Well, greetings, everyone.
It's a real joy to be here to have an opportunity to speak to you this morning.
What a privilege for me to be able to speak today.
But before we do, let's bow in prayer.
Father, how precious you are to us for the privilege of being in a country that we can come and worship you together.
Lord, we pray that as we look into your word today, the Spirit of God will move that we might realize the preciousness of Jesus Christ.
We commit this to you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, I don't really call myself a senior anymore.
Actually, I'm beyond that.
I'm what you call an old old fogey.
I looked up the meaning of fogey, and uh and the answer was the person with old-fashioned ideas.
And and my ideas, our old-fashioned goes right back to the Word of God a few thousand years ago, and I'm thankful.
But today I want to ask you, how precious is Jesus?
Really, how precious is he in your life?
This past year I've had the privilege of teaching this choice group of people about the life of Peter.
I'm so glad that uh Peter was chosen to be a disciple of Jesus.
He was a man who boasted that he would was ready to die for Jesus.
But when Jesus was taken to be crucified, he denied him three times.
He blew it.
Yet Jesus knew his heart and had told him earlier in the gospel, Simon, Satan demanded to have you to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.
And when you have turned again, strong, strengthen your brothers.
And Peter did change after the resurrection.
Jesus appeared to him personally there in 1 Corinthians 15.
And then in John 21, uh when he went back to fishing with six others, Jesus asked him three times, Peter, do you love me?
The first time Jesus said, Do you love me more than these?
Uh what did these mean?
Did it mean, Jesus, do you love me more than these other disciples?
Or do you love me more than the disciples love me?
Or Peter, do you love me more than the 153 fish that you uh caught and was piled up there?
Do you love me more than you love fishing?
And uh and at that time he was restored.
This can this was great encourag can be of great encouragement to anyone who is here today, who've wandered away, or who's struggled about the Christian faith.
Some of you might be going through these struggles in your faith, but he still loves you and desires the best for you if you are open to confess and submit to the Lord's leading.
Simon gradually changed from being a crumbling rock there.
He became a solid rock.
Remember John chapter one, there uh Jesus called him Peter and changed his name.
And the Lord later said to him, Peter, on this rock, really Christ, I will build my church.
And he became a real rock there.
Jesus in the uh Peter in the book of Acts spoke to the in chapter two to the Jews, and many came to Christ, then in chapter eight to the Samaritans, then chapter ten to the Gentiles there in Caesarea, and he fulfilled the mandate that God gave to him in in Acts 1.8, and to us as well.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.
Notice in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and to the ends of the earth.
And we see that spreading in the book of Acts.
Jesus Christ became the center of Peter's life, and he was the apostle to the Jews as Paul was to the Gentiles.
And later, when Peter wrote his two epistles, one thing stands out in my mind as I read 1 and 2 Peter, that Jesus became very precious to him.
And he wanted others to know and to grow in Christ.
And once he wrote to those being tested, he says, Your faith is more precious than gold that perishes.
He goes on to say to his readers, though you have not seen him, Jesus, you love him.
And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with joy.
He also writes that Jesus is the living stone, rejected by men, but precious to God.
Then he tells them that we are living stones in the spiritual structure that God is building.
He quotes Isaiah 28 by saying, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
And even though he was rejected by others in the sight of God, he was chosen and very precious.
Then he goes on to say in his writings, showing that we have been redeemed, notice, not with perishable things, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
And everything about Jesus is precious because Peter mentions in 1 Peter 1:4 that the Lord has granted to us his great and precious promises so that we could be partakers of the divine nature.
And although different Greek words are used in these passages, the main idea is that Jesus Christ is to be highly honored, esteemed, and he's beyond our wildest dreams.
So I ask you today, how precious is Jesus to you?
Do you treasure him?
Does he really have a place in your life?
As I look out at this congregation, I know that Jesus means so much to many.
Jesus is with you in the driver's seat of your car, spiritual car.
Okay.
You are studying the scriptures, growing in Christ.
But then there are others who love the Lord and spend a little time to get a daily snack of spiritual bread in your busy life, but he sort of takes a back seat.
He's important, but not in charge.
And then I'm wondering today if there are some here who have placed Jesus in the trunk.
You have been brought up as a in a Christian home, but the Christian faith does not seem relevant in this modern day.
The place is crowded out, the world has crowded out God in your life.
I was wondering, does he have a place?
But there may be some here, but God is even outside of the car.
You've never gotten to know the Lord.
