Entering the Kingdom

The point of the parable is here is a man who found something so valuable that he sold everything that he had to get it. He was so overjoyed. He was so ecstatic that he was willing to do anything to get that treasure. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. So what's at the top of your to-do list today?

Perhaps it's chipping away at your inbox, or finishing a project on your house, or spending time with your children. Whatever's filling your day, how do you make sure you're living like a citizen of God's Kingdom? John MacArthur has the answers as he continues his look at some of our Lord's most vivid and detailed descriptions of His Kingdom. It's part of John's series on the parables of the Kingdom.

And now with today's lesson, here's John. Matthew chapter 13, verses 44 through 46. Matthew 13, 44 through 46. The Lord said, Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy of it goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant man seeking fine pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Now if we were to sum up the meaning of these two parables, we could sum them up under the title, The Incomparable Value of the Kingdom. The Incomparable Value of the Kingdom. The great old Saint Thomas Guthrie once wrote on the value of the kingdom or the value of salvation, and he said this, What he was saying was what our Lord is saying.

There is nothing in all the universe to match the priceless value of the kingdom. And that's what we're going to see as we look together at these two parables. Now let's look first of all at the parables and then at the principles they teach. Very simple outline, the parables and then the principles. Now the parables, let's look first of all at verse 44. The first one is a parable of hidden treasure.

Very simple story. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which when a man has found he hides and for joy of it goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. Now this is very common parlance to the people in our Lord's time and not so common to us. We put our money in the savings and loan. Or we put our money in the bank. Or we put our money in stocks and bonds or securities or real estate or whatever that is if we have any money to put anywhere.

But in those days they had no banks as such for common people and banks weren't necessarily good places to put all of your resources. And so it was usual that men took whatever they considered of great value and they buried it in the earth. Particularly was this the case in Palestine because Palestine was a place of war. It was a battleground. Its history is literally filled with the record of one battle after another. One war after another and there were inevitably conquering peoples and those who came in to steal and to loot and to plunder. And so very often when a battle was on the horizon the people would take the valuable things out of their home, take them out into the field and in a marked place where they could recover them again they would bury them in the earth.

Very commonly done. The earth was a veritable storage house. And so here is a man who is in the field and we don't know but that he works in the field or that he is for some reason or other in that field which belongs to another man perhaps employed by the man who owns the field. And as he is working in that field, maybe he's plowing or maybe he's tilling the ground or whatever, he comes across a treasure buried in the ground. And immediately he puts it back where he found it and sells every single thing he possesses in the world, liquidates all that he has and buys that field in order that he may gain that treasure. Now it would not be uncommon for him to find something in the field. In Matthew chapter 25 our Lord tells a story about a man who gave talents to his servants.

Remember that? And the first two servants took the five talents and the two talents and multiplied them and the third one who was very, very timid in his investment approach buried it in the ground. Now that tells us something about a man who was not wise. He should have invested it and gained interest the Lord said. But it also tells us that that was commonly done by people who didn't want to invest their money but wanted to hang on to it. And so we see this man coming through the field, he finds a treasure, he puts it right back in the ground, goes and buys the field. This was very, very common. Josephus said, the historian in that time, the gold and the silver and the rest of that most precious furniture which the Jews had and which the owners treasured up underground was done to withstand the fortunes of war.

And so this was a very, very common thing to do. And there would be people plowing in the field or there would be people digging in the field for other purposes and they would inadvertently come across this treasure from time to time. Now at this juncture the parable introduces an ethical situation. People have said, look, this guy didn't do right. How can you have Jesus telling a story in which there's an unethical activity? How can you have Jesus telling a story in which a man does something that is wrong? I mean the guy uncovers a treasure and then he hides it without telling the man who owns the field and he goes to buy the field. What he should have done in discovering the treasure was pick it up and take it and say, here's a treasure I found in your field. And so some people have been struck by what appears to be unethical.

Well let me help you with that although that isn't the main point. If we don't get past that some people kind of choke on that and don't get the rest of the message. First of all, Jewish rabbinic law said if a man finds scattered fruit or money it belongs to the finder. Now that is what law said. If you find lost fruit or money it belongs to the finder. So the man is within the permission of the Jewish rabbinic law.

So the Jews listening to Jesus would not have perceived this man as unethical. Secondly, that which was hidden in the field did not belong to the man who owned the field. If it was his he wouldn't be selling his field without digging it up. He didn't know it was there. He had not gone to the effort to uncover it and dig it out.

