Matthew 13, 45, again, the kingdom
of heaven is like unto a merchant man seeking goodly pearls, who,
when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all
that he had and bought it. Again, the kingdom of heaven
is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of
every kind, which when it was full, they drew to shore and
sat down and gathered the good into vessels. but cast the bad
away. So shall it be at the end of
the world, the angel shall come forth and sever the wicked from
among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire,
and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus saith
unto them, have you understood all these things? And they say
unto him, yea, Lord. Let's pray tonight. Father, thank
you for your goodness and grace, Lord, that's brought us together.
Thank you for your grace in Christ that's made us family and one
in him. We pray your blessings upon your
message tonight. May your name be exalted and
lifted up and your people comforted. We pray, Lord, for those who
couldn't be here tonight, for those who are facing health difficulties,
Lord, and other concerns, Lord, that you know better than any
of us about, and we pray your mercy, Lord, your kindness, your
long-suffering, your teaching grace, that you would get glory,
Lord, out of all of these things, and your people be strengthened
in faith and comforted and blessed. Be with us, Lord, as we hear
tonight prayer. Hearts will be fixed upon Christ
and Him alone. Give us faith, increase our faith.
In Christ's name we ask, amen. Now the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ is offensive to sinners. It's not something that people
want to hear, and that becomes more and more true, it seems,
the more time goes on. Unless God does a supernatural
work in a sinner's heart so that we submit to his truth, the truth
of God will anger you, it will repel you, it will cause you
to hate God even more than you already do if you hear it. Sinners
hate grace more than they do law. But if God does do his saving
work in a sinner's heart, we will submit, and not only that,
we'll rejoice in that gospel that we once hated. In Matthew
15, just a couple of chapters past our text tonight, Lord was
preaching the gospel that he's commanded us to preach and when
he was through in verse 12 of Matthew 15 it says then Came
his disciples and said unto him knowest thou knowest thou that
the Pharisees were offended after they heard this saying But he
answered and said every plant which my heavenly father hath
not planted shall be rooted up We see that in our text, the
same teaching there, how the fish are brought in and the bad
ones are cast away. It mentions wailing and gnashing
of teeth there, where we read in our text. Paul said in Galatians
5.11, my brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer
persecution? That is, if I preach the law.
Nobody's offended by that. Then as the offense of the cross
ceased there is such a thing as the offense of the cross the
preaching of the cross Because christ on that cross shed his
precious blood and redeemed everyone he shed it for Because the son
of god made the difference between sinners on that cross with his
blood there is what's called the offense of the cross. You
see, sinners want to make the difference themselves. They love
the words up to you, up to you, up to you. It was up to the son
of God on Calvary. He saved his people and everyone
else is lost. And so that's the offense of
the cross. Nobody wants to hear that. If I preach salvation by
the obedience of the law, sinners are, We are masters at justifying
ourselves. If salvation is by the keeping
of the law, we will figure out a way to believe that we've done
our best, that our good outweighs our bad or whatever, however
you want to say it. If I preach salvation by the will of man,
that's what most of what's called Christianity
preaches now. I could preach from my text this
morning and I can tell you from experience that this is what
you would hear in most churches about the goodly man, the merchant
man seeking goodly pearls, found the pearl of great price and
went and sold all that he had and bought that pearl. They would
say that God is teaching us that this good business decision that
this merchant man made, it represents the decision that we all have
to make Concerning Christ we have to make a smart decision
and God has done all he can do he has made the pearl available,
but it's up to you to buy it I've heard this all my life from
The type of church that I came out of when I was younger the
Baptist Church This is a decision that we all
have to make the pearls available, but you have to buy it It's up
to you to do that And Christ made salvation available just
like that by his death on the cross. And you have to make that
all important decision. You have to recognize his value
and make that decision. And that is an outright lie. It's a damnable heresy. But we really don't even have
to go that far to not offend people. Religious people would
not be offended even if we just preach the truth up to a point
and stop We don't have to preach a complete lie like that we could
preach the truth up to a point and just stop at God being God
and Everybody would be fine with it Stop short of the whole counsel
of God, but here's the thing in the salvation of sinners God
must and shall have all the glory and there's not gonna be any
for us. There's not gonna be any glory for the sinner in the
saving of sinners. Our sin is us robbing glory from
God. Our sin in the beginning was
saying we will be God. We don't need to obey God. We
know better ourselves. We know we can decide, we can
choose, and we don't need God to tell us what to do. And the
remedy for that is not gonna give us any glory at all. It's
all of grace. He said to Moses, I'll have mercy
on whom I will. I'll have compassion on whom
I will. So then Paul said, it is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
showeth mercy. And that's going to either offend
you as a sinner, or it's going to delight you. It's going to
make you happy because God is able to save a wretch even like
me. If we're in our natural condition,
as we're born into this world without the new heart that God
gives to his people, we're gonna be offended by that gospel. Paul
said, God forbid that I should glory, save in Christ and what
he did. You remember in the context of
that, in Galatians, where he said, God forbid that I should
glory. He just had said right before
that, they love to glory in your flesh, they make merchandise
of you. They like to number you and count you and boast in you.
