4/28/2002

Let’s bow our heads: Father we thank you that we have a God who is worthy of us laying all of our crown’s, all of our successes, all of our pains, our burdens at your feet because you care for us, you are worthy of our praise, you are worthy of everything that exists. Father we thank you that you are such a God. Father there are many so called God’s out there, things that people worship and hope to bring satisfaction, hope to bring meaning to there life but Father we know that you are it. You are God above all God’s and we thank you and praise you for it. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Turn to the Book of Matthew, Chapter 13. If you look in the 44th verse of Matthew 13, you will find the first of two parables here. They are kind of twin parables. They are apparently the same meaning both times with a little bit of a twist. Verse 44 says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it."

Well you can see obviously the similarities here, both of them have to do with the kingdom of heaven. We will describe that in just a minute. And both of them found something very valuable. One found a treasure in a field, the other one a pearl. One of them was searching for the pearl, the other one wasn’t apparently searching for anything but found it anyway. Both of them found, discovered and recognized, of course, the great surpassing value of what they had found. Both of them went and sold all they had in order to have this thing of surpassing value. The little bit of difference is this, one was searching the other one apparently wasn’t searching. And so you can kind of draw that parallel to our own life possibly. When we come upon the information about the kingdom of God, about Christ, about all the things that he means to us, you may have been looking. You may have been searching, may have tried all kinds of things. You may have thought for like the pearl a great price, you may have been looking and looking and finding a bunch of false pearls or pearls of no value or little value. It could be any number of things, it could be pursuits, it could be goal, it could be money, it could be other religions, it could be other systems of faith, finding that none of them really are the pearl that surpasses the value of all the rest. And then when you find Christ you know and recognize immediately that this is what I have truly been looking for. So this parable, the pearls, suggests the active seeking out the kingdom of God. 

The treasure in the field is more as if a person were just kind of living there life normally and this fellow is probably just doing his job. He might have been digging in the field for something else, he might have been passing through and just saw something. If you know the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls back in the 40's you know that they were discovered by a shepherd boy who was just throwing stones. He threw some stones into a cave and heard something break and walked in there and there were a bunch of clay jars and pots with scriptures in them. Many, many, many manuscripts of Old Testament passages and whole books of the Old Testament that confirm the writings that we already had. And so it was not unthinkable for a person who was being invaded by an enemy army to take their treasure and bury it in a field somewhere and have to run for their lives and never make it back home to get their treasure again. In fact one commentator said that it was understood that the only safe bank was the earth. That was the only safe place to keep your money in those days and so people would bank their money in the earth, maybe never to recover it. So it is not unusual even in those days, even in our day, for people to discover money that had been hidden by somebody years maybe even centuries ago. The rabbinic law in Jerusalem or in Israel at that time was that the discoverer of the treasure owned it. It didn’t make any difference whose property it was because property owner might not even know it was there anyway. So they declared that whoever found the treasurer, it was finders keepers. And so I think it was actually a matter of justice this man actually went and purchased the field so he owned it kind of doubly. But he could have actually just taken it home with him and not even reveled it presence.

In fact there is a story about some archeologists back in about the eighteen hundreds that discovered some coins, in fact they discovered so many coins, that the workers knew they could keep them but somehow they couldn’t keep their mouths shut. And so many people found out about it that it got distributed to quite a few people anyway. Where if they would have kept their mouths shut they would have had a treasure trove of gold coins. And the pearl in terms of it’s value was highly valuable because it was actually many times you will see the scriptures talk about gold and pearls, right next to each other. In our day pearls, especially cultured pearls, are not quite a dime a dozen but they are not considered to be as valuable as they were in those days because in those days they only came from a few places, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf possibly and maybe even up in Great Britain. So a person who had a pearl, had truly a treasure and if he found the one that surpassed all the rest in price and value, that was a real find. And so gold and pearls were equated almost in those days. And so this man found something of surpassing value. Now like I say the one difference is, the one found it in his every day pursuits and the other one made his life searching for the pearl. And so there are people in this world who just kind of are for no reason they just begin to take some interest in spiritual things. 

I have spoken with people recently that said they were just kind of living life along and no special things going on and all of a sudden for some reason there was an interest in spiritual things. There was something that drew them to church or to talk to me or to another Christian and they began to just kind of, it’s like they discovered it rather than search for it. But they began to realize the value of it, to understand the value of the kingdom of heaven. Others of you may have been looking. Saying you know there is something missing in my life, I need to find out what it is. And when you find Christ, you say ok this is what I have been looking for. There is confirmation of it’s great value, the kingdom of heaven.

