“44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”
Desire is deadly. Experience will teach you that. You scratch a dark itch and wind up drenched in guilt and shame. You long to be honored and so eventually take dishonorable means to get there. Desire is deadly. Watching others will teach you that. You have friends and family members left wounded by pursuing what they once wanted. Desire is deadly. The Bible teaches you that; “after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death,” James 1:15. “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” James 4:1.
Desire is deadly, but how do you not desire? That is the what some Christians attempt. Their life goal becomes not desiring. Self-interest becomes the enemy and self-refusal becomes the ultimate virtue. It’s a short step from there from ethics becoming, “I’m good because I never do what I want to do,” and evangelism, “join us spending your life doing what you don’t want or else.”
Jesus seems to have a profoundly different take on desire. He knows it’s deadly. He came, died, and resurrected to destroy the works of deadly desire, but he not against desire in and of itself. Neither is the Father nor the Holy Spirit. God is a God of desire who is profoundly pro-desire provided the object is right. There are Scriptures for that too; “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,” Psalm 37:4. “The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath,” Proverbs 11:23.
So, yes, flee evil desires, and yes, chase after good desires with more vigor than Romeo chasing Juliet. There are parables dealing with both sides of the desire equation and today’s parables run with the grain of desire. You passionately pursue what you desire; the good news is that God is most desirable. That’s the claim of this sermon: You will passionately pursue what you desire; the good news is that God is most desirable.
We will study this in two points. First: a treasure hidden in a field. Second: a pearl of great value. First, in verse 44, a treasure hidden in a field. Second, in verses 45-46, a pearl of great value.
We see passion and pursuit in our first point: a treasure hidden in a field. These two short parables are two of the most famous; part of understanding famous Scriptures is understanding that they don’t stand alone. You can’t remove them from their context and understanding them anymore than you can ignore a child’s family and understand her. This first parable is about a hidden treasure and Jesus has been speaking about hiddenness. He just said that his parables uncover what’s hidden; up in verse 35 quoting Psalm 78, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”
This chapter’s parables deal with hiddenness—yeast folded into dough, an almost unseeable mustard seed, what’s hidden under the ocean’s surface being dredged up. It’s all hidden until it is revealed and Jesus says his parables reveal what’s hidden. Today’s focus is that what’s hidden is a treasure; verse 44, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” That’s wonderful news—good news. The hidden reality isn’t hopelessness or despair as the world would encourage you to be brave enough to see. No, the hidden reality is treasure.
Finding hidden treasure is an almost unimaginable experience for us today but not so in the first century. The ancients, especially during times of crises, would bury their cash and jewels underground in jars and boxes because that seemed the safest way to keep it. It’s hard for us to understand what a modern marvel banks really are. The rabbis then had a saying, “there is only one safe repository for money—the earth,” and so you see the man in the parable of the talents burying his master’s money to keep it safe for his return.
What likely happening in Jesus’ parable is that the previous owner of the field who had buried the treasure had died and this laborer was working the land for the new owner who knew nothing about what was hidden; the fieldhand stumbled across this treasure as he was turning over the soil. This happened in that day. It was the ancient equivalent of winning the lottery. It doesn’t to many people but it does happen.
I think the lottery is an apt analogy because there is some moral ambiguity in the lottery as there is in this story. Under rabbinic law if this man lifted the treasure out of the dirt, the treasure would become his master’s, but if he left the jar or box in the dirt and opened the lid to check it out while it stayed in the ground, it was still part of the field and he could, as Jesus’ parable says, buy the field and it would become his. You can see the convoluted logic which was much of rabbinic law, but the strangeness of it points to the moral off-ness of the situation. The same goes for the lottery. When I was a teenager one of my uncles would give me scratch tickets from the lottery with my Christmas present. I would agonize over those. I don’t think gambling is right, but the tickets were already bought, but what if I won and my picture was in the paper as a lottery player? I was in moral knots, which I’m sure would have baffled my uncle who just hoped I would have the joy of winning, and that alone is the point Jesus is trying to make with finding hidden treasure—the joy of treasure. Jesus uses a morally ambiguous illustration because we know the power and delight of acquiring and winning. We long for that joy.
This is a parable about that joy. It’s a parable about the joy of the surprise of getting something life changing. We studied the Father’s joy in finding us with the parables of the lost sheep and coin. Today’s two are about our joy in finding. It’s worth noting that Jesus tells many parables about joy. He seems to think that we need to be corrected into joy both by how we see God and by how we see ourselves. That’s worth considering when you think about God correcting you. He corrects you for joy into joy. He works with the grain of desire.
When we turn against desire—when we squash the passionate pursuit behind “he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field”—we don’t take steps towards heaven. We take steps towards hell. Jesus made us for desire and that he knows what will satisfy such longings. “The analogy,” as Snodgrass explains, “is not merely between the kingdom and the treasure. The analogy is with the whole process… the kingdom of heaven is the like the case of a man who finds a treasure, covers it, and because of joy goes, sells all, and purchases the field. The kingdom encompasses all these aspects.”
Now this can quickly turn into, “I should want the kingdom.” This parable can quickly turn into our attempt to try to convince ourselves that what we take to be a beige sensible sedan is actually a fire red muscle car and that we could see it if only they had enough faith but since we don’t there must be something wrong with us. That’s not this parable. There is no “should” in this parable. “The man’s action is dictated by pure self-interest, as is that of the person who opts for the kingdom of heaven,” as France explains.
