The Priceless Kingdom

We’re in week 4 of our 5-part sermon series that we’ve entitled Kingdom Come: How Jesus Revealed It in Parables. So all 5 of these sermons have come from Matthew chapter 13, the parables of Jesus that he introduces in this chapter, and they’re all kind of related. They all talk about the kingdom of God. And the series title that we’ve come up with comes from Jesus’s teaching in prayer that we get from the Lord’s Prayer, and that’s in Matthew chapter 6. It says, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So every time we pray thy kingdom come, we’re praying for his rule and his reign to come more fully into our lives. That’s what we’re praying for. We’re praying for that kingdom to be in our lives. Now, many of us today struggle with the idea of our self-worth.

Our self-worth. It’s a topic that comes up lot. As we look at different facets of how we view ourselves, there’s a couple different ways that we can mess this thing up, okay? On one side, some people value themselves only by what they bring to the table, right? How much money they make, perhaps.

Maybe it’s their job title, their possessions, their home and their cars and all the different things. Or maybe their talents and their skills, or their friend group, or or how many likes they get on social media. You know, they— all these are external things that, that people use to value themselves and may use to value other people. Other people struggle with internal issues, maybe a poor body image, right? Depression, anxiety, doubts and insecurities.

Many of those people lack confidence or they spend times comparing themselves to others. Right? The best way to steal your joy is to compare yourself to others. All right, try, you know, some of them also, they, they spend their time trying to please others. You know, they become people pleasers because of that, because they’re really concerned about these kind of things.

Now Matthew, the author of this gospel, knows something about being, having issues with self-value and self-worth, because he was himself an outcast. Matthew was a Jewish tax collector, and in the day, he would have been shunned by the entire Jewish community. He would have been an outcast. He would have probably been even shunned by his family, right? So he probably has no friends.

He knows what it’s like to be on the outside. And as he writes his gospel, as he writes as a Jew writing to other Jews, he’s writing with that perspective. He understands that there are outcasts. There are people that are outside the societal norm or outside the gathering of the normal people, the popular crowd, right? And he writes to bring the living hope of Jesus Christ to a world that desperately needed him, especially to the outcasts.

See, we too can feel like that sometimes, right? We can have a value problem. Whether you’re part of the in or the out crowd, maybe perhaps you’ve got the value in the wrong place. Right? We can have that value problem.

We can be— we can externally value things or, or have too much value on the internal, or just looking at things, and that really affects our view of who we are. Our view of the kingdom of heaven, though, should change all of that, should change the value that we see in ourselves, and we should change the value of the kingdom. Now, in Matthew chapter 13, verses 44 through 46, Jesus is going to tell 2 parables and he’s going to describe the kingdom of heaven as a treasure of priceless value that we’re invited to and to which we can belong. See, we can actually rightly respond to that priceless kingdom that Jesus describes. There’s, there’s a way to respond to that kingdom.

And how do we do that? How do we respond to that priceless, precious kingdom that Jesus is talking about? Well, the text is gonna give us 3 ways to do this, to respond to the priceless kingdom of heaven. So join me in Matthew chapter 13. We’re starting in verse 44, and we’re only gonna read 3 verses.

Matthew chapter 13. The kingdom of heaven is like 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. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. And may God bless the reading of his word.

Amen. We’re looking for 3 ways to rightly value the priceless kingdom of heaven. Here’s the first way: recognize that God seeks us for the priceless kingdom. Recognize that God seeks us for the priceless kingdom. Now notice we got these 2 short parables, only 3 short verses, and these 2 parables are found only in the Gospel of Matthew.

They’re not found in the other Gospels, and they’re parallel in many ways. Okay, each one follows this pattern where a man finds, he sells, and he buys. Found, sold, bought is what both of these men do. The man in the field and the pearl merchant, both of these men do this. And let’s remind ourselves of what we’ve been talking about for the last 4 weeks.