No doubt it belonged to a previous owner of that same field who had buried it there, died in battle or died by accident unable to recover it. And so it was no more the number one owners than it was the number two owners. So he had no prior right to it.

And the man who had uncovered it by Jewish law did have the claim on it. The other man had not done that. Now, thirdly, this man was very equitable.

This man was very fair. If this man was not an honest man when he found the treasure what would he have done? I mean, he would have split. He would have packed up his treasure and been long gone. And put it in his own field. Why go to all the trouble of buying the entire field when you've got the treasure in your hand? You say, well, maybe his conscience bothered him. Or maybe it was his father-in-law or some relative. Well, I thought about that and I thought of a good idea. This will show you how my mind works. You could take the treasure and go liquidate a portion of it and with the money you gain from the treasure then buy the field.

Not bad, huh? He didn't do that. He took that treasure that he had found. He knew it belonged to him by Jewish law. He knew he had more or at least equal right to it with the man who owned the land.

He put it right back in the ground. Never even used any of it for the purchase. Liquidated every single thing he had on the face of the earth in his possession and went and bought the entire field just so that he could do what was right to get that treasure. No lack of ethics here. No one was defrauded. Now having said that, none of that is the point of the parable.

That's just free for nothing. The point of the parable is here is a man who found something so valuable that he sold everything that he had to get it. That's the point of the parable.

He was so overjoyed. He was so ecstatic that he was willing to do anything to get that treasure. Now let's look at the second parable of the pearl. The kingdom of heaven is also like a merchant man and that is a wholesale merchant, emperas, and the Greek has to do with a wholesale man who would go around and buy things on a wholesale basis and then sell them to somebody who would retail them. So this wholesaler scouring around seeking fine pearls.

This is very common in those days for a man to do who was a sort of an entrepreneur. He would be in the pearl wholesaling business and he would find that there would be a diligent search on his part to gain the pearls that he was desiring to gain. Many people in diversifying their investments put their investments in pearls. Pearls would be the equivalent of diamonds today. Pearls were the most valuable gem available at that time in the world. And if you had pearls, you had a fortune.

Incredibly valuable. So valuable were they that when women wanted to show their wealth, according to 1 Timothy 2, 9, they put pearls on their head. And it was said of one lady by the name of Lillia Polina, the wife of the emperor Caligula, that at one event she had 36 million dollars worth of pearls all over her. In fact, the historian says she had pearls on her head, she had pearls on her hair, she had pearls on her ears, she had pearls on her neck, and she had pearls on her fingers.

She could have stood in for one of the gates of heaven. But this was how pearls were perceived in those days. Pliny, the historian, says that Cleopatra had two pearls each worth a half a million dollars, and that was in a day when money was 20 times greater in its buying power than it is today. And when the Roman emperors wanted to demonstrate their incredible wealth and show how filthy rich they were, they dissolved pearls in vinegar and drank them in their wine. So pearls were very valuable. Our Lord in Matthew 7, 6 says, don't cast your, what, pearls before swine, because He is trying to compare the worst with the most priceless. You don't give the most valuable thing to a pig.

That's foolish. And so pearls were really perceived like we perceive diamonds today. Very, very, very valuable.

In fact, even going into the book of Revelation, we find that when God begins to describe heaven, it is as pearls in its beauty. And so here is a man who went around seeking fine pearls, and he would market them because they were good investment. They went up in value, and you could diversify. You could put some of your money in the ground, some of your money in pearls, some of your money in property and whatever else, and that's the way people ran their businesses. The one thing you didn't do, I understand, if you're a smart investor and still don't, is to put everything into one investment.

But isn't it interesting that in both cases, that's exactly what these two did? The first man sold everything and bought the one field. The second man sold everything and bought the one pearl. Now, what are the principles from the two parables?

You understand them now. What are the principles? I'm going to give you six principles.

Listen carefully. Number one, the kingdom is priceless in value. The kingdom is priceless in value. Both parables are designed to teach us the incomparable value of the kingdom of the Lord.

And when we talk about the kingdom of the Lord, we're talking about salvation. We're talking about Christ Himself and the gift of salvation that He gives, the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, the preciousness of what it is to be in His kingdom, the preciousness of fellowshipping with the King, the preciousness of being a subject of the sovereign. The blessedness of the kingdom is so valuable that it is the most valuable commodity that can ever be found and only a fool is not willing to sell everything he has to gain it.

