230730 Sermon on Matthew 13:44-52 (Pentecost 9) July 30, 2023

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

For the past few weeks our Gospel readings have been from
Matthew chapter 13. This chapter has a bunch of parables about the Kingdom of
Heaven. So you heard about the kingdom of heaven being like a farmer who sows
his seed so that it falls on all kinds of different soils. You heard about the
kingdom of heaven being like a field that was sown with good seed, but the
enemy came and sowed weed seed.

With our reading today we are at the end of this section of
parables. We have three more parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like.
It’s like a man who found a treasure in the field. He sells all he has so that
he can buy that field. It’s like a pearl merchant who finds a pearl of great
value. He sells all that he has so that he can buy the pearl. Finally the
kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that pulls in all kinds of different
things. Only when it’s all brought to shore is the good separated from the bad.

I’d like to begin today by talking about the parable that
seems the most straight-forward, which would be the second one. A pearl
merchant, who travels hither and yon buying and selling pearls, finally comes
upon one that he simply has to have. He liquidates his inventory. He sells his
property. He empties his bank account. He buys it.

Jesus’s parables almost always have some kind of twist,
something unexpected, and the thing that is unexpected here is that this is no
way to run a jewelry business. Someone has said, “The business of business is
business.” This fellow no longer is interested in making money. He couldn’t
make money even if he wanted to. He doesn’t have anything left except this
pearl which he presumably won’t sell at any price.

The only explanation for this merchant’s strange behavior is
love. He loves that pearl. He loves it so much that he sells everything that he
has so as to buy it. He is willing to live as a poor person, with all the
deprivations that go along with having no money, because of his love.

This might seem like a harmless little story, but that’s not
how people are with money and business. There is a rule seemingly come down
from heaven above that a person or a business must always be making more and
more money. If you aren’t always making more money, then you’re a loser. So for
this fellow to check out of the money making business because of love sounds ridiculous.
It sounds like something a Liberal Arts major might do. People like that are
always poor.

Since this mentality is so strong and so widespread I’m a
little nervous pointing out to you that you will not find even a hint of this seemingly
heaven-sent rule in the Bible. Being money hungry is not a virtue in the Bible.
It’s a vice.  Other things get praised in
the Bible. These other things are not talked about as often in common
conversation, nor are they taken very seriously. Stuff like: Love. Wisdom. Suffering.
Weakness. Righteousness. Joy. Patience. Faith. Where do these things and more
all come together? In the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There, in the cross
of Jesus, are all good things.

Just as a great many people could be disgusted with the love
that this merchant has for that stupid pearl, so also a great many people could
be disgusted by the love a person might have for the cross of Christ. How’s
that cross going to make you any money? Plus, it’s not even pretty like a
pearl. It’s bloody, gory. And it sends a bad message to kids. Jesus just takes
it. He passively suffers. There’s no get up and go. What a worthless thing to
throw one’s life away for.

So it goes, though, with the kingdom of heaven. Those whom
God chooses love the cross of Jesus. If you sold everything that you had so as
to have the cross of Christ, you would not be disappointed. There’d be a happy
ending. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who found a pearl of great
price, who sold everything that he had, and bought it.

Let’s move on to the first parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man
found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and
buys that field.” This parable is not quite as pretty, not quite as pure
as the story about the pearl. The morality police know that something’s not
quite right here.

First of all, what is this man doing wandering around on
somebody else’s property—and with a shovel no less! This is highly improper. Then,
when he finds the treasure, he doesn’t inform the landowner. He buries it
someplace else so that only he knows where it is.  

He’s tricky and clever in the way that he obtains the
treasure. If he would have stolen the treasure as soon as he found it, people
would have wondered where he got his new-found riches. But if he buys the whole
field—maybe it was rumored that there was a treasure in there—if he buys the
whole field he can say, “Look, here’s that treasure that everybody’s been
wondering about and it’s all mine! Sure is a good thing that I had the good
sense to buy it!” Then he could spend the treasure as though it were his very
own even though it really was not. He cheated.

So how is this similar to the way the kingdom of heaven
works? According to a certain way of thinking, there is something “dirty,” so
to speak, about our salvation, about how we are judged before God. A classic
definition of justice is that each should get as each deserves. So what would
each deserve if each were to be judged by God?

Depends on the person, right? Some are good. Some are bad.
The good ones should be rewarded. The bad ones should be punished. The guy who
owns the field should get the treasure. The guy who doesn’t own the field
shouldn’t get the treasure.

But what God reveals about the way he judges is that there
is a righteousness available that doesn’t depend upon how you have lived,
whether you own any fields, or what you have done with your thoughts, words,
and deeds. This righteousness is that available is the righteousness of Jesus—the
righteousness of God himself. This treasure is given, possessed, and used by
those who don’t deserve it.

There’s something of a scandal with the kingdom of heaven,
with the Gospel. The scandal is that people don’t get what they deserve. Real
sinners are declared by God to be righteous for Jesus’s sake. Why? Because God
wants to.

This is similar to other parables of Jesus’s, such as the
pharisee and the tax collector. A pharisee and a tax collector go up into the
temple to pray. The Pharisee is a vastly superior human being compared to the
thug of the tax collector. The pharisee thanks God that he is the way that he
is. The tax collector prays, “Have mercy on me, a
sinner, O Lord!” The tax collector goes to his home justified, that is,
regarded by God as being righteous, rather than the pharisee.

It’s With the parable of the workers in the vineyard some
workers go out first thing in the morning. Some at mid-day. Some work only one
measly little hour. When it comes time to pay the workers they all get the
same. Why? Because that’s what the owner of the vineyard wanted to do. He
wanted to be generous. The owner says, “Can’t I do what
I want with what belongs to me?”

So it is that people who truly have sinned, who have not
right whatsoever to have any good thing, are given the perfect righteousness of
God in Jesus.

Finally, the last parable is that the kingdom of heaven is
like a dragnet that pulls in everything that’s in the water no matter if it
good or bad. It’s when the net is drawn on shore that the good are separated
from the bad. “So it will be,” Jesus says, “at the close of the age. The angels will come out and
separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In
that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

This last parable shows us the seriousness and the importance
to each individual of the kingdom of heaven. It appears so often to so many
that God’s Word is at best some kind of old-fashioned hobby. We sit around and
come up with interpretations and applications, but it doesn’t really matter to
a person’s life. What really matters about life is making money. Or feeling
good about yourself. Or having a good time. People will be serious about those
things, but not about the kingdom of heaven.

What this parable points out is that whether we are good or
bad, righteous or unrighteous, is of the utmost importance to our continued
happiness at the close of the age. Either we will be gathered together with
those who are good, or we will be cast in the fiery furnace where there is
weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And how is it that we will be righteous? It isn’t by making
a lot of money. It isn’t by filling our life with pleasures. It isn’t even by
trying our best to be a good person and never giving up. It’s by embracing the
cross of Christ. It’s by believing that it is no longer
you who are living, but Christ who lives within you. The life that you now live
is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.
Because he did that, you have an inexhaustible treasure. That’s how a person
will be judged by God as good.

At the close of the age, apart from Christ, even the most
outstanding specimen of a human being will be like a piece of trash snagged up
from the murky depths. On the other hand, even the foulest sinner who believes
in Jesus will be righteous with God’s own righteousness that is freely
communicated to him and held to by faith.

So let us be prepared for the dragnet that will pull us all
on shore. Let us take refuge in Jesus our Savior.