Over the past several weeks, we've been looking together at the parables of Jesus and we began in Matthew chapter 13 where Jesus was teaching on the kingdom of heaven. This morning we come to verses 44 through 46 and two parables that are unique to the gospel of Matthew. If you will, turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13 as we look together at the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl. Matthew 13, 44 through 46, but listen together to God's word. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 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. When I was in junior high school or high school, I think it was, campus crusade for Christ had a nationwide campaign that they got all the churches and paratured organizations to participate in together and it was known as the I found it campaign. I don't know how many of you remember when they did that back in the early 70s, I believe it was, but the method that they used was to give every Christian that they could find either a button or a bumper sticker or a sign or something that said, I found it. The idea was you were to put that button on your jacket or your shirt or the sticker on your car and as you went out into the world, people would see that and say, you found it. What did you find? It was a natural opening into sharing how you had found a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, how you had entered into new life in Christ by this great discovery that you had made, by having found the person of Jesus Christ. This morning as we consider these two parables, there is that aspect of finding or discovering the greatest thing that could possibly be discovered and as we think about it in context of the earlier parables that we've already examined, we see that Jesus again is talking about how the kingdom of heaven, how God's kingdom or even how salvation begins in the hearts of men, women and children. You see the parable that we started with, the parable of the four soils, shows people in the parable three out of four just didn't receive the seed of the gospel or the truth of the kingdom of heaven deeply enough for it to take root. They didn't receive it deeply enough for it to bear fruit of righteousness. So in that parable of the sowing of the seed, only one of four, only one had good soil where the gospel took root and the kingdom of God advanced. Jesus went on to tell the parable of the weeds that we looked at last week and I believe that he did that in order to warn us, in order to prepare us, in order to brace us for the great opposition that we will have as followers of Christ, as members of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus didn't want us to be unprepared for the attacks that would come against us, for the battles that we would face as we pursued life in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus wanted to warn us what it would be like as we lived in this real world waiting for his kingdom to come again. And now we come to these little treasure parables and Jesus really emphasizes that finding the treasure or finding the pearl in and of itself is not really enough. It's not just a superficial finding but it's a real discovering. It's an eye-opening discovering and finding that starts the process not only a finding but of possessing the greatest thing that one could possess and in these parables and in life we know it to be the kingdom of heaven or salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. There are several lessons that both of these parables together point us to, that I want us to consider this morning and that is the first one that discovering the treasure that is Jesus Christ is the most joyous, the greatest discovery that a person can ever make. You see there is a real distinction between giant something and discovering something. We've all heard stories about great garage sale or flea market finds where there's a painting for sale and the garage for $3.50 and the guy buys it just for the frame, doesn't even care for the picture, takes it home, rips out the picture and there behind the canvas as an original copy of the Declaration of Independence. How many people passed by this great treasure? They saw it there but they didn't know what it was, they didn't discover the true value of it and it wasn't until someone opened it up and saw what was really there that they realized the joyful discovery of the wealth and the riches that were there. You see the kingdom of heaven is something that has to truly be discovered because we live in a world and a culture and a society today where Jesus is easily found. Just a few weeks ago I received my weekly news magazine, and they're on the cover of the magazine as a picture of Jesus and it goes into great detail about how Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and everyone else has discovered Jesus and how they've come to know Jesus and how they've embraced Him in a certain fashion and assimilated Him into their own system of belief. They may have found Jesus but they haven't discovered the real joy, the real truth that comes from a life-changing encounter with God's Son, with our Savior Jesus Christ because you see that's the difference when we really encounter Jesus, when we really discover who He is, it's a life-changing discovery. It changes the way we see everything, it changes the way we react to everything, it changes everything about us. You see in these parables when these men, when the merchant and the farmer discovered the treasure and the pearl, there was such excitement in their life. They have found the joy and their discovery ended their quest for everything else in life. Once they would possess this discovery, nothing else mattered. They had a passion and an obsession for this treasure, for this pearl and nothing else would stop them from acquiring, from possessing that thing. We need to ask ourselves this morning. We need to each and every one of us evaluate our lives and ask if that is true of us in terms of our discovery of the kingdom of heaven. I would dare say that everyone within the sound of my voice this morning has found Jesus. They