The Problem with Parables (Matthew 13) | Pastor Rod Gomez

Pastor Rod: God, we need you tonight.

We recognize that there are things that are happening, uh, even around us, people

that are living and people that are dying.

People that are doing awful things, and we need you to help

us understand those things.

Sometimes we take for granted the little things in our lives, and sometimes the

little thing is life itself, that we're given the ability to live and breathe

and have blood flowing through our veins, and sometimes we're awakened to the fact

that those things aren't for granted.

So please help us tonight to have a tender heart toward you and to

think seriously about the things that we're about to discuss.

Us we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

have you ever played one of those?

Figure it out games.

You know how you, like, you go to winter camp and there's like nine

pieces of tissue paper and you have to figure out the pattern that makes the

thing up Was at Disneyland, waiting in line with the group of giggly girls.

And the girl says to me, she says this, maybe you know this one.

She says this.

She says, okay, my line is from here to here.

Is that a good line?

And I said, ah, yes.

She said, yes, that's a good line.

And she said, my line is from here to here.

Is that a good line?

And I said, yes.

She said, no, that's a bad line.

And I'm like, she did this several times over.

And everyone around me is looking at me like, is he, is this guy

ever gonna figure this out?

So she starts doing this thing again.

She said, okay, my line is from here to here.

Is that a good line?

And I said, I don't know.

And she said, yes, it's a good line.

We proceeded to do this for, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes.

And then it clicked.

I figured it out.

You guys paying attention?

All right, let me do it again for you.

So let see.

You can figure this out.

Okay.

Um, all right.

Alright.

My line is from here to here.

Is that a good line?

Yes.

No it's not.

That's terrible.

It's a bad line.

Okay.

My line is from here to here.

Is that a good line?

Yes.

Yes it is.

My line is from here to here.

Is that a good line?

It's a bad line.

It's a bad line.

Some of you might know this one.

I'll let you guys figure that out yourselves later on.

I'm not gonna tell you how to do it.

Or maybe you did the Johnny.

Johnny, Johnny Whoop Johnny, whoop Johnny.

All those things are black magic.

Have you played that one yet?

There's all sorts of fun games that are to figure it out.

Games you have to have a certain something to figure out how the game is played.

In fact, one wonders what makes someone really good at these games.

Maybe they're especially creative or they have an IQ over one

60, or they play in the band.

Who knows what the criteria is?

Or maybe as we're gonna see tonight, maybe the, the real ability to figure

out these mind puzzles has to do with the condition of your heart.

Jesus is actually gonna say that the biggest challenge in

understanding what he teaches.

Is not whether you're smart enough or whether you're tall enough, or whether

you're cool enough or anything else, he's gonna say that the biggest challenge with

you, understanding what he's teaching is not anything more than your heart.

Your heart determines what your head believes, what's

at the core of who you are.

Your heart is gonna dictate everything about you, whether you're

a hard worker, whether you're lazy.

Whether you love playing music, whether you love reading books,

whether you obey your parents, whether you even submit to God is really a

matter of your heart, your heart.

A lot of people think about the heart, and when they think about

the heart, they'll say, well, uh, my heart told me to love this person,

or My heart felt like it was wrong.

They're saying more than what they realized.

Your heart is more than your feelings.

It actually has a lot more to do with how your whole life works.

Your heart governs how you think your heart governs, what you believe your

heart governs, uh, what you feel.

Your heart governs everything about your life, and most importantly,

most importantly, your heart governs.

It determines whether and how you respond to God.

Tonight, I'm gonna share with you a 25 minute sermon, and your response is not

gonna be whether or not my sermon is good, although that really should matter.

But your response is gonna be determined on whether or not your

heart is humble, whether or not your heart is humble and soft before God.

Your heart is a big deal.

So the problem with the parables is not whether someone is smart enough, the

reason some people get it and some don't, has everything to do with their heart.

So to not have a question for you.

How's your heart doing?

How's your heart?

How's your heart before God?

How's your heart doing before other people?

How's your heart doing?

And when I say this, I'm not just saying like, are you sick or healthy?

I'm saying, is your heart soft?

Is your heart humble?

Do you genuinely desire to know what's true?

