SPEAKER_00: Matthew 13 this morning as we continue our study in the parables of God.
SPEAKER_00: Two wonderful short parables, very concise, well-known.
SPEAKER_00: Beginning in verse 44.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up, and then in his joy he goes and sells all he has and buys that field.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on a finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, we do ask that you would encourage us through your word, make your word plant deep in our hearts and cause it to bloom into joy.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that we would live in light of you and your kindness towards us in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: What would you do if you were shopping for fish down at the International Mercado right down there, Backlick, where they have all the fish lined up on the ice there, and you grabbed one and you opened its mouth and you looked inside of its mouth as one does and saw a pearl in there?
SPEAKER_00: You know you can't just steal the pearl, but that would be stealing.
SPEAKER_00: So you would probably buy the fish.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a moral obligation to let the manager know that they are selling a pearl worth$100,000 for$9.99 a pound?
SPEAKER_00: This was the dilemma that a man named Roy Wettstein encountered when he was at a national park in southern Arizona outside of Tucson, and they were selling at this barrel of these different rocks that supposedly, you know, you crack them up and there would be the you know the gems inside of the rocks, the whatever the purple things are inside of them.
SPEAKER_00: And they were selling this barrel of rocks.
SPEAKER_00: You could choose any rock you wanted for$15 there.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Roy knew what he was looking for, and he found one that was heavier than the others, and yet he held it up to the light, and he saw the way the light refracted through it.
SPEAKER_00: And the other rocks you couldn't see through.
SPEAKER_00: This one was allowing light inside of it.
SPEAKER_00: He negotiated the person down from$15 to$10 and bought it, uh, and it was appraised at$2.5 million.
SPEAKER_00: It was dubbed by the New York Times as the Star of America.
SPEAKER_00: It was a specific kind of rock called a ghost sapphire that was very unusual.
SPEAKER_00: It was the first one found in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have the right to let the manager know?
SPEAKER_00: I'm buying a$2 million rock for$10.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a more Virginia scenario.
SPEAKER_00: You're walking through a field, like through a house, it's kind of abandoned, it's for sale, and you come across in the yard as you're walking through it, a something metal sticking out of the ground and you dig it out.
SPEAKER_00: And it is, let's pretend for the sake of this illustration, you have enough knowledge to discern this.
SPEAKER_00: It is a sword that had belonged to George Washington.
SPEAKER_00: There, buried in a yard in Annandale.
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: You can't just take the sword.
SPEAKER_00: You know this.
SPEAKER_00: If you take the sword and you try to sell it or uh whatever, there's gonna be questions about where you found it.
SPEAKER_00: The providence of the thing is gonna be important.
SPEAKER_00: So you can't just make it up and said you found it in your yard.
SPEAKER_00: You would probably be discovered by the people who care about this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so you put it back in the ground and you bury it back up right where you found it.
SPEAKER_00: And then you go and take out some mortgage or HELOC or whatever you need to buy that house.
SPEAKER_00: And now you found the sword on your own property.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're a millionaire, or you would probably, because you're a good native Virginian, you would probably give it to Mount Vernon.
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
SPEAKER_00: All of Jesus' parables have dramatic twists in them.
SPEAKER_00: What is so surprising about this parable is not the plot twist.
SPEAKER_00: What's surprising about this parable is the comparison.
SPEAKER_00: The comparison point here is the kingdom of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ is compared to a pearl of unsurpassed value.
SPEAKER_00: Every culture, every time in human history has some similar kind of parable.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that far-fetched from us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's far-fetched, it would happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: You'll probably go your whole life and not find a treasure of unsurpassed value buried in a yard in Annandale.
SPEAKER_00: But the idea is that every culture has a grid for this.
SPEAKER_00: You have a concept of what it would be to be going through a pawn chop and finding something that is worth millions of dollars that they're selling for 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_00: Or to be walking through a field and finding a treasure.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it would be surprising if it happened to you, but the concept itself is very accessible.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of images that Jesus uses for the preciousness of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: It is revealed from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: The sky speaks forth its handiwork, day after day pours forth speech, night after night reveals knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: There is no place that the word and the preciousness and the glory of God is not seen or heard.
SPEAKER_00: And it does it without words.
