<p>13:46&nbsp;<em>And having found one-</em>&nbsp;He was thrilled with just one, even though He began seeking pearls in the plural (:45). The combination of &lsquo;seeking&rsquo; and &lsquo;finding&rsquo; beyond question is to be connected with the Lord&rsquo;s teaching about His seeking and finding of wayward individuals (Lk. 15 and see on :45; the same Greek word for &ldquo;find&rdquo; is used a significant seven times in the parables of Lk. 15). This strange little story could be making the simple point that if the Lord saved only one person, He would be thrilled by that. This is all directly in the context of this chapter, in which the Lord is discussing the general lack of response to Him, and comforting His flagging preachers in the disillusion which arises from little response to the Gospel. The Lord had taught that we should seek and be assured that we will find, in spiritual terms. All of His teaching He spoke to Himself, and He was the word of His own teaching made flesh.&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;understanding of seeking with the assurance of finding was that if we seek for persons to respond, we will find. Even if only one person. This surely should be our daily prayer- that we will be lead to meet the right people, that our seeking for others will result in at least one being found.</p>
<p><em>Of great price-&nbsp;</em>As the King of the Kingdom, the term &quot;Kingdom of Heaven&quot; can in some ways be applied to the Lord personally. Having spoken of how &quot;the field is the world&quot; (Mt. 13:38), the Lord goes straight on to speak of how &quot;the Kingdom of Heaven&quot; is like a man who gives all that he has so that he can buy or redeem a field in which He perceives treasure. The same man is also likened to a merchant who sells all that he has in order to buy a pearl of great price. In the utter bankruptcy, the selling all to obtain or redeem one thing, we surely see a parable of the cross, through which death the Lord Jesus redeemed the field of the world, and the pearl of great price [to Him]. Perhaps Paul had his eye on these parables when he spoke of how in the cross, the Lord Jesus who had been rich became poor for our sakes (2 Cor. 8:9). That pearl, that treasure hidden within the field of the world, then becomes symbolic of us. It was of &quot;great price&quot; (Mt. 13:46)- and Paul again may have this in mind when he warns that we &quot;are bought with a price&quot; (using a related Greek word) and should therefore serve the Lord who bought us and not anyone else (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23). Thus we see not only the cost of our redemption, the utter self-emptying of the Lord in His time of dying; but also a picture of how valuable we are to Him. We also see some outline explanation of the way in which the Lord's death redeemed &quot;the world&quot;, and yet we are His special treasure hidden within it. In one sense we as His treasure is still hidden within this world; in another sense of course we are to be as a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. We should be concerned at the danger of hiding our light under a bucket; but in another sense, our relationship to the Lord is such that it is by its wonderful nature 'hidden' from the world in which we currently lie. The strange feature of Mt. 13:44- that the man (in this interpretation, the Lord Jesus) 'hides' the treasure- perhaps becomes understandable in terms of Col. 2:3, which speaks of the Lord Jesus as having all God's treasures 'hidden' in Himself. The 'man' bought the field &quot;for joy thereof&quot; (Mt. 13:44); and despite all the pressure of the crucifixion process, the Lord Jesus could still speak at that time of &quot;my joy&quot; in our redemption (Jn. 15:11; 17:13). Just as the merchant man was &quot;seeking&quot; pearls and 'found' one of great price, so the good shepherd, the Lord Jesus, 'seeks' [same Greek word] fruit on the fig tree (Lk. 13:6), 'seeks' the lost coin until it is found (Lk. 15:8), 'seeks' and saves that which was lost (Lk. 19:10) and 'seeks' His sheep until He finds them (Mt. 18:12). The 'finding' of the lost sheep, the pearl of great price, in some sense happened in the Lord's death. Hence He pictures Himself as the shepherd carrying the redeemed sheep on His shoulders with head bowed forward- exactly the posture of a man carrying a crossbar on his shoulders.</p>
<p><em>He went and sold all that he had-&nbsp;</em>The very same phrase is used by the Lord in speaking of how the hopelessly indebted man was sold &ldquo;and all that he had&rdquo; (Mt. 18:26). The picture is of absolute and total destitution from selling every imaginable possession. This story does indeed have a strange twist to it. A rich man so loved a pearl which he saw that he became a pauper by selling absolutely&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;he had- his business, his transport, his expensive clothes- in order to buy a pearl. And, finishing off the story, we are to surely imagine him living the rest of his life in some humble dwelling amongst the poor of this world, daily admiring the beauty of his pearl, totally unrealized by the world around him, caring for it as the most important thing in his whole existence, realizing that in it was the epitome of absolutely all his being: his love, his wealth, his future, his joy of life day by day. And this is what the Lord did from His deep in-loveness with persons who only had potential to become pearls. He was and is in love with the idea of who we may become.</p>
<p><em>And bought it-</em>&nbsp;The Greek is elsewhere translated &ldquo;redeem&rdquo;. This speaks of our redemption by the love and self-sacrifice of the Lord on the cross. The emphasis is perhaps on&nbsp;<em>autos</em>, &ldquo;it&rdquo;. He had searched for many pearls, but was thrilled with giving His all for just one single one.&nbsp;</p>