Do you genuinely desire to have the best possible life you can have?

Do you genuinely have a desire to hear what God would say if, if God is

speaking through the Bible, do you want to know what God has to say to you?

Your heart will determine the answer to that question.

Some of you, your heart is in the place of saying, I don't even care.

I don't want to be here.

I don't like you.

I don't like the people next to me.

I don't like the people behind me.

I don't want to be here.

That's a heart problem.

And for some people, you'll ask them, well, why don't you believe in God?

They're gonna say, well, you know, so intellectually the reason why First

law thermodynamics and the reason, evolution, and they're gonna say all

these things that sound terribly smart.

But the reality is, is not that Christianity's a dumb religion.

The reality is our heart.

That our heart makes us resistant toward God because we are proud.

We naturally don't want to hear what God says because we wanna do things our way.

Our heart says, I'm the boss.

I'm the king or the queen.

I determine what the world around me should be.

I determine my own truth.

I'm gonna speak my truth to power.

The problem with the parables is not a problem with what Jesus says.

It's the problem of your heart.

Your heart determines what your head believes.

So as we jump into this, we're gonna jump, we're gonna jump in,

we're gonna have a lot of territory to cover, and we're gonna go fast.

So buckle up, make sure you have your Bibles open.

If you have your Bible, make sure you're taking notes.

I would love for you to take notes 'cause that really matters to me.

I also want you to make sure that you're facing the, the screen here or facing me

so that I know that you're looking at me.

I wanna be able to see your eyes and interact with you.

Uh, I honestly pay attention when I'm talking to you and I look at your eyes.

I can tell whether or not you're tracking with me or not.

So it's really important to me that I can see your eyeballs.

And that I can see that you're tracking or not.

Either way, I want to be able to look.

That's important to me.

Okay.

Matthew chapter 13, we're gonna start with the first parable that this one,

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

you might actually know, this one's called the Parable of the Soils,

the four different kinds of soils.

We're gonna look at four, and let me just summarize for you what we're gonna

see in these first few verses here.

Jesus is gonna say that a farmer went out to sow seed.

He has a satchel around his back.

He takes a seed, he spreads it on all these places.

On his farm, he's sowing seed into the ground and he said, as

the farmer sows his seed into the ground, there are four types of soil.

The first soil is the path.

The path is hard, and so the seed doesn't really have any place to go.

People are trampling upon it, and the seed gets eaten by

the birds doesn't do anything.

The second soil is the soil of the stony ground.

Some seed falls on stones.

On Stony ground.

And so, as you might imagine, there might be a little bit of life that

shows up, but not really a whole lot.

So the Stony Ground's another one.

The thorny ground is a soil that has weeds around it that steal

the nutrients from the soil.

The last soil is the good soil.

This is a soil that is soft and prepared and fertilized.

This is a soil that's ready to receive the seed, and it's

gonna produce something great.

At the end of this session that Jesus describes these four soils.

Here's what he says.

Very mysterious, but here's what Jesus says.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

He could have said something like this.

Look, if you're paying attention, you'll understand what I'm saying.

If you're wise, you'll hear what I'm saying and know that there is deep

meaning invested into this parable.

Parable, since they haven't described it yet, is a story that's meant

to be compared to something else.

He's saying, this story is like how life works.

This story is meant to be understood as something more than just a story.

It's not.

It's not a myth, it's not a legend.

It's a story that's meant to highlight a big idea.

Let's take a look at that big idea together here, Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

We're gonna skip on down to verse 18.

He's gonna say here.

Then he's telling his disciples the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it,

the evil one comes and takes this, takes rather, and snatches away

what has been sown in his heart.

This is what was sown along the path.

So the first soil, he says, the soils are all representative of the heart.

You're gonna see this, these, these, all, all these soils are

representative of the heart.

And he's saying the path is the, is the soil that is compacted.

It's hard, it can't be penetrated.

And when seeds, which is the word of God, the gospel, when that's given to

this soil, notice that the devil comes, the evil one comes and takes it away.

He has something to do with this.

The devil wants you to not listen so that he can take it from you.

This is what is sown along the path.

This is a bad soil.

This is a hard heart.

I.

He continues on the second soil.

