Pentecost 10

Matthew 13:44-52 - Pentecost 10 - August 21, 2011 

  We Value What God Calls Valuable

Have you ever expressed a deeply held conviction to someone only to hear that person say in response, “I value your opinion,” and then immediately proceed to disagree with what you just said?  It’s really kind of silly, isn’t it?  If this person valued your opinion, he must not have valued it very highly.  Oh it’s worth something, I suppose; it’s just not worth agreeing with.  Such reassurance that someone values what you have to say is essentially meaningless if that person will not also admit that what you have said is true.  We value what is true.  For example, I value my wife telling me that she loves me.  I love to hear it.  I regard such assurance of my wife’s love as precious and valuable, not because I believe that perhaps she doesn’t really love me.  No, it’s precisely the opposite; it’s because I believe she does.  It’s the same for all of you have someone that you care about.  We value what is good and true.  We don’t value what is insincere or false.  

But in this world where the concept of truth and goodness is as subjective and temporary as teenage clothing styles, people like to talk about what they value instead of speaking clearly about what is true and false, or about what is right and wrong.  Everyone, we are told, is entitled to, his or her own values.  And what you value might be a little less valuable to someone else.  It is all subjective.  We have American values, Iowa values, rural, urban, and suburban values, Christian values, Islamic values, conservative, liberal and secular values, and the list goes on.  Somehow all of these “values” are supposed to coexist side by side without any contradiction.  But the moment you claim to have the truth is the moment that you are accused of imposing your values on others.  Value is regarded as solely in the eye of the beholder.  Rarely is something regarded as in and of itself worth believing.  It’s all subjective.  

We see an example of this today in discussions regarding the value of human life.  The fifth commandment plainly tells us not to murder.  There is an intrinsic value to human life that God requires of us to recognize and respect and defend.  All human life is valuable.  This includes the helpless little baby inside his mother’s womb just as much as one who is newly born.  It includes the elderly woman who requires constant assistance to stay alive just as much as a healthy young man full of promise.  It does not matter if someone’s life does not appear very useful or full of potential.  The value of human life does not depend on our evaluation.  It depends on God’s evaluation.  He is the Lord and giver of life.  Our duty, therefore, to help, and defend our neighbor does not stem from how we feel about our neighbor.  It is a duty given to us by God who made each one of us.  God endows mankind with dignity not because of some virtue that can be found in man, but by virtue of the fact that God created man in His own image.  When God calls something precious, that settles it.  WE VALUE WHAT GOD CALLS VALUABLE.  

So it is with the Gospel.  We value the Gospel because it is the most precious gift that God has given to man.  Its value does not come from our appreciation of it.  The value of the Gospel is in the Gospel itself.  Just as human life does not receive its dignity from our appraisal, but from God our Maker, so also your soul, and my soul, and the eternal salvation of us all does not receive its worth from anything inside us or from any opinion we might have.  Our life receives its worth and value from the fact that God almighty took on human flesh in order to redeem our bodies and souls with His own most precious blood.  The Gospel is precious precisely because in it and through it God regards each one of us as precious.  

When we talk about valuing the Gospel, we aren’t just talking the way the world around us tends to talk about values – about some relative appreciation of something that we personally regard as important.  No, we are talking about something very objective and true – something outside of us.  We are talking about the specific life of obedience that the Son of God lived in our place as a man, and the specific suffering and death that He endured on the cross to atone for the sins of all men.  We are talking about the specific declaration that we are righteous in God’s sight that God made when He raised Jesus from the dead.  When we talk about valuing the Gospel, we are talking about the very specific and certain resurrection and life that is ours through faith in the forgiveness that the Gospel itself provides.  The Gospel is precious because of what God has done.  And so WE VALUE WHAT GOD CALLS VALUABLE.  

Although the Gospel is objective, our appreciation of it most certainly is subjective.  That is, each person must believe for himself.  No one can believe for another.  Just as by faith we are collectively one body with Christ as our Head, so also by faith each one of us individually is united to Christ our brother.  Each one of us must subjectively believe and cherish the Gospel, which is itself objectively true.  This is what it means to worship God.  

The word “worship” is an old English word that means to ascribe worth or value to something or someone.  We worship God because God is worthy and valuable.  Our worship, however, is not simply an emotional expression of our personal feelings.   Our worship is a clear identification of Him who has saved us by grace.  It is faith in Jesus.  God reveals to us in the Gospel exactly how valuable it is to have Him as our God.  That is why our worship consists primarily of proclaiming, repeating, and thanking God for what He has done in Jesus Christ our Savior that makes Him so worthy of our praise and adoration.  WE VALUE WHAT GOD CALLS VALUABLE.  

