Matthew 13:44

D. THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF THE KINGDOM: THE PRICE OF TRUTH

1. THE PARABLE OF THE HIDDEN TREASURE

TEXT: 13:44

44 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field; which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

THOUGHT QUESTONS

a.

The long-awaited Kingdom of the Messiah was the object of the prayers and aspirations of the Jewish nation, and yet, by means of this parable and its companion, Jesus would convince His hearers to seize their opportunity to make the Kingdom their own, as if there would be some danger that they would not. How would you explain this?

b.

Jesus describes the Kingdom of God, i.e., the Kingdom proclaimed in HIS message and seen from HIS view of it, as worth all the sacrifices we could ever be called upon to make. What should we think about Him, if He is wrong? What must we determine to do, if He has deceived us? How could we ever know, before it is too late, whether or not He has, in fact, done this? If you object to these questions, what gives you confidence to think them to be improper?

c.

Do you suppose that the man acted in perfect honesty to hide the treasure and buy the field that contained it without informing its owners about his discovery? Should Jesus use stories about people with such dubious ethics as models for our imitation? Or, is that what He did? How would you go about unraveling this mystery?

d.

What is there about the Philippian jailor that makes him an excellent example of this fortunate finder? (See Acts 16:23-34.)

PARAPHRASE

The Kingdom of God is similar to a treasure someone had buried in a field, which another man found and reburied. This latter, for the joy of his discovery, went and sold all he possessed in order to buy that piece of land.

SUMMARY

The Kingdom will not be forced upon anyone now. When a man stumbles onto its inestimable preciousness and recognizes its value, he wisely surrenders all else unquestioningly and unhesitatingly to make it his own, Our service to God is worth all it costs.

NOTES

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure: this is the main point of this parable. All else may be nothing but scenery necessary to make this one point, which is perfectly parallel to that of its companion story, The Parable of the Precious Pearl. In both stories three points make this lesson clear:

1.

There is first the discovery of the inestimable value of God's divine government.

2.

There is the consequent desire to make it one's own.

3.

There is, last, the necessity to give everything else one possesses to acquire it.

How much else is proper to interpret is debatable, as is evident from the contradictory results achieved by conscientious, believing interpreters. The following points seem to find echoes in the reality for which they are but the illustrations:

1.

A treasure hidden in the field. In a land racked by centuries of war and harassed by banditry, often the safest deposit for one's treasure is the earth. But what one man hid, by sheer coincidence another can find. (Long-forgotten arms caches hidden by partisans during the Second World War are still turning up in Italy more than thirty years after their hiding.)

Whatever the field may signify, God's Kingdom is there present, but hidden from common view. This concealment reaffirms with the Sower Parable that the message of the Kingdom, because it encounters widely varying receptiveness among its hearers, would produce varying results ranging from total failure to qualified success, leaving an uneven, spotty control of the Kingdom over the world. Neat, black-white distinctions between good and evil people are impossible, because of the presence of evil in the world, as explained in the Weeds Parable. This fact leaves the King's control over the world apparently in doubt and His Kingdom practically indistinguishable from other world systems until the judgment. So, here too in the story of the hidden treasure, He describes a state of the world where happy surprise over the unexpected discovery of the Kingdom of God is really possible.

Did Jesus mean to communicate meaning through the detail where the man purchased the field in order to have the treasure? The field itself took on supreme value for him because of the treasure it contained, as if before the discovery the field was relatively valueless to him.

a.

Some with Trench (Notes, 46) see the field, as picturing

... the outer visible Church, as distinguished from the inward spiritual. He who recognizes the Church not as a human institute, but a divine, who has learned that God is in the midst of it, sees now that it is something beyond all earthly societies with which he has confounded it; and henceforth it is precious in his sight, even to its outermost skirts, for the sake of its inward glory, which is now revealed to his eyes. And as the man cannot have the treasure and leave the field, so he cannot have Christ except in his Church; he cannot have Christ in his heart, and at the same time separate his fortunes from those of Christ's struggling, suffering Church, The treasure and the field go together.

b.