Jesus’ assumption of this parable—in addition to his assumption that we humans are desire-ers—is that the God and all He offers are supremely desirable and will be seen as such when truly seen. I didn’t give myself peptalks to find my wife attractive. I did and do find her such and so I act accordingly. The message of this parable is that nothing else compares with what the Lord offers. You truly are trading up if you find the Lord even if it costs you everything. He’s worth it.
This mattered for the original disciples who by this point in the gospels had given up a fair bit for Jesus. Jesus is telling them that they’ve made the deal of a lifetime. “To find the kingdom of heaven is to find the one treasure which outweighs all other valuation. It is worth any cost to seize this unique and unrepeatable opportunity,” as France put it.
The man in this parable didn’t think he sacrificed anything. He didn’t give up what he had to buy that field out of a sense of should. He wanted that field more than he wanted anything else and so went after it. If you are blessed enough to hear about grace, go after it. If you are providentially gifted enough to encounter this God who loves, grab on and don’t let go.
That’s how the kingdom of heaven is. That’s how this parable starts, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure…” There is something sick within us that wants this parable to read, “the kingdom of heaven is like the blandest food you can imagine and so it must be good for you.” Mahy of us have been so burned by desire that we assume that if we desire anything, there must be something wrong with it or something wrong with us. Yes, our desires do get us in trouble but desire itself is not the trouble nor its intensity. As CS Lewis put it on this topic, ‘It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.”
This parable is a call for you to wrestle with desire. For you it might be a call to learn to desire again. It might be a call for you to ask the Lord to show you more of His glory so that you again desire Him and what He offers. It might be a call for you to be grateful that you even found this treasure just as you were grateful that the Father found you when you were lost and keeps finding you. It might be a call for all that and more. That’s today’s first parable; the second and related one has to do with a pearl and that’s our second point: a pearl of great value.
This second parable is quite similar to the first but also different. That’s why we are studying them together on the same night but also in different points. You see this in the word “again”; “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” You have another story dealing with value and what some might call “good fortune.”
There are differences, though. In the first parable the man simply stumbled across a hidden treasure. In this one, the merchant is searching diligently. The first parable highlights the joy of the surprise of the good news. This parable tells us to get busy searching for what’s good. In both, though, there is treasure that will transform the life of the acquirer.
Jesus liked to appeal to us by way of treasure. “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven;” “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus knew that we humans are treasure focused. He didn’t chide us for that. He didn’t chide the man in the last parable about being excited about the treasure. He didn’t chide this merchant for securing this once-in-a-lifetime pearl. He commended them. Jesus commends our pursuit of right treasure.
That’s a helpful correction for many of us. These two parables always surprise me because I realize yet again how bizarrely apparently anti-treasure I must be. My self-righteous flesh which masquerades as an angel of light seems to think the last parable should be about a man who went and told his master about the treasure and that this parable should be about the merchant finding that he loved something more than the pearl. I’m not alone in that. There were apparently many stories dealing with pearls in that culture. Pearls were, after all, a sign of wealth—a bit of the way we have songs diamond rings. In the Jewish stories, though, finding such a pearl was a divine reward for having done something good beforehand or the found pearl was soon sacrificed to save something more valuable—like a loved one. It’s possible that Jesus knew these stories and crafted this parable to highlight the proper role of self-interest in grabbing hold. “Jesus, as always, surprises his hears by treating well known stories in such a way as to emphasize an aspect that they do not in the least expect,” as Jeremias explains.
This merchant knew a good value. He likely focused solely on pearls. We are so used to general stores that we don’t realize what a novelty they are in human history—a novelty that was pioneered here in West Michigan by Hendrik Meijer. For the vast majority of human history shops sold a single product—you had your dairyman. You had your vegetable man. You had your olive oil man. This merchant is a pearl man and so knows a value when it comes to pearls he sees it, and so, “when he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” Jesus wants us to know that this was a sound investment. This merchant’s wife didn’t respond to him bringing home this pearl the way Jack’s mother responded to him in the Jack in the Beanstalk—“what have you done?” This was a great trade. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and he took it.
The kingdom of God is like a once in a life time opportunity. Take it. That’s the desire and joy behind these parables. It’s the same response CS Lewis showed in entitling his memoir Surprised by Joy. It’s the same language Jesus points to in calling the gospel good news—good surprise. Jesus’ message is that “the kingdom is present and it is time to celebrate and participate in that kingdom at any cost,” as Snodgrass put it.
The man in the field and the merchant saw that. They didn’t need to be told to give up everything. They wanted to give up everything because they thought they were getting more in return. While there is much about sacrifice in Scripture, but ‘it is not by telling people to sacrifice that they make “sacrifices,”’ as Bruner explains. That’s worthy our consideration. Sacrifices for God that don’t stem from the spirit we see in this parable don’t lead to joy; they lead to resentment.
This parable might be a call for you to wrestle with resentment and reward. It might be a call for you to consider whether you really do think the grace of God is the deal of a lifetime. It might be worth you considering whether what you found in Jesus has brought and brings you joy. It might be worth you considering all that and more. Amen.