have heard of Him on the radio or they've heard someone talk about Him on television. They've read a book, they've seen a movie, they've read a news week article, they've heard someone talk about the person of Jesus Christ but has your life been changed by the discovery of the profound treasure that is truly the greatest thing that we can have as Jesus Christ? Is your relationship with Jesus Christ the thing that gives you the deepest pleasure in life? Is your service to Jesus Christ, the source of the most profound satisfaction or do you respond to Christ begrudgingly or do you do so out of a sense of obligation and duty? Or do you serve Him in order to gain points just in case it turns out in the end you need to have done enough to get into the kingdom of heaven? Or ask yourself these questions, does your work, does your job, does your career give you more meaning in life than your faith does? Does the wealth that you have, do your investments or your 401k plan or your retirement package or your savings account give you more excitement or zeal than your daily thought of heaven? You look forward more during the week to Saturday or to Sunday. Do you anticipate more reading the sports page in the morning paper or spending time in God's Word? Let's don't ask you those questions. Let's ask someone else. If we were to talk to one of your friends or someone in your family who knew you well and ask them, how would you evaluate this person and their passions? What would you say about the things that mean most of them? What are the things that define their life? How would they respond? Matthew chapter 15, just a short time after the parable that we're reading in verse 18, we read, but the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart. What are the things that you spend time during the day talking about? That's one of the ways to evaluate where your passion and your heart is. Out of the mouth, come the things of the heart. If you were to spend time at the end of the day evaluating how much time you spent talking about different things, what would it look like? Where is your passion directed? We need to examine ourselves and see if we have truly discovered the greatest treasure that can be found. I want you to consider with me a minute and look at how the Apostle Paul described his Christian life after years of following the Lord in Philippians chapter three. Paul says this in verses 7 to 8, but whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as lost for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all that be lost. You of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. Notice in Paul's words there, how at one point he uses the past tense. When he found Christ, I counted everything as a loss. In the past, I counted it as a loss for the sake of knowing Christ, but he goes on to say, even now, I continue to count all things lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ. Can you say that this morning? Can we say that honestly with all of our hearts that we count everything a loss compared to knowing Jesus Christ? We need to examine our heart and see if that is true this morning. I think a second thing we see in these two parables, the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl, is that the heart only has room for one ultimate treasure. There's not room in our hearts for two competing passions or treasure. The farmer had to go and sell everything else. He had to sell everything he had in order to buy the field to gain possession of the treasure. The pearl merchant in the same way had to sell everything else before he could buy the pearl of great price. For them, for both of these men finding the treasure in a sense was easy. They found it, but possessing it was costly. Jesus could have told these stories in any way. He could have said they had to spend the lot. They had to make great sacrifice. They had to go through a lot of different things to make it happen, but he didn't. He said they had to sell everything, and that's what it costs to follow Jesus. That's what it means to follow after Christ, to lay aside everything else, to put aside any sin-tangle, to forget about the things that demand our passion and attention right now in our lives. We can't hold on to the treasures of this world and the treasure of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus leaves us only room in these parables for one all-consuming passion for his rule in our lives. The kingdom of heaven cannot be possessed by those who see it as a part-time occupation. The kingdom of heaven, the gospel, salvation, and faith in Christ, cannot be had by those who just want to have part of it or want to experience it temporarily or want to do just a little or merely like it. It has to be possessed by those who long for it with all of their hearts who desire it above everything else and who are willing to set aside, sell everything and lay everything aside in order to possess it. Is that true of you this morning? Is your heart singular, focused in its passion for the kingdom of God and for Christ? Before we move on, I think it's important to emphasize the fact that throughout the scriptures we're told that we cannot buy the kingdom of heaven. When Jesus talks about selling everything in order to possess the kingdom of heaven, he's not talking about buying the gospel or buying salvation. The passage that we read at the beginning of our worship service, not I mean our scripture lesson, Isaiah chapter 55 has some profound thoughts in it. When Isaiah says, oh everyone who thirsts come to the waters and you have no money, come and buy. The idea of selling in order to buy is selling off all of those things that we think in some way make us worthy of possessing the kingdom of heaven, whether it's our own self-righteousness, whether it's any idea that we deserve the kingdom of heaven, we must set it aside in order to embrace Christ. I think the next thing that we see in both of these parables is that in order for us to possess the treasure of the kingdom of heaven, we have to truly understand and comprehend the true value of the kingdom of heaven. As we continue