods we could ever sacrifice. The kingdom of heaven is eternal, but the earthly kingdom is temporary, so even if we have great worldly wealth, we will only be able to hold on to it for a few decades at most. Giving up temporary wealth for eternal treasure is a wise decision.

But there is also a spiritual aspect to these parables. There are the spiritual treasures that we possess which we are asked to trade for the spiritual treasure of the kingdom. What are the spiritual treasures that we give up?

We give up our own human efforts at salvation through our own righteousness and trade them for salvation through Christ’s true righteousness.

The farmer who found the treasure in the field and the pearl merchant both realized that what they possessed was of no value compared to what they could gain. To give up what they had was an easy decision and they both did it gladly.

When we come to God, and see that God is offering us the kingdom of heaven if we will give exchange what we have for what He has, every person should gladly be willing to make that exchange. Unfortunately, there are many people who either over-value what they have, or they undervalue what God offers.

I have known numerous people who have told me that they are good people, and that they make it a point to be nice to others, to be generous with people in need, to try to do the right thing most of the time, etc. They look at their lives and believe that since their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, or at least their bad deeds aren’t as bad as what they see other people doing, that God must be okay with the life they have lived. They have put a lot of effort into being “good people,” and they feel confident about their position before God.

They have overestimated the weight and value of their good deeds, and have underestimated the weight and cost of their sins. They don’t realize that God’s balance doesn’t put good deeds on one side and bad deeds on the other; it looks at how someone measures up to perfection, and even the slightest imperfection disqualifies us.

For those who realize the truth about what they bring to the table, and understand that God will trade His treasure if they will give up theirs, it’s like someone who shows up at the bank with a couple of bags of pyrite, or fool’s gold. As the banker does his tests on the metal and it’s clear that what they have is worthless, the banker tells them, “I know what you have there, but I’ll trade you a truckload of pure gold bars if you give your two bags to me.”

God tells us, “I know what you bring to the table. I’ll take it off your hands and give you something truly valuable in exchange, but you have to give yours up in the process.” We have to give up our efforts to earn God’s love and forgiveness by being “good enough.” We have to stop looking down on others thinking that we are somehow more worthy or righteous than they are because of the things we’ve done, and instead approach them with compassion and with the great news that we are also people who depend on God’s mercy and grace, and that His salvation is available to all who put their faith in Christ.

The reason I want every person listening to this message to clearly understand the value of the gift that God offers us, and want us to understand that this gift is worth giving up anything and everything we possess, is so that we each live our lives in a way that we are obeying God and following Him where He leads us, even when it’s hard; even if it means selling everything and moving to the other side of the world. I want each one of us to look back on our lives one year from now, and five years from now, or ten or twenty or fifty years from now and see the things we have given up and sacrificed for Christ, but also have that sense of knowing that it was worth it because God’s kingdom is so valuable.

The reason I want you to understand the spiritual transaction that happens when we give up our efforts to earn salvation and instead receive the gift of righteousness that comes from faith in Christ, is because when you stand before God in the hour of your death, I want you to have the confidence and peace that comes from knowing that the righteousness that you stand before God in is not your own, it’s not a righteousness you tried to earn through your own effort; it’s a righteousness that Jesus gave you when you put your faith in Him. You traded all you had in yourself, and gained the treasure of the kingdom of heaven. This means that your salvation is secure and is guaranteed because it is based on Christ’s righteousness, not your own… What a relief! Even as a pastor, I’m glad I’m not depending on my own righteousness to earn my salvation.

This is great news, because even though some of us might feel like we’re not that bad, there are many people here and all around us every week who are hiding secrets and insecurities; people who don’t think God could ever love or forgive them for what they’ve done. There are people who have been damaged by others, or damaged by their own choices, who have convinced themselves that there is no room for them in church, or as part of God’s family. I hope these parables help you realize that we have an incredible message of hope and healing for those people because the kingdom of God is offered for them, not because they deserved it or earned it, but because God knew that we all needed to exchange our brokenness for His righteousness. Our hope is built on Christ’s righteousness and not ours, which puts us all on an equal playing field, from the church pastor and deacon to the addict on the street, and the biggest sinner with so many skeletons in their closet that they don’t think they could even walk on the same side of the street as the church.

Thank God for His incredible mercy and grace for each of us.

Let’s pray...

May God stir in your heart this week and bring you joy as you think about the great value of the kingdom of heaven, and the fact that it is available to you, and may you find someone to share this great news with. There are people that cross our paths every week that need to hear this message.

Hebrews 13:20–21 CSB

20 Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

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