PENTECOST 11, A, 2008

SCRIPTURES – Deut. 7:6-9; Rom. 8:28-39; Matthew 13:44-52 

             I want you to think about your life as a Christian for a moment. How well are you following Christ? If you had to choose a stone to represent the quality of your Christian life, what stone would you be? A precious gem, like a diamond? A useful stone, like granite? Or, just a plain and dirty rock, like those that fill the soil of New England?

 It’s tough to evaluate yourself. We want to be humble, as well as honest and truthful. We must be, for we can’t fool God! He knows our sins and imperfections, how often we have let Him down and disappointed Him, others, and ourselves. We often don’t feel beautiful, or strong and useful, important to God and needed by this world.

             Now, how does God look upon you? How valuable are you to Him? He hasn’t left us hoping and wondering. In the parable of the Pearl of Great Price Jesus tells us:

YOU WHO BELIEVE IN JESUS ARE  PRECIOUS TO GOD

I.              YOU ARE PRECIOUS PEARLS FOR WHICH HE HAS SEARCHED.

But, not like a pearl diver. Pearls in Jesus’ day were found by divers who would swim to the ocean floor and bring up oysters. They would dive many times, hoping to find a pearl as they brought up oysters.

God has not searched for you haphazardly. It isn’t just lucky that you are a Christian, an accident of birth or place. Do you think that God would leave something as important as your eternal salvation, for which He gave His only-begotten Son into death, up to chance? Never! Nor does He leave our salvation up to us: our own decisions for Christ, or our persistence, good sense, or innate goodness. If He did, we sinners who fail constantly would surely be lost. Thanks be to God that He doesn’t base your salvation upon you!

No, God’s search for you was carefully planned and organized. He planned to find you.

Ex. As in the modern cultured pearl industry. Beads are placed within oysters so that they will make pearls. It is not left to chance.

The search for you began in God’s heart, with His planning. “Those whom God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son,” says our epistle reading (Rom. 8:29). He predestined you to faith, chose you from eternity to be His. He did this by pure grace alone, because of His love, and not because of something good that He saw in you.

 

But can you know that you are one whom God has predestined and chosen? Can you be sure of this?

Ex. Consider again the cultured pearl industry. After the oysters are seeded with beads so that they will make pearls, they are not thrown into the ocean in the hope of being found later. No, they are placed on racks together and put in calm, sheltered bays. There they are fed and watched over and tended until the pearls are ready.

You can know that God has chosen you, for “those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified…” These are acts that take place in time and place. God doesn’t leave those He has chosen by themselves. He calls them, gathers them together to tell them of His love for them in His Son. He then justifies them, forgives their sins through the Sacraments and the absolution. Hearing and believing God’s Word with other Christians – and being glad that you can do so – is a sign that God has chosen you. God in His goodness and mercy seeks you out to be His own. He calls you by His Word and seals you with His Holy Spirit in His Sacraments. These are signs of your preciousness to God.

The ultimate sign of your value to God is the life of Jesus. In His life God proclaims:

II.            YOU ARE PRECIOUS PEARLS GOD HAS PURCHASED.

And at great cost – “he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Are these parables of the pearl and the treasure an encouragement for us to give up everything we have to have Jesus? They would not be very comforting then, would they, for do we give up everything? Hardly. How seriously do we even want to?

Jesus is speaking of Himself in these parables. He is the one who came down from heaven to search for us – which was very hard work.

q   Pearl diving 2,000 years ago was difficult and dangerous work, for the oysters were normally 35’ – 70’ deep. And, the divers had no scuba tanks!

Jesus is the one who sold all that He had – even giving up His life – to purchase us as His own. No greater price has ever been paid for anything than the price that God paid when He shed His blood and died for you. Why did He pay such a price? A buyer will normally give up much in return for much. Why did Jesus give up everything He had, even His own life, for you? “in his joy he went and sold all he had.” God was, and is, filled with joy at having you as His own. How amazing!

Now, this is not because of how unbelievably wonderful we are. Jesus didn’t pay this great price because you and I are so great and good.

q   How does a pearl begin? As an irritant, a bit of foreign matter that irritates the flesh of the oyster.

Apart from and before faith in Christ we are foreign to God, sinful rebels who oppose Him and His will. We are under Satan’s power and influence. How ugly!

Jesus was filled with joy at having us, not because of what we are, but because of what He would make of us: beautiful pearls!

q   It is the oyster that causes the irritant to be changed. It covers it with layer upon layer of a secretion it produces called nacre, thus turning a piece of foreign matter into a beautiful pearl.

As we are baptized; as we hear Jesus’ words of forgiveness pronounced upon us; and as we receive His body and blood in His Supper, Christ covers us with Himself. In this way He transforms us from:

q   People who are dead in sin and destined to hell to those raised up to new life, and whose eternal destiny is heaven.

q   People who were slaves to sin and under the rule of the devil to His brothers and sisters who share in His rule over sin and can do that which pleases God.

The Son of God rejoiced to sell all that He had to have you because He would completely remake you, beautify you! “those whom He justified, He also glorified.” Those whom God has chosen as His own will also be glorified by Him, led in the way of good works and the obedience of Christ. This He does for all who trust in Him. For you are God’s pearls!

III.           YOU ARE PRECIOUS PEARLS THAT GOD DISPLAYS.

God now wants you to display your beauty, not your sins. He wants His goodness to be seen in and through you; He wants to show what He has made of you. This is where our good works, our choosing Jesus and following Him, come in. God is pleased with you because Christ has covered over all sin that would displease Him. He now wants to display you, to show Himself and His work in you.

Your beauty as a Christian, God’s pearl, is not displayed through your success, wealth, physical beauty, etc. After all, these are things that even some terribly wicked people have. God has made you kings with Jesus! You therefore don’t need to focus upon earthly things, amass them, or worry about them. They are simply the settings in which your life in Christ can be displayed, just as a pearl may be displayed in a necklace or ring or broach. God will take care of your life!

Your beauty as a Christian is displayed through your good works, by your choosing to learn God’s commandments and following them because they are good. Your beauty as God’s people is seen in your Christian wisdom: your distinguishing between what is good and what is evil, between what is right and what is wrong, and by believing, thinking, and doing what God says is good. In these ways you show forth Christ and His beauty to the world, and show yourself to be His brother or sister.

But where can you obtain such wisdom, especially in a world where the distinction between right and wrong seems to be increasingly blurred? Should you expect God to appear in a dream, or just do what feels right? Don’t trust in this!

q   Learn from the pearl. A pearl gets its color and beauty from the oyster, from the section of it’s shell to which it is closest as well as from what it eats.

Filling yourself with this world’s wisdom, pleasures and treasures will dull, even destroy, your beauty as a Christian. Fill yourself with God’s words and do them. Stay close to God and His worship. He will make you greatly pleasing to Him, and will Himself live in you and through you. You will then shine as His brilliant and lustrous pearl in this sin-darkened world.