SPEAKER_00: It's just evident, resplendent in all of creation.
SPEAKER_00: And the actual gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the scripture, is practically ubiquitous in our world.
SPEAKER_00: There are Bibles everywhere, gospel messages everywhere, sermons online, so that all men everywhere are without excuse.
SPEAKER_00: And yet people repress the truth and unrighteousness, they bury it with dirt, they tread on it underfoot as if it is worthless.
SPEAKER_00: Now, these last two parables describe a person's heart being awakened to the preciousness of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We mentioned there's seven parables in Matthew 13.
SPEAKER_00: The seventh one will say for next week it's kind of like the final exam one.
SPEAKER_00: The first six are in couplets, they're in groups.
SPEAKER_00: The first two, the sower and the weeds, the next two, the leaven and the mustard seed, and then these two, the pearl and the treasure.
SPEAKER_00: Each of them are interpreted as a couplet.
SPEAKER_00: The first two are about the depth of the church, the second two about the breadth of the church, and the last two about the value of the church.
SPEAKER_00: The first two is about the church competing with the world, the world and the church, and the church and the world.
SPEAKER_00: The second two are about the church's victory over the world.
SPEAKER_00: And the final two are the church's value over the world.
SPEAKER_00: The first two talk about the church growing through evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: The second two talk about the church growing through patience.
SPEAKER_00: And the third two, the ones we're looking at today, talk about the church growing through celebration.
SPEAKER_00: And these final two are certainly the most personable of the parables.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the first two are very generic.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel's gonna go forward in evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: So evangelize.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel's going to grow, and weeds aren't a threat to it.
SPEAKER_00: So don't get wrapped up about all the evil in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Don't focus on that.
SPEAKER_00: Focus on evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first two.
SPEAKER_00: Again, very generic.
SPEAKER_00: It's not talking about you personally.
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about you as a Christian, but it's true of every Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Evangelize and care more about the gospel and less about the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first two.
SPEAKER_00: The second two parables, also very generic.
SPEAKER_00: They're almost independent of you.
SPEAKER_00: You're not in the second two parables.
SPEAKER_00: The second two parables are the gospel is gonna grow around the world.
SPEAKER_00: So that should give you confidence, but you don't have a role to play in it, quite honestly.
SPEAKER_00: The seed is gonna grow.
SPEAKER_00: I guess water it, but it's going to grow.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second two.
SPEAKER_00: Leaven is going to work.
SPEAKER_00: And so let the gospel work through your life, let the gospel work through your world.
SPEAKER_00: That's true, but it's going to work.
SPEAKER_00: It's axiomatic.
SPEAKER_00: So you're almost negligent or you know, on the outside of the second two parables.
SPEAKER_00: But this final couplet, these final two, they're all about you.
SPEAKER_00: The first one was the method of ministry, and the second one was just the reality of the church.
SPEAKER_00: This last one is how you appropriate that power and beauty of the gospel for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: These last two parables, they're not ones that can be interpreted corporately.
SPEAKER_00: These are individuals.
SPEAKER_00: Individuals.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a neighborhood that finds the treasure.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a church that finds the pearl.
SPEAKER_00: It's an individual.
SPEAKER_00: Now, these two parables are linked, of course, not just by their plot such as it is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, very quickly moving here, but they're also linked by the acts that the person does.
SPEAKER_00: When he finds a treasure and when he finds the pearl, both dudes do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: They sell all that they have.
SPEAKER_00: They abandon their previous life and go all in for the wonderful treasure of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: There's two reasons people would sell all that they have.
SPEAKER_00: One, because they're in massive debt and it's an act of desperation, not of hope, but of desperation.
SPEAKER_00: They feel like they have no choice.
SPEAKER_00: The wrong team won the Super Bowl and they gambled with the wrong crowd, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's not this.
SPEAKER_00: The other reason somebody would do that is because they have such a wonderful, optimistic, hope-filled opportunity in them in front of them that they're all in.
SPEAKER_00: That's this kind of person here.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it says in verse 44 that they do this with joy.
SPEAKER_00: That's the key phrase.
SPEAKER_00: With joy they do this.
SPEAKER_00: They are not reluctant participants in this, they are joyful participants.
SPEAKER_00: And that can be our heading this morning, entering the kingdom with joy.