We’re talking about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven, again, it’s a concept that occurs 126 times in the 4 Gospels. Matthew primarily uses the term kingdom of heaven, okay? He says kingdom of God a handful of times in his Gospel. Most of the other Gospels say kingdom of God, but Matthew uses the term kingdom of heaven.

And it might be because he’s a Jew writing to other Jews. And even today If an Orthodox Jew is going to write even just the word God, the Orthodox Jew will not write the proper name of God, will not say Yahweh or Jehovah, whatever you think the proper name is. They will write G-D to even not be sacrilegious at all. They are so reverent of the name of God that they will do that. And so perhaps that’s what Matthew’s trying to do.

He’s trying to be sensitive to the cultural feelings of the time, saying Kingdom of Heaven as much as he can, because he also knows that his audience knows what he’s talking about. Okay, so kingdom of heaven— who’s in heaven? God. Okay, well, we know who we’re talking about. Now again, let me remind you what Pastor Gary’s been teaching us for the last 3 weeks, that the kingdom of heaven is the saving reign of God that entered history through Jesus the King, and even now is breaking into this present age wherever his rule is received.

And will one day be fully and visibly established when Jesus returns, right? So the Kingdom of God was inaugurated when Jesus came, it’s here now, and it will be fully realized with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God exists in the hearts of believers. It exists in the fellowship when we gather together, the fellowship of the saints. It exists in the works of God.

We see the kingdom of God that way. This is that tension that Gary has been talking about, this already, not yet. It’s already here, but it’s not fully implemented yet, the kingdom of heaven. Let’s talk too now about first-century rabbinic practice. A rabbi in the first century in the Jewish world, ’cause Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, right?

A rabbi in the first century taught by the use of parables. This was— most rabbis used parables. So Jesus was not out of the ordinary when he spoke in parables.

This is what rabbis did. They taught in the use of parables. And remember, Gary’s been reminding us what a parable is. It’s an allegorical story. It’s a metaphor.

It’s a— you can tell because Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like, right? When we use that word like, that is pointing towards a metaphor or some sort of a simile, some kind of a thing that helps us understand what he’s talking about. And all of these parables that he’s been using in Matthew 13, the entire chapter has said, the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like. He said this every time, and now he says it twice today, the kingdom of heaven is like. Okay, so parables would happen routinely, and there’s always something a little weird in Jesus’s parables, right?

Because he’s trying to teach a story that, that most of the audience would understand, Okay, but there’s a twist. Okay, if you remember back to the first week, we were talking about the parable of the 4 soils, right? One of the twists there was, if this guy was a farmer, why is he throwing seed on the path? That doesn’t make any sense. If a farmer would know where good seed is, right, why would he throw it in the rocks, right?

What— that doesn’t make sense. Okay, what about the parable of the wheat and the tares, right? Why, why would you sow soil with wheat, you know, with, with, with, uh, with weeds in it? The other one too, uh, the mustard seed, you know, that’s, that’s a weird, that’s a weird twist. Okay, we’re going to see a couple more here in a second.

Now, one of the other things that you need to know about the first century way of teaching, okay, is that there’s an Eastern way of thinking and a Western way of thinking. A lot of times we think, okay, Uh, you know, Eastern, you know, there’s a lot of way, you know, paths to get to. That’s not what we’re talking about. We have a lot of teachers in this room, okay? We have a lot of teachers in this church, period, okay?

Teachers, you know, we like to do Western way of thinking, right? And so one of my favorite subjects when I was in high school and stuff was math, math and sciences, because you get to an answer, right? There is an answer, and we like to get to the answer. So that’s the Western way of thinking. The problem is this: the answer is that.

And then sometimes, though, when you start to get into some of the softer sciences, you get into the social sciences or history or philosophy or something like that, now all of a sudden the answer is harder to come by. There’s not necessarily always an approved solution. You don’t have a teacher’s handbook necessarily for all of these kind of things. The Eastern way of thinking thinks that the journey is as important as the destination. So the journey to getting knowledge is at least as important as the destination.

