Introduction and Greetings

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Jesus' teachings on the Kingdom of Heaven

The Kingdom of Heaven

Understanding the context of Jesus' teachings

Context and Setting

The Parable of the Hidden Treasure

The Parable of the Merchant and the Pearl

Exploring the characteristics of God's reign

Characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus teaches about the rare and valuable nature of God's kingdom, where everything flourishes and everyone is protected and redeemed.

The Precious Kingdom of God

Jesus seeks disciples willing to sacrifice everything to be part of the kingdom of heaven, emphasizing the value of participation over material possessions.

The Sacrifice for the Kingdom

An analogy of the kingdom of heaven as a priceless treasure, emphasizing the need to prioritize the kingdom's values and people over worldly possessions.

The Treasure of the Kingdom

Encouragement to enter into Jesus' story and recognize Him as the main character, leading to a right relationship with God.

Entering Jesus' Story

Explanation of the decision to follow Jesus, the lifelong journey it entails, and the importance of valuing the kingdom of God as the top priority.

The Decision to Follow Jesus

- The speaker welcomes guests from Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec
- He shares the fable of the blind men and the elephant to illustrate the idea of partial experience
- Jesus taught about the Kingdom of Heaven through parables
- The speaker will be examining 4 of these parables over the next 2 Sundays
- The parables reveal different aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven
- The context of Jesus' teachings is during the second year of his ministry around the Sea of Galilee
- Jesus encounters rejection and resistance from some towns and the Pharisees

- Jesus begins to heal people and attract large crowds with his remarkable teaching
- The Pharisees feel threatened by Jesus' influence and wondrous signs
- Jesus teaches parables to his disciples in a private setting, away from the crowds
- The disciples, who were ordinary people, had a limited understanding of God's favor and the Kingdom of Heaven
- Jesus prepares his disciples for a larger, more inclusive Kingdom of Heaven
- Jesus tells two parables about the Kingdom of Heaven being like a hidden treasure and a merchant seeking fine pearls
- The parables illustrate the value and worth of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the willingness to give up everything for it.

- The speaker discusses a man who dedicated his life to finding a valuable pearl and eventually sells everything to acquire it
- Jesus tells two parables about the value of the kingdom of heaven, emphasizing its uniqueness and worth
- The kingdom of heaven is described as a place where everything flourishes, everyone is protected, everyone can be redeemed, and everything can be restored
- The speaker encourages the audience to understand the incredible value of the kingdom of heaven and to grasp its unique characteristics

- Jesus teaches his disciples about the rarity and value of the kingdom of God, where everything flourishes and everyone is protected and redeemed.
- He wants disciples willing to sacrifice everything to be part of the kingdom, as seen in the Beatitudes.
- The kingdom of heaven is not transactional, but disciples are expected to value it above all else.
- An illustration from Indiana Jones emphasizes the choice between worldly desires and the kingdom of heaven.
- The message urges listeners to consider the value of the kingdom of heaven and decide how to respond.

- Jesus taught parables to reveal hidden truths about the Kingdom of Heaven and to inspire commitment to the Kingdom.
- Becoming a Christian is about entering into Jesus' story and recognizing him as God and creator.
- Repentance involves choosing to follow God's instruction and turning away from disobedience.
- The speaker leads a prayer for those who want to confess their sin and commit to following Jesus.
- Being a follower of Christ is a lifelong journey with big plans in the Kingdom of Heaven.
- Prioritize the Kingdom of God to have a preserving and impactful influence in your community.

- The speaker welcomes guests from Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec
- Shares the fable of the blind men and the elephant to illustrate partial experience
- Jesus taught about the Kingdom of Heaven through parables
- Will examine 4 parables over the next 2 Sundays
- Parables reveal different aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven
- Jesus encounters rejection and resistance, heals people, and attracts large crowds
- Teaches parables to disciples in a private setting
- Encourages understanding of the incredible value and unique characteristics of the kingdom of heaven
- Urges listeners to consider the value of the kingdom of heaven and decide how to respond
- Leads a prayer for confession of sin and commitment to following Jesus
- Prioritize the Kingdom of God for a preserving and impactful influence in the community

Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl Merchant

It is great to see you right in the middle of summer.

It's like a whole Canadian reunification thing going on.

But Sheldina, her mom's brother, Keith, is with us today from Alberta, along with his son, Travis.

So would you help me to welcome them today?

There's an old Asian fable known as the blind man and the elephant and the story goes like this.