The Gospel is powerful.  That’s what makes it so valuable.  “It is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe ….  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed.”  The forgiveness of sins is valuable.  It is its power to wash our sins away that makes the blood of Christ so precious.  It is the forgiveness of sins that makes coming to church so important.  It is the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ’s most perfect righteousness that makes your identity as a baptized child of God more valuable than anything else in the world.  We treasure the Gospel above everything else we have – more highly than sleep on a Sunday morning, more highly than the extra hours of work that help pay the bills, more highly than our own loving relationships that seem to make life worth living.  These things don’t have the power to give us life.  Only God does; and He gives us eternal life.  That is why WE VALUE WHAT GOD CALLS VALUABLE.  

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”  This is how we regard the Gospel.  But we don’t find the Gospel just anywhere.  It’s in a specific place.  Just as this man re-buried the treasure in the field where he found it, so also we return to hear that most precious Gospel in the same place where we first learned it.  We don’t remove it from Scripture, we don’t presume to find it outside of the Church.  Instead, we consider all that we have as worth giving up for the joy of hearing God’s word and receiving the benefits of His holy sacraments.  We embrace everything God says to us for the sake of the treasure of the Gospel.  

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”  This is how we value the Gospel.  Not only is it more precious than anything else we have, but it cannot be divided into several separate little treasures.  It is one pearl.  Either you have it, or you don’t.  It is not possible to have a piece of a pearl while retaining its value; and it is not possible to have a piece of the Gospel while remaining the Gospel.  We do not shave off of this pearl those things that the world around us does not so highly value.  To do so would render it worthless.  Not only do we value the Gospel more highly than all our earthly possessions, but we regard the righteousness of Christ that is ours by faith more highly than any goodness of our own.  Just as one must claim all of a pearl or none of it, so we must claim all of Christ’s righteousness alone and none of our own if we are to possess any of the riches of the kingdom of heaven.  

That is why we confess with St. Paul in Philippians 3.  After he has reviewed his own impressive credentials as a virtuous and faithful man, he says, “Yet indeed I 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 them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”  Therefore with Paul, WE also VALUE WHAT GOD CALLS VALUABLE.  

In all of these parables concerning what the kingdom of heaven is like, you might have noticed that God is the actor, the doer of everything.  It is God who sows the good seed of the Gospel on all kinds of soil.  It is God who brings growth and abundant fruit.  It is God who separates the wheat and the tares, and who will separate the believers from the unbelievers on the Last Day.  It is God who plants the tiny mustard seed that grows into a great tree, and as yeast causes dough to rise, it is God who causes His Church to increase.  God is the one who does the doing when it comes to the kingdom of heaven.  

But in these two short parables that we consider here today, it seems as though we have made ourselves the doers.  We find the precious treasure.  We seek and find the priceless pearl. We sell all that we have in order to receive what the kingdom of heaven has to offer.  We do.  But do we not rely on what God does?  On what He seeks?  On what He finds?  On what He regards as valuable?  But what does God regard as more valuable than the object of His own love.  It most certainly is God who finds a treasure in a field and sells all that He has to buy it.  Surely it is God who sought out His own pearl of great value and spared no expense to possess it.  It is Jesus Christ Himself who sought out and found His own beloved Church and redeemed her, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood, and His innocent suffering and death, that we may be His own and live under Him here in His kingdom of mercy.  

This same Christ “loved the church and gave Himself for her … that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”  Yes, it is Jesus who seeks, and finds, and purchases that which He regards as so valuable.  But it is precisely that which Christ Himself values so highly that we Christians also treasure.  We seek it, and we find it, and compared to this robe of righteousness that Jesus gives us we regard everything else as worthless.  

Our status with God, our value in His mind does not depend on our own evaluation.  It depends on God’s evaluation.  And He does not evaluate us according to our sins.  For when Jesus seeks us, He does not keep a record of our transgressions.  Instead He bears them.  He does not reduce our worth as God’s own children by exposing the worthless treasures our sinful hearts hold so dear.  Instead He gives to us His own worthiness as the incarnate Son of God.  He does not set you and me on the hopeless task of finding something within ourselves worth purchasing. Instead Jesus directs us to His cross where He took this all away from us, and bore in His own body and soul everything shameful and worthless and removed it from us as far as the east is from the west, as far as life is from death.  Jesus directs us to that which not only returns dignity to mankind, but gives eternal life to sinners.  

And there is nothing more valuable to our Father in heaven than that which He imputes to us freely by faith in the Gospel.  This, dear Christians, is our dearest treasure too.  We seek, and find, and highly prize what is true and certain; and so does God.  Our righteousness is not just some legal fiction.  It is not just some illusive value in the eye of God the beholder.  It is real.  It is certain.  It is grounded and confirmed and provided here in the blood of Christ our Lord.  And so it is that by His grace, WE VALUE and possess WHAT GOD CALLS VALUABLE.  This is our priceless treasure.  

In Jesus’ name, Amen.