in our Bibles tonight to Matthew
chapter 13. Matthew chapter 13. Let's read
tonight verses 44 through 51. Again, the kingdom of heaven
is like unto a treasure hid in a field. The witch, when a man
hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth, and selleth
all that he hath, and buyeth that field. 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 set down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the
bad away. So shall it be at the end of
the world. The angels shall come forth,
and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them
into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing
of teeth, Jesus saith unto them, have you understood all these
things? They say unto him, yea, Lord. Tonight we're looking at the
last three of the seven parables that our Lord spoke that are
recorded here in this chapter, 13th chapter of Matthew. These last ones that we're looking
at tonight are only given to us in Matthew. The parable of
the treasure, of the pearl, and of the net, they are only recorded
in Matthew's Gospel. And we know by our Lord's question
in verse 51 that these parables were spoken to the disciples
after our Lord had gone into the house He explained the parable
of the sower and the parable of the wheat and tares, and then
he gave these final parables. We know he spoke these to his
disciples because of his question. In verse 51, he said, have you
understood all these things? And they said unto him, yea,
Lord. If you look above this in verse
10, His disciples had asked Him this
question. And the disciples came and said
unto Him, Why speakest Thou unto them in parables? He answered
and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. Now remember in the scripture
that a mystery is that which would have remained unknown. had it not been revealed. And we see that it is by grace
that men come to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Our
Lord said, unto you, because it is given unto you. It is by grace, we know the scriptures
teach this, that salvation is by grace. And it is by grace
that God gives men understanding The Scripture says, "...the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are foolishness unto him. Neither can..." Think about that
word, can. It's not may. "...neither can
he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. The natural
man is dead in trespasses and sins, and our Lord, as He told
Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see." the kingdom
of God. He cannot perceive the mysteries
of the kingdom of God. The mystery in scripture is that
which man would have never learned, never would men understand the
truths of the gospel if these things had not been revealed
unto us. And remember also Paul's words
to the believers at Corinth, for who maketh thee to differ
from another? You understand tonight the mysteries
of the kingdom of God. Who maketh thee to differ from
another? And he went on to ask, And what
hast thou that thou didst not receive? So we see grace again. Grace, for by grace are you saved,
for unto you it is given. Lord, why do you speak to the
multitudes? Why speakest thou unto them in
parables? His answer was, because it is
given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but
to them it's not given. Now we see God's grace in giving
us understanding, revealing the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,
but also notice man's responsibility. We see, yes, all through the
Word of God, the Scripture teaches the sovereignty of God in dispensing
His grace. But also, parallel with that,
we see the responsibility of men. One does not negate the
other. Yes, God is sovereign in His
grace, giving His grace, but yet man is responsible unto God. Man is responsible to walk in
the light that God gives him. And you see that here in this
passage, after he said, Because it is given unto you to know
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is
not given. Now notice, for whosoever hath,
whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he shall have more
abundance. But whosoever hath not, from
him shall be taken away even that he hath or seemeth to have."