He says, as for what is sewn on the rocky ground, this is the one that hears the

word and immediately receives it with joy.

There's some kind of life.

They hear the gospel, they hear the word of God preach, and they say,

wow, that's really interesting.

I get it.

I like that.

They receive it with joy.

Yet this is important.

Yet he has no root in himself.

But endures for a while.

And when, here's the important part here.

When tribulation or persecution arises on accord, on account of the

word, immediately he falls away.

This is the person who at first looks like a Christian.

They respond well, but then bad things begin to happen to them

and they think, wait a minute.

I thought Chris Christianity was supposed to make my life better.

That's not better.

Therefore, Christianity's not true.

I'm outta here.

I'm not gonna do this.

This is too hard.

I don't want anything to do with this.

The third soil is the soil that is sewn among the, uh, rather

the seed is sewn among thorns.

This is the one who hears the word, but they understand it, but the cares

of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word that means the word

can be given to somebody, but because they care a lot more about things that

the world offers or even money, power.

That person says, I can't afford to let go of what I got.

I can't afford to give this up to Jesus.

He's just not worth it.

I value my video games more.

I value my music more.

I value my shoe collection more.

I value my job more.

I value almost anything.

The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches.

Notice the word deceitfulness.

The trickery of riches.

I care more about that, and so it chokes the word.

It means that it restrains it from ever taking root and growing

because I care much more about these other things over here.

That's the third soil.

The fourth soil is the good soil.

Here's what Jesus says, as for what was sewn on good soil, this is the one

who hears the word and understands it.

They're listening to it.

They understand it.

He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundred fold,

and another 60 and another 30.

The one who understands it and hears it is the one that bears fruit.

They do something with the word of God.

And in Luke chapter eight, this is the same.

It's a parallel account in another gospel.

Here's what Luke says, as for that, in the good soil, they are those who hearing

the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.

When the bad times come, they're okay with that.

I'm just gonna stay focused.

I'm gonna stay the course.

And so you have four soils.

The first soil, the path doesn't have anywhere to go, and so it ends

up, it ends up producing nothing, uh, and it's attacked by Satan.

The birds of the air come and steal the seeds.

The evil ones involved the second soil.

Is the seeds that fall on the rocky soil.

There's no root.

They can't build a, they can't build a foundation, and so when the

hot times come, they wither away.

Kind of like a Texas summer.

Some things in Texas can't afford to grow because it's just

too hot out or too cold out.

So because it has no root, can't sustain it, it withers away.

It dies The third soil, it sea a seeds that falls on the thorny soil.

It gets choked out because of the weeds.

The weeds and the thorns, they come and rip away that soil

or rip away the nutrients.

Therefore, the seed cannot, cannot produce.

But the last one, seeds that fall on the fertile soil.

Think about a good soil that's all manured, and it's broken

up seeds falling easily.

And because the soil is soft and tender and ready for the seed, that seed goes in

there and it bears fruit and it does good because the word of God sewn in the heart.

That's prepared and humble.

Can do.

Great.

Good to you.

All of these soils are conditions of your heart.

Which one do you think you are?

Which soil do you think best reflects where you're at right now?

It's good to be honest with yourself.

No one to trick yourself and say, well, I think I'm the fourth soil 'cause I'm here.

It's good to say, well, I, I think I ought to really examine my life

and say, where am I with God?

Your heart will determine what your head believes.

If that's the truth, if that's the case, then what you really

need do is grow a humble heart.

You have to take it seriously to grow a humble heart.

If your heart is hard and you think the Bible is just a bunch of stories, and you

think Jesus coming to live and die in your place, and rise again on the third day is

just a legend, you're not gonna respond the way that you might even want to.

The thing that changes people's lives is a humble reception of God's word.

God wants you to have a tender heart.

If you come with a hard heart, you're gonna have a hard time understanding

anything that I'm talking about.

Think about a good tortilla.

Mm-hmm.

Imagine your grandma.

Your grandma makes you these homemade tortillas.

They're piping hot, fresh, they're covered in lard.

They smell terrific.

They feel your house with joy and gladness when you pick up this

tortilla, which has been warmed up.

In her heart.

What does this tort, what does this tortilla feel like?