SPEAKER_00: That's what binds these two parables together.
SPEAKER_00: The joyful aspect of a person's encountering the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I was talking this week with one of my friends, and we were trying to figure out if he could boil down every religion to one word, what word would that be?
SPEAKER_00: Some are easier than others, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Islam, obviously surrender.
SPEAKER_00: Judaism, probably Torah, Catholicism, probably sacrament.
SPEAKER_00: What would you do with Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: You'd probably land on the word joy or love or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: Love, joy.
SPEAKER_00: But you could make a strong case for joy.
SPEAKER_00: That the heart of the Christian relationship with Christ is that of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Not of sacrament, not of submission, but of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Not of law, but of joy.
SPEAKER_00: This parable, these two parables here, both describe, you know, Jesus is preaching this to a group of people that don't get the church.
SPEAKER_00: They've never heard of a church.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have a grid for the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel prophesied the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah pointed to the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: They're holding on to the old covenant with all of their might.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to murder Christ in a year or so from this, a year and a half from this, over his saying constantly that he's fulfilled the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: These people are not letting go.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have a grid for what Jesus is teaching.
SPEAKER_00: And so he tells them a parable about the joy that his disciples will have.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, at the start of Jesus' ministry, you don't see the joy there, right?
SPEAKER_00: After he's crucified, there's no joy.
SPEAKER_00: They're hiding together in the rooms, expecting themselves to be betrayed next.
SPEAKER_00: There's not joy.
SPEAKER_00: But once they encounter the promises of the gospel through the Jesus Christ and through the church, as the angels and the Holy Spirit drive them into the world to proclaim, their religion very quickly gets marked by joy.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity produces joy.
SPEAKER_00: And that joy comes through two theological words.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use two theological words as their heading.
SPEAKER_00: They're both biblical words as we go through the text today.
SPEAKER_00: They're both described in these parables, but it's such a powerful personal parable.
SPEAKER_00: I think just extracting the theological concepts here would be helpful for us.
SPEAKER_00: The first word is regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is the biblical word to describe going from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the word means.
SPEAKER_00: You're inanimate, dead, and then you were empowered, reanimated.
SPEAKER_00: So generation just means to give life.
SPEAKER_00: Generation is to plug something in.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is to plug something in that used to be plugged in.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is to give life to someone that used to be alive, that has since died.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is to bring back to life, in other words.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a word we use in our culture outside of theological circles, except for maybe lizards.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I hear it the most.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can chop off the tail of a lizard and it'll grow back.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't even know if that's true.
SPEAKER_00: I do know that the lizard is in Northern Virginia, man, I see a lot of them missing tails.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is the idea that you're dead and you can be brought back to life.
SPEAKER_00: The biblical doctrine of regeneration comes from the idea that mankind used to have life.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve used to walk with God in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: They sinned.
SPEAKER_00: Now every human being that is born is born with physical life and spiritual death.
SPEAKER_00: You were knit together in your mother's womb in iniquity.
SPEAKER_00: You were born in this world with a sin nature.
SPEAKER_00: The byproduct of that sin nature is that your eyes are closed to God, your ears are stopped to God, your heart is hardened to God.
SPEAKER_00: So that you walk by, over, and on the treasure of the gospel all the time and you don't recognize it.
SPEAKER_00: This parable describes a person cutting through a field and finding a treasure.
SPEAKER_00: This is not in our experience because we don't cut through fields.
SPEAKER_00: We generally walk on sidewalks.
SPEAKER_00: But there are exceptions to this.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine back when you were younger, back in the days when kids still walk to school.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember those days?
SPEAKER_00: And you would often cut through fields to get to school, a cut through a neighbor's yard if there's a shortcut.
SPEAKER_00: And there are lots of these all over Annandale where the streets go side by side, and you recognize you can a kid will recognize he can save 10 minutes off his walk to school if he cuts through these two yards.
SPEAKER_00: That happens in my yard all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I see the middle school students cutting through to get to homes all the time.
SPEAKER_00: That's something people do.
SPEAKER_00: And as they're walking that way, the implication with this kind of parable, in Galilee, there's fields everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: In Galilee, there's not roads, there's not sidewalks, there's a path that zigzag through the fields.