So the idea— of wrestling with the text, wrestling with the story, was part of the reason why these rabbis used parables, ’cause they want you to wrestle with it. They want you to look at the text, the biblical text that it’s based upon, and really chew on it and wrestle on it. There’s not always just this perfect answer, okay? And let me just say as an aside, you know, perhaps the person that you are, that you’re praying for and who’s your one, Maybe that person is someone who struggles with some of these big life issues, right? You can pick any one of the social issues of the day.

Maybe that’s a stumbling block for them. But one of the worst things that we can do as Christians sometimes is give them the, this is the approved solution answer, right? Here’s this one Bible verse, see, that answers your question. Well, no, it’s the wrestling that’s really important. The wrestling is important.

We have to deal with these things with God, ’cause that’s what God does with us. Right? That’s what— anybody who’s been a believer for more than a couple days realizes that it’s not easy, right? And if you’ve been a believer for 30, 40 years, you’ve been wrestling with God for a while. And it’s a good thing.

That’s part of the process. So the rabbis had this in mind. That’s what they wanted to do. The other thing that they did is that they would throw out a bit of Scripture. A few words, maybe a phrase, okay?

And they expected the students to know what the context was. Now, in the first century, even the uneducated fisherman and farmer had been through the basic bet midrash, or the school, and they would most likely have the first 5 books of Moses memorized. How many of us have any scripture memorized, right? And now these illiterate farmers, They know the whole first 5 books. They know the Torah, right?

And so, and then many of them would also likely have large segments of what our Old Testament is memorized. So a rabbi could just throw out a phrase and it would key in the entire context of what the rabbi is talking about. Okay? Okay, for people of my generation, if I throw out the words September 11th, Okay, you immediately know what I’m talking about. You remember the day, you remember what you were doing, you remember the aftermath.

You probably remember several things in years of what happened afterwards, right? For people in the generation that are older than me, you could say the Kennedy assassination, and that was a big thing, you know, that was a significant event. Or Pearl Harbor. Honestly, I don’t know, for Gen Z and Gen A, I have no idea what your 9/11 is. I don’t know.

COVID, maybe? I’m sorry I brought that up. Sorry. But that’s kind of the point. If you say this one thing, it brings the whole context in, and that’s what the rabbis would do.

Okay, so they would throw these things. Sometimes it would just be a word, because some words have themes throughout the entire Old Testament, and the talmidim, or the Jewish disciples, would know what the rabbi was trying to talk about, and they would extrapolate from there. So let’s look at this parable with those things in mind. So the man finds, okay, he finds a treasure in the field. Now there’s already, that’s something weird, okay?

We all live in eastern North Carolina, there’s farmers’ fields everywhere. How many of you driving home from church would go up to some tobacco field somewhere and just start digging? Right? Isn’t that weird? I mean, so if you don’t own the field, You’re not going to go digging in the field, but this guy does.

Okay, this guy does, and then he finds something and he immediately hides it. Why? Because the field doesn’t belong to him. We find out later that he’s going to go buy it, right? The field doesn’t belong to him.

Who does, who does that treasure belong to? The owner of the field. Okay, so this is weird. Okay, there’s a lot of weird things in there. So he immediately hides it and goes back and, and covers it up.

Now, if you’ve heard teaching on these parables before, likely it comes out of Proverbs chapter 2. And in Proverbs 2, it likens the kingdom of heaven like a pearl, something that you would dig deep in and that you would want to mine for. And, and that’s valid, but I’m going to tell you, uh, I’m going to go with the minority position. Now, I think I’m okay here because there are a lot of other theologians that agree with me, so I’m not really in danger of heresy, I don’t think. But we’re going to look at figuring out who the man is in the parable, okay?