It's pliable.

Soft.

You could put your beans and your meat in there.

You could put some cheese on top, put some salsa.

That thing is gonna do its job.

That is a good heart.

It's flexible.

Smells good, feels good, does its job well.

But let's say your grandmama doesn't love you and she gets

you the store by tortillas.

Cold and stale.

You pull it outta the refrigerator.

It doesn't look like this.

You pull it outta the refrigerator, it's brittle.

What happens when you try to take that brittle corn tortilla

and fold it into a taco?

What happens?

Breaks.

Breaks kind of garbage.

Is this, you might say, grandma hates me.

You would be right if grandma bought you.

That kind of Yeah.

The heart is a lot like a tortilla.

Yep.

I said that.

A warm heart.

Like a warm tortilla does its job well, it's flexible.

It's pliable.

A cold heart, a cold hard heart, like a tortilla is not flexible.

It's not gonna do its job.

It's not.

It's gonna crumble.

It's not gonna serve you well.

A hard heart will ultimately destroy you.

You therefore need a humble heart.

Now, humble heart looks like this.

It listens carefully to God's word.

A humble heart is willing to say, look, if God is real and he's talking to me

through the Bible, I better pay attention.

I have to.

Because if this is God talking to me, I need to hear what he says.

If I don't hear what he says, man, I'm gonna put myself in a world of hurt.

If this is truly God's word, and the Bible says this is God's

word, and he's proven it over and over again by signs and miracles.

The miracle the most, the the biggest miracle, the one that we celebrate

is Jesus, resurrection from the dead.

You need a humble heart that says, I want to carefully listen to God's word.

The good heart hears and understands God's word.

The hard heart doesn't even bother.

'cause I've got bigger things to do.

I've got better things to do.

I, I really like my sin.

I don't want Jesus because sin is just too much fun.

A humble heart, however, seeks understanding of God's word.

Let me just cut it straight with you guys.

The Bible's hard, isn't it?

Can we just be honest about the Bible's hard?

It's a, it's a difficult book.

There's a lot of complexity in it, even though it's simple

enough for a child to understand.

The Bible is hard.

A soft, humble heart says, I will persist.

If this is God's word, I will seek to understand it because it matters.

A humble heart says, I need this.

If it's really God, I need to understand it.

I will slow down and do what I need to do to make sure that I understand it.

Thirdly, a humble heart produces good works from God's word.

A humble heart is gonna say, okay, I, I, I wanna listen to it.

I wanna understand it, and now I want to put it to work.

I need to do what it says because I believe what God says.

I trust what God says, I'm gonna do it.

It, I'm gonna do it.

This is what it means to have a humble heart before God.

Not just to hear the word, but to do the word again.

How's your heart?

What soil best represents you?

Are you the soft soil that says, yes, Lord, I want to do what you say, or are

you the hard soil that says, no thank you.

I don't have any interest in what you're, what you're giving me here.

Your heart determines what your head believes.

You've gotta make sure your heart is humble.

Jesus continues.

He tells more stories, more parables.

And this next parable, we're gonna look at two of them.

We're gonna look at the weeds, actually, I think we're only gonna look at one,

but we're gonna look at the weeds.

He put this parable before them saying The kingdom of heaven may be compared to

a man who sowed good seed in his field.

So this goes back to the parable of so again, but this is beyond that,

he says, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sewed

weeds among the wheat and went away.

It.

So when the, when the plants came up in Bo Borg grain, then the weeds also appeared.

So imagine a farmer sowing good seed and he goes to sleep, but

his neighbor who hates him, Mr.

Johnson, he comes at night sneaking in like a burglar and is sowing

weeds into to the farmer's soil.

So later on when he sees the, the, the harvest begin to come up, he's like,

Hey, where did all these weeds come from?

And then his friends are like, well, hey dude.

Um.

He said, Hey master, didn't you just sow good seed in your field?

How then does it have weeds?

And he said to them, an enemy has done this.

It's Farmer Johnson.

I know it.

Farmer Johnson did this.

So the servant said to him, well, do you want us to go and gather the weeds?

Then that's what my lawn service does.

They come and they spray for the weeds and they take them out for us.

They help us to control our lawn.