Long time ago there were a group of blind men that lived in a village together And they heard that a strange foreign animal called an elephant had been brought to their village.

But none of them were aware of its shape and its form.

So out of curiosity, they said that we should go and inspect it by touch, and then we'll have an idea of what it's like.

So they sought it out, and when they started feeling around, each person went to 1 part of the elephant.

The first person whose hand landed on the trunk of the elephant said, oh, this creature is very much like a big python, a large, large snake.

Another person felt the elephant's ear and said, oh, This kind of feels like a fan.

It's just this long floppy thing to brush the air around.

Another person was feeling the elephant's leg and said, oh, this creature must be like a tree.

And another person was feeling the side of the elephant, its rib cage, and said, oh, this creature is like a wall.

And yet another person was feeling the tail out and saying, oh, this creature is like a long winding rope.

And the last person was feeling the tusk of the elephant at the beginning, at the front of the elephant, and saying, no, no, this is sharp like a spear.

The story is just a warning that people often tend to take their, their partial experience, their partial observations as the whole truth of a thing.

They mistake their little experience, these men for example, touching the elephant's tail as their understanding of what the whole creature is like in its entirety.

And they can only report a few details from their perspective.

I share this story with you because this morning we're going to be continuing our examination of the parables of Jesus Christ regarding a subject that's much bigger than an elephant and that's the kingdom of heaven.

Did you know that Jesus taught about the Kingdom of Heaven more than any other subject in the whole Bible.

In the Gospel of Matthew alone, he refers to the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God 35 times.

12 of those times, he refers to them through these parables.

Parables are stories that talk about extraordinary things, things beyond our imagination, through stories that refer to very, very ordinary circumstances, very, very ordinary objects.

Just like the blind men who are exploring different facets of the elephant, these 12 parables explore different individual facets of what the kingdom of heaven is like.

12 times in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus starts teaching parables that begin all with the same words, the kingdom of heaven is like.

It's because the kingdom of heaven is something that transcends anything that you and I can understand in this world.

It'd be like explaining what a fourth dimension would be.

A tesseract object, for those of you who are in physics.

Things that only exist in our imagination, not in real life, as we know it.

Jesus says in his parables, the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.

It's like a mustard seed, or yeast, or like hidden treasure in a field or a pearl of great value.

He says the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner or like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son or like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom, or like a man going on a journey.

He said the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants, or like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.

Each 1, like the picture you see on the screen, reveals 1 aspect, 1 characteristic that we can relate to.

Over the next 2 Sundays, we're going to be examining 4 of these 12 parables together.

2 of them today, and I'll be back again next week.

But together, those 4 parables are part of 1 cohesive story, 1 cohesive teaching that Jesus is giving to his disciples, his 12 disciples.

There's something specific that he's preparing them for.

There's something that he needs them to grasp that will enlarge their understanding of God's kingdom, such as they know it.

And the part that Jesus sees them playing for it.

Now, I believe there's also something that the Holy Spirit has for us to learn through these parables, not just for those 12 disciples.

For some of us, the lesson will be a helpful reminder.

It'll help steer us in the right direction.

For others who might be here today, This could be a life-changing lesson for you today.

Jesus says, those who have ears, let them hear.

Today's lesson, what we'll find by the time we leave here today, the big idea that's hidden away in these first 2 parables is that the kingdom of heaven deserves to be your life's greatest pursuit.

And that'll be true because that's where you'll find God's righteousness, God's justice, and God's flourishing for your life and for all of creation to be true.

Now when we started this sermon series a few weeks ago, Doug Virgin, whom we prayed for moments ago, he told us in his first message on the subject that the first 3 things we need to consider any time we want to really study a parable of Jesus is context, context again, and context the third time.

What's been, what has he been teaching about so far, and what's been happening so far around this teaching that he gives?

Where is Jesus geographically in the world?

Scholars generally recognize that these parables, excuse me, are given by Jesus in the second year of his three-year ministry.

During this period of time, Jesus is spending his time primarily around what's called the Sea of Galilee.

It's not really a sea, it's not an ocean, it's just a really big lake.

You can imagine a large plot of land that you'll see on a slide that I'm preempting here, that has a rather large body of water in it.

In Matthew's Gospel account, we'll see in chapter 11 that Jesus moved westward from the Sea of Galilee to teach in towns and villages that belong in that red shaded area, which is, it's not really a province or anything like that, it's an administrative region called Galilee.

By the end of that same chapter, chapter 11, we see that Jesus mentions some communities like Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum as towns that are outright just rejecting his teaching.