Because according to Proverbs 2, we’re the man and we should be digging for the kingdom of God. But let’s, let’s ask some questions now. I’m gonna, I’m gonna test you, okay? For the last few weeks, if you’ve been paying attention to what Pastor Gary said, let’s, let’s remind ourselves of where we’ve been. So in the first one, the parable of the 4 soils, who was the man in the 4 soils?

God. That’s right. All right, in the parable of the weeds, The owner of that field, who was the man? God. Okay, we’re starting to see a theme here, right?

Who was the farmer that planted the mustard seed? God. Okay, who’s the woman that bakes leaven into the bunch of dough? Allegorically, it was God, right? Now, in today’s parable, who’s the man?

If we’re, if we’re in Matthew 13 and he’s telling the same thing the kingdom of heaven is like, kingdom of heaven is like. Who is the man that’s searching the field? God. Who is the pearl merchant who finds the pearl of great price? It’s God.

So God’s the one that’s doing the finding. Now, like I said, rabbis of the day would quote from the Old Testament extensively. And yes, Proverbs 2 is, is a good way to look at it. But here’s another way to look at it, because Jesus quoted from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel more than any other prophet. And you don’t always see it because we’re not as literate as the— biblically literate as the first-generation Jews who were listening to Jesus were.

We don’t recognize it as much, but if you have your study tools, you’ll find it. I think that Jesus is alluding to Ezekiel chapter 16, verses 3 through 7. Let me read it here for you. Ezekiel 16 says, for thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

And as for your birth, on the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you to do any of those things to you out of compassion for you. But you were cast out in the open field. You were abhorred on the day that you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said, in your blood, live!

I set in your blood, live. I made you flourish like a plant in the field, and you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Now you’re going to go, all right, Mike, what are you talking about? What’s going on here? Well, let’s notice a couple things.

First of all, God addresses this to the woman Jerusalem. Jerusalem would be a stand-in for God’s people. So God’s addressing God’s people. And God’s people here in this story, this baby girl is cast out and abandoned in a field, okay? Cast out.

And you could even say that she was abandoned. It’s the same word as hidden, okay? She was hidden in a field. God nurtured her, raised her up to full maturity, raised her up to full maturity, okay? And this is a, this is a very vivid picture that Ezekiel is painting.

And the word in the ESV is full adornment, raised up to full adornment. That is maturity. So that would be a, you know, in our context would be a teenage girl, but you remember back then that was full maturity back then. That full adornment could be translated a beautiful jewel. So You’ve got this, this, this baby hidden in a field, raised up, right?

And is now a beautiful jewel that God himself has found. God found that beautiful jewel in the field. Now if you say, okay, okay, I see that, but I don’t quite follow you, let’s look at the rest of— let’s look at some of the rest of the context that Jesus uses. In John chapter 4, verse 23, he says, but the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. The Father is seeking.

The Father is seeking. Luke 19:10, for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. We like the last verse, save the lost, but don’t miss the fact that the Son of Man is coming to seek. He’s the one that’s looking. There’s another illustration that we all know, and we all know, and that is Out of, again, from the outcast Matthew, as he talks about the parable of the lost sheep.

In Matthew 18, Jesus says, what do you think? If a man has 100 sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Now we rightly like to focus on the one that comes and is saved.

Certainly that is a wonderful part of this, but don’t miss the fact that the shepherd was out looking for the sheep. Jesus was seeking. God seeks. You are that precious treasure that God has been seeking. If God is doing the seeking, what do we do with that?

How do we respond to that? Here’s one way. You have never encountered a single person not made in the image and likeness of God. You have never encountered someone who’s not made in the image and likeness of God. A couple years ago, I was on a layover in Pittsburgh and I had a knife pulled on me.

This homeless person, kind of a— not a very nice fella. Okay, nothing happened. Okay, nothing happened. We’re okay. But that person was made in the image and likeness of God.

Even if he wasn’t displaying it very well, he’s made in the image and likeness of God. You’ve never met someone that is not made in the image and likeness of God. We all have inherent dignity and worth. Take time right now to take an honest assessment. Do I value myself too highly with the things of the world?

