OUR FATHER WHOSE KINGDOM IS OF UNFATHOMABLE VALUE

The Lord Jesus concluded his exposition of the parable of the wheat and the tares with this statement in Matthew chapter 13 verse 43;

43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

Here, the righteous, who had paid the price and enrolled in the kingdom of their heavenly Father, are described by Jesus as shining brighter than the sun.

The Lord, wishing to drive home the point of how extremely valuable the kingdom of heaven is,  continued teaching his disciples, with the use of two very similar parables found in Matthew chapter 13 verses 44 - 46.

Both these parables describe the appropriate response to the discovery of the kingdom of heaven given the proper understanding of its value.

44 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, 46 who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

In the first parable, the Lord Jesus tells of a man who was prospecting on a piece of land when he stumbled upon a treasure that he immediately understood was highly valuable. He excitedly concealed the find and went off to sell off all his other holdings so that he could return and buy the field. The man did this discreetly so that the owner of the land did not know of the treasure and either refuse to sell the land to him or rachet up the price of the land to account for the presence of the treasure.

By starting the second parable with the word 'again', Jesus indicated that the second parable carried the same lesson as the first but he framed it in a different milieu.

Whereas the first was based in the context of a valuable substance hidden underground that was concealed from sight, the second was set in a jewelry market where a trader, looking through the inventory of pearls, discovered a particular pearl of very high value that no one else had detected.

He quietly went off to sell everything he owned in order to return to the market and buy the pearl that he had discovered.

These two parables speak of the serendipitous discovery of a very valuable thing that no one knew about. In the first case, the valuable thing was hidden from sight so that no one was aware that it was there until the man uncovered it. In the second case, the valuable thing was in plain sight alongside all the other low value pearls but everyone was ignorant of its actual value and passed up on the opportunity to buy it.

In both cases, the men, realizing the importance of what they had tripped over, ransacked their own lives in order to invest everything they owned in what they had discovered.

The two cases correspond to the two different backdrops that the good news of the kingdom finds its hearers in. Some people hear of the good news of the kingdom in a spiritually dry desert and immediately understand its value and jump at the chance to acquire membership. 

Other people, awash in a miriad of religions and philosophies, disern the unique value of the propositions of the kingdom of heaven and give their entire lives in exchange for it.

With these parables, twinned for emphasis, the Lord Jesus counsels us to divest ourselves of all our earthly holdings in order to possess the eternally priceless treasure of the kingdom of heaven.

Amen.

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