<p>13:44&nbsp;<em>The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field</em>- This mini parable, and the next one about the man seeking to buy pearls, presents things to us from the perspective of the Lord Jesus. He had just taught that &quot;The field is the world&quot; (:38). Who bought / redeemed the world? The Lord Jesus. It is &quot;<em>His&nbsp;</em>field&quot; (13:27,31). When did the Lord &quot;buy&quot; (this is the word usually translated &quot;redeem&quot;) the world? In His death on the cross, which cost Him all that He had. We note that the parable puts the focus on the joy of the obtaining rather than all that was given up and lost. Surely Paul alludes here when he writes that we are &quot;bought [s.w.] with a price&quot; (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23) and should act and feel accordingly. Why did the Lord do this? Because within &quot;the world&quot; there was &quot;treasure&quot;- us, those who are finally His special personal possession. Here we see neatly explained the difference between the Lord's redemption of the whole world, &quot;all men&quot;, and yet personal salvation only being experienced by a few hidden within the world, His &quot;treasure&quot;. Rev. 5:9 may have this in mind when speaking of how the saved were &quot;redeemed [s.w. &quot;bought&quot;] by [Christ's] blood out of every tribe, language, people and nation&quot;. But to save&nbsp;<em>us</em>&nbsp;He had to redeem the world, purchase the field. Yet we are 'hidden' in the world; not that our faith is to be invisible, but insofar as we are a minority. This again was in the context of encouraging the disciples that the poor response to their message in the Jewish world was nothing to be unduly discouraged by. The world- and perhaps the Lord had in view the&nbsp;<em>Jewish</em>&nbsp;world for whom Christ primarily died (Gal. 4:4,5)- was to be bought by Christ in His death, but only a few would respond and be 'found' as His treasure. Again, we find &quot;treasure&quot; mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount. The principle that &quot;where your treasure is, there will your heart be also&quot; (Mt. 6:21) applied to the Lord- His heart is totally with us. And there is to be a mutuality between a man and his Lord; if we are our Lord's treasure, then we are not to lay up treasure on earth, but rather have Him as&nbsp;<em>our&nbsp;</em>treasure (Mt. 6:19,20) just as we are&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;treasure. Paul seems to play around with this idea of 'hid treasure', for he uses the same Greek words twice. But each time, slightly differently. He speaks of how we the light of God's glory has&nbsp;<em>shone </em>in our hearts, using the very same word as in Mt. 13:43 about the righteous shining as the sun in the Kingdom; but he then says that this &quot;treasure&quot; is hidden in the &quot;earthen vessels&quot; of our own bodies (2 Cor. 4:6,7). Just as we as a community are 'hidden' in the soil of the field / the world, so actually the real essence of our relationship with Christ is likewise hidden within all the dust of our own personal humanity. This is not to say that we can relax and justify worldly living as being merely 'the flesh'. But it is a comfort that the Bible teaching here recognizes that our real spiritual essence is indeed 'hidden' in the dust and ashes of all we have to do as we go about life in the flesh in this present world. Again, as it were playing with the ideas, Paul speaks of how &quot;In Christ are&nbsp;<em>hid</em>&nbsp;all the&nbsp;<em>treasures</em>&nbsp;of wisdom&quot; (Col. 2:3). There is no very obvious semantic connection with the Lord's teaching about us being His treasure hid in this world. So perhaps this is one of Paul's many unconscious allusions to the Gospels, whereby he had the words so deeply in his consciousness that they influenced his thinking and writing both consciously and unconsciously. For more examples of this, see my discussion of the issue in&nbsp;<em>Bible Lives</em>.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Which a man found</em>- In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord had put the emphasis upon&nbsp;<em>us&nbsp;</em>seeking and finding the way to life (Mt. 7:7,8,14; 16:25). Yet He is also searching for us; He speaks of how He 'found' faith in a Gentile man, and had been seeking to find such faith in Israel (Mt. 8:10 s.w.). The Lord told parables of Himself as the good shepherd seeking and&nbsp;<em>finding</em>&nbsp;the lost (Lk. 15; Mt. 18:13 s.w.), of Him seeking and<em> finding</em>&nbsp;workers for His work (Mt 20:6), wanting to&nbsp;<em>find</em>&nbsp;fruit on the fig tree (Mt. 21:19; Lk. 13:7),&nbsp;<em>finding&nbsp;</em>people to come to the marriage supper (Mt. 22:9,10). This is why when the searching Lord finds the man searching for Him, there is a spark of mutuality which makes all the Angels of the cosmos rejoice. Thus the same words are used about the early disciples 'finding' Christ, and Him 'finding' them (Jn. 1:41,43). We may justifiably speak of our search for God, for Jesus, for &quot;the truth&quot;, but the reality is that the Father and Son were in search of&nbsp;<em>us.