Now notice that the thing that is of great value in terms of the story are two different things but in terms of reality it is the same thing. It is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven. One of the things that I discovered is in my thinking and passed and sometimes all of our thinking we tend to equate getting saved with the kingdom of heaven. With Jesus, the king of heaven. That is true but not true. The gospel of Christ is just a portion of the whole gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Cause in the kingdom is everything. Everything that God created, we become part of when we step into the kingdom. We become subjects of God himself, subjects of Christ himself, we become citizens of his country. Now many of you have been to Yellowstone Park or one of the other great national parks or some of the great national forests and when we go their, as citizens of our great country we know that we have ownership in this. This is our Yellowstone Park. This is our Isle Royale, this is our national forest, this is our whatever because we are citizens of the country. So we have ownership in it. Because our taxes pay for part of it. We have ownership because we are citizens of this country. So we talk about the kingdom of heaven we are talking about ALL that God owns becomes partly ours because we have stepped into his kingdom. The other side of that too is we become subjects of the Lord. There is the Lordship aspect of Christ that he now is willing and has a right to call the shots, as it were.

Now we hear about kings, we tend to think of the kings in England where they are more of a figure head than anything else. But in the kingdom of heaven God is a very active, authoritative king who says this is right, this is wrong, here is how you do these things, here is how you don’t do these things. He gives us the absolutes. He gives us the rights and the wrongs and calls us to holy as he is holy. So the kingdom of heaven is a wide term including the whole universe, actually. When we step into the kingdom of God and become part of his kingdom, we step into ownership as it were, but also we step into being subject’s of the king. If you know the Lord’s prayer, which probably all of you do, towards the end of the Lord’s prayer it says for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for how long? Forever and ever. It says, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Best part of the kingship of God is that he says it is my will, it is to be done in all of my kingdom. So when we step into his kingdom we now take part in seeing that his will is carried out. Because he has the right of authority and power, he has the right of ownership for thine is the kingdom, it is his, he created it. Thine is the power, you are the power, the authority of all the kingdom and it is for your glory that it is all done. So therefore, as I said, he is not a figurehead king, sadly enough however, in many Christians lives, he is only a figurehead. He is a king who has no power because they offer no submission to him. A person may come in and say, ‘Yes, I want Jesus, I want to be saved,’ so they kinda get there ticket to heaven and think that is what Christianity is all about. Christianity is stepping into the kingdom and being subject to the king. And so if Christ is not truly Lord of our life, we wonder if he is the Savior of our life. Because God’s intent is that we become his subjects, his people who live under his power for his glory and under is authority. And so when we step into the kingdom we are not stepping into a place that says, ‘Ok now I got a guarantee of heaven.’ ‘ No,’ he says, ‘you are stepping into my realm, my realm of authority.’ And that is what is says here. The kingdom of heaven is like this, it is like the treasure, we either happen upon in life or we have searched for it. We understand the surpassing power and value of this kingdom, however. 

Now what does it cost? How much does it cost each one of these guys? Everything they had, didn’t it? Cost them everything they had. Each one of them went away and sold all that he had in order to have this thing. The kingdom of heaven, the pearl, the treasure of great value. And so they sold everything, they gave up everything that they had in order to have this one thing because they saw that it surpassed the value of their whole life. Jesus says, ‘What is the profit of man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?’ In comparison to what we can provide for ourselves, but God can provide for the kingdom of heaven. It is so much vaster than we can imagine that the value is not even equitable. We see the value of it so therefore we want it. And it costs ALL. That is what the cost is. The cost is ALL. If you have a dollar, how much is all? It is a dollar. If you have ten million dollars, I heard a guy on the radio the other day, say is company is now worth over a billion dollars. If he were to come into the kingdom of God, how much would God require of him? ALL, ALL, that is all he asks of you is just all. It is not a great deal, it is just all. It is everything that you have, it is everything you own. Because you step into now the ownership of God. Now the sad thing is that many of us treat him as a figurehead God, figurehead King when he wants to be the real king in our lives. And so it is like he says, ‘Yes, you are welcome to have the kingdom but it will cost you ALL. Now what does it look like when it costs us ALL? How do we give ALL to him? Well, suppose, what do you have? What things to you have? Do you have a tongue, how many of you have a tongue? How many of you know how to use it? Yah, I have heard some of them. And I know that they can be well used, the Bible says the tongue is set on fire by hell itself. How does God say we should use our tongue? He says you should use your tongue carefully to encourage people, no unwholesome words from your mouth, only words that build people up. No course jesting, no dirty jokes, no lies only the truth, be ready at all times to tell people why you believe in Christ. So he says from here on out when you give me ALL for the kingdom you give me your tongue. I let you use it but I own it. And you have to use it under my guidelines. So therefore our tongue we get to use but we have to use it under God’s direction. So he says, ‘No more lying, no more course jesting, only words that build up people, that encourage people, and that tell the truth all the time. The whole truth, nothing but the truth. So if we are in the kingdom, how is our tongue used? It is not our tongue anymore. It is God’s tongue because he took ALL of us in order to give us the kingdom. 