But then in that context, he said, God forbid that I should
glorify in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, not what man has
done or needs to do or will do or does do, but in Christ and
what he did. And that's the difference between
the gospel and the lie that's being told. Everybody in our
day and then every day his glory. It's the glory. God forbid that
I should glory Save in him who is glorious and
in his glorious salvation on the cross His glory is at stake
And how are we gonna just preach part of God's Word that's the
other thing to It's a matter of God's glory,
but it's also a matter of preaching the whole counsel of God. I know
preachers, I've heard preachers. They skip around. I've been invited
to Bible classes, and they had a Bible study here not
long ago. I can't remember if that was
here or in Texas, but I think it was here. And I was invited
to it, and they were, Preaching they were teaching through the
book of Romans. I may have told this story before and Somebody
invited me to to this Bible study there. We're gonna go through
the book of Romans I said I tell you what when you get to Romans
chapter 9 Let me know and I'll come because I want to hear what
you have to say about that and so later on I checked in with
with the guy and And I said, have y'all got to Romans chapter
nine yet? And he said, you know what? He
said, we got to Romans chapter eight and then we went into another
book of the Bible. We didn't talk about chapter
nine. I was like, okay, yeah, that
tells me what I need to know about that Bible study. How do
you just not preach part of the word of God? How do you ignore
passages of scripture in the Bible? Yes, the merchant man
who does represent the sinner, he does find the pearl. And when
he does, he abandons everything he had before that he counted
precious and valuable. Paul said in his experience,
in his conversion, he said, I've suffered the loss of all things
and do count them but double. Everything that I thought was
so valuable before. in order to obtain, in order
to pursue and lay hold of Christ. I abandoned all that. That's
taught in the story of the pearl. That I may win Christ and be
found in him. I know this is right because
that's every one of us. That's the testimony of every
sinner. Like the prodigal son, we woke
up in the hog pen, didn't we? And it says that we came to ourselves. He woke up in that hog pen, he'd
been eating the pig slop, the husks, corn husks, apparently,
that they had fed the pigs. And it says in Luke 15, 17, and
when he came to himself, he said, how many hired servants of my
father's have bread enough and to spare and I perish with hunger.
I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, father,
I have sinned against heaven and before thee. and am no more
worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy hard servants.
And before we even got home, this is our experience, before
we even got back to the father, he ran and met us and he had
compassion on us. It says he fell upon his neck
and kissed him. And that prodigal said, I'm no
son, I'm not worthy. The father said bring forth the
best robe and kill the fatted calf. He put me in his son He Welcomed me it says the angels
rejoice when a sheep of the Lord's returns home We came to ourselves didn't we Simon preached to his audience
on the day of Pentecost and said this, save yourselves from this
untoward generation, this wicked, this perverse generation. But the story here of the prodigal
son wasn't the beginning of the parable that our Lord told there
in Luke 15. That parable began with a story
of a shepherd, as you recall. In Luke 15, four through 10,
we won't go verse by verse through this, but you remember that parable,
it's a three-part parable. People talk about the parable
of the prodigal son. There is no parable of the prodigal
son. There's the parable of the shepherd and the sheep, the woman
and the coin, and the father and the prodigal. It's one parable. And it starts out this way. One
sheep wanders from the fold and the shepherd goes and looks for
it and finds it and lays it on his shoulder and brings it home
rejoicing. That's the gospel just as clearly
and beautifully as the story of the prodigal. The middle part
of the three-part parable is the woman who lost her coin.