Nothing comes close in value. In Christ and in His kingdom, there is a treasure. There is a treasure that is rich beyond comparison. There is a treasure that is rich beyond conception. There is a treasure that is incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, eternal. There is a heavenly treasure lying in the field of this poverty-stricken, bankrupt, accursed world, a treasure sufficient to eternally enrich every one of earth's poor, miserable, blind, and naked inhabitants. Salvation and forgiveness and love and joy and peace and virtue and goodness and glory and heaven and eternal life all are in that treasure. And the treasure is that salvation, and the pearl is that salvation that is equivalent to being in the kingdom. It's what the hymn writer said when he said, I found the pearl of greatest price, eternal life so fair, it was through the Savior's sacrifice I found that jewel rare. Of all the excellent pearls in the world, of all the things that might be in a field, salvation outstrips all of them in its eternal value. What a gem, what a treasure, and how the world knows little of that treasure. How they do not understand it at all.

How they wrap themselves up in that stuff which is valueless. Secondly, this lesson, the kingdom is not superficially visible. The treasure was hidden, right?

And the pearl had to be sought. It isn't just lying around on the surface. The treasure is not obvious to men. The value and the preciousness of the kingdom of heaven, the value and the preciousness of salvation is not viewed by men. They don't see it although it stands there and looks them in the eye. The world looks at us and they don't understand why we're all about this business of worshiping God. They don't understand why we want to give our lives to Jesus Christ. They don't understand why we want to live and obey a code of ethics and rules that goes against the grain of our deepest lusts and drives.

They don't understand why we price this so highly when it means so little to them. No, the kingdom is not superficially visible. It says in 1 Corinthians 2, the natural man understandeth not the things of God. They are foolishness to him.

And in 2 Corinthians 4, it says that the God of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ should shine unto them. So, it isn't that apparent. Even though the message is here and the word is here, they don't see it.

They're blind. It is not superficially manifest. In both cases, one, there is a seeking.

The other, there was a discovery and a pursuit of that which was discovered. Some people never bother to look beyond the surface. They're so busy fiddling around with the baubles and the trinkets and the toys and the pebbles that lie on the surface, they never get to the treasure underneath. One writer put it this way. Under the form of a man, under the privacy and poverty of a Nazarene, was the fullness of the Godhead hidden that day from the wise and prudent of the world.

The light was near them and yet they did not see it. The riches of divine grace were brought to their door and yet they continued poor and miserable. And that's true.

And there have been multitudinous times that I and you as well have gone and given the description of the treasure and the pearl to people who have turned their backs and walked away. And they do not care. They do not want that. They do not understand its inestimable value. It is not superficially perceived. That is why it says in Matthew 7, 14, that narrow is the way and few there be that find it. And that is why it says in Matthew 11 that the kingdom is taken by the violent who take it by force.

In other words, it must be pursued. The kingdom is valuable, but the kingdom is also hidden from the superficial lookers who do not want to look deeply to the truth that is hidden in the Word of God. That's why it says in Luke 13, 24, strive to enter in at the narrow gate for many I say will seek to enter in and shall not be able. Now even the pearl gives the same idea. The pearl, while it is not hidden in the sense that the man doesn't have to dig it out of some place, still originally had to be gained at the most incredible kind of circumstance where the person dives into the sea, digs it out of the bottom, opens the shell, finds it there, and now the man pursues it all over the world till he finds it. And so there is the sense in which we see the hiddenness of the message.

The world doesn't see it. You know, Jesus said that you will not come unto Me that you might have life. And then He said, search the Scriptures, for they or they would speak of Me. And John said He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world what? Knew Him not, He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. You see, just the average, run-of-the-mill, superficial approach to life, just pumping your way through, trampling across the path of life, day-to-day with never a thought for anything that is deep or profound or of true value is not going to render you the truth at all.

It isn't on the surface. There has to come that desire at some point to respond. Even in the case of the man who found the treasure, he had to pursue what it was that he originally found, and maybe he hooked his plow on something and was willing to pursue what that something was. Third thought, the kingdom is personally appropriated, and this is the crux of the parables. The kingdom is personally appropriated.

Now the previous two parables give us the idea that the kingdom is just influential, or it's just large. It doesn't say anything about the personal appropriation, and that's why our Lord gives us these two. You have a man in verse 44. You have another man in verse 45. Now we're dealing with individuals, and each of them finds something specifically for himself and appropriates it unto himself.