&nbsp;</em>The Hebrew prophets likewise present God as in search of man, and not simply awaiting our approach to Him if we wish to make it, with passive emotionless indifference. The Lord is saying that His death on the cross would not be simply to die for the world; it was because He had 'found' the treasure of believers. But who did He find? A small group of mixed young men, one time prostitutes and a few Gentiles. That was enough. His finding of&nbsp;<em>them</em>&nbsp;motivated Him to die for the world that He might save&nbsp;<em>them</em>. In this we have a window onto the apparent 'wastage' of God; that the whole world was redeemed just for the sake of a few. Some argue for universal salvation on this basis- that why should Christ have died to save just a few. But the parable is clear- it was for joy at having found the minority, which were to Him a priceless treasure, He bought the entire field- just to get them. This is the waste and abandon that comes with love, and only a utilitarian, pragmatic, loveless legalist would question its authenticity, credibility or necessity. So the Lord is encouraging His dispirited disciples that He has found them, and He rejoices over them with love and devotion; and they have found Him. That the rest of the world haven't responded cannot take anything away from this experience.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>And hid</em>- It seems that He hides the treasure, although it could mean that He hides Himself. Hiding the treasure gives the impression of an intensely personal relationship between Him and the treasure which He can't share with others. Or if He hides Himself for a period before going to buy the field, we likewise get the impression of a man overcome with an intense sense of in-loveness which only He can understand. This is how He felt about the disciples. It could be in the context of 13:10-15 (see notes there) that He means that He is hiding Himself from the world by telling them parables from now on; and instead will focus on giving His all to get the disciples and the few with &quot;ears to hear&quot; as His special treasure. He is thus putting a far more positive slant on His realization of how Israel generally have rejected Him, only a minority have accepted Him, and Israel had not accepted her king, nor John&rsquo;s ministry, and so Yahweh&rsquo;s glory was not going to come to Zion as envisaged. The Lord is saying that He has so fallen in love with the remnant who<em> had</em>&nbsp;responded, that He felt a joy so great that He would give all He had to redeem the whole world in order to save them. And this is in keeping with His teaching in the previous parables- that the wonder of the few good seeds who respond amazingly, of the wheat that grows so well despite the weeds, is such that all the loss, rejection and casualty is worth it.</p>
<p>If we really want to make encounters and conversations work, we need to consider who we're talking with. The Lord's parables of Mt. 13:44-49 make it clear that people have different motivations when they first encounter our preaching. Some are merely fish caught in the Gospel net and compelled to come in; others are as the merchant man who is searching for good pearls, who sells all he has to get that pearl and just have it, gazing at it with admiration and appreciation each day; others are as the man who finds something of value in a field, maybe he sees there's some precious raw material he can exploit there, and so he buys the field in order to get some benefit for himself. The strange (to my ears) comment in Mt. 13:44 that the man 'hides' his discovery appears to contradict the reality that we should joyfully share our discovery of Christ with others. Perhaps the picture is being painted of a man with all the wrong motivations, who comes to the treasure from the viewpoint of 'What can I selfishly get out of this' (it may be in our age... a desire for welfare support, a partner, a social club...). And yet all the same he has come to the treasure, been called to it, allowed to find it... that is perhaps the point. All these types of people have differing motivations, and need to be treated differently by us.</p>
