Patience
Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 3
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Matthew 13:44
It has been said that grace is free, but it costs us everything.
Many years ago I was working for a hospitality company that staffed conferences and marketing events in Orlando. One of our jobs involved a weekend at the Florida Mall where we were helping with a promotional sales event. The mall was literally offering a free gift card to any shopper in the full amount of whatever taxes they had paid on their purchases that weekend. All they had to do was show us their receipts, let us add up the taxes, and we would hand them a gift card for that amount to spend anywhere in the mall. There were truly no strings attached.
You would have thought we were trying to sell iced cold lemonade in the middle of a blizzard. Nobody was interested. We talked with people walking out of Neiman Marcus carrying hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, not to mention bags from countless other stores, but they refused to show us their receipts. They literally walked away from free money.
That’s the thing about grace. Like the gift card, it is free, but it does us no good if we are unwilling to receive it. The Kingdom of Heaven is like that. Jesus describes the Kingdom as a treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great price, a tiny mustard seed or a pinch of yeast. All of these are more valuable than we can imagine in their context, and yet how often do we walk right on by? “I buy my bread at the store,” we might say. “What do I need yeast for?” Or we might hear about that treasure in the field and brush it off thinking it’s some kind of marketing scam, never realizing how it could have completely transformed our lives.
God saw you and me and every person who ever lived scraping our way through this sin ridden life and believed we were valuable enough to sacrifice his only Son just to dwell with us as it was in Eden. Do we value God and the Kingdom of Heaven as much as God values us? As one of my former pastors used to ask every Sunday, “Will you say yes to the one who said yes to the cross for you?”
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
Video of the complete worship service available at http://asburyumc-huntersville.com/live