First Reading: Deuteronomy 7:6-9
6{Moses said to the Israelites,} “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations ….”
Psalm 125
1Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but stands fast forever. 2The hills stand about Jerusalem; so does the Lord stand round about his people, from this time forth forevermore. 3The scepter of the wicked shall not hold sway over the land allotted to the just, so that the just shall not put their hands to evil. 4Show your goodness, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are true of heart. 5As for those who turn aside to crooked ways, the Lord will lead them away with the evildoers; but peace be upon Israel.
Second Reading: Romans 8:28-39
28We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel: Matthew 13:44-52
44{Jesus said to the disciples,} “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. 47Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. 48When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. 49So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” 52And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
Picture Album of God’s Kingdom
For most of my life, the classic portrait of the average tourist featured a camera hanging around the person’s neck. Nowadays, these large cameras have been replaced by cell phones. Because of their compact size, almost everyone can now have a high-quality camera with them. What makes this even more handy is, no matter the location, we have the ability to produce photo memories even when we’re on a casual sightseeing outing.
When sightseeing, we want to capture memories of our visits and experiences. Of course, some experiences only require 1 or 2 pictures to capture the memory while others require multiple photographs. When things are big or breathtaking, taking one picture can’t possibly do justice to the location or event. To begin to capture the experience, we must take multiple images, from various angles, in order to do justice to the event.
Think back to some of your own travels. Who’s been to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park, Niagara Falls, or Alaska for example. Was one picture enough? We all know the answer, of course not! We take multiple pictures of our adventures to preserve the memories and to do justice to the magnificence. Over the past three weeks we’ve been reading through the 13th chapter of Matthew, and one could say that we’ve been on a sightseeing tour. Our guide for these past weeks has been Jesus as He has been revealing to us a broader view of the kingdom of heaven.
Over the past three weeks we’ve hopefully come to realize that a single glimpse or picture of the unfolding kingdom cannot capture it all, and we’ve been given the opportunity to see this unfolding kingdom from multiple angles. Matthew 13, then, is a kind of sacred scrapbook as the Lord, through the use of parables, offers us a series of pictures of the kingdom of heaven.
By looking at chapter 13 in this manner, we could say that two of the parables or pictures in the scrapbook are larger in scale — perhaps a panoramic view. The first parable gave us a view of the unfolding kingdom in terms of four different kinds of soil. The second parable showed us the kingdom in terms of two different kinds of crops. We looked carefully at each of those pictures during the past two weeks. Now it is noteworthy here to recognize that in this chapter Jesus uses seven different illustrations to explain the unfolding kingdom, and just as importantly, clearly warns us twice of the coming judgement and punishment of the ungodly. We don’t dwell on these subjects a lot in our readings or in sermons, but these warnings of judgement, hell, and eternal punishment need to be taken seriously. This notion of there being no judgement, punishment, and hell is an outright lie of satan.
I digress. In the other 5 illustrations Jesus uses in Matthew 13, we also see a quick series of smaller pictures. Each is a image of the kingdom, yet they’re taken from different angles. In the verses between last week’s gospel reading and this week’s, we have the parable of the mustard seed. Here the kingdom is captured as a small seed that grows into a tree. Here the tree not only illustrates enormous growth, but also provides a crop for the farmer, and provides shelter for the birds of the air. And then there’s the story of the leaven. The message of the kingdom, the leaven, is mixed into the dough of this world and when allowed to work, change occurs, the leaven causes all the dough to rise and becomes bread.
In our gospel reading for this week, Jesus finishes this photo album with three additional pictures. The first two photos appear to be a transaction; the first being a hidden treasure found, reburied, and the land purchased. The second is a pearl of great value that the man sells all he owns to obtain. And finally, Jesus finishes up this mosaic with an illustration of a fishing net. To be clear, each of these seven illustrations have value unto themselves. But to get the greatest value from this chapter we need to look at all these snapshots together. When we do, we get a greater appreciation of the full picture of the kingdom of heaven.
To continue to gain appreciation for what Jesus is saying here, let’s include the parables that this week’s readings do not include. First, we have a picture of a seed, an exceedingly small seed. By simply looking at its size, we might think that such an insignificant thing could never amount to much. It’s tiny, vulnerable, and easily dismissed. However, we need to see what Jesus is telling us. Jesus reminded His audience that from this tiny seed comes a plant that grows into a substantial tree. Indeed, so significant that it becomes home for other creatures! When it was a small seed, it might have been eaten by birds; now the birds can build their nests in its final form — and so it is, again and again!
When the followers of Jesus amounted to a dozen or so nobodies, who were frequently characterized by fear, by doubt, by misunderstanding, and by misplaced priorities, the kingdom didn’t look like it would amount to much. When all of the believers could fit into a single room in Jerusalem on the day before Pentecost, the kingdom looked small and easily dismissible. Throughout the earliest generations of church history, when the first Christians were severely persecuted and forced underground, the kingdom must have looked extremely fragile and vulnerable. But see how things have changed! We can see what has become of Christ’s kingdom on earth! The church now spans the globe!
The gospel is now written and is proclaimed in hundreds of languages. Every single day, new people from all around the world come to faith in Christ. The church has outlasted every despot that has tried to crush it and every regime that has tried to silence it. How many billions of souls have made their nest in the branches of this kingdom that started out so small?
Next, we see a picture of a woman making a loaf of bread. It’s an ordinary scene; even today bread is made around the world daily. Then we see her remove one hand from the kneading. She reaches for a nearby container, takes a pinch of a powdery substance, and works it into the dough. In the end, the whole batch of dough ends up being changed entirely by that tiny bit of leaven that she added into it. Jesus presents a picture of how the kingdom grows and spreads.
