In his sermon 'Parables About the Value of the Kingdom,' Robert Bosley explores two parables from Matthew 13:44-46 that illustrate the incomparable value of the kingdom of heaven. The first parable describes a man who discovers a hidden treasure in a field and joyfully sells all he owns to purchase the field. The second parable tells of a merchant seeking fine pearls, who sells everything to acquire one pearl of great price. Bosley emphasizes that these parables highlight the immense worth of God's kingdom, which surpasses all earthly possessions. The sermon further discusses how individuals may find the kingdom either unexpectedly or through diligent seeking, and how true conversion involves joyfully abandoning former ways of life for the treasure of Christ. Bosley draws parallels between the parables and biblical figures like the Apostle Paul, illustrating that the kingdom is a gift of grace, not something earned by works. He concludes by urging listeners to value Christ above all and to embrace the kingdom with joy and repentance.

If you could take out your copy of the scriptures and open up to Matthew chapter 13. Matthew chapter 13. We've been going through the parables of the kingdom told by our Lord and today we're going to continue that with the the next two parables in the line that Jesus gives here in this this chapter. Matthew 13 beginning in verse 44. Again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls who when he had found one pearl of great price went and sold all that he had and bought it. Let's pray. Father, we come to you this afternoon and we thank you Lord for giving us such a beautiful Lord's Day. Thank you for the wonderful time we have had worshiping together, sitting under the instruction of your word. Thank you Lord for our time of fellowship.

Thank you for feeding us again both body and soul today. And Lord as we turn again to your word, the all sufficient scriptures that we heard about this morning, we pray God that you would open them up to us, help us to understand Lord. Open up our dull ears, open up our heart and hearts that we may know and understand what you are saying to us in these words. And may you be glorified this afternoon. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

So again, we're continuing the parables of the kingdom. And in the previous parables, we've seen many glorious truths. In the parable of the sower, we saw how the message or the word of the kingdom is scattered abroad and those who have been prepared receive it and that word yields a glorious crop. The parable of the weeds laid before us, the reality that this world is a field of weeds, but also wheat. And there will be a separation of the two one day.

There will be a true and real final judgment for all people. And the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven taught us about the world conquering growth of the kingdom and its ability to spread and subdue all opposition. Now these next two parables turn to another element of the kingdom that we must understand. In these two parables we learn of the great, all-surpassing value of the kingdom. The value of the kingdom of heaven.

And so we've seen, there's kind of a flow to the parables. We've seen in the beginning how a rejection of the message of the kingdom and a rejection of the kingdom itself leads to judgment. And this kingdom is an inexorable force filling the whole world. And now we see how this kingdom is an invaluable treasure worth abandoning everything for. So again I'm going to read verses 44 and 46 and we'll examine these these three short verses and and see what beauties we can pull out of them.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure, hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Two short parables in three verses, but one basic message. The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, which is best I believe understood as the rule of God in and through Christ is more valuable than you can possibly imagine. That's what these two parables teach in their essence.

The rule of God is the most precious treasure you can have. Nothing else comes close. Nothing in this world comes close to matching the treasure that is the kingdom of our God. Look at the first parable, the parable of the hidden treasure. There's very little detail given in this story.

It's a single sentence, it's a single verse. A man is in a field that he apparently doesn't own, and somehow, we don't know the details, but somehow he finds every five-year-old boy's dream he stumbles on hidden treasure and he sees this treasure and he does the mental math and he realizes that everything he owns pales in comparison to the value of this hidden treasure that he's found. And so in his joy, not begrudgingly or half-heartedly, he runs to sell everything he has so that he can go and buy that field. And buying that field, take possession of that treasure. Now, no background is given on this field, who owns it, why this man is in it, what he's doing there, Nothing.

There's a lot of questions that are raised. And this lack of information has actually given rise to a long tradition of commentators arguing with one another about the morality of the actions of the man in the story. But let's not get caught on all the details. As we've gone over previous parables, we don't have to make every detail correspond to reality. The parables are intended to convey essentially one basic idea, and certain elements of the story may or may not be relevant to reality.