And I trust today, wherever you're at, you may understand that the preciousness, that Jesus is a treasure.
And so today I want you to know that Jesus is the greatest treasure that you could ever have.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels or he says jars of clay to show the passing power belongs to God and not to us.
And then I love what we read about Moses in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11.
When Moses was in Egypt under Pharaoh's daughter's supervision, notice, no doubt preparing perhaps to become one of the next pharaohs.
We read this in Hebrews 11, 24.
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.
Notice, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeing pleasures of sin.
He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking for his reward.
And I'd like to look this morning to the two brief parables in the Bible that were read to you from Matthew 13, 44 to 46.
These two parables deal with the same subject from a little different perspective.
The first one is the parable of the hidden treasure.
It will be put up again on the board, I believe.
The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up.
Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Have you ever discovered a treasure or found something valuable unexpectedly?
I did once.
While planting City Center Baptist Church in Mississauga, we purchased a two-acre prop property for$330,000 with a house on the property.
And that was a lot of money in those days, and especially for a fledgling church about 42 years ago.
Before we moved in the house, we had a lot of work to do.
Remove carpet from the kitchen.
Have you ever thought of?
Or removing a wooden frame around a lovely stone fireplace, removing ugly wallpaper, and also trying to cut down the bushes around the windows so that light could come in and the sun as well.
But uh after the renovations, what a change in the house.
In fact, uh the people we bought the house from were Christians, and I invited them back to see the renovations that had taken place.
But uh when we got in, I decided to clean the fruit cellar.
And as I dust the shelf, I found a package of aluminum foil come out.
And I opened it up, there was a thousand dollars.
There was another aluminum one that had$90 in.
And there was uh in this other package.
And that money, by the way, helped us to connect the house to the city water.
The former people had been on a well, and it was unreliable there.
And what a difference to have running water from the city come into that house.
But uh it was a big relief.
However, so I could identify in a little way to the man in this particular parable.
This man in the parable found a treasure in the field.
And when Jesus told about this man finding a treasure, we must remember certain things.
One, because Israel was in constant conflict with surrounding nations, the common thing in that day was to bury treasures.
I mean, they weren't banks in those days as well.
And when you read the Old Testament, you know that Israel was often at war with the Philistines, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and so on.
They had to flee under the Assyrians and under the Babylonians as well.
So they they buried their treasury valuables, hoping to retrieve them later.
This was a normal practice in that day.
And as Jesus gives in Jesus the parable of the talents, the man here received a talent.
He went and hit it.
And we know that Achan, uh, in the book of Joshua, what he did he did.
He buried all the lovely things of beautiful Babylonian garments, silver and gold there uh at that day.
So treasure in the field didn't, but the treasure in the field at this person, with this person, uh, it didn't really belong to the owner.
It had uh, if it had, he would have come and sold it and taken it.
But likely a former owner had died and was there.
And we are not told why he was in the field, was he ploughing or doing some things for the owner?
But the thing is, he stumbled upon it.
Rabbinic law stated that if a man finds scattered fruit or scattered money, these belong to the finder.
So anyone listening to Jesus here would not think he was in the wrong.
As we read this, though, we find that this man was really an honest man.
He could have taken the money or liquidated a part of it to purchase the field.
But it says he sells all that he had to buy the field.
And even though Jewish law gave him the right to claim it, he knew the right way to get the treasure.
And the point in this parable is he found something so valuable that he sold everything to get it.
He was so ecstatic finding the treasure that he was willing to do whatever was necessary to get it.
So when it comes to discovering Jesus Christ as precious treasure, there are some who stumble upon it too.
In fact, there are some who may not be interested or even be against the faith of Jesus Christ, but they find him in a special way.
And one example in scripture is that of Saul of Tarsus, who was on his way to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus when a light shone from heaven and he heard Jesus say, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
I am Jesus.
And this was the changing moment in Saul's life.
And what a change.
It took a while for the disciples to connect with him because of his past hatred.
For the Christians, Barnabas had to bring him to them and tell about the conversion of Saul.
But then we read what Paul later wrote in the book of Philippians, and it would be put, I believe, up on the overhead.
If anyone else thinks he has reason to for confidence in the flesh, I have more.
Circumcise the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal persecuting the persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of this surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ, my Lord.
For his sake I suffer the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.
Rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
And he found true righteousness that comes from God by faith.
I think of a scale.
Here was Paul, all that he could have under and as a Jew, circumcised, under the uh the special uh tribe of Benjamin.
