All right, if you would, open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13. We've been going through Matthew's gospel and we're at chapter 13 where Jesus begins teaching in kingdom parables. And Matthew 13 is a little complex. We've had to bounce around a little because we've had Jesus tell a parable and then we skipped down to where he explained it. And then we moved back up where he told another one and skipped down to where he explained it. In the process of doing that, there are some verses that we've missed out on that I want to pick up. So it might seem scary, but we are going to do four parables in this sermon this morning. And here it is, you forgot to pack a lunch. Those four parables, they are quite short, and they're actually making some of the same points. The first two are the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven. They're found in verses 31 through 34. They're similar to each other. And then there's another set of parallel parables of the hidden treasure and the priceless pearl in verses 44 through 46. And they're also making similar points. So let's read those. Matthew 13, verses 31 through 33. Another parable, he put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. Another parable he spoke to them. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. Now, skip down to verse 44, we'll find our other two parables. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a 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 go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, we are thankful for the day you've given us. We're thankful for this place that we can come and we can worship you, that we can sing praises for your salvation that you've provided through your son, Jesus. And Lord, we're thankful that we can hear from the Lord Jesus this morning in his teaching of these parables. Please give us an understanding of it. Please guide my words Give me an unction of your Holy Spirit, Lord, that I might deliver the message that the Lord Jesus intends for us to understand. Forgive me of my sins, for it's in Christ's name we pray, amen. In In large housing markets near big cities, there is an entire industry dedicated to staging homes for sale. So once a seller moves out, the company will hire movers. They will place furniture throughout the house, a king-size bed in the master bedroom. They'll put art on the walls. They'll put pictures of some generic happy family on the coffee table. They've even done studies to determine what best scent could be added. Is it the smell of cookies in the oven or vanilla candles wafting through the whole place? They know what is going to be more likely to garner a cash offer from the people looking at the house. The movers and the furniture and the art and the candles are all worth it. They all pay off. because they found those houses sell at a consistently higher price and faster speed. This is an economic principle known as perceived value. The buyer does not get the art, he doesn't get to keep the bed, he doesn't get the happy family or even the cookies. But the added perception that, hey, this place seems like it's worth a lot, does get them a bigger mortgage. This perceived value. Shows up in other places. It's also why you're more likely to buy something that costs $19.99 than you would pay $20 for it. It's why you're less likely to buy an item for $5 and more likely to buy two of them for $10 because there's a buy one, get one free sticker. It sounds like there was a little pain in that, I'm not sure. There's a great story about perceived value when it made lobsters go from being worthless crustaceans that washed up on shore and got collected and fed to prisoners to now it is the most expensive item on high-end restaurant menus. These four parables of Jesus challenge us to evaluate our perception of the kingdom of heaven and adjust our ideas of its value accordingly. When Jesus began teaching in parables in this chapter, he's not just spinning tall tales or weaving charming stories. He's teaching about spiritual truth and challenging the preconceived ideas that people had about what the kingdom of God is like. And so through this whole chapter, he's teaching in parables. The kingdom of heaven is like, it's like a farmer sowing seed in a field. The kingdom of heaven is like a field full of wheat and weeds. It's like a tiny seed growing into a tall tree. It's like a woman who is needing It's like a buried treasure in an empty field. It's like the most expensive pearl you've ever seen. All of this is aimed at challenging the hearers, challenging us as readers. How do you see the kingdom of heaven? What is it worth to you? The first two parables this morning deal with that perception. How do you perceive the kingdom? In verses 31 through 33, we have two parables that are aimed at how we perceive the kingdom of heaven. First, there is the parable of the mustard seed. Verses 31 and 32. Another parable he put forth to them saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds. But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. Now let's just state the obvious here. This is just two verses. Jesus is not going to reveal every secret and every description of the kingdom of heaven in two verses. He's not trying to tell us everything about the kingdom of heaven here. He's telling us one specific aspect of the kingdom of heaven, and it is the aspect that people there most needed to embrace. So here's the simple message that I'm convinced this parable and the next one are trying to convey. Don't judge God's kingdom by what you see. It's going to be greater than what you see. Don't judge God's kingdom by what you see. It's gonna be greater than what you see. I know that's not deep theological territory. It's relatively simple, but that's the message. Now, some folks wanna argue with these verses right away. In fact, if you've got a study Bible, it probably starts giving you all kinds of disclaimers about, well, yeah, a mustard seed is not really the smallest seed. It