Very important. Now listen. This is to show us that you can be sort of in the kingdom, under the dominion of God, and not be a member of the kingdom. If you're alive in the earth, if you live in the universe, you're under God's rule.

Is that right? Because He's the sovereign of the universe. And if you're on the earth, in a sense you're in the kingdom, because He's ruling. But you're not a subject of the king. You're not a personal member of the kingdom.

There are just like a lot of people in the church who aren't Christians. The wide world is under the rule of Jesus Christ, but not a part of His true kingdom. That's why in Matthew 8 when He talks to the Jews, He says, The sons of the kingdom will be cast into outer darkness, where they'll be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. In other words, there are some Jews who, although they are Jewish, and are although under the covenant of God with Israel, are going to forfeit all that that means because they've never personally come to know God.

Right? In Romans 2 it says, The circumcision is not the circumcision of the flesh, but of the heart. And in Romans 9, 6 it says, All Israel is not Israel. So you could be a Jew, as it were, under that monarchy or theocracy, that rule of God, and never be a true member of the kingdom.

And the same is true today. There are people in the earth who are here, but have never appropriated the kingdom. And so it is to the personal appropriation point that we come in these two parables. It is not enough to be under the influence of the kingdom. It is not enough to just be under the influence of the church or the influence of Christianity.

It is not enough to just, as it were, lodge in the branches or be touched by its permeating influence. There must be personal appropriation. And at some point in time, in order to do that, men and women must come to the point where they realize the value of it. See, God offers men what is really valuable.

And it's incredible the extremes they go to to find what's worthless. . That's John MacArthur. He's chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He's also the featured speaker here on Grace to You.

And today he showed you why the treasure God provides is better than the best this world can offer. It's part of John's current study from Matthew 13 called The Parables of the Kingdom. Now, as we're seeing in this study, the meaning of Jesus' parables was hidden to those who didn't believe in him. And as is always the case, only a believer can truly understand what the Bible means by what it says. And so, John, I know you would say that saving faith doesn't necessarily guarantee a right interpretation. It's necessary, but something more is needed too, right? Yeah, well, first of all, backing up to what you just said, not being a believer can guarantee that you won't get the right interpretation.

Right. Because the natural man understands not the things of God. They're foolishness to him. They are spiritually discerned, and he is spiritually dead. So a non-believer is always going to get the Bible wrong, and we have plenty of evidence of that, the misuse of Scripture on an individual level, and all the unregenerate people who develop cults and bizarre religions and twist Scripture. Yes, you need to be a believer in order to have the Spirit of God as your teacher and your mind illuminated in the truth.

But it's not just that. It requires diligent study, and that's why we go back to that familiar text of Paul writing to Timothy. The original translation was, Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

So if you don't rightly divide the word, or rightly interpret it, you should be ashamed of yourself. That tells us that the Bible can be understood if you're diligent enough in searching the Scriptures. We want to help you with that, and the flagship resource of this ministry has always been the MacArthur Study Bible. It gives you 25,000 footnotes for the whole Bible from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, helping you understand what each section means, each passage, and in many cases, each word. The MacArthur Study Bible has sold in the multiple millions over the years a New American Standard Version, New King James ESV. It's available in Spanish, German, French, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese. If you don't have a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible, you need to get one.

It is a library in one volume. It will make a huge difference. It will lead you to an accurate understanding of everything you're reading in Scripture. You can order one today from Grace to You. A lot of options to choose from with regard to that, so check the website.

That's right. Whenever you come across a passage you don't understand, just look at the footnotes. On every page, they give a clear, detailed explanation that will unlock the meaning of Scripture verse by verse. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. The Study Bible is available in hardcover, genuine leather, and premium goatskin.

And as John said, you can choose from the English Standard, New King James, and New American Standard Versions. To get your MacArthur Study Bible, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. And at our website, be sure you take advantage of all the resources that are there for you. Do you have a question about how to honor God and honor your spouse in your marriage, or how to deal with the trials you face, or how to minister to a loved one who is suffering? For those issues and countless others, you will find biblical answers in the Grace to You Sermon Archive. That's 3,500 full-length sermons available for free download right now. You'll also find daily devotionals and insightful blog articles and much more. Our web address again, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the staff, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John continues his fascinating look at the parables of the kingdom. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You. .