He was blameless as a Pharisee.
He thought he had made it, but then he found Christ.
Oh, this is rubbish! Rubbish! What a difference Christ made in in his life.
And what a joy it is to uh see the difference that came.
Then we come to the next parable.
The parable of the pearl of great price.
Well, this parable has the same meaning, but notice I'll just read it again.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.
This parable has the same meaning, but with a different twist.
The difference is that this man is looking intently for pearls.
He doesn't stumble upon it.
Here we meet a merchant who specializes in pearls.
Pearls in the ancient world were considered the loveliest of all possessions, a symbol of perfection.
And the man in this purple did not find the pearl by accident.
His life was one long search for the finest pearls.
Jesus warned about casting pearls.
Remember, before swine, he contrasted the lowliest to the jewel that was most precious.
And John had a vision in Revelation 21, 21 of Jerusalem, which revealed that each gate was a pearl there.
In ancient world, pearls were very precious.
But one thing a smart investor would not normally do, to invest all that he had in one thing.
But that is exactly what this man did.
This expert merchant knew his pearls.
And many would be imperfect, but when he came upon this unblemished pearl with an iridescent luster, he went all out to get it.
So the kingdom of heaven is at such value that one needs to embrace it with total abandonment of anything that would deter.
I thought of anyone in scripture to illustrate this particular parable.
I thought of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8, verse 27 to 35, speaking to Philip here.
And by the way, an angel led Philip here.
It's interesting as Cheryl is going to be speaking of angels, but angels could lead people as well in those days.
And he rose and went.
And there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure.
He had come to Jerusalem, notice to worship, and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
And the spirit said to Philip, Go over and join this chariot.
So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, Do you understand what you are reading?
And he said, How can I unless someone guides me?
And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this.
In his humiliation, justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.
And the eunuch said to Philip, About whom I ask, about whom I ask you, does the prophet say this?
About himself or someone else?
Then Philip opened his mouth.
And beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.
You know, he must have spoken, he must have said a lot of other things.
We're just getting a glimpse of what happened here in the Bible.
But this man had traveled all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem trying to find his spiritual pearl.
He was a Jewish proselyte and came to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel.
In his search, he was reading the Hebrew scriptures there.
And this is when Philip was sent to him and told him about Jesus.
No doubt he said, Oh, we like sheep have gone astray, we've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all there in Isaiah 53.
And he was saved.
And he wanted to be baptized in order to be a true disciple.
You know, a true proselyte Jew, if he wanted to be a Jew, would have to be immersed called the Mekbah.
Immersion was so important.
And here he now wanted to be immersed in the Christian faith.
What a wonderful example of this parable.
And now we have two parables showing that entering the kingdom of heaven is having our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and He's the greatest treasure, he's the greatest pearl.
However, I want to give you a warning, a caution.
This treasure or pearl is not in any way connected to the prosperity gospel.
Remember that.
Some people have the idea that if you trust in Jesus, you'll be prosperous and have a successful life.
I once witnessed to a neighbor a few years ago, and I told him about Christ.
He says, Well, I tried it and that didn't work.
He thought that everything you trust Christ, everything will be honky-dory.
But that's not the case.
And you know, some of you are going through much uh trouble and and uh and hard situations.
And in many countries of the world, people who believe in in the Lord are severely persecuted, some are abandoned by family and friends, many are uh forbidden to worship publicly, and as we as they trust in the Lord, things personally become even worse sometimes because of persecution.
I think of Jesus in John chapter six.
We have uh the John's uh rendering of the feeding of the five thousand, plus women and children.
And uh by the way, it's the only miracle that's in all four gospel.
But uh Jesus, when Jesus fed all these people from a boy's lunch, what did they want to do?
They wanted to come and take him as king.
And he gets away and they go on on the uh water.
But the next uh the next day, Jesus was talking to the people about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and uh how there was to be uh a commitment along to following him.
And it mentions a lot, left him.
Jesus had to come to the disciples, what about you?
And Peter said, You are the one that has eternal life.
You know, uh, it's not always easy to follow the Lord.
And there's a cross to bear.
But despite all this, Jesus is the greatest treasure and friend.
He promises to be with you wherever you go to meet your needs and to have you with him for all eternity.
Isn't this worth it?
As I conclude my sermon today, I want to share with you a personal person who came to Christ through my ministry.
Some of you may remember this.
I've done it, said it a long, long time ago, but I believe the Lord would have me tell it again.