Others, with Lenski, (Matthew, 542), think of the field as the Scriptures which had seemed so common and ordinary to the reader. But, suddenly, he comes alive, because he has just discovered the vital truth of the Kingdom and Jesus Christ, the Bible's grand subject. Whereas before, the Bible had been treated as if it had belonged to others, now he must make its true treasure his very own personal possession.

c.

Is it not simpler to see the field as parallel to the various pearl markets among which the merchant found the one pearl of inestimable value? (Cf. on Matthew 13:46) If so, we see that this field was not the previous possession of the fortunate finder, because his possessions and interests lay elsewhere. Nevertheless, while present in THIS field for whatever reason (was he plowing it or just walking through it?) he stumbled onto its treasure. Could it be that by the field He means to suggest the intellectual field of specifically religious ideas which a person does not necessarily make his own unless he sees some compelling reason to do so? Until this discovery, his material interests and cares could effectively block any concern for buying anyone's religious ideas. But when he gets a glimpse of Jesus Christ and the live possibility to realize at least in his own life the Kingship, beauty and order of God, he no longer chokes on religious ideas, but accepts them readily in order to possess Him who is the highest treasure. (Cf. Matthew 11:25; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Colossians 2:3-4; Luke 19:42)

2.

which a man found and hid; and in his joy he goeth. His unexpected discovery brings him joy, but also to the crisis of decision. No matter what made the discovery possible, he finds himself face to face with Truth and must decide whether to seize it or lose it by default. The morality of his covering up his discovery has been doubted by some who leave Jesus-' use of this story in question, despite their attempts to defend Him. They argue that the treasure belonged technically to the present owner of the field, so that the principle of personal integrity would have required the finder to inform him of the treasure. Then, they correctly insist that Jesus did not justify the man's conduct nor hold his (im)morality up for imitation. They rightly see the point of the story as the man's earnestness in obtaining the treasure. But they assume too much and thus leave the Lord open to criticism:

a.

Is the present owner of the field any more the true owner of the treasure than the happy finder? Edersheim (Life, I, 595f) shows that then-current Jewish law vindicated the finder as the proper owner.

b.

The treasure's original owner may as easily be presumed dead and forgotten long before the finder arrives on the scene, rather than think of him as the current owner of the field. It is not necessary, of course, to assume that the field had ANY owner. To whom belong, for instance, the treasures found on the Mediterranean Sea's floor beyond the territorial limits of any nation, treasures that once represented the wealth of Rome or Greece? And if it be presumed that the happy finder had stumbled onto a fortune in Babylonian gold coins no longer in circulation but whose intrinsic value represented a fortune reminted, all in a field whose original owner left no heirs, and if it be imagined that his nation had no laws specifically protecting its own ownership of such antiquities, then it would be possible for the man easily to pay to his township the field's value, thus clearing his title to the treasure. (Did abandoned lands revert automatically to government disposition at the death or in the absence of their heirless owners? Cf. 2 Samuel 9:9 f; 2 Kings 21:16; 2 Kings 8:3-6) At any rate, the captivities would have effectively interrupted, if not altogether ended, the normal execution, especially in the case of some families wiped out, of the ancient patrimonial inheritance laws whereby such lands would pass to one's next of kin, thus keeping them and any improvements thereon within the ancient tribal families. (Cf. Leviticus 25:25-34; Leviticus 26:31-32; Leviticus 26:34 ff; Leviticus 26:43 ff; 1Chron. 36:21; Isaiah 1:7; Isaiah 6:11-12) Because of these disorders it would be perfectly imaginable for the field to have no known private owners to whom the treasure would supposedly belong, It is unfair to judge the man's morality on the basis of modern legislation or obligations that do not represent his actual ethical responsibility in his own time-period and legal situation.

c.

The brevity of Jesus-' story does not permit those who doubt the man's morality to prove that he did not in fact inform the present owners of the field's treasure. They might have let the treasure go to the new buyer, because of indifference or some other unstated technicality. (Cf. Boaz-' purchase of Ruth ahead of his kinsman who had prior rights. Ruth 4:5)

d.