Am I Am I more caught up with what’s going on in the world, my possessions, my stuff, my, my friends? How about, do I not see the inherent value that God gives to me? You are that precious jewel. You are that treasure in the field. God went searching for you.

Maybe you need to deal with your image issues. Maybe you need to realize that you are so special that God sold everything he had for you. Which brings us to our second point. Our second way that we can correctly value the priceless kingdom is to realize God’s total payment for our entrance into it. Realize God’s total payment for our entrance into the kingdom.

So remember, both of these parables are going through that, that 3-step process to seek, or to find, sorry, to find, to, to sell and to buy. Find, sell, buy. So we’re in the sold part right now. And in verse 44, you see that the man in joy sells everything that he, that he has, right? And that same joy is in Ezekiel chapter 16, okay?

Joy is the reason that this man goes and sells everything. He, he, he literally can’t hold himself. He wants to sell everything, right? He He sells everything. He sells all that he has.

Jesus paints this picture that the man is liquidating his entire estate. He’s selling all of his possessions in order to obtain something of a greater value, right? Now, most of the commentators would point out that this only makes sense if the thing that you’re buying is worth more than all of your possessions, right? That’s the only way it makes sense. Let’s imagine, if you will, because we live in eastern North Carolina, You know, this is the home of Blackbeard the Pirate, right?

You know, let’s say he had a great treasure chest full of Spanish doubloons, right? And you happen to find it. It’s in Ocracoke, or it’s in Bath, wherever, wherever he used to hang out, right? And you find it, you hide it, you come back here to Wilson, you sell your house, you sell your car, you get all this money, and then you go buy the property where, where that, you know, that treasure chest is. You know, that only makes sense if that treasure chest is worth more than what you have back here, right?

So the man sells all that he has. The kingdom of heaven, then, it’s not an addition to your life. It’s the one possession that reorders all the rest of your values. It’s not an addition. You don’t just add the kingdom of heaven to your life.

It is the thing that rearranges all of your value. See, we don’t just add Jesus to our lives. He is our life. See, you are worth the cost. You are worth it.

Our value is not derived from our own effort, and we shouldn’t go in the other direction either, because just because God’s given everything up for us, you know, some people will take that payment and make it something cheap, and they’ll twist the gospel, and they’ll allow sin to enter into their lives. They will misquote verses such as 1 John chapter 4 and say God is love, and since God is love, you know, he loves me no matter where I am, and, and I can stay where I am. Well, that’s, that’s not putting the right value on the kingdom.

Others might take God’s character and, and, and twist it and add Jesus’s payment to something else. You know, like I saw a video a couple months ago where there was a preacher— I guess he was locally famous, I’d never, never heard of him— but he decided that as a Christian preacher, he was going to adopt the Buddhism. So he was going to add Christianity and Buddhism. Let me tell you something, you know, Jesus plus anything ruins everything, all right? If you add anything to Jesus, you’re messing the whole thing up.

So Jesus plus my devotion to my possessions, that ruins everything, okay? Jesus plus works ruins everything. Jesus plus anything ruins everything. Jesus is the value. He has imputed that to you.

He has given you that value because he gave everything up for us. Now, you know, there’s a reason why our church’s motto is to come as you are and be forever changed by the love of Jesus. Notice it’s not come as you are and stay that way, right? You’ve heard that before. We believe that those of us who recognize that, that total payment for sin that Jesus paid on the cross, that he lived a, a, a sinless life, died on a cruel cross in my place and in your place for sin, was resurrected in 3 days by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that that will change us. So it is okay for you not to be perfect, okay? We are not going to be perfect this side of paradise. But look at your life. Are you better today than you were yesterday?

Are you in a better place than you were a year ago, 10 years ago? Are you making progress? Are you making that Are you making that journey with Christ? Are you closer in the kingdom of God than you were in the past? Good, okay, because you’re not going to be perfect.