They reject his call to repent because the Kingdom of Heaven is here.

So he's encountering that kind of rejection.

He also encounters in chapter 12 resistance from the Pharisees.

Those are local teachers of the law, of God's law.

Matthew writes that not only are they criticizing Jesus, not only are they rejecting his teaching, they're actually starting to plot his death.

They're starting to conspire against him.

But when I say rejection, I mean deep rejection.

That kind of I want to kill you rejection.

So Matthew writes that Jesus withdrew from those areas and He began to heal everybody that he encountered that was in need of healing And that attracted large crowds of people they heard about what Jesus was doing They heard about his remarkable teaching that they'd never heard of before and they wanted to see him and so people were coming from all over to see what Jesus was up to and the Pharisees were threatened by that interest they were threatened by Jesus wondrous signs that he was doing that they couldn't do.

He was, and they were threatened by the influence that he had with the crowds.

And that finally brings us to the chapter that we're gonna be in today, chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew.

Here we learn that Jesus was staying as a guest in someone's house near the Sea of Galilee.

And chapter 13 starts with him coming out of that house to get close to the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

And from here he begins speaking the first of these parables of the kingdom that we find in the Gospel of Matthew.

He begins by teaching this parable about sower and soils.

Joe Ash, who just blessed us with the announcements, he taught us that 2 weeks ago.

And then Jesus told those crowds again by the same shores of the Sea of Galilee, these parables of weeds and the mustard seed and of the yeast which are like the kingdom of heaven and a brother Balaji taught us that last week.

And then Matthew writes that Jesus withdraws back from the crowds and goes back into that house where he's staying as a guest.

And his disciples, his 12 disciples, join him in that house in a more private setting.

And there, when the crowds weren't around, they asked Jesus, so what did that parable about the weeds, what did that mean?

And it's from this starting point in that house that we enter our text for today.

So we're going to look at 3 important context clues that help inform us what the parable is about, what Jesus is trying to teach his disciples.

Their guests staying in the home of their host somewhere close to the Sea of Galilee.

The first important bit of context to consider for these parables is that Jesus is giving a private teaching away from the crowds just for his disciples to hear.

The second important bit of context to consider for these parables is who his disciples were.

Now some traditions, they venerate, they revere, they hold up the disciples like these mighty, holy heroes of the church.

If you're into Star Wars, they'd be like Jedi masters.

But the truth is just, it's a lot more ordinary than that.

The 12 disciples were everyday people like you and me.

They had regular jobs, they had a regular education, they had tempers that flared, they had misunderstandings, they didn't understand what Jesus was talking, we know about that because they asked him.

None of them was a trained priest or a scribe or a teacher of the law.

But also, the disciples were culturally and traditionally Jewish.

This is a very important detail because that means that all the things that they would be hearing Jesus teaching would be filtered through the way they've been brought up, the way that they have culturally been taught about who God is and who he favors.

Their understanding gave them a familiarity with ideas like a kingdom of God and a Messiah who would save his people from oppression, but the understanding they had was that the people God would save would be the Jewish people, his chosen people of Israel.

The rest of the world as far as they were concerned, they're on their own.

And this is going to be an important perspective because Jesus is going to start exploding that idea in their head that the kingdom of heaven is so much bigger than that, and that it's for everybody.

The third bit of context to consider is what the Lord Jesus was preparing his disciples to do in the future.

Let me tell you, these guys, these 12 disciples, had no idea what Jesus was planning for them.

They were following along, they heard that they'd be fishers of men and stuff like that, and okay, that's great.

But they had no idea that Jesus would be preparing them to be the leaders of the very first church in Jerusalem.

They had no idea that they would be among the first evangelists who would proclaim a brand new gospel, that the Kingdom of heaven would be for all people of all cultures, all generations, not just for the people of Israel.

They had no idea they'd eventually be indwelt by God's Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

That they would be extending membership in Jesus' kingdom and his church to non-Jews, and that they would even ultimately suffer and die as martyrs for Christ's sake.

That's all the end of the story, but we're going to rewind back to this room right now that they're in, in this house, because they don't know all of that.

Matthew chapter 13 reveals this important context from which Jesus reveals to his disciples what the Kingdom of Heaven is really like and how he's preparing them for a Kingdom that is so much bigger than this fabled elephant.

So I want you to imagine with me, if you will, for a moment that we're there.

And Jesus and his disciples are in that house.

So the house has windows, but there's no glass.