<p>The man who finds treasure [or, perhaps, a deposit of precious metal in a field which could be mined]&nbsp;<em>hides the fact</em>&nbsp;(Mt. 13:44), and sells all he has to buy that field. The hiding of the discovery speaks to me of the utterly personal knowledge between a man and his Lord which we enter into when we 'find' the treasure of the Kingdom, the pearl of great price. For any man or woman who hears the Lord's words, He and His Father will enter in and make their abode with them (Jn. 14:23). Although we are a great multitude of redeemed, yet the communication of the Father and Son to us are still amazingly unique, even though we all hear and read the same actual words, and reflect upon the same facts. Right back at the beginning of God&rsquo;s relationship with Israel He had made the point that &ldquo;I will meet you [plural] to speak there unto thee [you singular]&rdquo; (Ex. 29:42). &nbsp;</p>
<p><em>And in his joy</em>- This is the joy of the in-love Jesus, so excited at having found the remnant, the treasure in the field of the unbelieving world, so excited He hides Himself for a while, or hides the treasure from others&rsquo; view. One of the motives behind His endurance of the cross (which was how the field of the world was bought / redeemed) was &ldquo;joy&rdquo;. Not joy in the sense of giggling and happy-clappy; but &ldquo;joy&rdquo; in the sense that He could speak of &ldquo;My joy&rdquo; just hours before beginning the ordeal (Jn. 15:11; 17:13). The parables of Luke 15 describe the Lord&rsquo;s joy as being in relation to finding the lost, and this was what had happened in the Lord&rsquo;s &lsquo;finding&rsquo; of the disciples and responsive remnant.</p>
<p><em>He went and sold all that he had and bought that field-</em>&nbsp;These very words are used by the Lord in teaching that the rich ruler should sell all that he has- and give to the poor (Lk. 18:22). The Lord wasn&rsquo;t asking the man to do anything that He Himself was not doing. His giving to the poor was in giving redemption to&nbsp;<em>us</em>. And the Lord was a &ldquo;cheerful giver&rdquo;; He gave up all &ldquo;with joy&rdquo; for us; and in the first instance, to die for that small group of mixed up men and women who tagged around with Him. &ldquo;Sells&nbsp;<em>all</em>&rdquo; might suggest He was wealthy; seeing that the Lord was not a wealthy man, we wonder what this &lsquo;wealth&rsquo; was which He gave up, recalling Paul&rsquo;s comment that He who was rich became poor for our sakes on the cross (2 Cor. 8:9). What did He &lsquo;give up&rsquo; or &lsquo;sell&rsquo;? What was His real loss? Perhaps it was that as God&rsquo;s Son He could personally have been saved without the cross, but He did all He did in order to save us- and thus set the ultimate example of overcoming selfishness.</p>
<p>The man who sells all to buy the field containing the treasure (Mt. 13:44)- what does he&nbsp;<em>do</em>&nbsp;with his newly found wealth? The question, of course, bids us reflect what we have done with the wealth of the Gospel which we have found. These open-ended parables with unanswered&nbsp;questions are left hanging because the point is, it all depends upon our response as to how they end in our cases! The parables are thus not just cosy stories. They challenge our response. Our tidy images of reality are shattered by the open endings and elements of unreality in the parables. Our minds are arrested and teased by them, as they lead us to self-realization, self-knowledge, at times even healthy self-condemnation. The parables, especially those which Luke records, appear to end leaving us with unanswered questions. Does the wounded traveller survive and get better? When does the Samaritan return? How much does it cost him? Was the beaten man happy to see the Samaritan when he returned? Who inherits the property of the rich fool? Does the barren fig tree produce a crop in the end? Does the elder brother finally join in the party? Does the unjust steward succeed in getting himself out of his problems after his dismissal? What happens to the rich man&rsquo;s five brothers, seeing Lazarus isn&rsquo;t allowed to go and warn them? Do they hear Moses and the prophets? Do the riff raff come in from the lanes to the Great Supper? Does the unjust judge actually resolve the widow&rsquo;s complaints? How does the rich merchant survive, after having sold all he has for the one pearl, thus discarding his entire past, his life&rsquo;s work&hellip;? And what does he do with the pearl? He, presumably, sits and treasures it, but can do nothing with it in order to prosper materially&hellip; And yet we are left to reflect upon this.&nbsp;</p>