doesn't really become the biggest tree. And that's true. I think orchid seeds are really tiny. Tobacco seeds are really tiny. There are olive trees in Israel that would have been way bigger than any mustard seed would have produced as a tree. And so obviously, Jesus doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, remember, Jesus is not here giving a scientific statement. He's not writing a botany textbook. Within the context of this story of a farmer planting seed, a mustard seed was much smaller than wheat or barley or anything else that a first century Jewish farmer would have been planting. and it produced a tree that could be 10 to 15 feet like a bushy tree that in verse 32 is greater than the herbs, greater than the garden plants. So in comparison with other seeds and plants the farmer worked with, the mustard seed was the smallest seed and the tree it produced is the largest plant. The point seems to be that the kingdom of God is not something that is going to initially appear great in the eyes of the world. It would be easily dismissed. It would be easily overlooked. It wasn't a kingdom of pomp and pageantry and publicity. It has a simple beginning. Listen, when Messiah King Jesus was born into this world, he didn't come with pageantry, there wasn't fanfare and a big announcement from the ramparts of a castle. He was born, not to a princess, but to a pauper, surrounded by smelly farm animals and set to rest in the feed trough. And for 30 years, he resides as part of a poor family in Northern Israel, far north from the religious center and the political center. One of his disciples is later going to run and tell a friend, hey, we found the Messiah, it's Jesus of Nazareth. And his friend is gonna react by saying, can anything good come from Nazareth? And for the three years that Jesus walked Israel calling a handful of people to be his disciples, Jesus did what no other rabbi in Israel would do. He collected, there were women following him as disciples. No other rabbis in first century Israel were doing that. He also called the dregs of society, like fishermen, tax collectors. There was one guy named Simon the Zealot who we would best describe as a domestic terrorist. And so very few people looked at this and saw Jesus and goes, oh, I get it. He's a great king. This is a wonderful kingdom. They missed it because what Jesus was doing was radically different from what they wanted him to be doing, what they expected of a Messiah. They wanted a Messiah who was gonna descend on Israel dramatically, form an army, boot out the Romans from the land, establish royal rule. It was supposed to have pomp and circumstance and trumpets and military parades and oh, so many vanquished enemies. Now is Jesus going to do that? Yes, he's going to do that. He's gonna come back and do that. But he's not doing it at this moment. And when they looked at Jesus's ministry and judged the kingdom of heaven according to only what they could see, it was easy to dismiss. But the kingdom of heaven is not to be judged based on what you can see, no matter how small and insignificant it appeared at the beginning, it's going to grow. And Jesus says it is going to be gloriously visible in time. He describes this tiny mustard seed and he says when it grows, it's gonna become greater than the herbs. It's gonna become a tree so that the birds can come and nest in its branches. Let me just say as a side note, this is another good reason why you don't want to cross interpret parables. There's birds in the branches of the tree. What does that mean? Well, in the parable of the sower, the birds were bad, right? They were coming and taking away the seeds. Now, birds are good. They're nesting in the branches of this tree representing the kingdom of heaven. Some people read this and go, well, maybe the birds are all the Gentiles who find protection in the kingdom of Jesus, and that sounds great, but how about this? Jesus is just telling us there's birds in the tree, so we know it's a tree big enough to handle birds. There is this visible manifestation of the kingdom, and it's coming, it's growing. This mustard seed produces, or it pictures this small, overlooked beginning, but it grows into a final result that is gonna be much bigger than anyone anticipates. The second parable is the parable of the leaven, verse 33. He spoke in another parable, he spoke to them, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. All right, I need to brace myself here. I need to apologize to you here on behalf of myself and many preachers who you've heard How many of y'all have heard a sermon that, in the Bible, leaven is a picture of sin? All right, how many of y'all have heard more than one sermon that, in the Bible, leaven is a picture of sin? How many of us have preached more than one sermon that, in the Bible, leaven is a picture of sin? Okay, that's probably just gonna be me. I'm sorry. Listen, in parables, there's symbolic illustrations like this. We really shouldn't say something always means this, right? Always good, it's always bad. That's why I pointed out the birds a minute ago. In one parable they're good, in another parable they're bad. We should just take parables and illustrations on their own in context and we do a lot better. To just make sure everybody's on the same page here. Leaven that Jesus is talking about is yeast. Leaven is the stuff that makes bread rise. Unleavened bread is hard, crusty. Leavened bread is good. Leaven is the stuff that puts the wonder in Wonder Bread, y'all. It's good, right? It tastes good. Now, can leaven be a symbol of sin in scripture? Yes, of course, the Apostle Paul used it that way when he warned about sin and he said, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Like, you get a little bit of yeast in your dough, it's gonna get through the whole thing. In fact, when I've preached about this, I've used one of my favorite illustrations back, you know, in ancient times when people read newspapers and I was the editor of the newspaper in