Good morning. I have been on about half a dozen
pirate treasure searches this week. So we'll see how this goes. But we're going to look at a
different treasure search this morning. If you would turn to
Matthew 13. Matthew 13. And I want to read verses 45
and 46. Again, the kingdom of heaven
is likened to 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. Here we have a parable of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Some of our parables that the
Lord Jesus Christ told everyone, he would later go back and explain
to the disciples, and we have record of some of those. This
one, we don't have any record where he explained this parable.
But we see, as Christ says, this is concerning the kingdom of
heaven. It says the kingdom of heaven is like unto I know some may say that this
merchant man is Christ, but there are a couple things here that
make me think otherwise. First of all, it says this merchant
man was seeking goodly pearls. And I agree with what Tim James
said on this verse. He said, Scripture says Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners, not good people. Second, it says he sold all he
had, but Christ did not come selling anything. He did come
to purchase something, but he was not selling anything. But
we also have one pearl of great price. So let's go through this
passage to glean some things from scripture as it relates
to this parable. I want to talk about the merchant
man seeking, one pearl found, and the one pearl bought. Those pearls that occur naturally,
they're very rare, very hard to find. You don't hardly see
that nowadays. They're manufactured, if you
want to say it that way. But these natural occurring pearls
are in clams or oysters. And to find these natural occurring
pearls, it's very time consuming and difficult. Here in this passage,
we have a man who is seeking goodly pearls. He's seeking that
which is honest and good. That's what the word means. Now
we by nature do not seek after the things of God. And I know
these are talking about the things of God because it says the kingdom
of heaven is likened to. Scripture tells us that there
is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. We by nature are not seeking
goodly things. We by nature love darkness because
we are darkness itself. Psalms 10.4 says, the wicked
through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God. God
is not in all his thoughts. Again in Psalms 14.2 and verse
3 it says, the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children
of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek
God. They are all gone aside. They
are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good.
No, not one. So how can I say this is a child
of God? What makes a man like this begin
to search goodly pearls? Well, Psalms 110.3 says this. Thy people shall be willing in
the day of thy power. In the beauties of holiness from
the womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth. So
in the day of God Almighty's power, he will make us willing
to seek him and seek him diligently. There is a time when the things
of God mean nothing to an elect individual, one that is yet lost. Then something happens and things
are different. You began to seek, looking for,
and desiring things that you did not desire or look for previously. Hebrews 11, six says, but without
faith, it is impossible to please him. Four, he that cometh to
God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek him. So in order for someone to begin
to seek God, he must have faith. Because it says here, for you
to come to God, you must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him. We know faith comes
from Jesus Christ because it is his faith. Ephesians 2 and
8 talks about grace, salvation, and faith, and that they are
the gift of God. So when God gives faith, a man
begins to seek God diligently, looking for goodly pearls. I
just want to point out that it says he was seeking goodly pearls,
but he did not say that he found any. However, there was this
one exception. He found one pearl of great price. So this one pearl found. This
merchant man found one pearl. This pearl was of great price.