And so they ask them, do you want us to go take out the weeds?

And then the farmer says.

No, because if you gather the weeds, you might accidentally take up the wheat

along with them, that you might destroy the crop if you take out the weeds.

Therefore, let both of them grow together.

Until the harvest.

Until the harvest, and at harvest time, I will tell the reapers,

gather the weeds first, and then bind them into bundles to be burned.

That's not a good thing.

Gather the wheat into my bar.

Okay, so Jesus is telling you a little story, a parable about how you should

expect the church to work in the church.

He says, in the kingdom of God, there's gonna be two

kinds of people in the church.

At any given time, you're gonna have weeds, and you're gonna have weeds.

The enemy is the devil.

He comes and he sows bad things into the church.

He sows people in the church that their job is to deceive and to take away.

Instead of exposing them right now, Jesus says he's gonna wait until the

very last day of judgment to expose them and to gather them and to judge them.

This is a bad situation, but you should know, know something

about, know something about this.

Jesus is telling us that in the church there will be both Christian

and non-Christian going to church together, doing church things,

producing church activities.

What does this mean for us?

Jesus is telling us, if you see hypocrites and sin in the church, maybe it's

not the church who's at fault here.

Maybe it's the enemy, the devil sowing people in the church

who are there to destroy it.

If that's true, then you need to guard your heart against

something called cynicism.

You need to realize that there are people in the church even now who are

not Christians, who are the weeds.

And who are those who are planted by the enemy that are meant to

take away from the church itself?

They're there to confuse, they're there to destroy.

They're there to sow discord.

They're there to create problems for the church as Christians.

Then we shouldn't look at that and say, well, uh, you know, it must

be that it must be true then that the church is full of hypocrites.

The church is full of evil people.

I, I'll never go to a Christian Church because those people

are all fakes and phonies.

I can't trust them.

And, and for some of those people in the church, maybe that's true.

Maybe that's true.

You know, when I was your age, when I was your age, one of my favorite

youth pastors, he's a cool guy.

I really liked him.

He was, he was like one of the most popular guys in the church.

One of my favorite youth pastors cheated on his wife and wrecked his family.

I was my youth pastor.

I looked at him like.

How God, how could this be?

This guy was a godly guy.

He said all the right things.

He was funny.

He was engaging.

I liked him, but then that guy goes and does something so stupid.

It rocked my world.

I thought, how could I possibly, how could I possibly move past this?

My parents both were professing Christians.

They're the reason I ended up in church in the first place when

my parents decided to divorce.

I thought, well, if God can't fix my parents' marriage,

what's he gonna do with my life?

If he can't be trusted to fix my parents, how's he gonna fix my life?

That's two people.

I'm only one.

If he can't do anything with two, surely he can't.

He can't do anything for me.

The one

in high school.

I began to ask serious questions about my faith, and so I challenged

my leaders by asking hard questions.

I, I don't even remember what some of them were.

One of them had to do with the nature of love, and I asked my leaders these really

hard questions that I was wrestling with, and, and you know what they answered.

Here's what they said.

You ready for it?

Here it goes.

I don't know.

That's a good question.

You don't have answers to these things.

These are important questions.

I need answers to these questions.

I'm having an existential crisis of faith here.

You need to tell me the answer to these questions.

And my, my youth leaders, I mean well intentioned, but they, they just

didn't know I had serious questions.

That really rattled me, that really bothered me.

Questions about God and goodness and evil and badness and how this all works.

And if God can destroy evil, why doesn't he?

And why doesn't God do all the things that I expect him to do?

He can't keep my parents together.

Uh, he's clearly, he can't keep a pastor married to his wife faithfully.

If God's real, why is all this stuff happening in the church?

Why is it true that the, the church seems to be struggling all the time and

that even the best Christians seem not to be able to keep their lives together?

Man, I'm really having to struggle keeping myself in the church here.

And here's the thing.

I almost slipped.

I almost said, you know what?

I'm done with this.

I struggled and I didn't think, I can't stay here with a clear conscience

until God taught me by softening my heart and giving me a humble heart.

Maybe there are people in the church who are not Christian.