Minnunk. The newspaper office was located right across the street from the Minnunk Baking Company. Let me tell you, it smelled great. I mean, three city blocks smelled wonderful, like fresh baked bread. And I would preach about it and say, well, this is why God used leaven as a picture of sin, because it is so appealing to us, just like sin is. And then I'd go on to describe how the dust from the bakery got everywhere. It would cover my truck. It would get in every crack inside the office. There would be a layer of that stuff on the outside of the windows. Just like sin, it gets everywhere. Listen, does it always mean that in scripture? No. For example, in Exodus, the Hebrews were told to make unleavened bread when God was gonna bring them out of Egypt. Was that because leaven was symbolic of sin? No. God called it the bread of haste. You do it because make the bread like you're in a hurry. I'm taking you out of here. He even told them, right, put your sandals on your feet, have your walking staff in your hand, make the bread of haste, because I'm going to deliver you tonight. So it's not as simple as just saying, well, leaven equals sin. Because sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes that's not the point. And here in Jesus's parable, leaven is something good. He's describing in this short little parable a woman in her home taking yeast and adding it to a new batch of dough. Now, don't picture her opening up a Kroger sack and pulling out a little yeast packet and ripping it open and adding it to dough. That's not how it worked. Okay? It was customary that you would save some of your former dough, that you would take a pinch of it that has yeast in it, and when you start making new dough, you would add that to the new dough, and you would knead it together, and soon yeast goes all through the new dough. Just as a side note, that's why Amish friendship bread freaks me out. There's stuff in there. It could be 400 years old. I don't want to eat that. That little pinch of dough with yeast, the idea is it would infiltrate, it would permeate the entire new batch of dough. That's why the Apostle Paul used leaven as an illustration of sin to say, look, sin has a permeating effect. It infiltrates places that maybe you didn't even want it to go. Jesus is using that illustration in a similar way, but he's doing it in a positive way. Listen to verse 33. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. This was simple, relatable. Every one of his disciples could picture this as Jesus spoke. I think their minds could have easily thought of their, you know, a Galilean housewife, whether it's their wife or their mom mixing and kneading dough and understand what Jesus is saying. My grandmother. would make these wonderful yeast rolls when I was a kid. I remember running around the kitchen while she was mixing the stuff, while she was kneading the stuff, but when it was time that she was done with that and she was setting it up to rise, I had to leave the kitchen. If I was in the kitchen, somehow I would ruin it. I don't even know how I would ruin it. It's just the kind of power I had, you know, but I had to go. She was very intentional in the process. The yeast rolls did not rise by accident. It happened according to a plan. And here's where I hope you accept that Levin is not always talking about sin because if you're not with me, you're really not gonna like this. I'm convinced the application of this parable is describing us, believers, as the leaven. The kingdom of heaven grows through the intentional contact. Just like the mustard seed was intentionally planted for growth, the yeast is intentionally kneaded into the dough for the intention of expanding, for the intention of growing. The kingdom of heaven is growing, Jesus says, intentionally. And then it was the Lord Jesus himself who sends out his disciples into the world to preach the gospel, to make disciples of all nations. In both of these parables, the kingdom of heaven is growing imperceptibly. While the work of this leaven is sure to happen, you could not really see the bread rising any more than you could see the mustard tree grow. Right, again, when my grandma made yeast rolls, she would put like a warm towel over it and I could look over there every 15 or 20 minutes and go, ooh, it got bigger. But if I just stared at it, I promise, you could not see it moving. Could that be part of the parable here? Is that the kingdom grows imperceptibly? I would certainly make sense with what the disciples need to hear, right? They expected this messianic kingdom that would just slam down on Israel, proclaim the Messiah King, defeat the Gentile world powers. We don't want to watch it grow slowly. We just want it to be here. But this parable might just teach them that the kingdom they expected was gonna look a lot more like yeast rising. It's gonna look a lot more like a plant growing. They shouldn't judge it by what they see, but they should believe it's gonna be greater than what they see. See how those two parables match each other? Don't judge God's kingdom by what you see. It's gonna be greater than what you see. It's gonna grow steady and sure like a mustard plant. It's gonna rise like a lump of dough with yeast in it. It's gonna be intentional. It might be imperceptible, but it will grow. Do not be put off by the small beginning. Don't be deceived by the slow development. There is a sure ending to this that's coming. The Messiah King is gonna return in glory. Revelation 11 five declares that when he comes, it says the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever. There's going to be something much greater coming than what you can see. So these first two parables are how do you perceive the kingdom, right? What's your perception of it? And then the next ones are how do you value the kingdom? Now before going to these next two parables in verses 44 through 46, I want you to see something about the structure of this chapter. It can get easily lost as we sort of bounce around