through that Isaiah 55 passage, the very next verse says, why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? You see all of us in the world today, every human being recognizes that there are needs in their lives. Every human being knows that there are unfulfilled desires, every human being knows that there is something missing in their life and yet they go about their daily life trying to fill that void with other things and they spend money on what is not food and they spend money on what does not satisfy. They fill themselves up to fit our temporary and all of these things are the things Christ is talking about, setting aside, selling off and getting rid of in order to truly possess what is worthwhile. We need to truly understand, we need to be able to recognize what is important, we need to be able to truly see the value of the kingdom of heaven. Some of us just don't have an eye to see that. Reminds me of my friend Arnie. When we were in college, we would go shopping together. Arnie had a knack for finding things that were of tremendous value and he had a knack for finding things that were of lasting value. Arnie Arnold today wears some of the same clothes that he bought when we were in college together because he knew how to find things that were well made and that wouldn't go out of style. I didn't have the patience for it. Arnie and I are basically the same size and we would go into stores, junk stores, good stores, all these places. I'd walk in and spend three minutes and I'd go, there's nothing of any value in this store and I'd walk out. Well, an hour later, Arnie would come out with three brand new wool suits that had been tucked away back in the corner. They were 50 years old, but they still had the tags on them and he's still wearing them on Sunday mornings now. I'm running off the long place to buy the latest trendy thing which fell apart a week later. It is in the trash heap now because I didn't have the eye for the true value. It's that way with so many of us in the kingdom of heaven. We look at things and we see what's popular. We see what everybody's excited about. We see what folks are talking about. The latest trend in the church or the latest exciting thing to come down the pike and we jump on the bandwagon without truly considering the value of that thing. When there's really only one thing of value, it's the kingdom of heaven. There's only one thing that's worth possessing. Paul and writing to the church at Philopi encouraged them to really be aware and really have the kind of knowledge you need to discern these things. In Philippians chapter 1, Paul actually prayed for the church to have this kind of discernment. In verses 9 and 10 of chapter 1, Paul says this, and this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ. Paul's talking about real knowledge. He's not talking about a knowledge of science. He's not talking about a knowledge of business or economics. He's not talking about a knowledge of literature or anything else. He's talking about a real knowledge that has value that will stand us in great stead on the day of Christ. You have that kind of knowledge. Do you recognize what is a value in this light? Or are you still hanging on to all sorts of things just in case they may be worse something someday? They lay on the side, seldom off in order to possess the kingdom of God. The other thing I think we see so clearly in these two parables, the parable of the hidden treasure in the pearl, is that joy is a characteristic of the discovery. Joy is a characteristic of the true discovery of the kingdom of heaven and that that joy then fuels the passion and the obsession in the life pursuant of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Verse 44, it said, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field which a man found and hid again and from joy over it. He goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Their sacrifices involved as we follow Christ. There's the daily taking up of our cross and following after him but there's something very profound in these parables with the emphasis in both situations on the joy that comes to us when we really discover what it is to be in Christ. Friday night we watched Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory out on the church lawn. We had a great time for those of you who didn't come. I would encourage you to come out and join us. We had a number of folks that showed up on the church lawn and it was a fun evening together but there were so many things in that movie that I'd forgotten. I hadn't seen in such a long time but one of the things that really struck me was how everybody in the world was in passionate pursuit of the golden ticket that would get them into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and people were going about finding a ticket in all sorts of different ways and young Charlie wanted a ticket so badly, poor Charlie who lived at home with his mother and his four grandparents. Now, Alan, I were talking about this. Charlie's four grandparents all lived together and slept together in the same bed and they had been in that bed for 20 years. Now, Alan asked me the how they go to the bathroom before I'm living together in the same bed for 20 years. All kinds of questions come to your mind about that but the thing that struck me was when Charlie finally got the ticket, when Charlie finally had the ticket and he brought it home. What happened to Grandpa Joe? When he heard that he was going to get to go to Willy Wonka's factory, all of a sudden the man who had been laying in bed without moving for 20 years gets up out of bed and starts dancing around the room. The joy that overwhelmed him at the thought of going into Willy Wonka's factory changed everything. Here was a guy who had been so unmotivated and so distressed by life that he wouldn't even throw back the covers for 20 years and now the joy possessed him in such a way that he jumped out of bed and it's a tremendous thing to see Charlie and his grandfather dancing through their little one-room house. Enjoy over the possession of that ticket which meant entrance into the factory. Are we like that? Have we been sitting around in bed for 20 years? Are muscles atrophying? Becoming weaker and weaker? No passion? Nothing to motivate us to get out of bed? The golden ticket is ours. It's a free gift that God is giving to anyone who desires it. Anyone who wants to get into the factory, anyone who wants to see the wealth in the riches, anyone who wants to possess the kingdom of heaven, all they have to do is ask for the ticket and God will graciously give it to you. He'll give you that ticket which gives you free passage into the kingdom of God. A ticket was bought with a price, the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who is our example in this? Jesus, the one who pursued us, the one who had a passion to make us right with God. Think again of that wonderful verse which I quote so often from Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 2. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfect faith, who for the joy set before him, for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, spicing its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Jesus, the one who's made it possible for you to have eternal life, to know God, to be in relationship with him, to have that treasure which is beyond anything we've ever imagined. Possession of the kingdom of heaven, that's the kind of joy that should be characterized, that should characterize your life. That's the kind of joy that should characterize your life, that joy that Christ had, the joy that we should have when we understand and we truly discover the kingdom of God and it's free to us. There are three things I think we need to think about this morning. Are there things in our life that are keeping us from truly discovering and possessing the kingdom of heaven, the treasure that is ours in Christ Jesus? Are there things that compete for our affection, for Christ's affection? Are there things that keep us from truly having a passion for God and for his son Jesus Christ? We need to get rid of them in our lives. We need to think about the things that we talk about during the day and set aside those things which take up our time in such a way as to cause us to neglect our passion and our love for Christ. Secondly, we need to spend so much more time alone with God and his word and in prayer. We need to pursue passionately our relationship with him. How can we say that we have a passionate desire for Jesus Christ when we don't spend time with him, when we don't spend time reading his word, when we don't spend time in prayer? How would challenge you this morning? If you say that you're a follower of Christ, if you say that you're a Christian and yet you're not spending time in God's word, you're not spending time praying, I would say challenge you to reevaluate your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Those things don't make us right with God. You could read the Bible all day long and pray all night and it wouldn't get you into heaven but it is characteristic of someone who's passionate about the kingdom of heaven and it's an indicator of our spiritual condition and so I would encourage you this morning to do some self-evaluation and I would encourage you to become passionate and ask God by his power of his Holy Spirit to give you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, to give you a hunger and thirst for his word, give you a passion to know him greater and to love him more deeply and God will honor that and he will reward you and he will cause you to grow in your knowledge and love for him. Find out what I would encourage you this morning to confess those things that are keeping you, chained to the past, the sins that you don't want to let go over, those things which keep you from really embracing Christ with all your heart, let them go, turn them loose, confess to God those things, ask him to take them away and fill you with this kind of passion that the man who found the treasure in the field and the pearl merchant had when they discovered, when they truly discovered the greatest treasure they could have ever imagined. I can tell you this morning that there is only one treasure in this world that is worth giving up everything for and that is the gospel, that is the good news that Jesus Christ is willing to make you right with God by giving you his righteousness. Jesus will freely give you his righteousness and make you right with God and all you have to do is ask him for it and believe in him and trust him that his work on the cross was sufficient to pay the penalty for your sins, the penalty that you deserve to pay, embrace him today and then follow after him with all your heart, have a pin for him that can never be quenched, that can never be satisfied until you stand before him in his kingdom one day and see him as he really is. Jesus, our Savior, let's pray together. Our Father and our God, we ask that you would help us this morning to really evaluate our hearts, to evaluate our lives and our passions. Father, we recognize that there are so many things that would keep us from truly loving you with all of our hearts and we pray that you would tear them away from us and that you would give us that singular passion and obsession that comes from truly knowing you. I pray Heavenly Father that there is anyone here this morning who has never even thought about turning their life over to you, if they have never thought about the fact that they can have such a treasure, I pray that you would open the eyes of their heart that they would have understanding and sight to see the glorious news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that they would embrace him and that they would love him with all of their heart and I pray Heavenly Father for those of us who have trusted in you and who believe you and who love you, that you would give us a greater love, a greater depth of knowledge and a greater understanding of your kingdom and your purpose for us in this life. Fill us with an overwhelming passion that we will pursue with all of our hearts, the greatest treasure that can be had, the gospel of Jesus Christ and whose name we pray, amen.