None of us are. But we need to recognize that Jesus has already paid that price. You know, in the verses that follow that Ezekiel passage that I read, if you read on, you’re going to see that Israel actually flaunted that gift. God had redeemed Israel and set her apart and brought her to beautiful maturity, and then she ended up chasing after foreign gods. He, he, he, he kind of likes it to, to, uh, uh, whoring after gods.

And it’s a very, it’s a very, uh, ugly passage. And God feels that pain. Rather than responding rightly to the blesser who is God, who took on the cost of purchasing them, they chose to live another way. See, Jesus Christ did not shed his blood to purchase something that was of no value, but of something that is of great value. That is you.

It cost him everything. How do we respond to that? One of the things we need to realize is that we brought nothing to the table, but Jesus did. Romans 5:8 says, God shows his love for us that while we’re still sinners, Christ died for us. You know, if we, if we flip that illustration, if we, if we think back to the parable If we were the ones that discovered God, if we were the man in the story, how— what could we possibly sell that would be worth the kingdom of God?

You and I don’t have anything compared to that. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, right? There’s no— he doesn’t need our money. It would be— in 1 Peter 2:24, he says, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you’ve been healed.

Jesus has paid that perfect price. He paid it all for our redemption so that we could die to sin and live to righteousness. That gift of grace, that’s free. It’s free to us, but it cost God the life of his Son. Now we have to re— we have to realize that that gate’s open for us.

Jesus Christ opens us and welcomes us. Now you all know I’m a history guy, so here’s Here’s my history illustration for the day. It’s World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic is still going on strong. It’s February of 1943. The SS Dorchester is a troop ship and is heading over to England with 908 troops aboard, 4 of which were chaplains.

Okay, 4 of us were chaplains, and one of them, one of them was named Lieutenant George Fox. He was a recent graduate of Moody Bible Institute. Up there in Chicago. At the time, it was a very famous— it still is a very famous seminary. So they’re heading on over to the UK.

On the 3rd of February at midnight, a German U-boat found the SS Dorchester, fired some torpedoes, and hit them. And the ship started going down quickly. Okay, it started sinking. And now there’s a mad scramble for the lifeboats, right? And one young soldier comes up to Lieutenant Fox and says, I can’t find my life jacket.

And so Lieutenant Fox goes, oh, here’s one. And he runs off. There are 4 of the chaplains were standing there offering solace and prayer. And by the end of the event, all 4 of the chaplains had given away their own life jackets. And the soldiers that benefited from them were in the lifeboats and they’d gotten out, or they were in the sea, however they chose to get off the boat.

And eventually the ship sank and it took the 4 chaplains with them, and they went to a watery grave praying as they did on the way down. And all 4 of them were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously. Those 4 men paid the price for those soldiers to continue to live. See, God has already paid for our entrance into the kingdom. Jesus paid it all.

Because he paid it all, we can let go of things. We can let it go. What are you still hanging on to? Are there secret sins that you have buried? They’re in the closet over here.

You’re saying, hey, Jesus isn’t going to look in here, right? Are there some secret sins that you haven’t repented of? Or how about There are consequences of sin perhaps that you have preferred, that you had, or, or somebody has done against you, and you’re still holding on to the hurt. You’re still holding on to it, and you still continue to bring it up, and it continues to cause pain. Maybe you need to let that go too, because Jesus paid for that as well.

What relationships do you cherish more than Jesus Christ? Speaking to the young people here, Who are you dating? You know, are those people more important to you than, than your relationship with Jesus Christ? See, our response is to give up everything for this priceless kingdom. What earthly things are holding us back?

Here’s a third way that we can correctly value the priceless kingdom, and that is embrace God’s ownership of the kingdom. Embrace God’s ownership of the kingdom. So we’re in the third phase, right? We got the found, you got the sell, you got the bought. Here, both of these men, the, the, the man in the field and the merchant, they buy the treasure.