In 1977, we moved from Windsor to Bradford to begin Bradford Baptist Church, and I found out that there was a lady in the community who wrote news articles in the weekly Bradford Witness newspaper.
So I contacted her uh almost weekly to give her uh thoughts about this new church starting in Bradford.
And uh Carol, by her name, was very accommodating and was interested in to include what I gave her each week.
She lived in the Holland Marsh with her husband Andy.
And uh he grew vegetables to take to market.
And during these visits that I made to their home, I discovered Carol was already a Christian and attended the Anglican church in town.
But Andy had a negative feeling towards Christians.
However, during my frequent visits, we had some very interesting conversations together.
To my surprise, when Father's Day came that year, the Simonis came to our church, meeting in the school.
And that Sunday, I don't even remember what I preached on, but I was giving the importance of the importance of the father in the home.
And God spoke to Andy that particular Sunday, and when they went home, Carol led him to Christ there.
And he started to come regularly to church and went home.
And as they began regularly, I sought to disciple him, uh going through the uh fellowship uh share program at that particular time to disciple him.
And it was a joy just to see Andy growing in the Lord.
Well, each week in the new church, we had a lot of children, and uh I would include a children's special and uh during the service, and one week I used a yo-yo, this this yo-yo right here.
I still have it.
And uh I won't do any tricks on it.
And uh as I uh did a few tricks and said to the boys and girls, listen, if you want to be a good yo-yo player, you need to practice.
Keep at it, keep at it.
And if you want to be a good Christian, it's important to keep reading the word and regularly each day so that you could grow in Christ.
And uh so that was my children's special that particular week.
Well, a few days later, Andy and uh uh uh Sarah, Andy uh the Simonis went to Niagara Falls.
And they brought back a gift for me, and it was this, a yo-yo.
To the for the executive, the man with pole.
This just goes up and down.
So they gave it.
This is a very precious gift to me now.
So it was interesting uh when they gave that to me.
And each week I would include this children special.
But then every summer we planned a day camp for our children, and we would go to the provincial park close by.
But one day it rained, and we had to meet in the gym of the public school.
And while we were there, a neighbor, an OPP officer, Grant Housley, who got to know, rushed into the school, and he informed me that Andy was out in the field during the rain to get his cabbages to take to market, and he was struck by lightning.
I immediately went to the New Market Hospital, but Andy never recovered.
This was quite a shock to the whole community and to our church.
And at the funeral service, I was able to read this testimony that I had been working with, that I had him write out, that he had written just prior to his death.
And here is just a part of what he wrote.
I was always against Sunday Christians.
I found them to be hypocrites who did not live what they pretended.
Some cheated on the job and in the business world.
I always thought that I was perfect and never committed any sins because I never did not murder or steal, etc.
The God I had heard about was dead, as far as I knew.
I never even read the Bible.
All I saw was that people who professed to be Christians could not even agree with each other.
Then I met a few Christians who were seven-day a week Christians, who were not hypocrites.
To them, Christ was alive and lived what they professed.
Their lifestyle was more believable.
I also saw God work some miracles in the lives of those close to me.
My stepson was healed of epilepsy.
God answered prayer.
Seeing these prayers answered really helped to make me believe.
Also, living with a Christian wife really hammered home some truths that I had not been aware of.
Then some changes occurred when I found that campaign conversations were going around.
The Lord used all these things to help me decide to accept Christ into my life.
Now I have new life in Christ.
And I see more seven-day a week Christians who have the joy of the Lord.
People appear to be fulfilled and living their faith day by day.
It was the unity of the Christian church being stressed that really made being made me a member of Christ's family so important.
And I want to tell others, with my mouth, Romans 10 and 9, that Jesus Christ is my Lord.
And Romans 10 and 9 meant so much to him.
If you confess with your mouth the Lord, that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
And so it was quite a shock there.
But his testimony left a real impact on all who were there.
And Jesus became a real treasure for him.
He believed in Christ, beloved, before it was too late.
And if you're here today and have been holding off, why not trust right now in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Believe in your heart and tell him with your mouth, and you will be saved.
I'd like us just to bow in prayer.
And for just a moment, as you've been listening to me this morning, I'm just wondering, is God speaking to you?
To trust in Christ.
If you're not saved, it's the time you're dead right now.
And I trust God is speaking to you if He's in the trunk of your car.
You haven't been opening up your life to Jesus.
Trust in him right now.
He's the greatest treasure.
The loveliest pearl you'll ever have.