Do you have a mind? How many of you have half a mind? I have heard people say they had half a mind to do something, so I assume that is all they had. So if God wants all your mind, how does he want you to think? He says, ‘Ok you can have the kingdom but I want your brain, I want your mind. Ok, he says I will let you use it though. But you need to use it under my guidelines. So he says be anxious for nothing. Go with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and God will fill your heart with peace that surpasses all understanding. He says then let your mind dwell on these things. What kinds of things? If you know that passage in Phillipians, which I thought I knew and just should you I didn’t as well as I thought. He says, ‘Let your mind dwell on things like this, whatever is right, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is anything excellent, anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Said you can use your mind if you want to but you have to use it under my guideline. So therefore anxiety, worry, is not to be part of your thinking. Instead the other stuff should be things your mind dwells upon. 

Ok do we have hands? Most of us have hands and so he says you can have the kingdom but I get your hands. If I am going to get ALL of you, you have to give me our hands. So what do we do with our hands? He says, you can have them back but you have to use them under my instruction and my authority and my standards. So therefore he says what your hands find to do, do it hardily as to the Lord not just for the eyes of men. When you do your work do it hardily because God is watching, not just people. He says therefore you are not going to steal, are you? You are not going to take things that you shouldn’t be taking. You are not going to be doing things with your hands that are contrary to God’s law because we now step into God’s kingdom, they belong to him, he let’s us use them under his guidelines. So he says our hands are to do his will.

What else do we have? You have a wallet, how many have a wallet or a purse? Most of you do, ok. Who’s is it? If you are in the kingdom, it is not yours. God says, ‘I’ll take the tenth, I’ll let you use the rest under my guidelines. What does he say about it? He says in Proverbs 3:9-10, ‘Honor the Lord from the first of all your produce; that your barns may be full, and your vats may be full of wine.’ He says, ‘You give me the very best of the first and don’t worry I will give you the rest.’ You know Jesus says if you seek his kingdom and his righteousness all the stuff we need will be added to us. He said that all these things will be handed to you. So he says, ‘You give me our wallet, I’ll give it back and you can use the money but you have to use it under my guidelines. If you want the kingdom all it costs you is ALL.

Do we have eyes? Most of us have eyes. He says, ‘You can have them back for my use. Or your use under my guidelines. So what should our eyes be looking at? Job says, ‘I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust upon a woman.’ Jesus says if a man looks with lust upon a woman he has already committed adultery in his heart. And so our eyes should be careful as to what things they look at. Whether it be television, whether it be computer screens, whether it be people, whether it be enviousness or covetousness, whether it be the thing the other person has, whether it be their car, their horse, their mule, whatever it is, Jesus said don’t covet. Whether it be your neighbors wife, your neighbors mule or whatever else it is, don’t covet, don’t look with lust upon anything. Because God can give you what you need. So he says, you can have your eyes back to use but you have to use your eyes under my guidelines because I really own them now. Because you are a subject of the king. Thine in the kingdom, the power and the glory.

What else do you have? Do you have a car? Who get’s it? If he wants ALL. If the kingdom costs ALL, which these guys paid for the pearl and for the treasure, they paid ALL. So we say I want the kingdom, Lord. And he says, ‘Ok, I only want ALL of you and that means your car. So you get to have it back for use but you get to use it under my guidelines, which means if you got an extra one, you loan your car to somebody else who needs one for a little while, if they need one. He says it is mine anyway. So you let them use it. Says you make sure that you keep it pretty clean for me. I don’t mind a clean car but of course today, good luck. He says I don’t want any tickets on it either. You follow the laws of the land because the laws are under my direction. He says in Romans 13, ‘The authorities that exist have been established by God.’ So therefore with our car we honor God, because it is not our car anymore. It is God’s car, we take good care of it and we use it honorably.

We have a house. Who owns the house? The bank does, you and the bank, joint owners of it. He said in reality I own the house now because you want the kingdom, that’s ok you can have the kingdom, you can have ALL that I have but I get ALL that you have. So he says you can keep your house but it is for my use too. That means if somebody needs a place to stay, you give it to them. Let them stay there. You have an open door policy for hospitality. People can come to your house, you can show them grace. In fact it tells us in Hebrews, that sometimes we entertain angels unaware. I think God sometimes sends people to us to see if we are hospitable. Whose house do you think it is yours or mine? If we have the kingdom it is no longer our house. We consider it our house and it is for our use but it is under God’s guidelines. 