They buy the field, the first guy does, and the, the pearl merchant buys a pearl. Now, this word pearl is an interesting one. In the ancient Hebrew, there is not— there are not very many words for precious stone or jewels.

Or pearls. Now likely they’re talking about pearls because pearls were the most valued of all the jewelry, precious stones, and those kind of things in the day. So they’re probably talking about pearls, but it could be anything of great value like that. And so they go and they buy— they’ve sold everything and they buy these things. They bought it, they liquidate everything, they sold everything, they bought the pearl, and both of these men did that.

Now, because he bought it, who owns it? He does. If God has paid everything, who owns you? God does. If he bought it, he owns it.

You know, F.E. March, the theologian, says, because blessed be his name, he found us and brought us to himself, we’re precious to him as the treasure was to the man who found it in the field. Because he paid the price, he owns us. You know, there’s some freedom that comes with knowing that God is the owner and God is the one in charge. And I say this as an extreme Type A.

Anybody who knows me, I am very— I, I’m sorry, I’m the one that has to drive. I’m the one that’s in charge. Okay, I’ve been working on it. And you know, Randy was sitting up front here in first service and he laughed as I talked about this because he knows me. He knows I struggle with this.

Okay, and still continue to struggle. I’ve been working on it for decades. Okay, I am very Type A, but you know what? It’s very freeing and very liberating to know that God is in charge and I don’t have to be. It’s very liberating.

You know, we’re placed here as stewards. We’re stewards of our possessions. We’re not the owner. We are stewards. You are steward of your house.

You’re steward of your car, right? You are stewards of your families, this planet, this area. We’re stewards of this. Deuteronomy 10 says, behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that’s in it. God owns it all.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, as I said. And if we’re concerned with how we earn our money, for those of you who are not retired, okay, you’re still in the working environment and you’re still, you know, putting in the time at the job, you know what? Even that comes from above. Deuteronomy 8 says, you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth. So even your ability to work is given to you from the Lord.

How do we respond to this ownership? How do we respond? Well, the late Pastor Chuck Smith said, for God is the one who gave everything to buy the field so that he might obtain the treasure. He owns it. And then he immediately— Pastor Smith immediately goes into John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Life. You see, what Chuck Smith was saying was, because God owns it, the response is to believe. God owns it, the response is to believe. And not only do we believe, but we are called to make Jesus both Lord and Savior. Lord and Savior.

We’re really good in the Christian church, especially in the modern evangelical tradition, to talk about him being our Savior, right? But is he your Lord? Because there’s a difference. Right? We want to be saved, we want eternal life, but is he the Lord?

Is he really the owner? Is he the one that gets to say what we do with our life? See, because God has included us in this kingdom and he’s the Lord, he’s the owner, we’re to practice those things that he’s told us to do, right? If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. You know, and it’s gonna sound simple, but he asks us to pray.

How’s your prayer life? He asks us to spend fellowship time with other believers. He asks us to spend time in his word. He wants us to do those outreach things, those, those evangelistic, uh, opportunities to get out and to stretch us and to stretch the kingdom. These things that we do, we do them because he’s already included us in his kingdom.

We want to help it grow. That’s what he asks us to do. Your life isn’t your own. Ezekiel 18 says, behold, every soul belongs to me. Both father and son are mine.

God already owns you, so let’s do what he asks us to do.

That ownership implies authority and sovereignty. God is the ultimate ruler and sustainer. We live under his authority. Recognize that he’s sovereign. We’re not masters of our own lives.

All right, so now that we’re part of that kingdom, we live it out. Psalm 24 says, the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. And then here is the instruction. In 1 Corinthians 6, it says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.

So glorify God in your body. Paul here, writing to the Corinthian church, says God already owns you, so what do we— how do we respond? We respond by glorifying God with our body. Now that may have some interpretations for some of you that, that you might think of some other things, but let’s think about this. I’ve got hands, I’ve got feet, I’ve got a head, I’ve got a brain, right?