SPEAKER_00: That's how people get to synagogue, that's how they get to the market, that's how they go to Tiberius, that's how they get to the Roman highway.
SPEAKER_00: You cut through people's fields all the time.
SPEAKER_00: The paths are worn down.
SPEAKER_00: The first of the parables hinges on that point.
SPEAKER_00: There's paths that everybody walks on.
SPEAKER_00: So as you're hearing this parable, I'm not reading too much into this parable, it's not here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus describes a parable of a guy cutting through the fields, finding a treasure in there.
SPEAKER_00: You would immediately assume he walks through this field all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get anything else about him.
SPEAKER_00: He's just going on his life normally.
SPEAKER_00: It's you don't get to know his sin.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get to know what he's living for.
SPEAKER_00: The idea is that he is just Joseph Israelite here.
SPEAKER_00: He's doing his normal Israelite thing.
SPEAKER_00: He's living for himself, going about his business.
SPEAKER_00: He has probably walked over this treasure a thousand times.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of spiritual death.
SPEAKER_00: Your eyes do not perceive the wonders of the gospel in front of you, even when you're stepping on them.
SPEAKER_00: The second guy with a pearl of great price, he is looking for treasure.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have a category of what he's looking for, but he's looking for treasure.
SPEAKER_00: Now, most people would identify with the first man.
SPEAKER_00: Most people are just living their lives.
SPEAKER_00: They're not rebelling against God at every corner intentionally, they're just living their lives, walking about the world for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: That's where most people are.
SPEAKER_00: But you can probably think of somebody you know that is always looking for a religious experience.
SPEAKER_00: It's always, I have a friend that every I see him at high school reunions, like every five years.
SPEAKER_00: And every time I've seen this guy since high school, he is a different religion.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's gone, he's gone through it all.
SPEAKER_00: Last time I saw him, he was some weird kind of Buddhist.
SPEAKER_00: You know, ten years ago or 15 years ago, he was a Muslim.
SPEAKER_00: Long before that, he was he was Catholic.
SPEAKER_00: This guy just shops through everything.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second parable.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who's just looking for something spiritually valuable in life.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know what they're shopping for.
SPEAKER_00: They're not looking in the right aisle, of course.
SPEAKER_00: They're not even in the right store.
SPEAKER_00: So these are two kinds of people.
SPEAKER_00: Just living their life and just looking for religion.
SPEAKER_00: Both of them are spiritually dead.
SPEAKER_00: Both of them are lost.
SPEAKER_00: Both of them wouldn't recognize the beauty of the gospel if it bit them on the nose.
SPEAKER_00: So what happened then?
SPEAKER_00: Both of them do encounter the beauty of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What happens?
SPEAKER_00: That's the theological concept of regeneration, where God opens their eyes to the truth.
SPEAKER_00: He unstops their ears so they can hear.
SPEAKER_00: The revelation of God, the general revelation of God, goes out into all the world at all times, proclaiming the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: But people are so spiritually dead they cannot perceive it.
SPEAKER_00: They oppress it, reject it, and suppress it.
SPEAKER_00: And regeneration is taking that general revelation, opening a person's heart to the truth of it, and then internally through the Holy Spirit giving them spiritual life so that suddenly they see.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly they know.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly they are alive.
SPEAKER_00: That's Ephesians 2, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: God being rich in love and mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even we were dead in our sins and trespasses, he made us alive together with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: God makes you alive.
SPEAKER_00: That is the internal effectual call of God, where he opens your heart and draws you to the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now there are providential twists and turns in every person's conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Providential twists and turns, ups and downs in every person's life.
SPEAKER_00: No person is saved the same in every detail.
SPEAKER_00: But every person who comes to faith comes to faith through regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: So many years the external call just bounced off your heart like a toy arrow.
SPEAKER_00: That's how hard your heart was.
SPEAKER_00: But when regeneration comes, God softens your heart, makes you alive.
SPEAKER_00: Your mental faculties are awakened, your mind is opened, your heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh, the scales fall off of your eyes, and you see the beauty of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is called being born again.