Men are responsible to walk in the light that they have. About a week before the Lord
called Cody home, a lady who was a member of their congregation,
but she had stopped coming, She came to their home and she had
a renter who was an American, and she wanted Cody to speak
with this man about his papers, the situation there in Merida. And Cody took this lady and he
showed her on her phone. He was concerned about her, naturally. She had attended the services,
professed faith in Christ, been baptized, been faithful for for
a while, but then she stopped coming, drifted away. And Cody
showed her on her phone, I think he downloaded that app, Sermon
Audio, and showed her how she could listen to the messages
concerned about her. And then, the reason I bring
this up, this man, he made the comment, this American, he said,
well, he said, I know there's a God, but I don't know anything
about him. I don't know who's right, who's
wrong, all these different religions. And Cody told him this. I thought
this was so good. He said, walk in the light that
you have. Number one, you know there is
a God. And number two, you know that
you don't know him. Walk in the light that God has
given you. You know there is a God. And
you know that you don't know Him, look in His Word, get in
His Word. Meet with God's people and hear
the preaching of the gospel. Let me show you this in John
chapter 9. In John chapter 9, men are responsible
to walk in the light that they have. I remember Brother Ralph
Barnard making the statement several times when he was preaching
Men are not only responsible for what they hear, but what
they could have heard. Let that sink in. Not only responsible
for what they hear, but what they could have heard. Men could
have heard the gospel if they had so desired. Many could have. But they had something more important
to do. They didn't have time. for God. They didn't have time for the
Word of God. Our Lord Jesus healed this man
who was born blind in John chapter 9. But notice his words here,
beginning with verse 39. And Jesus said, For judgment
I am come into this world, that they which see not might see,
and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the
Pharisees... Now remember, these are the religious
people. These are the know-alls. They know everything. You can't
teach them anything. They know everything about God,
everything about the Word of God. They know everything. Pharisees. Studied. Learned. They asked the Lord. Some of
the Pharisees which were with him heard these words and said
unto him, Are we blind also? And look at our Lord's answer
to that question. Jesus said unto them, if you
were blind, if you admitted your blindness, if you admitted your
need, your emptiness, if you would admit that, if you were
blind, you should have no sin. But now you say, we see. They didn't see. Our Lord said,
except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom. They
didn't see, but they in their mind, they knew everything. Men are responsible to walk in
the light that God gives us. These parables, our Lord said
unto you, it's given. That's grace. But men are responsible
to to consider, to meditate, to
hear what the Lord has said. Now, I believe the mysteries,
the mysteries revealed in these last parables, the mysteries
are two. And both mysteries are revealed
as a result of the Lord Jesus Christ coming into this world.
Both of these mysteries that we see in these last parables,
they are revealed by the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ in this
world. What are the mysteries? First,
the gospel. You say, well, the gospel has
been here all this time. I realize that, but it had not
been manifested like it was by the coming, by the appearance,
by the incarnation of the Son of God. And His work the mystery,
number one, of the gospel, and number two, the kingdom of God's
reign in this world. The gospel, we know from this
passage of scripture, is the good seed which is to be sown
in all the world. Preach the gospel to every creature. The kingdom of God's reign is
nearly equivalent to the church, and at present is mixed But we
know one day it shall be consummated in glory, in purity, and in beauty. But let's look at these two things,
that is the gospel and the kingdom of God's reign in these last
three parables. First, the gospel. The gospel
as it is represented by the treasure and the pearl of great price. Verse 44. Again, the kingdom
of heaven is like unto 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. 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. Here are two things that we see,
two things alike that we see in both of these parables. Now
I don't think it's right to try to make everything in these parables
stand for something, but there are two truths that we see in
these two parables about the gospel. Both, and they're easy
to see, both parables represent the gospel as that of great value. That's so easy to see, isn't
it? Both parables, they represent the gospel as that of great value. A treasure, think about this,
a treasure in the day when our Lord spoke this parable probably
would have been made up of precious metals, precious stones, that
which is valuable. But what could be more valuable
than the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you think of anything
more valuable to you, to me, to men in general than the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you imagine what it is to
be born in this world, to live, to spend our time in this world
and never, never hear the gospel, never have the gospel? What could
be more valuable to us than the gospel of Jesus Christ? When I think of gold, precious
metals, I'm reminded of each piece of furniture in the tabernacle. We know each piece was overlaid
with gold. I think about the table for the
showbread, the lampstand, the altar of incense, And then the
Ark of the Covenant, all overlaid with gold, and the Mercy Seat
itself was of pure gold. It was beaten of pure gold. All
of these, of course, are pictures of Christ in His work in the
Gospel. And that Mercy Seat, which was
the place where the blood was sprinkled, and remember it says
it was of beaten, beaten work. Doesn't that picture the Lord
Jesus Christ as he was wounded for our transgressions, as he
was bruised for our iniquities, that by his stripes we are healed?
That man took that hammer, took that gold and started beating
it, straightening it out and beating it more and more and
more. Beaten gold. What a picture of the sufferings.