So debating the morality of the man is completely outside the bounds of the parable. It's irrelevant to the actual point that Jesus is trying to communicate. Jesus is in teaching about the ethics of the situation. He's not giving a case study of what you should do if you happen to find a vast treasure chest in someone's yard someday. He's not intending this to be a parable explaining the application of the law of God in the case of hidden treasure.

Instead, the parable is laser focused on one thing, the treasure that is the kingdom of God and how this man abandons everything to gain that treasure. Everything else is secondary to that. But there are a few interesting things to note, I believe, in the parable. First consider that it's just, the scene is just dropped on us. It's there's treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid.

So he finds it and he re-hides it so no one else could find it. There's no indication that the man was searching for it. It seems as if he stumbles on it almost as if by accident. The implication is that the man, without looking for it, found this vast wealth. And I believe this is intended to teach us in this parable that there are those who find the kingdom of heaven without having sought for it.

Isaiah 65, one, I was sought by those who did not ask for me. I was found by those who did not seek me. There are some, there are some in this building who can attest that they were living their life their own way and they were content to be in that situation when all of a sudden something happened and Their eyes were open to the treasure of Jesus Christ. They weren't looking for it, but Christ was looking for them, and he found them. And so from their perspective, out of nowhere, they found the treasure of the kingdom of God.

There are some who live in open rebellion all their lives, and in a moment by mere sovereign grace, they are changed from God haters to God lovers, and they pursue that kingdom. They are changed in a moment they see the perc... The surpassing glory and value and beauty of Christ and joyfully abandoned their previous way of life in order to know and follow Jesus. They were not seeking God, but God sought them out and claimed them as his own. I believe the Apostle Paul is a great example of this.

Consider what he says in Philippians chapter 3, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so circumcise the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law, a Pharisee, concerning the zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what happened to the Apostle Paul? On the road to Damascus, he was not looking for Christ. But Christ literally knocked him off the horse, so to speak, and brought him into the kingdom. And so Paul says, but what things were gained to me, all this litany of his lineage and what he could claim to as some sort of reason to have a right standing before God, Whatever things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I might gain Christ." The apostle is a great example of the man who stumbled on that hidden treasure. He wasn't looking for it, but he found it anyway. And his eyes were opened, and he saw the value, and he abandoned it all for the sake of Christ. And let's be honest even if you are fit more into the paradigm of the man in the second parallel, which we'll get to in a second, understand that ultimately this does describe every one of us. There is no one who seeks for God.

They have all turned aside. By nature, none of us seek after God. It is always by grace that you come to see and find this treasure. Now in the second parable the man is seeking. He is a merchant in the business of looking for pearls.

Verse 45, again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. At this time, all the way until really the 20th century, pearls were actually rarer than diamonds. So pearls were extraordinarily valuable jewels. And so this is a merchant who makes it his business to find these things. And he finds one greater than any he could have imagined.

He found one pearl of great price. He sought it and he found it. Here the picture is of a man who has been looking diligently for this thing. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, Jeremiah 29.12.

There are those who God does first enable them and they do seek. That's always by grace, always by grace. Some find the kingdom seemingly almost by accident. Others have a prolonged search. Some people can attest to for years seeking and looking and having a sense of, I need something.

God is there, but I don't understand. Some people, God works over time. So we can't immediately categorize everyone the same. Everyone's conversion story, everyone's path to Christ is different, but if they become part of this kingdom, it is because of God's grace at root. And in the second parable, it's not just that the man found a particularly large or valuable pearl.

Look at the language. He found one pearl of great price. The language in the original is emphatic. Some translations or commentators argue just he found a pearl. No, he found one pearl of surpassing value.

And that is how the kingdom of God is. There is only one kingdom of great surpassing value. There are many lesser kingdoms in the world. You can build your own little kingdom, But all of it pales in comparison to the kingdom of God and the rule of God in Christ. There is only one kingdom and one way into that kingdom.