SPEAKER_00: That's John chapter 3, where Nicodemus, secretly in his heart, asks Jesus, What must I do to go to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: And Nicodemus tells him, You can't even see heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You can't even see the kingdom of God unless you are born from above, born again.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus doesn't know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You're a teacher of Israel and you don't know what it means to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: This is John 1, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: That he came to his own, whose own did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to the Jews, the Jews rejected him, but to all those who did receive them, he gave receive him, he gave them the right to be called children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Children who were born not of blood, not of the will of man, not of the will of the flesh, but born of God.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this is God's working.
SPEAKER_00: God makes you alive.
SPEAKER_00: You don't make yourself alive.
SPEAKER_00: God makes you alive.
SPEAKER_00: This is his work.
SPEAKER_00: You don't make yourself be born again any more than a baby could conceive himself.
SPEAKER_00: This is Exodus 36, verse 26, where God says, I will give you a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 3, verse 9 simply calls it being born of God.
SPEAKER_00: Sin has so thoroughly corrupted mankind that we tread on the gospel all the time without an awareness of its beauty.
SPEAKER_00: But God doesn't leave us for dead.
SPEAKER_00: James 1, verse 18 says it was an exercise of his will, God's will, that God brought us forth by the word of truth.
SPEAKER_00: That word brought us forth, God made us be born by the word of truth.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 1, verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy caused us to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably the most direct way Scripture says it.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says, God caused us to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 37 is the valley of dry bones.
SPEAKER_00: That's people outside of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They are spiritually dead.
SPEAKER_00: Can dry bones appreciate the beauty of the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel is asked by God, can these bones live?
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel has the right answer.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You know.
SPEAKER_00: That's when God asks you a question.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel, Ezekiel is a good enough prophet.
SPEAKER_00: He sees a trick question when it's coming.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel, can these bones live?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: You answered the question.
SPEAKER_00: It's your test.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord says, Yeah, they're gonna live.
SPEAKER_00: I will open the graves and cause them to come out of their graves, and I will put my spirit within them, God says.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says it this way, John 6, verse 63, it is the Spirit who gives life.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has caused the light of the glories of Christ to shine in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Titus 3, verse 5 says it's the washing of regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the word is used in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's the sprinkling of the water of the word.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart is washed by the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Your spirit is made alive by the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: Titus calls that, or Paul calls it to Titus regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you are regenerated?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing you expect when you're born, you open your eyes and suddenly, I don't think you remember it, but you're born and you open your eyes, and your first thing you're aware of is that there's a world here.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens in regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Your eyes are opened, and the first thing you see is the beauty of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing you see is the preciousness of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That God, holy, beautiful, life in and of himself, resplendent, all of his attributes on maximum display, robes himself in human nature, takes on a human body, leads a sinless life, dies bearing your sin on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It shows you all the glories of God and all the horrors of sin mingled in one person at one moment on the cross, buried, pays the penalty for your sin, resurrects, ascends to heaven where he reigns and invites people to come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Every part of the attributes of God, every element of the attributes of God, every facet of his beauty is on full display through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say every part or element, I don't think that God has little parts in him any more than a diamond.
SPEAKER_00: It's one diamond, but it's got all of the facets, all the sides, all that is on display on the cross of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God's justice and mercy and holiness and forgiveness all meet there.
SPEAKER_00: The person who's unregenerate doesn't see how beautiful that is, just walks by it.
SPEAKER_00: Walking on the sidewalk and a piece of mulch has fallen on the sidewalk.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't cross the street to pick up a piece of mulch.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's in front of you, you probably wouldn't even alter your step.
SPEAKER_00: You'd probably just step on it.
SPEAKER_00: That's how people treat the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's the most beautiful display of God's infinite glory and beauty and majesty in the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: And people walk on it and step on it because they don't know what they're looking at.
SPEAKER_00: They're spiritually dead and blind.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration opens their eyes to see the beauty of God and the incarnate Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing they understand when they are regenerate is how beautiful the gospel is.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Edwards describes it this way: quote, it is a sight of the divine beauty of Christ that bows the will and draws the hearts of men.
SPEAKER_00: Your eyes are opened and you see this is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: You've probably heard the expression that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
SPEAKER_00: Is that true?
SPEAKER_00: I bet you could make that horse drink.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: You're strong enough, the horse is thirsty enough.
