Matthew 13:44-52
“Notice what you notice.” Another late evening RTB for me… We’ve just got a lot going on that requires daytime hours. Sorry to those of you who wait for my note to begin your reading…!!
So today, two similar parables (Hidden Treasure and Pearl of Great Value) and one “end-time” parable, similar to the Wheat and Weeds (Tares). The first two are quite familiar to me. We cover one of them in Avanza and the other is quite similar. Except that the Hidden Treasure parable is a bit odd, in that a man found the treasure, then re-buried it and went off to buy the field. Even our Avanza kids thought this was a bit unethical. But the point that Jesus is making effectively justifies the means to the end – the Kingdom of Heaven is worth anything we have to do to get there – but Jesus has already done it all; we have but to accept his offer!
The Pearl of Great Price came home to me some 15 or so years ago. I was in a Wednesday morning prayer group; another member of the group was an accomplished saxophonist. He found what he considered to be the best saxophone he had ever seen – then went off and sold all his other instruments and bought that saxophone. It was his Pearl of Great Price.
Finally, the Dragnet parable, as I noted above, is quite similar to the Wheat and Weeds parable. However, it is the one parable of these seven in chapter 13 that is least familiar to me. Similar to the Wheat and the Weeds, there is an end-time sorting out between the good and the bad. So if we are the “good”, we are told that the “bad” will continue to exist among us. I could extend this a bit to that book title, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. But Scripture tells us, that’s the way it will always be – the bad with the good until the Kingdom of Heaven is fully consummated!
But what really struck me today was verse 51. Jesus said, “Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” Are these the same disciples who seem NOT to be “getting it” time and time again? But they have a simple answer – “Yes”. Today’s parables are three of the seven parables that Jesus has related to them in Chapter 13. There must be some value in repetition!
Slava Bohu!