The picture of the kingdom starts as something tiny, a mention of the gospel here, an act of kindness there, and from those modest beginnings comes something so much bigger. At issue here isn’t so much that the tiny thing grows into something big, but rather the tiny thing proved to have such a big influence. It’s also important to note that the leaven didn’t grow into the lump of dough; rather the leaven changed the lump of dough. Our goal isn’t to change into the world, but to change the world by what we have to share.
The truth of Jesus’ image reminds us that when the gospel takes hold in a person’s life, the impact isn’t confined to some small aspect of living. No, the whole loaf is leavened! The same is true when the gospel takes hold in a culture at large. We know the stories of great revivals that have occurred in certain regions or in whole countries. We recall what Luther spawned in sixteenth-century Germany. And, closer to home, we think of the great awakenings in America during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
What happened during those favored moments in history was no small achievement. God’s word is not easily contained or confined. Instead, reform spread throughout the land. The whole loaf was leavened.
Surely the loaf of the whole world was envisioned by the parable. The entire globe longed for the redemption of God’s kingdom. But that required a great deal of kneading. It began two millennia ago, and the work continues to this very day. Next, we see two pictures that look very much alike. The one features a man who sold everything in order to obtain a certain field. The other features a man who sold everything to obtain a certain pearl. We’re reminded of the principle of Pharaoh’s two, similar dreams (Genesis 41:32): there is something divinely emphatic about the doubling of the message.
Here the kingdom is represented as a transaction — and a personal transaction, at that. This, then, is a view of the kingdom from a different angle than the earlier pictures. One senses that this kingdom picture is less global and more individual. The characters portrayed in these two, brief, similar parables both make a discovery. They come across a thing — a treasure, a pearl — that they recognized was worth more than everything else they had. It was a remarkable calculation. But it was still a more remarkable find!
Think about that for a moment, of coming across something so valuable that you’re willing to sell all you have to obtain it. The thought of total liquidation makes us uneasy. Yet, if we knew for a fact that the treasure we would gain far exceeded all that we would sell, wouldn’t it make perfect sense to complete the transaction? The idea of making an appraisal about the value of the kingdom of God may seem crass, but it isn’t unbiblical. On the contrary, scripture encourages us to be very calculating in these matters.
We remember, for example, that Jesus encouraged His disciples to count the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:26-33), lest the thought of following Jesus be reduced to a sentimental enterprise or a half-hearted resolution. Jesus wants us to run the numbers. Jesus knows that once we’ve made the careful calculations — once we’ve clearly seen the value of everything — the decision to follow Jesus becomes clear. Wasn’t this the same type of calculation that prompted the prodigal son to return home? “How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food,” the son reasoned, and yet “here I am dying of hunger” (Luke 15:7). It may seem crude, yet it makes perfect sense. Once the son had made the comparison, the choice was obvious.
Likewise, St. Paul came to the same conclusion as the two men in Jesus’ parables. He wrote to the Christians in Philippi about the calculations he had made. “Whatever things were gain to me,” he explained, “these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:7-8). “The surpassing value.” That’s the issue of the kingdom when it comes to the individual and the decisions we’re being asked to make.
The man who stumbled upon the buried treasure and the merchant who discovered the pearl of great price: both recognized “the surpassing value,” and they didn’t hesitate to give up all they had in order to acquire for themselves what they had found. The sad contrast to these stories is found in Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22). The aristocrat wasn’t willing to give up everything in order to follow Jesus and inherit the kingdom. He couldn’t perceive the surpassing value.
Most of us are naturally sympathetic with the rich ruler. He doesn’t strike us as a bad person. After all, he had followed the commandments, and he demonstrated enough sense and earnestness to pursue Jesus and inquire about the kingdom. And deep inside we fear that we would have made the same decision if we had been presented with his choice. It’s essential for us, therefore, to recognize the wisdom of the calculation made by the man who bought the field and the merchant who found the great pearl.
Finally, we see a picture of fishermen who cast a great dragnet into the water. Predictably, the net brought in an assortment of fish, and so the fishermen had to sort through their catch. They pulled the net up onto the beach, and they divided the fish into two categories. The good ones they kept. The bad, they threw to the side. This is yet one more angle on the kingdom of God, and Jesus didn’t leave us wondering about the meaning of it. “So it will be at the end of the age,” Jesus explained. “The angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
If the mustard seed was a glimpse of the kingdom at the beginning, then the dragnet is a picture of the kingdom when Jesus returns. The mustard seed illustrates the small beginning. The dragnet anticipates universal, eschatological judgment. If human achievements like Westminster Abbey or the pyramids require more than one picture, doesn’t the same apply to the kingdom of God? A single picture cannot possibly capture the whole truth about the kingdom. We need multiple angles in order to get a proper understanding of the whole thing.
Look at its length, it stretches all the way from first-century Palestine into eternity! Marvel at its breadth, observing how it applies to the individual yet also encompasses the whole world! And, finally, stand in awe of its height, as it reaches from a manger in a cave all the way to the throne room of the universe! The kingdom of God is indeed vast, and we need a great many pictures in order to capture this sight.
But we must be careful, God’s unfolding kingdom isn’t some roadside tourist attraction. We don’t pull up before God’s kingdom in a tour bus, clamor out, buy some souvenirs, take some pictures, and move on to the next thing. No, being about the Father’s business is a much more profound business, and the pictures that Jesus shows us reveal to us the significance of what we are seeing.
Amen.