between the parables and the explanations. The previous two parables that we just read, the mustard seed and the leaven, those were told as the whole crowd was around Jesus. In fact, immediately after those two, in verse 34 it says, all these things Jesus spoke to the multitude, right, to the big crowd, in parables, without a parable he did not speak to them. But then in verse 36, Jesus sends the multitude away. He's speaking to his disciples. They ask for an explanation of the parable of the tares that we talked about last time. And it's immediately after that explanation that in verse 44, Jesus launches into two more parables, the parables of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great price. So it's possible, I would say even plausible, that those first two parables were aimed at the crowd as a whole, while these next two are for the disciples specifically. And so if so, what the crowd needed to hear was, how is it that you see the kingdom? Are you perceiving it right? Are you misjudging it by judging it too early? But the message to the disciples is gonna be, well, since you perceive it right, since you see it clearly, is it as valuable to you as it should be? It should be more valuable to you than a hidden treasure or a costly pearl. These two parables teach the simple lesson that obtaining the kingdom of heaven is worth everything you have. Look at the hidden treasure, verse 44. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a 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. Our first reaction to this, because we're not first century people, is what on earth is somebody doing burying treasure in a field? I mean, are we talking about pirates or what? One of the difficulties of parables is that it is a relatable message, but it's culturally distinctive, right? It's to the people in front of Jesus. We are a long way from living in that culture that buries valuables in the ground. I think, some of y'all might bury valuables in the ground. And so some questions naturally come to our mind, which really would not have been in the mind of Jesus' audience. The reality is this burying of priceless valuables is a fairly common means of protecting your possessions in the first century. They didn't have access to FDIC insurance. They couldn't deposit something at their local Samaritan Savings and Loan Bank. There weren't any safety deposit boxes. They had to put stuff somewhere. In another parable, Jesus, think about the other parables you know, Jesus tells a parable of a rich man who gives to his three servants some talents, some coins, right? To one he gives five coins, to another he gives three coins, to the last one he gives one coin. You remember what the guy with the one coin did? He went and buried it in the ground. That was a perfectly acceptable way to protect valuables. Also, this area was frequently a war zone. Some invading army decided to roll in and that everything was their right to plunder, that they got everything in sight. The only way you could secure something is by getting it out of sight. So you'd bury that thing in a jar or a box in the ground where you'd be able to find it later. Of course, if you forgot where you buried it, or if the invading army showed up and killed you, What happens to the treasure you buried in the ground? It just sits there until somebody finds it. That kind of thing happens. Another question that comes to us in this parable is whether this guy is doing something unethical. All right, by finding this treasure, stinging it back in the ground, running and selling everything that he has in order to buy that property so the treasure becomes his. Is he doing something deceitful? Is he doing something unethical? Well, the time honored and established legal tradition of the Jewish people was a concept of law known by the technical term finders keepers. And I know that sounds childish, but as long as the owner was gone, dead, unknown, couldn't be found, if you found something, good for you, it's yours. You can tell Jesus is not describing a deceptive person here because if he was a crook, when he found the treasure in the field, what would he do? He wouldn't put it back. He would take it home with him. He certainly wouldn't sell everything he had so he could legitimately make a purchase of the field. And we know that the landowner is not getting scammed because if that treasure was known by the person who owned the land, he's not gonna sell the land. And so this all sounds strange to us, but it's plausible. It's expected in the first century, as expected as a woman making bread or a farmer planting a seed. Now, say all that to just relax about the idea that this guy's done something wrong. The people who Jesus is talking to, they would not have had some kind of ethical dilemma come up in their head. What they would have understood is that it describes a legal and morally principled transaction, but what they would have been focused on is the part where Jesus says, for joy over it, he goes and sells everything he has to buy that field. Is this treasure really worth everything the man has? Well, Jesus says it brought him joy, He gained contentment over the acquisition of this treasure, although perhaps his family and friends would have thought him to be crazy, right? I've seen that field, the sacrifice you're making right here. It is not worth it. And they would have thought that because they don't know what he knows. They would not see the hidden value in what he'd given everything to obtain. Look at the next one, the pearl of great price in verse 45 and 46. 