I’ve got a, I’ve got a tongue, I’ve got a mouth, right? All of these things could be used for the glory of God. That’s what he’s calling us to do. Because God owns us, glorify God in our body. I love when Jesus illustrates his own points, right?

He uses his own points to illustrate what I’m talking about here. Remember the story of the trap that the Pharisees set for Jesus when they asked him about paying taxes to Rome? Is it right to pay taxes to Rome or not, right? They’re trying to get him caught in a political thing, you know, and maybe, you know, get him in trouble with the Roman authorities, or maybe get him in trouble with the Jewish authorities. And remember how Jesus answers this in Matthew chapter 22.

He says, “Show me the coin used for the tax,” and they brought him a denarius. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” And they said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And you know, we we are amazed by his logic, and it’s it’s really good. It’s very. It’s very insightful, but there’s an unstated sentence there. He says, remember, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.

Whose likeness and inscription is on you? You are owned by God, so therefore give it to God. That is our response.

Here’s where I come back to that idea though from Proverbs 2. That we’re to richly mine for God’s kingdom? Because I think it’s a both/and, okay, as we look at this parable. God’s kingdom is so precious and priceless that nothing in our lives should come before our pursuit of the kingdom. What does that look like?

I’ll tell you what, let’s get serious about our faith. Let’s get serious about it. If God owns the kingdom and we’re part of it, let’s do what he says. Does career or hobbies or family obligations, do they hold you back from fully following God? That ain’t right.

Do you give priority to attending Sunday morning gatherings, community groups, you know, Bible studies when we offer them, evangelistic opportunities, outreaches, other opportunities for growth? Hey men, there’s a men’s retreat coming up. That’s a fantastic opportunity for growth. I highly encourage you to go. Lord willing, I’ll be there.

I gotta get my schedule for October. I’ll find out in 3 days or so. I’ve signed up. Please come with me. Since Jesus has bought us with a price, we need to live like we believe it.

God’s kingdom is priceless. It’s priceless. We can rightly value his kingdom as, as we recognize that he was looking for us even when we weren’t looking for him. He paid that ultimate price for us to be a part of that kingdom, and because he owns that kingdom, we need to pursue it wholeheartedly. Let’s pray.

Father, I, I pray for those of us here that we— we— I confess we have issues with self-worth. We have a couple ditches that we always end up in. Some of us, we think way too highly of ourselves, or or we value things of the world way too far, way too much over and above the kingdom that you have provided for us. Father, there’s also some of us, we struggle with our own self-worth. We struggle with, with depression and anxiety and, and self-doubt.

Father, we give that to you. And, and perhaps, you know, there’s somebody in the sound of my voice and they’ve not joined the kingdom of heaven, and they, they really are struggling with this. You can, you can join us today, and you can pray with me, and you can just pray in your seats right now with me, and pray like this: Lord Jesus, I want to be part of your kingdom. I recognize that, that I’ve not been living for you, but I’ve been living for me. Would you forgive me?

Would you forgive my sins? Would you allow me to be part of your kingdom. I want to make you Lord and Savior of my life. Friends, those words aren’t magic, but if you’ve prayed them with me, you’re part of the kingdom of heaven now. Praise God.

And I also recognize that many of us here have problems even though we’ve been walking with the Lord for a long time. We may have issues with, with self-worth and dignity, and we don’t see how God has made us. Or maybe we have our priorities out of balance, and I want to pray for us too. So Father, I pray for these, my friends, pray for myself as well, that we many times get our priorities out of order and, and we do not value the kingdom of heaven the way you would have us value the kingdom. And so I pray, Father, that you would make those values real to us, that we would recognize that we are that found treasure That, that you value us so much that you sent your Son to die for us, and that cost him everything.

And because of that, you own us. You— we belong to you. And help us to live that out. I pray that in Jesus’ name. Amen.