Maybe there are people in the church who are here simply to create issues and maybe

even for Christians who are in the church, maybe Christian sin in grievous ways,

and maybe just maybe I'm a really big sin or too, and I just don't see it yet.

One of the biggest things that you're gonna have to fight young person

is cynicism against the church.

I wish that I could tell you that some of the people that you love

and respect won't let you down.

Truth is they will.

I wish I could tell you and make a guarantees.

I wish I could tell you and make a guarantees that everybody that

you run into at the church is a godly man and a godly woman.

They have your best interest at heart and they're always gonna do what's right.

That's simply not true.

But your hope shouldn't be in the people.

Your hope should be in the Lord.

You need to guard your heart, protect your heart against cynicism, by the way, in

case you're wondering what cynicism is.

It's always seeing what's wrong in the world.

It's just saying, it's looking at something and saying, this is

broken, this is evil, this is out.

Or let's just say you get a good present in the mail.

Someone's sending you a good present.

Oh, it's probably broken.

They send you a present.

Oh, they probably bought it secondhand.

You know, a cynic is someone who doubts everything.

That's good.

A cynic is someone who's always looking at the glass and

saying, half full, not enough.

For me.

A cynic looks at everything through a dark color lens and says.

Everything is messed up.

Everything is broken, everything is shot.

In fact, some people have argued that the author of Ecclesiastes, one of the

books of the Bible is quite cynical.

Cynicism is something that you have to guard your heart against because

it doesn't just start in your heart.

It expands and moves toward God and says, God can't be trusted.

I don't want that for you.

So to protect your heart against cynicism.

To protect your heart against sin, can you move it forward?

Protect your heart against cynicism?

I don't know why I can't connect.

Connection.

Lost.

Okay.

Thank you.

Protect your heart against cynicism by expecting demonic

opposition to the church.

The devil is at work.

He is sowing opposition into the church.

He's got his people working for him.

His people are called demons.

Demons are constantly at war with God's true church.

Why?

Well, 'cause they don't want people to know the gospel.

They don't want people to get saved.

And so you should always expect that even within a good church, perhaps,

especially in a good church, there's going to be things that are gonna

make you sad and angry and upset.

I'm not saying the church should tolerate sin, but you should

expect the church is going to be struggling with sin all of her life.

'cause Jesus says there's gonna be wheat and there's gonna be weeds

in the church at the same time.

And this is because of the devil's.

Strategy.

He wants to sow demonic opposition into the church so that she's not

as effective, so that she doesn't bring God the glory that he deserves.

Second, protect your heart against cynicism by expecting

sin and hypocrisy in the church.

I'm not saying that the church is sinful or that Christians

are hypocrite, hypocritical.

Sometimes they are, sometimes, but, and while Christians do sin, and while

Christians do sometimes express hypocrisy.

It is not true that the church is full of sinners who are hypocrites.

The church is full of broken people, but they're not hypocrites.

Christians are in church because they recognize they're

broken and they need a savior.

Have you noticed that yet?

Have you noticed in your own life that you're broken and that you need a savior?

Have you realized that when you point your bony finger at all these

Christians, you're actually pointing several fingers back at yourself

saying, I'm actually a hypocrite.

I'm actually a liar.

I'm actually a thief.

I'm actually quite broken myself.

This is the whole reason Christians are Christians in the first place.

We see that we need Jesus.

We recognize I can't do life by myself.

I need Jesus to save me.

I've already broken his law.

I can't do anything to change that.

Therefore, I need Jesus to save my life and otherwise.

The challenge for us is that we, we look at all of this and we say,

man, the church is just broken.

I hate the church.

I hate the Christians of the church.

They're all phonies and fakes.

It's just not true.

It's just not true.

A cynical heart will make you believe.

That everything you see while they're just baking it, that's just Sunday.

I want to see you on Tuesday and hey, it's perfectly right to expect

that a real Christian grows in grace.

They should.

I know for some of you, you look at your parents and say, my parents are phonies.

They're like this on Sunday, and they're like this on another day.

I get it.

I really do, and I'm sure that everybody, when they go to church, they're, they're

trying to put their best foot forward.

I, I understand that.

Hypocrisy is not the same thing though.

Hypocrisy is not saying that you don't acknowledge that there are

severe shortcomings in your life.