Does anybody have a wife? Some of you guys do. Anybody have a husband? Some of you ladies have one? Ok, who do they belong to? They belong to God. Either the sad or happy fact is he gives them back to ya. Ok, you get to keep them but you have to treat them like God says. So husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church. Granting her honor as a pure vessel lest your prayers be hindered. A combination of Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3. Wives love your husbands, submit to them, honor them, support their leadership, treat them as Christ as in relationship to the church. So you can have your husband and your wife but you have to treat them the way God said to. Because see he has ALL of you. If you want kingdom that is ok, but he gets ALL of you. 

We get a better deal by the way. What do we get? We get the universe. We get to be heirs with Christ. We get to have heaven for our inheritance, for eternity. We have the Holy Spirit as a down payment, as a pledge, for all the things we are going to get later on. And so we have the better deal here. We just have to allow God the use of ourselves and our things throughout this life in exchange for the kingdom. Sadly to many of us think when we become Christians we get Christ. No, that is a portion of the gospel. The gospel is we get everything and God gets ALL of us.

Some of you parents have kids. In fact most of you parents have kids. Most of you mothers have kids, right? Ok, what does Jesus say about them? He says, ‘They are mine now.’ You give them to me, I give them back to you but you have to treat them right. You have to raise them and nurture in admonition of the Lord. Says you make sure you don’t spare the rod and spoil the child. He says, you discipline them diligently so they grow up to be children who love God. So he says there are certain ways we treat children because they don’t belong to us anymore. We get the whole universe, he gets ALL of our universe. We get it back but we need to use it under his guidelines.

So he says the one person happened upon this. It is like wow look how valuable this it. This is great. I get the universe, God wants ALL of me. That is a good trade. Not only does he get it, I get to use it. But under his guidelines. So it behooves us to know what the king says doesn’t it. That is why it is very important for us to know God’s word. To know character, to know who he is, to know the king so that we can know how to live in a way that honors him. Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, it is his so we honor him. Turn to Philippians, Chapter 3 just in terms of the value and the surpassing value of this St. Paul writes an interesting little passage in Philippians 3. Paul kind of gives his personal pedigree here. He says, ‘This is the kind of person that I am and it is all honorable.’ Verse one says, ‘Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. . To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for your. Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh , Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more; circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee.’ So he says look at this, I am from God’s chosen people, both my parents were from God’s chosen people, the Israelites. He says I am a Hebrew of Hebrew parents, I am a Pharisee, which means I know the law, I do my best to keep the law. He says not only that in Verse 6 it says, ‘As to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.’ He said you couldn’t have a better pedigree than that. Verse 7, ‘But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.’ What he said, these are all mine things but they are not mine any longer they are his. I count them as if they are not mine anymore. Count them as if they are lost to me. And that is what we have to do when we want the kingdom we count everything that was ours as lost to us, they are now his. Then we become his for his use. 

Verse 8 says, ‘More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.’ So when we step into the kingdom, God says you ar3 welcome to all of this and I have forgiveness, I have the Holy Spirit for you, I have eternal life for you. I have these things for you, I have grace, I have blessings. All I require is ALL of you. So we count it as nothing because now it is His but he gives it back for our use under his guidelines. 
Is that how we see the kingdom? Or do we see that we just have a ticket to heaven and Christ? No, that is not all there is. That is a portion of the kingdom. The whole kingdom is the whole universe, that is ours because we are citizens of God’s. But he requires ALL of us. And then to use it as our uses, as it were, for his use. He gives it back to be used for him. So we have to know how he wants it used. So yes we do need to be saying, ‘Lord is that how you want my tongue used? Is that how you want my eyes used, is that how you want my hands used, is this how you want my feet used, is this where you want my car parked, is this how fast you want me to be going? We need to be following God’s guidelines and know what he says in order to serve the king better. He is not a figurehead king, he is a REAL king and we are in his kingdom.

Let’s pray, Father we thank you that you are a God who is active. You are not the God who wound up the world like a watch and set it aside and just stands back and watches it go. You are intimately acquainted, you are aware of everything we say and we do and you are very careful to watch us. To support us. You said it was you who is at work within us both to will and to do your good pleasure. You are actively involved in helping us to do what is right. Because we are doing your will. You give us the resources to do what is your will, you give us the grace to do so. You give us the desire to do so. So Father in your kingdom we actually use your resources. And you give them freely when we do things that are according to your will. Father we stand under your authority but sometimes we forget that, sometimes we think our things are our things and we have the right to determine what we do with our things. We have rights. Father help us to understand that we don’t have rights, we have responsibilities before you. That you own us, you direct us, we are for your use. Father help that to become very clear in our minds, help us from this day forth to know that we don’t belong to ourselves, we belong to you. We get to use us for your sake, for your is the kingdom, and the power, and for your glory, forever and ever. In Jesus Name we pray. Amen

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