It was a very valuable coin and precious to her and she lost
it, but she lit a candle and she searched and she found that
coin. And that's the Holy Spirit of
God searching us out by the light of Christ and finding us. How much is a lost coin worth?
Nothing, but a found one. That we were precious to him.
And so he turned on the light. And then the story of the prodigal
was told. Do you see how important that
is? That's salvation. First, the Lord seeks us. First,
our part in salvation from the start is what? We need it. We
wander, we stray, we go away from Christ just as ignorantly
and self-destructively as we possibly can. and he seeks us
out and finds us and brings us home. But what that looks like
in our experience is the prodigal. We realize how stupid we are.
Here I am eating corn, empty husks. And even the servants
at my father's house are eating fine fare. I'm an idiot. That's our experience. But we
realize when he saves us that it's him that saved us. We give
him the glory. We say, I was that one sheep.
We came to ourselves because he came where we were. But they skipped that part. They
overlooked that part. How many times have you heard
somebody, and you may not be from the world of religion like
I am, but I've heard the parable of the prodigal son a million
times. Not one time have I ever heard
anybody mention the lost coin. You know why? Because they don't
know what to say about that. They don't know a God that seeks
you out and finds you. And on the day that our Lord
spoke the parable of the pearl of great price, those weren't
the first words that he spoke, and they weren't the last words
that he spoke. Look back in the rest of our
text there in verses 47 through 50. After he said, notice the
word again in verse 47, he's still talking. He didn't stop
there. And look at verse 44. Again,
the kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field,
the which when a man hath found, he had it. And for joy thereof
goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field. I've heard people argue about
what that's all. There's just one treasure. There's just one treasure. And
that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the merchant man seeking
goodly pearls. And then again, verse 47, the
kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the
sea and gathered of every kind and it was pulled ashore. And
God said, this one's good and this one's bad. Didn't he? Isn't that what it teaches? What
else could it teach? It was drawn into shore. Is a fish going to go into a
net or is he going to run away from it? He's going to run away
from it. That's the nature of a fish.
He's not going to willingly go into a net. If you've ever caught a fish,
you know that. Even the way we fish, there's
a net involved sometimes if it's a big fish. And I guarantee you,
you get that fish close to the boat and you stick the net down
into the water too soon before that fish is tired, you're gonna
find out how fish feel about nets. They don't like them. But the Lord throws the net out
anyway and gets ahold of you and brings you in unto himself.
That's our Testament. Isn't that delightful? Aren't
you glad he does that? We're not going into the net
by nature. We're not going to do it. You remember what our Lord said
to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus? As Saul journeyed, he came near
Damascus, Acts 9.3, and suddenly there shined round about him
a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth and
heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? And he said, who are you, Lord?
Isn't that an interesting question? You're the Lord, but who are
you? Sounded like he answered his own question, didn't he?
To a great extent he did. Who are you, Lord? And the Lord
said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against
the goads. That's that word, pricks. It's
a goad that you goad an animal with. Saul was trying to get
out of the net, wasn't he? The Lord had to goad him into
submission, but there's no getting out of the Lord's net. There's
no rebelling against his will in the matter of salvation. How
can the kingdom of heaven be like both? How can we be both
a merchant man who wants the pearl of great price so badly
that we'll sell everything we have to obtain that pearl, but
also be a fish that the last thing we ever want to do is to
be pulled out of our refuge, out of our natural habitat. Taken from where we're comfortable
and happy pulled from our world and into
his, the last thing we'll ever willingly submit to. Did we find the Lord Jesus Christ
and lay hold of him? Or did he find and bring us? And of course, both are true.
That's why both are there. You can't just pick out the part
you like and not preach. the part you
don't like if you don't know him. The only reason you don't
like it is if you don't know him. If he's never done that
for you, then you're not gonna like the sound of that. But if
he has, you're praising him for it, for laying hold of you. Self-destructive and hope, a
lost sheep is lunch for every predator in the world. Even if
he don't get eaten by a predator, he can't provide for himself. A goat will do just fine, but
not a sheep. Our only hope is if the Lord
comes where we are and lays hold of us and puts us on his shoulder
and brings us home. So we rejoice in the story of
the pearl because we understand that, we've experienced that.