His reburying the treasure is no indication of immorality, but of prudence lest he lose it by theft during his absence, and of haste lest someone else buy the field ahead of him while he dallied. He honestly cleared his own title to the property before moving the treasure. In fact, his rehiding the treasure (ékrupsen) is merely the act of putting the treasure back exactly as he found it: hidden (kekrumméno, from the same verb krùpto).

3.

In his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Possession costs everything, but cost is no object, since his joy motivates him to part with whatever was dear and closest to him in order to make the field his own. All that he hath is the price, but how much is that if we would purchase the Kingdom? All that a person thinks important or of value: place and possessions, fame, wealth, one's former religious system, family, philosophies, etc. Any ambition, however dear, any habit or way of life that obstructs our possession of the Kingdom must go. Whatever sins a man quits for Jesus-' sake are part of his price. (Cf. Matthew 10:37-39; Matthew 16:24; Matthew 19:29; Mark 9:43 ff) Often our dearest possessions are but garbage in contrast to the supreme joy of having the Father and the Son! (1 John 1:3; 1 John 2:23; 1 John 5:11-12) Listen to Paul describe HIS great find! (Philippians 3:1-17) Or Philip and Nathanael (John 1:43-51)

By means of this illustration Jesus pleads with people not to be ashamed of the price they pay for the Kingdom of God in comparison with the value they receive. Many would refuse the fortune of Christ, because fool's gold is less expensive. Yet the only sure way to purchase peace of mind, genuine joy, unmarred beauty, enduring righteousness and that crowning happiness to be found nowhere else is to accept the discipline, the self-denial and the cross. Any happy finder of the Kingdom should be willing to part with any prejudices, any previously dear values and ideas, in order to possess and enjoy all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ.

Matthew himself is one such fortunate finder, because this publican probably never dreamed that one day he would look up from his ledgers into the face of a Jesus fully ready to invite him into special service in His Kingdom as an Apostle. This sudden hope so gripped him that he was willing to drop instantly and permanently his lucrative tax job and cast his lot with the Lord. He goes and sells all that he has for Jesus the yet-uncrowned King? Despite the apparent ridiculousness of staking everything on this one investment, something more than a good head for figures brought Matthew, wide-eyed, to his feet. It took some real vision, some true understanding of Jesus of Nazareth, and much real faith to think the yet undefined service of an itinerate, controversial Rabbi worth chucking away his cozy, materially rewarding position, in order to make his own all the Lord offered! (See notes on Matthew 9:9.)

On the basis of this man's sagacious personal acquisition of the Kingdom, Trench (Notes, 50) shares the following suggestive outline on buying well:

1.

Purchase truth, instruction, wisdom and understanding: all things of the spirit! (Proverbs 23:23)

2.

Buy what has real value, ironically at no cost whatever! (Isaiah 55:1)

3.

Buy while there is still time! (Matthew 25:1-13)

4.

Buy from Jesus the deep needs of our soul! (Revelation 3:18)

More comments on the impact of this parable will follow the Precious Pearl Parable.

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

What single point does this story have in common with that about the precious pearl?

2.

What is there in the background of the disciples that made this story necessary?

3.

What is there in the immediate teaching of Jesus that rendered this story essential at this point in His message?

4.

Explain the historical situation of the happy finder by illustrating the customs of Jesus-' time that make His story a living reality to His original hearers, and, at the same time, prove the legitimacy of that man's course of action.

5.

How does the happy finder of the treasure differ from the pearl merchant in the companion parable? Does this indicate a difference in emphasis between these stories? What, precisely, was the man doing when he discovered the treasure, or can we know this? Is this important?

6.

To what (if anything) is reference made by the following symbols:

a.

The hidden treasure?

b.

The fortunate finder?

c.

The field?

d.

The finder's former possessions? (all that he hath)?

7.

What texts indicate that Jesus had already taught this truth before the great sermon in parables?