It was worth more than this merchant man had ever seen before. This
one pearl, as I think everyone here knows, is that one pearl
of great price, Jesus Christ the Lord. Looking at this pearl,
you may get many different colors of light coming from it, just
to name a few, though. He is our righteousness, our
sanctification. He is truth. peace, strength,
life. But this one pearl is in particular
one thing to us when we first find the one pearl of great price. He is our redemption. I'm not
saying this is more important than the others. Not at all. For most believers, when they
are seeking Christ, they are seeking him because they find
no cause in themselves that would commend them to God. They are
naked before God. They know that every time they
try to do something to make peace with God, they spit in His face
by trying. They know there has to be something
other than the goodly pearls of their works. They know they
must serve Him and obey Him, but something else is needed
to make peace with God so that He does not consume them in His
wrath. But when they see this one pearl,
this one for them, it came down and paid the debt of sin for
them with his own blood being made sin for them. They know
that this one and only one that is ever, this is the only one
that's ever needed for them. The one pearl bought. It says
here that he sold all that he had. This word sold means to
dispose of as merchandise or to dispose of into slavery. This traveler was willing to
give up all he had to be a slave to this one pearl. How did he
buy it? He gave up everything to be slave
to the one pearl of great price. This is one for whom God has
made to love him and one he is dealing with. those for whom
have been made to seek those things above. And then God Almighty
reveals to them his son, Jesus Christ the Lord. God will make
it so that nothing else matters to you once you see the Lord
Jesus Christ. He will cause you to seek and
he tells us, seek and you shall find. We by nature will never
do any seeking of our own. Our own seeking causes us many
sorrows. When we seek of our own selves,
we are seeking out our own inventions. What it is, it is us seeking
our own way, whatever way that is. It leads to destruction,
and when we are looking for those things, there will always be
sorrow involved. But when we are enabled by God
to seek, and in seeking to find this one pearl, this one truth
that Joe spoke about last week, we are again enabled by God to
be willing to give up all to be slave to this one pearl of
great price, which is Jesus Christ the Lord. When it comes to finding
this one pearl, God will make you consider all things you have,
and you will, if he has in fact dealt with you in love, he will
cause you to say within yourself, I do not have sufficient to finish
it, and only he does, and I want to be joined with him. In Luke
14 and verse 28, we read, For which of you intending to build
a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether
he have sufficient to finish it? And again, it says in verse
31, Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth
not down first and consulteth whether he be able with 10,000
to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000? We do not have sufficient in
and of ourselves to finish anything, nor can we defeat any enemy lest
we have Jesus Christ the Lord, and only if we have him. God Almighty will not share any
glory. As others have said, he gets
all the glory because he does all the work. He gets all the
glory because all the glory is His, and it is found in the face
of God's one pearl of great price, Jesus Christ the Lord. God will
bring you to that place where you know you have in and of yourselves,
and by God's grace, knowing you are up against the justice of
God, you have not enough to finish or defeat the enemy. What is
that enemy? Right here. or who is that enemy, I should
say, right here. What is the main point of this
pearl? First and foremost, it is the
one pearl of great price. There's nothing more valuable
or of more worth than this one pearl. This one pearl was not
the first initial sought after thing this merchant man was after.
But after it was found, everything was given up for this one pearl. I know that God the Father loves
nothing more than His Son, Jesus Christ. My hope is to be found
in Him. He is the way, the truth, and
the life. No man cometh to the Father,
but by this one man, Jesus Christ the Lord. So if you have goodly
pearls, and that's all you have, you do not have enough. You must
come into possession of this one pearl. You will only do that
by the power of the one pearl, Jesus Christ the Lord. There
are some results or impacts to finding Jesus Christ the Lord. When it comes to following Jesus
Christ the Lord, it's not a part-time thing. It is not a half-hearted
attempt at serving Christ. There's nothing more important
than following after Jesus Christ. If there are more important things
than Jesus Christ to you, then you're just making excuses as
those did in Luke 14 that I just mentioned, verses 16 through
20. God is telling us in that parable
that he has bid everyone to come to the supper he has prepared.
He does this by the gospel. Have you ever heard the gospel?
If you've been here, you've heard the gospel preached before. But
if you have ever heard the gospel, you have been bid to come to
the supper. What happens when you make excuses?
You will not taste of the Lord's supper. If you have something
better to do, something that means more to you than Jesus
Christ the Lord, then you will not partake of Jesus Christ the
Lord. He is the supper where all shall
be filled. But what does God do, and this
is the one spoken of here as making a great supper, that's
what this passage is saying, but what does God do when he
encounters all these excuse makers? God has told his servants to
bid those who are poor, maimed, halt, and blind to come to his
supper. All those who are traveling and
tired, all those who are hedged in and not able to get out of
their surroundings, What does God tell his servants to do?
Bid them all come. I like this next verse because
this is what God is telling us here in Luke 14. And this is
what we are trying to tell men today. But in John 1 and verse
45 and verse 46, we read this. Philip findeth Nathanael and
saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law
and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him,
can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith
unto him, come and see. We are telling men and women
the supper has been laid out. The one spoken of has come. This
one that is one pearl of great price, he has finished the work
the father gave him to do, and he fulfilled it completely and
to the uttermost. Come and see him. If you want
to make excuses, you will not eat at his supper. The one pearl
of great price is not a part-time thing. You don't have this pearl
up in a trophy case where you can come and visit it every once
in a while. You become slave to this one pearl of great price.