It stands alone and any alternative is by definition a downgrade any alternative is by definition lesser it is a lesser treasure it is a lesser pearl it is not the all-surpassing treasure that you truly need. Any alternative to this kingdom will not satisfy. It can never do it. Now in its essence, what are the treasure and the pearl pictures of? Well, obviously the kingdom or the rule of God, yes, but specifically, ultimately, I want to propose that it is Christ himself.

It's Christ himself. The most precious part of the kingdom of heaven is the king. The rule of the King and his kingdom are inherently linked. The greatest treasure that anyone can find is the one who is the desire of nations. The one that without whom heaven would not be the glorious place that we are told that it is.

Now I personally grew up in a church tradition that emphasized when doing evangelism and going door-to-door asking people the question, do you want to go to heaven when you die? That was the main opening, the main opener to try and talk to somebody and eventually get them to pray some sort of sinner's prayer and claim that you won them to Jesus after 30 seconds of talking. You ask them, do you want to go to heaven when you die? And I remember probably 10 or 11 years ago for the first time hearing someone rebut that idea, someone we're all probably very familiar with. I heard Paul Washer talking about this idea of asking people if they want to go to heaven when they die.

And his point was absolutely spot on. He says, everyone wants to go to heaven when they die. Everyone wants to go to a place where there's no more pain and no more sorrow and no more death. They just don't want God to be there when they get there. So the question is not, do you want to go to heaven when you die?

The question is, do you want Christ? Do you want to be with Jesus? That is the question. We have heard much in our study through Revelation about the glory of heaven and the magnificent gifts and blessings that God has in store for his people in eternity. But the greatest of all of them is our King himself.

And so if you don't want Jesus, If He isn't your treasure, then you won't be satisfied. Heaven will not be what people want or need unless Christ Himself is their treasure, unless He is the one that they want above all. The true convert loves Christ and values Him more than any other, and his or her heart cries out as we see in the last couple verses in Revelation, come Lord Jesus, not come eternity or come heaven. It's come Lord Jesus because the heart of the true believer longs to be with Christ because He is the supreme object of love and worth. And again, look back to the first parable, verse 44.

Not only does the man find the treasure, but it says, for joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has. Once discovered, he realizes that this treasure is so precious that it is a joy to him to go and abandon everything he has. All his possessions are counted as nothing in comparison to the value of this treasure that he's found. And he does it joyfully. For joy over it.

The faith that saves is truly faith alone. We are not saved by any mixture of faith and works, But true saving faith is not cold and sterile. It's not simply clinical or academic. It is a faith that motivates the soul to love. The soul that sees the beauty and glory of Jesus and the preciousness of his kingdom is a soul that is filled with joy at what he's found in Christ.

There should be joy when the sinner sees his need and sees what Jesus offers him in his kingdom. The sinner joyfully turns and goes to Christ. Peter described the heart of all God's people when he said, though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Love and joy go together when they found the most extravagant and glorious treasure in all the universe.

If you've truly seen your need for Christ, you can't help but rejoice at having found him because you know how much you needed him. Now we know that salvation is not purchased. The price was paid by Christ. You were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He purchased your redemption.

So don't think that you earn eternal life by literally selling all you have. You cannot buy the kingdom. We do not earn or buy God's grace by giving up material things or by doing any amount of good works. None of it is sufficient. It is all of grace.

It is a gift. And we are instructed, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. You who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. You are told to come and purchase salvation without cost because the price has been paid on your behalf already.

So then what does the man or the men selling everything they have to buy these treasures, to buy this treasure and this pearl, what is that a picture of? I believe it's a picture of repentance. The sinner seeing the treasure of the kingdom of heaven turns from his sin and his earthly mindedness and he abandons his former way of life and he turns from his rebellion and submits to Christ as his King and his Lord and his God and this repentance is described here as giving up all that he has. It's described as giving up all that you have because for the unbeliever your rebellion your sin is all that you have. Nothing you have lasts.

And so the best that the unbeliever has is his rebellion and the fleeting pleasure of sin. And so these men are described as giving up everything, selling everything to get these treasures. So what do you sell in order to buy the incredible treasure of the kingdom of God? You give up your sin. You renounce your unbelief.