Hypocrisy be would be to pretend that there isn't.

It's like, oh, I'm, I'm totally fine.

I'm, I'm, I'm perfectly, I'm perfectly good.

Every Christian knows that who they want to be and who

they are are different places.

Guard your heart against cynicism 'cause your heart determines

what your head believes.

And whether or not you just accepted what I said right now is

gonna be determined by your heart.

If your heart is humble, willing to understand and listen to reason,

great, not you won't listen.

Last passage here, Matthew 1344 to 58.

I wanna look at two parables as we close together.

These last two parables are the best.

Here's why.

Jesus is gonna make a case for why you should be a Christian.

Here we go.

Two parables.

Parable of the Hidden treasure.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.

So the gospel is hidden in a field which a man found in covered up.

He sees it.

He finds it.

He says, this is awesome.

I'm gonna cover it up.

Why?

Because in joy, he goes and sells all that he has to buy that field.

It because he's gonna get something far greater than everything that he sells.

The second parable is the parable of the pearl of great price.

He says this again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant

in search of fine pearls.

And then he finds this pearl, this one pearl of great price.

This is the most valuable pearl that he could find ever.

And so he goes, sells all that he has and buys it.

And both of these parables, both of these stories, Jesus is highlighting a man

and a merchant who give up everything.

To gain the kingdom of heaven, to gain Jesus, to gain the gospel.

Point number three, you need to show your heart that Jesus is worth everything.

It's worth giving up your whole life for.

In fact, that's exactly the price that you have to pay if you want, follow Jesus.

Jesus says you have to lay down your life to follow me, and that means

signing up to do anything that he says.

He's the Lord.

We're the servants.

He's the king.

We're the subjects.

Imagine that you're a teenager who collects great shoes.

You're a sneakerhead and you have several pair of cool shoes.

Nothing great, but enough to be respectable.

Several hundred dollars worth of good sneakers.

But at a yard sale in North Texas, you go to prosper.

'cause those are where all the rich people live.

You're in prosper.

And you go to a yard sale and you see at the yard sale, oh look, a pair of Air

Jordan ones, oh look, these are original.

And then you begin to do some internet searching and you realize this looks

like a game worn pair of Air Jordan ones.

And so you begin to realize you just stumbled across the

biggest find of your entire life.

You asked the person at the desk, how much are you selling these junky old shoes for?

And they say to you, those are a hundred bucks, a hundred bucks.

What's your move?

What's your move?

Whatcha gonna do?

You got an answer?

If you're like most of us, you're gonna go home, you and scrounge up every

dog you can to buy this pair of shoes.

You know why?

How much did this pair of shoes go for?

This is a game worn.

This is an actual game worn pair of Air Jordan.

Ones worn by Air Jordan, not just game worn by somebody

these worn by Michael Jordan.

Uh, and I believe this is the one that he broke the backboard on.

How much are these going for?

Anyone?

Take a guess.

Just call it out.

Take a guess.

Million.

Close.

No way too.

Way too.

Okay.

You guys are way at the ballpark.

$600,000.

Is the numbers pretty good?

Pretty good pay date if you ask me.

So you go home, you sell all your shoes to get the a hundred dollars

to buy this $600,000 pair of shoes.

Did you make a good deal?

Was that a good bargain?

Yes, yes, absolutely right.

Duh.

The best deal of your life.

When Jesus says in these two parables, the man and the merchant sell everything

to gain this pearl of great price.

He's saying the gospel, the God of the gospel, Jesus is worth far more

than anything that you give up for it.

Some of you guys will say, well, I don't wanna lose

friends if I become a Christian.

I don't wanna lose the music I listen to when I become a Christian.

I don't wanna lose my free time when I become a Christian.

I don't want to uh, I don't wanna lose my freedoms when I become a Christian.

All the things that you might add up and say, I don't wanna do it

because of these things, Jesus is saying, it is worth it more than

you realize following Jesus, loving Jesus, living for Jesus is worth it.

So you need to show your heart that Jesus is the priceless treasure.

He is the treasure that is worth all treasures.

We talk about selling your shoes, you could sell your whole house and your

life and everything and give it to Jesus and you would still be getting a bargain

because Jesus is a priceless treasure.