And then that blood sprinkled on it. What a picture of the
sufferings of Christ and His blood that makes an atonement
for the soul. The gospel is valuable. I've been reading through the
Bible, beginning in Genesis at the first of the year, and I
was in Numbers just last day or two. And I notice this again. But you know, God, He claimed
all the firstborn of Israel was His. Because He spared them when
He delivered His people out of Egypt. And so He claimed of the
nation of Israel, all the firstborn were His. But rather than take
all the firstborn, He took the tribe of Levi. This tribe of
Levi would be the tribe that would do the service in the tabernacle. So he had Moses to take a census
and to number all the firstborn in the other tribes. And then
to number all the males in the tribe of Levi. And there was
a difference. There was a difference of 273
people. Now what does God do? What does
he say about this? He says those 273, they've got
to be redeemed. But how were they redeemed? They
were redeemed by the shekel, the silver shekels of the sanctuary. And that made me think of the
passage in 1 Peter. Thank God we're not redeemed
with corruptible things. Silver's precious. There's a
treasure. Yes, the gospel's a treasure.
But we're not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold
from our vain conversation received by tradition from our fathers.
But we are redeemed with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The gospel tells us about the
person of Christ, of his precious blood, of His one sacrifice that
does put away sin. And when I think of precious
stones as a treasure, treasure made up of silver and gold and
stones, when I think of stones, I think about the fact that the
Lord Jesus Christ, He is that rock upon which we must be built,
that precious stone, that precious cornerstone. And then the one
pearl of great price. Notice it says there was one.
He had some pearls, but he found one pearl. One pearl of great
price. And I don't know about you, but
that reminds me of the fact that there's one gospel. There's one
Savior. There's one faith. There's one
name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. You know, pearls are valuable
today. But in that time, I would imagine
they were even more valuable. And men risked their lives, didn't
they, to obtain pearls, diving to the bottom of the ocean. Pearls
were valuable. The gospel is valuable. The gospel
shows us, it shows you and I tonight, how it is true that God God may
save sinners and yet at the same time by no means clear the guilty. Now that's a riddle, isn't it?
That's an enigma. How it is that God said he will
by no means clear the guilty and all of us are guilty. The
gospel shows us how. He saved sinners. And at the
same time, he will not clear the guilt. You say, well, how
did he do that? Through Christ. Through Christ as our substitute,
dying in our stead, satisfying God's justice and God's law. The gospel shows us how that
God is a just God and, don't you love that verse in Isaiah?
A just God and a Savior. That's the gospel. The apostle Paul tells us how
he might be just, and at the same time, the justifier of him
that believeth in Jesus Christ. That's revealed to us in the
gospel. So both of these parables, that of the treasure and that
of the pearl, they both represent the gospel as that of great value. And number two, both parables
represent men willing to part with everything to have the treasure. Both parables, they both represent
men as willing to part with all to have the treasure, to have
the pearl. In both of these parables, our
Lord says that the man sells all that he hath Now, it goes
without saying that Christ cannot be purchased with money. We know
the scripture is not saying that. When the Bible speaks about men
buying, it speaks about buying without money and without price. And besides that, the gospel
is for those who have nothing to buy. Our Lord told that parable, didn't
He? The man that owed 50, the man that owed 500, was it pence? And either one had any money. Either one could pay. And the
Lord frankly forgave them both. The Bible never shows man as
being able to purchase salvation. But what these parables are showing
us is that men are willing to sell everything. in order because
they recognize the value of the gospel. This is most important. Let me show you an example in
Mark, if you will. Mark chapter 10. It's not a perfect
example, I'm sure, because we don't know everything about this
man, but Mark chapter 10 in verse 47. A man by the name of Bartimaeus,
a blind man. And when he heard, that is verse
47 of Mark chapter 10, when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth,
he began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have
mercy on me. Many charged him that he should
hold his peace, but he cried the more a great deal. Thou son
of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still and commanded
him to be called And they called the blind man, saying unto him,
Be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee. And he, now notice
this, casting away his garment. You say, well, that garment,
beggar, probably wasn't worth much. May have had holes in it. It may not have been worth much,
but it maybe was all he had. He was a beggar. Remember that. But the point is, garment has
to go. I've got to get to Christ. I've
got to get to Him who can do me good. These men in the parables,
they were willing to sell everything. They did sell everything to get
the treasure to buy the field. Because then they would have
the treasure, sold everything that they could get that pearl
of great price. John Gill said that in this parable,
this in the parable, it represents willingness to part with all
that has been or is dear unto them, with their sins and self-righteousness,
with their good names and characters, their worldly substance and life
itself for the sake of the gospel and their profession of it. William
Hendrickson, he says, and I think this is so, if you look over
in Philippians chapter three, Paul's testimony is a good commentary
on this. These men sold everything they
had to get that field because of the value of the treasure. Sold all their pearls because
of that one pearl of great price. Men are made willing in the day
of His power. Philippians chapter 3, verses
8 and 9. Paul said, Yea, doubtless, and
I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss
of all things, and do count them but dung that I may win Christ. and be found in him not having
mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which
is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of
God by faith. He pointed out that in Scriptures
we have examples of those who find the treasure unexpectedly,
as it seems this man did. We don't know why he was in this
field, anything about that, but he found something unexpected.