You repent of your rebellion. That is how you sell all that you have to buy this kingdom. You turn from your short-lived earthly pleasure to gain eternal pleasures at the right hand of God. You turn from your idols to serve the living and true God. Remember Pilgrim's Progress, the man in Interpreter's House who had the muckrake digging in the straws and the dust while a celestial crown was offered to him.

You put down the muckrake and you take the crown. You put down the muckrake. You stop playing in the filth of the world. You give up hell and gain heaven. And so rightly seen, when you understand what the parables are getting at, rightly seen you realize that these men made no sacrifice.

And the sinner who repents makes no sacrifice. He loses nothing when he comes to Christ, because there is nothing that you give up that will not be repaid a thousandfold in the Kingdom of God. You lose nothing. You gain everything, more than you could have imagined, more than you could ever want. You could ask any believer here, you could ask any of the dead saints of all history, and they will tell you they never made a sacrifice for Christ.

They got more than they ever abandoned. And so if this is the situation, if you truly have nothing worth holding onto, And God is extending and offering to you a glorious eternal kingdom of joy. What will you do? Those are your options. Temporary earthly minded pleasure that leads to death and hell, or a kingdom of unending peace and joy.

Which will you choose? And I'm asking specifically those of you who know that you have not yet turned to Christ, particularly you young men and women, you boys and girls. I'm so thankful that there seems to be something going on where there have been several young men and women who have been seeking and finding. But I know that there are some who have been seeking for a long time and don't yet know the state of their souls. Or there are some of you who aren't even seeking.

You're like the first man, you're not looking. You don't care. But this is what's offered to you. A kingdom of dust and straw that ends in the wrath of God. We're a kingdom of joy and the forgiveness of your sins.

This is what's offered to you today. What more can be offered to you? What more could you want? You may think that you can't come to Christ yet maybe because You're not old enough Christ received children and he still does. Children go to Christ.

Turn to him in your youth so that you can have many years of faithful service to Jesus. Jesus. Maybe you say that you are too sinful to become a Christian. Christ receives sinners. He came for those who are sinners.

He came for those who see their sin and know that they have no other hope. He receives sinners. You don't clean yourself up first in order to come to Him. You come to Him and He cleans you up. Perhaps you may think that there are things that you want to do before you become a Christian.

Now if these are lawful desires, things that are not sinful, you can do them after you become a believer, after you are part of this kingdom. And the joy you find in lawful desires will be greater as a Christian than as an unbeliever. And if they're sinful desires, if the things that you want are forbidden, why? Why play with the fire? Why continue to dig in the filth when treasure is offered to you?

If you know that what you want is sinful, but you say you'll become a Christian afterwards, do not tempt God. Do not put Him to the test. You may not make it to that point or God may harden your heart in your rebellion. Turn to him now. Repent and trust in Christ.

He is a mighty Savior and the glorious treasure that your soul needs. He alone forgives sin and he can forgive you today and give you that joy that you're looking for. Today is Easter, Resurrection Sunday. What better day to receive the forgiveness of your sins that our resurrected Lord purchased with His own blood? What better day to enter the kingdom of heaven and begin to experience the taste of everlasting joy?

And if you are already in that kingdom, examine your heart. Examine it. Is the rule of God, the kingdom of God, a joy to you still? Or have you grown cold? Has the rule of God become a burden?

Remember what happened in your soul and remember what you were rescued from. Pray that God would restore that joy of your salvation. Remember from the standard that you've fallen and repent. Rejoice in the treasure that Christ has given you. And again, if you are not in that kingdom, come today.

Come today. The treasure is open before you now. Do not hesitate. Do not wait. You will find more than you could have ever imagined or ever hoped for.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for these parables and the instruction given by our Lord. God, we thank you that you have given us a kingdom, an eternal, glorious kingdom, unshakable, more precious, more valuable than all the riches of earth. Oh God, I pray that you would open hearts here today.

Help sinners to see the treasure of your kingdom and the beauty of your son. And God, may you be glorified in all that we do. And help us, Lord, to live every day as those who have discovered this great pearl of great price May we not forget the great treasure that you've given us in your son and in his name we pray amen