You want to hold this pearl up for everyone to see, because
the beauty of this pearl is worth telling about and showing to
all. What else does it say in Luke 14 verses 26 and 27? If any man come to me and hate
not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren,
and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his
cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. You will forsake
everything and follow Jesus Christ the Lord, or you are not his
disciple. What is it to bear your cross?
God will call you to forsake everything to follow Jesus Christ
the Lord. Christ also tells us this in
Matthew 6 and 33, it says, but seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added
unto you. What is the kingdom of God and
his righteousness? Jesus Christ the Lord. I'm not
seeking this to get these things, but God will add these things
to me if I am seeking his righteousness. Seek Jesus Christ the Lord above
all things. Don't worry about anything else.
In fact, take no thought of it. He will take care of everything
else because he even takes care of the sparrow. When God Almighty
does something for you, you will not let anything else get in
the way of following Jesus Christ. I mean, you will do this by His
power and His Spirit, the Spirit of God. You will have nothing
else. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, verses 25 and 26, and every
man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now
they do it to obtain corruptible crown, but we, and incorruptible. Therefore, so run, not as uncertainly,
so fight I, not as one that beateth the air. I'm not throwing punches
and missing. I'm not going about in a religious
fervor trying to work up a sweat for Jesus Christ. If I do, I'm
just beating the air. I'm not just following him whenever
it feels good to me, at Christmas or Easter. I am by his grace
learning of and following after Jesus Christ the Lord. Again,
Paul tells us in Philippians 3.12, he says,
not as though I already attained, either were already perfect,
but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that which also I am
apprehended of, Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ has apprehended
you, if he has placed you in his handcuffs of grace to where
he says, almighty love, arrest that man, you will then begin
to lay hold of him and holding on for dear life. Knowing this,
that if you reach here or reach there for something else, it
just might slip from your fingers. And you don't want Jesus Christ
to slip from your fingers. If he does, he never apprehended
you to begin with. And that is a scary thought. I think of those boxers, and
most of us may not know about boxers, may not even like boxers,
but I think about those boxers when they're boxing and they
grab a hold of the person to stay safe. I think of that when
I read this passage. But also of Jacob, who had a
man who wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. in which
Jacob would not let go until he was blessed of this man. This
was Jesus Christ. But I'm here to say that Jesus
Christ, if you are one of those who are poor, maimed, halt, blind,
traveling, or hedged in, the scripture is clear, Jesus Christ
came into the world to save sinners. Are you looking for something
to fill the time, or are you looking for someone to save you?
Are you doing okay and just need a little bit of help? Or are
you completely lost without one notion of where you are or where
you are going? Luke 19.10 says, for the Son
of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Are
you lost? If Jesus Christ comes seeking
a sinner, he will find you. When he does, he will cause you
to seek him. When this happens, you will find
him because Christ tells us in his word you will. You will then
lay hold of him to become a slave of Jesus Christ, knowing that
if you are to please God, it will be in this one man. He is
that one pearl, and this is that redeeming glimmer that comes
from that pearl, that glimmer that sees him as my substitute. From the Old Testament, we see
that this pearl is the one that has created all things, and it
is he that is our Redeemer. Isaiah 44 and verse 24 says,
thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from
the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretches
forth the heaven alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by
myself. But last of all, this Redeemer
who was creator of all things is the one that was my substitute
and did the work to satisfy holy justice of God on my behalf,
making him that one pearl of great price. My redemption had
nothing to do with anything I did because all of that is vain.
1 Peter chapter 1 verses 18 and 19 reads this. For as much as ye know that ye
were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from
your vain conversation received by tradition of your fathers,
but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot. Oh, may it be that the power
and grace of God that you seek and you find this one Oh, by
the power and grace of God it is that you seek, and you will
find this one pearl of great price. Oh, what a Savior. Amen. Mason, will you lead us
in prayer, please? Heavenly Father, we call upon
thee this day to thank you for all your goodness and mercies
that you've extended to thy people. Heavenly Father, guide us, lead
us by your Holy Spirit into all truth. For thy Son is truth. In his name we ask. Amen.