He found a treasure in the field. The Samaritan woman, when she
left her house that day with her water pot, do you think she
went away from home expecting to find the water of life? Of course not. What about that
eunuch, that Ethiopian eunuch? Is he a picture, an example of
someone who was seeking, like that man who was seeking goodly
pearls and found that one pearl? He had been to Jerusalem, and
he's on his way home, and he has the Word of God, he's reading.
We've got examples in the Scripture of men who fit the pictures in
these parables. Now, the second, the kingdom
of God's reign. So we see the value of the Gospel,
the value of the Gospel in those first two parables. But also
the kingdom of God's reign in this world is pictured in the
parable of the net, which gathered of every kind, gathered of every
kind. This parable is identical for
the most part to the wheat and the tares, which are not separated
until the harvest. In the net there was both good
and bad fish. which are not separated until
the net is brought, drawn to the shore. And we have the same
words. The words, so shall it be at
the end of the age. Look in verse 40. At the end
of the parable of the wheat and the tares, it says, and therefore
the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in
the end of this world. And then in verse 49, speaking
of the net, so shall it be at the end of the world. And in both parables, the tares
and the bad fish are cast into a furnace of fire. Notice that
concerning the tares in verse 42. and shall cast them into
a furnace of fire, and then the fish, in verse 49, so shall it
be at the end of the world. The angels shall come forth and
sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into
the furnace of fire. In this last parable, we might
also learn from these words in verse 47, of every kind. The gospel is God's net. And it is cast out. It is cast out and it gathers
of every kind, of every nation, of every language, of every level
of education and social standing. It gathers into the net. But some are good and some are
bad. And this reign of the kingdom
of heaven is much like the church in this dispensation. Much like
the church. Because we know that in any church,
every church, and all churches, there are some who are tares
and some who are wheat. And really, We're not to try
to discover who the tares are and who the wheat are. We just
preach the gospel. But it will be revealed in the
last day, in the end of the world. One writer made this observation,
and I'll close with this. He gave these parables about
sowers, mustard seed, yeast, hidden treasure, and pearls.
Illustrations, all of them, which they were familiar, his disciples. They were familiar with these.
But then he closes with one about fishing, with which his disciples
were even more familiar. Because many of these disciples
we know, they were fishermen. And this writer said this, is
he not telling them what you yourselves have been doing many
a time, or have seen your fellow disciples doing, namely, pick
out the bad from the good and discard them, will be done once
for all by the angels at my order. Is he not implying, therefore,
speaking to his disciples, therefore warn men everywhere to repent
Repent, or you shall all likewise perish. In view of the irreversible
decisiveness of the coming judgment, impress upon men the exceeding
preciousness of the kingdom of heaven and the necessity for
everyone to take possession of it here and now. Because there's a day coming.
when the door will be shut and no one shall enter into his kingdom. Is he not impressing these disciples? Go out and preach. Preach. Warn men everywhere. Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Well, I pray that the
Lord would bless this word to all of us here this evening.