Matthew 13: 46
The Pearl of Great Value

I. WE KNOW HOW NOT TO UNDERSTAND THIS PARABLE (AND THE PREVIOUS ONE)

1. If there were not a great body of material against it, one might think that the kingdom has a paid admittance fee with which we actually buy salvation.  But we know better: Nobody buy's salvation:  "By grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves.  It is the gift of God, lest anyone should boast."

2. Leave the parable for a moment; the truth is that we are like a person holding all that we are, all that we will be -- or could be -- and all that we possess in qualities or in things and God offers us the gospel and eternal life.  And in order to receive that eternal life we reach out and in reaching out we drop everything that is in our hand.  That gift that is offered to us is the pearl of great value.  And that figure represents the forgiveness of our sins, the gift of the love of God, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  But it also represents our eternal heritage upon which I want to put the emphasis this morning.

1. And the merchant that represents us takes action.  There is no question that he has to have this pearl.  It is the find of his life!  He would do anything for this pearl!

2. And he sells all that he has in order to possess the pearl.

What a radical decision is this!  Can you imagine what his parents, what his siblings, what the friends he grew up with would have said to him?

"You are absolutely bonkers!"  "You mean to tell me that you sold everything that you had and now are going to buy a pearl?"  "-- your savings, your inheritance, your social security, your special treasures, and you buying a single pearl?"  "The man has gone crazy!"

Of course this represents Christian faith and the accepting of Christ by the individual. The application in our culture is a little different.  In ancient times they very much disapproved of Christian faith.  In our particular culture, with its long Christian influence they are more tolerant except for radical Christian faith.  They are of the opinion that "all things in moderation," even -- and especially -- in religion.  None of that nutty stuff of "giving your life to Christ," they will say.

But we confess that when we take Christ as Savior, we are giving everything that we are to him for his care and for his use and for his glory!  In ancient times that often called for martyrdom like 10 of the 12 Apostles and many of their fellow Christians experienced.  Realistically -- at least as things stand right now -- we will not be called upon to give our lives for Christ.  But, no; that's not really true.  We are called to a living martyrdom because we offer up our very lives and beings to him who is our Savior -- our lives our possessions, our reputation, our chance at prosperity, our careers, our ease of life -- we offer them up -- or to use my original illustration we drop them in order to reach out for the gift of salvation.

Is your involvement in the Kingdom of Heaven of this nature and quality?  Is it?  Can you give me an instance that illustrates that it is?  Do you have an instance in which your Christian faith cost you something very dear?

III. BUT THE POINT OF THE PARABLE IS THE PEARL!

1. In this way the parable we are looking at differs from the previous one.

2. We gather that the man who was the subject of the parable was very rich and made it his business to use his resources to go hunting for precious additions to his holdings.  And this one pearl strained his net worth and he gave everything he owned to buy this pearl. He didn't have an extra pair of socks or a spare toothbrush when he got through buying this pearl.  It was, the Greek text says, "polu-timos."  VERY precious, the word means.

3. Just how very precious is the Kingdom of Heaven for which we too have given up all that we are and have, or ever will be, or will have.  How precious is that?

4. I do not even speak of our justification, or of our sanctification or the presence of the Holy Spirit today.  I do not speak of the comfort of the Holy Spirit, or of assurance of God's protection and watch-care over us.  These are great treasures too, but today I want to restrict myself to the eternal aspects of our pearl-like heritage.

Just how precious is it?  The Bible answer is that it is so precious that there is no way to fully convey the preciousness of what we have gained.  In some passages it is represented as a kingdom given to you; in other places a golden crown;  in still others it is being in the very palace of the Heavenly Father forever; in other places sheer glory -- blessed peace and happiness and fulfillment for ever and ever. 

The multiplicity is of figures is instructive.  It is not irresponsible variation but an attempt to present the indescribability in our feeble collection of metaphors.

Do you realize that compared to eternity, the longest possible lifetime is like a day or even an hour?  And that long, never ending eternity filled with delightful satisfaction and peace and ultimate fulfillment is the pearl of unspeakably great value.  How sad when people who are upon the earth are enjoying a moderately fulfilling day and at the same time miss out on the chance of an ETERNAL and NEVER-ENDING blessedness in the presence of him who could be their dear Lord and Savior!  How sad is the fate of multi-millionaires and Hollywood glitterotti and pundits and people sought out for their off-the-cuff opinions on everything from politics, to entertainment, to happiness.  How sad is their fate when they have so much supposed happiness but are losing out on the pearl of great value.

Now this eternal and never-ending blessedness might seem to be boring to some people who, in this life, always need to have something new.  But never fear, God has designed Heaven for us and us for Heaven and blessedness, and happiness will be infinitely complete.  Be assured of it.  You have the perfect handiwork of God behind it.

5. In addition it is clear that that inexpressibly blessed outcome of having left all to follow the Lord will be increased in its blessedness according to how completely and severely the person has given up things in devotion to the Lord with whom they will spend eternity.  For he himself said that there is no one who shall have given up houses or family or possessions for his sake who will not receive a hundredfold in the life to come. 

6. And another factor is the quantitative enormity of the reward.  It will be forever and forever.  The Biblical expression is "into the ages of the ages."  The idea is surely that it is as if eternity is made up of thousands and thousands of millenniums made up of- instead of years- of millenniums.  There are those who smugly think that eternity is static because you can't have time, they say, after there is no longer a physical creation.  But I do not see any reason that, since we were created as people in time, that we won't likely have the sense of the passage of time which is so much a part of our humanness now. There is no reason we couldn't have the sense that a millennium would have passed since the time we were living in history, for example.

But back to my point:  life -- the very longest life -- is  a mere moment, an hour, a second compared to the blessedness of eternity and that eternity is a major part of  the pearl of unbelievably great value that we have found in our salvation.