SPEAKER_00: You got one of those little horse tasers.
SPEAKER_00: I bet you could do it.
SPEAKER_00: You could make that horse drink.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what you cannot make that horse do?
SPEAKER_00: You cannot make that horse lift its little head up and say, Man, that is good water.
SPEAKER_00: That's what saving faith is.
SPEAKER_00: You can bring someone to church.
SPEAKER_00: It's easier than the little kids, right?
SPEAKER_00: You can physically bring them to church.
SPEAKER_00: You can get your neighbors or coworkers to go to church.
SPEAKER_00: You can even get them to take notes.
SPEAKER_00: You can say, hey, you take good notes, you tell me three things you learned today, I'll buy you a coffee afterwards.
SPEAKER_00: You can get your coworker to go to church, you can get your coworker to take notes.
SPEAKER_00: You know what you can't get your coworker to do?
SPEAKER_00: And say, Man, that is that is a beautiful Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That is lovely.
SPEAKER_00: That's what saving faith is.
SPEAKER_00: Where your heart is open to the truth of the beauty of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when you're regenerated.
SPEAKER_00: How do you know that sugar is sweet?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you taste it.
SPEAKER_00: There's really no other way to help you beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: You can only describe the sweetness of sugar so much.
SPEAKER_00: But you have to actually taste it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what regeneration is.
SPEAKER_00: It's tasting the gospel and saying, Oh, that is so precious.
SPEAKER_00: That is so sweet to my soul.
SPEAKER_00: That's regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens to these guys in these parables.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand that?
SPEAKER_00: They're dead in their sins and trespasses.
SPEAKER_00: They're walking around, and suddenly their eyes are open to a beauty that's right in front of their face, and they cannot take their eyes off of it.
SPEAKER_00: That's regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration leads to conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion is what happens from regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I say what happens from it, I don't mean it happens five minutes later or ten minutes later or ten years later.
SPEAKER_00: I mean it happens immediately.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration and conversion go together.
SPEAKER_00: You're regenerate and that produces your conversion instantly.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that the sun produces light.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the sun produces light ten minutes later, but you can't flip it around and say the light produces the sun.
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: The light comes from the sun.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion comes from regeneration, but it is instantaneous.
SPEAKER_00: You're regenerate, you open your eyes, you taste the sugar, and you go, that's sweet.
SPEAKER_00: And at that same moment, you say, My life is going to be spent with this sugar.
SPEAKER_00: You open your eyes and you see the beauty of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: In that exact instant, you say, That is so beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: I'm giving my life to the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's conversion.
SPEAKER_00: You were living this way.
SPEAKER_00: You were on the path.
SPEAKER_00: This dude was on the path, going to town, sees the beauty of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Turns everything around.
SPEAKER_00: This guy who was looking for the pearl finds this pearl.
SPEAKER_00: He's not looking at the next fish.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, oh, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Let me look at one more to see what's there also.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: His life is changed.
SPEAKER_00: Right there.
SPEAKER_00: That's the sense of realization.
SPEAKER_00: Your eyes are open, you see light, and then conversion is you know nothing is going to be the same anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration opens your eyes to the beauty of Christ, and conversion is this wonderful and tragic experience where you realize everything you were doing before is wrong and it won't be the same anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I say wonderful and tragic because there's a positive and negative side to it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the guy sells everything he has.
SPEAKER_00: He does it with joy.
SPEAKER_00: But isn't there a little bit of grief mingled?
SPEAKER_00: Think of all the years that were wasted.
SPEAKER_00: Think of how many decades this guy had spent with his little savings account and his little living his life for this or that.
SPEAKER_00: And none of it's where was he going?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even matter anymore where he was going.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: It's irrelevant.
SPEAKER_00: Everything he lived for, it's waste.
SPEAKER_00: It's rubbish.
SPEAKER_00: It's gone.
SPEAKER_00: XM radio fills the air right now.
SPEAKER_00: I think the satellite can penetrate the church building.
SPEAKER_00: But if you turn on your car radio and you just have FM radio, you're not going to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration is giving you the right radio.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion is you experiencing the beauty of the music and saying, I'm never going back.