And we know what happened. And like in the story of the
good Samaritan, we're not going anywhere, we're goners, we're
laying there, it's over for us. But he comes where we are. pours
in the oil of His grace and the wine of His precious blood and
heals us and picks us up and puts us on His beast. He supplies everything. He takes
us to the end. He pays our way. He tells the
innkeeper, if he owes anything more, put it on my tab. What did we contribute to that
scenario of the Good Samaritan? You think about that. What did
we contribute to that? Our only part in it is neediness. In every miracle that our Lord
ever performed, every one of which picture the saving of a
sinner, every miracle he performed in this book, even the creation
of the world, Pictures us in our natural darkness and him
saying let there be life Everything that God ever did that's recorded
in this book pictures him saving me and you And in every one of them we are
helpless to do anything for ourselves every last one of them. That's why they call it a miracle. We're blind. We're lame. We're leprous. We're four days
stinky dead. We're hanging up on the mercy
of God's son. But once the Lord Jesus Christ
comes where we are and with his irresistible almighty power says,
Lazarus come forth, we come. And we come gladly, we come willingly,
but it was his will that saved us. He said, my sheep hear my voice
and they follow me. We've got to hear his voice.
We've got to hear, come forth. We've got to hear, let there
be light. And then we follow. And he said, blessed are your
ears for they hear. The kingdom of heaven is likened
to both. Here's what we need to know and
remember. Which one happened first? Why is that important? Because it determines who gets
the glory. That's why. First John 4.19, we love him
because he first. Loved us. We love him. We've got to have him. But we love him and we must have
him because he first loved us and had to have us. Had to have
us. He gave infinite price to redeem
us from our sins. We see him as precious and we
realize that we must have him because he first saw us lost
and wandering and helpless and hopeless and said, that's my sheep. Notice the ownership
in that parable, in that part of the parable, where the prodigal
son is spoken of, the parable of the shepherd and the sheep.
He said, rejoice with me, I found my sheep. Not rejoice with me,
I was just out and I found a sheep. I found my sheep. Which was lost, and now he's
found. John 6.37, all that the father
giveth me shall come to me. And remember what he said also
in John chapter six, no man can come unto me except the father
which hath sent me draw him. But then he said, all that the
father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me,
I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven,
not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
And this is the Father's will, which hath sent me, that of all
which he hath given me, I should lose nothing. Does that sound
like the Son of God came down here to get as many as he could? It sounds like to me, like he
said in another place, I came here to seek my sheep and bring them home. that of all which he hath given
me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last
day. I came, he came, and then we
come. Him that cometh to me, I will
no wise cast out, but what does it say before that? I came to
do my father's will. which had everything to do with
him. He came and then we come. We
come because he came. The Holy Spirit must first come
where we are as well. If we are to come to Christ,
John 3, 3, Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily,
I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God. How's a man born again? The spirit
of God blows where it will, like the wind. You can't tell where
he came from or where he'll go next. But when he comes, you
know he's there. Isn't that what he said? You can hear the sound. You don't
know where he came from or where he'll go, because he goes where
he pleases. So it is with everyone that's
born of the spirit. And unless you're born of the
spirit, you can't see God's kingdom, which is Christ. How are you going to buy that
pearl? if you can't even see it, if you don't even know the
value of it. It might be a piece of plastic
for all a blind man knows. So how does God draw you in?
By opening your eyes, by giving you faith to see the Lord Jesus
Christ for who he is. He doesn't save sinners contrary
to their will, but by means of their will. Your enemy becomes your friend. Your enmity becomes love when
God gives you a new heart. Psalm 110.3, thy people, the
Lord's people, shall be willing in the day of thy power, God's
power. Salvation is you making a conscious,
willful decision to own Christ as your righteousness and your
sin offering before God, you willingly submit to him, you
willingly choose him. It says Moses chose the reproach
of Christ over all the treasures of Egypt, but before you ever
choose, he chose you. Second Thessalonians 2 13, but
we are bound to give thanks all the way to God for you brethren
beloved of the Lord Because God hath from the beginning chosen
you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth You think about the wording of
that how did God choose you he chose you from the beginning
to salvation What did he use to do that to save you? He chose you before there ever
was a you. Jacob have I loved before they
had ever been born or done any good or evil. But how did he
save us? How were we set apart? Well, through sanctification
of the spirit. The spirit goes to everyone that's
born of God, is he's the one that births them of the spirit,
born of the spirit, born from above. through sanctification
of the Spirit. And what is the result of the
Spirit coming where you are, though, and setting you apart?