The braver among us, if Steve McCargh were here with us, if those of you who know him, he'd stick his head in the window to see what's going on.

Imagine that we're peering in on this conversation.

We're listening to this teaching that Jesus is giving his disciples.

Turn with me now or follow along on the screen.

This teaching in Matthew chapter 13 starting at verse 44.

Jesus says to them, guys, the Bible doesn't say guys, but I like to imagine, Guys, the kingdom of heaven, it's like a treasure hidden in a field.

And then in his joy, he went and he sold everything that he had.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.

When he found 1 of great value he too went away and sold everything that he had and bought it.

That's 3 verses, 4 sentences about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

In the first of his parables, Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a hidden treasure.

It's something of great worth that's hidden from plain sight.

We don't know how the man in the story discovered it, but we know it was by accident.

Maybe he saw there was some disturbance in the ground.

What we do know is that the moment he discovered this treasure, he spent everything that he had, everything, to purchase that land so that he can obtain the treasure because the value of that treasure in his calculation was greater than the land itself and it must have been greater than everything that the man possessed.

And scripture says that he did it with joy in his heart.

If I had to sell everything that I had, I don't care what it is.

I'm gonna be, never mind joyful, I'm gonna be anxious.

What am I going to do with this 1 thing if I don't have anything else?

It's just a story Jesus tells, but this is the heart attitude of the man that he's describing.

To him, he made the calculation and he made it quickly and it was worth it.

Now the second parable is very similar to the first but like the elephant metaphor I'm using, just a little twist.

It's just a little different perspective.

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.

Notice at first Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, but he doesn't say in the second parable that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl.

He said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.

It's a slightly different perspective now.

Now this merchant, we don't know much about him in this story, but I can tell that he deals in a specific commodity.

Some of you are car guys, some of you are technology guys.

He's almost certainly bought and sold pearls for most of his adult life.

He's dedicated to intentionally looking for and finding the big 1.

The pearl that is more valuable than all the other pearls.

And it turns out in the story that 1 day he finds it.

He hits the motherlode, the big 1, the pearl that is of such exceedingly rare value and beauty that he too, he sells everything that he owns.

A house, maybe some camels, crops, certainly all the other pearls that he must have bought over his lifetime.

He cashes it all in so that he can acquire this treasure.

Now the first 2 parables are meant to be read and interpreted together.

They address the same themes, but they have slightly different perspectives.

In the first parable, the treasure is completely hidden and it requires great effort to find it, or depending on the language you wanna use, great luck.

In the second parable, the pearl is out there.

It just needs someone who knows what they're looking for to find it.

Also in the first parable, the treasure is found more or less by accident.

We talked about some ways that could have happened.

But In the second parable, the merchant knows exactly what he's looking for.

He's very intentional in pursuing that pearl.

Who knows how long he spent looking for it.

That's how they're a little bit different.

In both parables, we understand both the treasure and the pearl are very unique, they're very rare, they're exceedingly valuable.

And in both parables we understand that both men's response was to sell everything that they had to possess their treasure, so great was the treasure's value.

I think that first, Jesus wants his disciples to grasp the incredible value of the kingdom of heaven.

I think he wants that because he knows that the kingdom of heaven is not like anything the disciples could possibly have experienced or imagined.

And I wanna say to you and to myself in the mirror, the kingdom of heaven is like nothing you have ever experienced before or can imagine.

We spent quite a few weeks back in the earlier months of the year as a church studying through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

It's a sermon that's all about the Kingdom of Heaven.

And we taught there that the emphasis of what the Kingdom of Heaven is, is far less on where it is physically, what it looks like physically, And the emphasis is much more on what God's reign in that kingdom looks like.

And how does that compare to how we rule ourselves on this planet.

We portrayed what God's reign is like through 4 characteristics, 4 pictures that we see from scripture.

We taught that when God reigns, everything flourishes.

I grow flowers in my front yard of the house now as I'm getting older.

But there's a host on Saint-Zotziq, not far from here.

They have a garden that is just booming with flowers of all kinds, all colors.

Somehow they managed to get it to shade like a rainbow.

It goes from 1 color to the next in a nice succession.

I don't know how they do it, but that's the, oh, and I get excited.

I'm 47 years old, so I'm starting to get excited by birds.

We see that picture in the book of Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, before sin enters the picture.

Where God reigns, you see, everything grows.

And nothing grows at the expense of anything else.

We see plenty of people flourishing and growing, but it's often at the expense of others who have to suffer and have less in order for others to have more.

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Parables of Jesus