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. Pearls were in that culture essentially like diamonds are today. They were the most valuable jewel of Bible times. And 1 Timothy Paul says when women wanted to attract attention, they would wear gold jewelry, fine pearls. The gates of heaven are described as being made of one giant pearl. The value wasn't simply found in the fact that they were rare, which by the way, diamonds aren't rare either, but don't get me started on that. a great amount of the value of a pearl was based in the danger found in obtaining them. In the Persian Gulf or in the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean, anywhere you had pearl oysters, you could die in the process of obtaining pearls. They didn't have modern scuba equipment. They would tie a rock to themselves, jump off a little boat and down into the deep where they would dig around on the seafloor seeking for a pearl oyster while holding their breath. And when they got up, if they made it up, they would open up the oyster and hope that there was a pearl inside, but there wasn't always. When you eventually found one of such symmetry and beauty and size, it was practically priceless. And so there were shrewd pearl merchants who would travel the coastline buying those things up. And you could make a pretty good living that way, especially since pearls were a good investment. You could buy some land, buy some pearls, bury some of your money for safety. Essentially, that's the first century version of diversifying your investments. But whatever you do, you don't do what this guy did. When verse 46, sorry, verse 45 says he went and sold all that he had, it's describing probably a long process of going inland back to where he lives, selling all his valuables to retailers, then traveling back on dangerous, bandit-filled roads with nothing but cash, and coming to spend everything on buying a single pearl, and then what do you do with it? The two men in our parables did not diversify investments. They literally sold out everything they had for the one thing they valued most. In one case, it's a treasure in a field. In another, it is a virtually priceless pearl. What would make these two men willing to give up everything they owned? They saw value where others didn't. In the first parables, the people had misjudged the kingdom of heaven because they couldn't see it. They couldn't perceive it for the treasure that it is. But then when Jesus takes his disciples aside and he tells them about this priceless treasure, He tells them that this true value of the kingdom of heaven, it is worth more than everything you have. Most of the world is now tooling along in life, content to just view what's on the surface. Brian, our hearts are fully set in order to only satisfy ourselves by the things that we can see. When you tell the world about Jesus, you're essentially telling them about a priceless treasure and they cannot comprehend why you would give up everything in your life in order to obtain a treasure that they can't see. They don't get the value of. Do you think the pearl merchant would have been considered wise for risking everything he owned to obtain a single pearl that he valued so greatly? Or do you suppose the man buying the field would have had the full support of his family and friends who could not comprehend and grasp the value of this treasure? The world around us that does not see the kingdom will say, you are an idiot for giving up so much of your life in order to value that. But those who comprehend the treasure, We can see what it is that they can't see. Becoming kingdom citizens through faith in Jesus Christ, that citizenship is not visible, but it is ultimately valuable. It is the only thing worthwhile. And so what are you willing to give up in order to hold on to the kingdom of God? In both these parables, there is a transaction taking place. If the kingdom is like a hidden treasure in a field or like a priceless pearl, then the kingdom has to be obtained. It has to be obtained through a transaction of some kind. And don't panic, y'all. I'm not gonna tell you that you can purchase your way into the kingdom of God. You can't. But there is a transaction that takes place to get to, so that we can obtain the kingdom of God. Jesus Christ, God's son, paid the price for us to be born again. And the Spirit brings that new life and points us to faith in Jesus. And when you repent of your sins and trust in Jesus, you become part of God's family. You become a citizen of Christ's kingdom. Now we understand that the Bible teaches all of that, but remember, the parable isn't trying to teach everything at once. These parables are trying to make the simple point, even if it costs you everything, the kingdom of heaven is worth it. This is how the Apostle Paul described it when he wrote to the Philippians in Philippians 3.8. He says, yet I indeed also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count it all rubbish that I might gain Christ. Paul's saying the combined value of whatever I lose is worthless compared to what I gain through Jesus Christ. Maybe your dedication to Christ's kingdom has not cost you everything, but the lesson here is that it is a treasure. It is a priceless jewel that's worth everything. If you're one of the people who has perceived, truly perceived its value, the glory of Jesus, the beauty of his kingdom, then you will rightly estimate its worth. Do you love Jesus more than everything else? Do you love Jesus more than your family? Do you love Jesus more than your possessions? Do you love Jesus more than your own life? And I don't know that you'll be asked to give up your family and your possessions and your life, but if you were asked to give up those things, would you look at Jesus and just say, he's worth it? He's worth everything. The world will look at the kingdom of God with worldly eyes. Jesus says, don't judge. Don't judge it by what you can see. Remember what it's gonna become. It's like a mustard seed that's gonna grow into a large tree. It's like yeast that's expanding through dough and it is going to rise, it's gonna grow. The greatness of Christ's kingdom is yet to come, but the greatness of Jesus Christ is right now. And if through faith in Jesus, you've seen the kingdom of God rightly, you will treasure it like a hidden treasure to cherish. You will value it like a priceless pearl. You will honestly say, Jesus Christ is worth everything I have.