You believe on Christ, belief of the truth, faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. So that's God's choosing, God's
operation. Salvation is of the Lord. Before you ever loved him, he
loved you. 1 John 4.10, here in his love,
not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son
to be the propitiation for our sins. The purpose of God according
to election sounds like this according to Paul in Romans chapter
nine. God's purpose according to election. Here's what it sounds
like. Jacob, I love you. And Esau,
I hate you. Now look at what the Lord said
in our text in verse 51, and I love this story. We've talked about the pearl
of great, I use that as an illustration in half of my messages, the pearl
of great price, because what a beautiful story that is. He had to have that pearl no
matter what. But listen to verse 51. Jesus
saith unto them, have you understood all these things? Is that precious
to you? The Lord Jesus Christ comes,
he teaches us, he has arranged this here where the gospel is
preached, his church is here by his doing, by his providence,
teaching us the gospel. And then he comes in the gospel
by his Holy Spirit and he asks us this question, have you understood
these things? The Lord makes sure that we understand. And they say unto him, yea Lord,
we know that we don't know anything as we ought to know. And even
when we say we understand, often we don't. But what a wonderful question. And the Lord is asking us through
this text tonight, have you understood these things? Do you see how
that in salvation, we're lacking in animate calling as far as
our ability to come to God. No man can come, except. It doesn't say no man can come,
because we do come. But there's a reason why, the
Father, God, the Holy Spirit and Christ himself. They draw
us to himself and it can't happen otherwise. That rich young ruler
came and said, what do I got to do? I want to inherit eternal
life. And the Lord told him what's
necessary for a sinner to be worthy of eternal life. And he went away sorrowful because
he couldn't cut the mustard, just like every other sinner
in this universe can't cut the mustard. But when the Lord confronted
him with the law, what did he do? He said, oh, I'm in then,
I'm in, I've done that, I've kept all that. So did he have any idea what
the Lord was talking about? He said, there's something you
lack. There's something you lack. Go and sell everything you have
and give it to the poor and follow me if you want to be perfect. And notice he didn't say if you
want to go to heaven when you die. If you wanna be perfect,
if you want to actually be righteous according to God's law like you
say you are, you don't have to know me, you don't have to follow
me. I'm gonna have to be your righteousness, your everything.
And he went away sorrowful. And the disciples asked, who
in the world can be saved? And the Lord said, with men it's
impossible. But God saved us anyway. He saved us anyway. We're like an inanimate coin,
not participating in any way in the finding of us. And do we understand this? Have
you understood these things, how that once Christ finds us
and reveals himself to us, we're like the prodigal who says, Oh,
if I could just be with my father again. If I could just take back
all of my stupidity. If the father would just have
me. If he'd have me back. Have you understood how that
we are the merchant man? And he is the priceless pearl.
And also how that we are the fish. And he is the one that
cast the net. Have you understood these things? And most important, have you
understood what both pictures mean? What both of these pictures
say? Think about this. What does it
say that Christ came where I was and found his helpless sheep?
And even then, it doesn't say, he said, oh, what are you doing
out here? Come on back. and then leave us to find our
way back. He has to pick us up. He has to bring us back. He has
to make us to lie down in green pastures. That's worth singing
about. That's why David sang about it.
He wrote a song saying, he maketh me to lie down in his green pastures. What does that say though? What
does that picture say? That Christ is all. It says that Christ is all. Without
him, I'm still lost. Without him, I'm worthless, I'm
gone. What does it say? That a sinner
would give everything. What does it say that a sinner
would say like Paul, I've suffered the loss of all things and do
count them but done that I may win Christ. That also says Christ is all. If you're the coin, Christ is
all. If you're the merchant man, Christ is all. If you're the
sheep, Christ is all. If you're the prodigal, Christ
is all. Every part of every parable teaches
that Christ is all. Thank God for his salvation. May he cause us tonight to rejoice
in his saving mercy and grace. Thank him from our hearts. Let's pray together.