He is a the one of a kind savior.

He's worth all that you possibly could imagine and so much more.

Jesus is supremely valuable and you would do well to have a heart that.

Humble enough to say if he is who he says he is, if he is God on the flesh,

if he is the man who lived and died in my place, who was perfect, and if

he is the king of Kings and the Lord of Lords and he died for me, then

surely I should give my life to him.

And if I give my life to Jesus and I trade my life for his on the cross, I am getting

the best deal that I could possibly ever get because he is the priceless treasure

and he's the one of a kind savior.

Here.

Now that I'm old and I'm over the hill, I've been thinking a lot about

buying a watch, like a nice watch.

Not, not like a super nice watch, but like a timepiece, you know,

a, a Rolex, uh, perhaps, and buy a Rolls Royce on top of it.

This is what you call a midlife crisis.

I'm just kidding.

Uh, not gonna buy those things, but just a nice watch.

A watch that's more than an Apple Watch.

Everyone wears an Apple watch.

And so I found this one that I wanted to bring to your guys'

attention in case you thought about it during Pastor Appreciation Month.

This is called the Graph Diamonds Hallucination.

I got you.

Got me.

Thank you.

This watch can be yours for a cool $55 million.

It's a bit feminine, but I can, I could roll with it is all I'm saying.

How do you even.

I don't know, but I'd figure it out.

All of these are diamonds.

That's all Real.

Graph made it, and this is a one of a kind.

This is a one of a kind.

There's no more.

This is it.

This is the one wash they made.

It's 55 million and if you guys want to get it from me, it's in October.

That's when pastor appreciation month is.

There it is.

It's actually not for sale, but if they did sell it, it'd be $55 million.

You could rock that.

I could rock that during worship.

Lots of rocks to rock that too.

Jesus is more valuable than a $55 million watch.

He is a one of a kind, and in part of what makes that thing valuable is there's

nothing like nothing else like it.

It's a one of a kind.

Jesus is the one of a kind savior who graciously gives his life.

For anybody who willingly submits their life to him, Jesus is worth everything.

If you've been flirting back and forth up to this point, you've been in true

north, you've been thinking, don't wanna become a Christian, don't I,

man, it's time to make your decision.

You.

Jesus is valuable.

He's worth it.

There is nothing in your life that's more valuable than Jesus.

He gives you to himself freely at the cost of his own blood.

If you'll just but submit yourself to him.

Die to yourself, live to him.

It's worth it.

Some people have a really hard time discerning what's really valuable.

I could prove it to you.

People spent millions of dollars on an art exhibit where a

man taped a banana to a wall.

I'm serious.

Millions.

Look at that number up there.

$6.2

million for a banana taped to a wall.

I, you just have to have some serious cash and some problems to do that.

You guys will laugh at that and say, well, that's just crazy.

Who would do that?

Well, there's people out there, but you know what's really crazy

is to see the value of the gospel and say, well, no, thank you.

That's really crazy.

You think they're crazy?

No.

The real craziness is the people that see Jesus for who

he is and says, no thank you.

I, I will prefer to be the soil number one, or soil number two or so, soil number

three, because I don't wanna do that.

I love money too much.

I love my comfort too much.

I love anything else too much.

You're making a batch trade.

Jesus is more valuable than anything, and the thing that stands between you

and Jesus is not the intellectual, rational questions that you might have.

It's really your heart because your heart determines what your head believes.

So if you wanna respond to Jesus rightly, you need to make

sure you pursue a humble heart.

Maybe starting tonight.

You need to pray to the Lord and ask him to give you a humble heart

and to give you a repentant heart.

It all starts there and is totally worth it.

Lord, we ask that tonight as we prepare to go to small groups, that you would

give us the grace now to discuss these things openly and honestly.

Help us to have fun in our groups, but also to get down to business and

to be honest and vulnerable and able to get through the questions, not for

the question's sake, but really Lord, just to talk about what's happening.

The things that we've learned and, and what we need to take away from this.

And so tonight we ask that you would make it a great time of honest,

vulnerable, real conversation.

Let us walk away with new truth to put to, to put to work in our lives.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.