SPEAKER_00: These guys sell, both of them sell all that they have.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion is also a biblical word.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 15, verse 3 talks about the gospel going to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: The conversion of the Gentiles brought great joy to all the brethren.
SPEAKER_00: See how in Acts 15, verse 3, conversion and joy are linked.
SPEAKER_00: They're converted, everyone has joy.
SPEAKER_00: Their taste is awakened.
SPEAKER_00: They experience something great and lovely, and everything is new.
SPEAKER_00: This is a song that we often sing.
SPEAKER_00: All I once held dear and built my life upon.
SPEAKER_00: All this world reveres and wars to own.
SPEAKER_00: All I once thought gain, I have now counted loss, spent and worthless now compared to this.
SPEAKER_00: There's joy in that, right?
SPEAKER_00: But also a little bit of just astonishment about all that you spent time on that doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: That twofold facet here of conversion, it's seeing repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance and faith are hand in glove here with conversion.
SPEAKER_00: You can't have one without the other.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't even mean that it's two things you need, I mean that it's the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: The analogy has been so helpful for me to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin.
SPEAKER_00: The coin, I mean, think of this.
SPEAKER_00: You have a penny, the penny is conversion in this example.
SPEAKER_00: The coin is conversion.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have heads and tails.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion is repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't say, I have a penny.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, do you have heads or tails of the penny?
SPEAKER_00: I have heads, but not tails.
SPEAKER_00: No, if you have the penny, you have heads and tails.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and look.
SPEAKER_00: Flip it around, they're both there.
SPEAKER_00: If you have conversion, you have repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: You can't have one without the other.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you think about what they are, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is you're leading your life this way and you turn around.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is the turning.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is the object that you are turning towards.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is giving up going this way and turning this way.
SPEAKER_00: You can't have the turnaround without turning towards something.
SPEAKER_00: There's no Switzerland here.
SPEAKER_00: There's no neutrality.
SPEAKER_00: I give up sin and I'm just going to live in this independent area, not for Christ and not for sin.
SPEAKER_00: Now, repentance and faith are together.
SPEAKER_00: That's conversion.
SPEAKER_00: You're living for sin.
SPEAKER_00: You are living for self.
SPEAKER_00: You are living for religion in some sense.
SPEAKER_00: You are doing that.
SPEAKER_00: You are converted now.
SPEAKER_00: You turn away from that to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You repent from your sins and trust Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is the language all over the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is almost conflated with conversion in many places.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' first words out of his mouth preaching, the first word he says, recorded word from Jesus' mouth when he preaches, is repent.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist's first word when he preaches, repent.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, you can make a list.
SPEAKER_00: Many of the prophets, their first word, Jonah, repent.
SPEAKER_00: Sort of.
SPEAKER_00: It was implied.
SPEAKER_00: You're going down.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah's first word was fire.
SPEAKER_00: But implied was repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that because what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They heard Jonah's preaching, and what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: Repented.
SPEAKER_00: Even the sheep repented.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 26.
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells people, open your eyes so you can turn from darkness to light.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Open your eyes so you can turn from darkness to light.
SPEAKER_00: You're about to walk off a cliff, hard to navigate with a blindfold on.
SPEAKER_00: Regeneration, have your eyes opened.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion, turn around, darkness to light.
SPEAKER_00: This is the change that happens when you encounter Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let the thief who steals steal no more, but get a job.
SPEAKER_00: That's repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And repentance is not done out of penance.
SPEAKER_00: It's not done to make atonement for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: That is not the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is not, I'm going to turn from my sin in order to make amends for all I've done.
SPEAKER_00: No, repentance is turning from sin for the joy set before you.
SPEAKER_00: The joy of the gospel produces repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Zacchaeus was so stoked to be with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That produced the repentance.
SPEAKER_00: That produced giving things away.
SPEAKER_00: Joy is the marker, though.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians 3, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: What a critical verse for this.
SPEAKER_00: More than that, Paul says, I count all things lost for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I count all things lost and I count them rubbish so that I may gain Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's this parable lived out in Paul's life.
SPEAKER_00: Where Paul was the Pharisee persecuting Christians, and then he counts all of his credentials, his genealogy, his education, lost and rubbish.
SPEAKER_00: He says it twice, lost twice, rubbish once for the value of knowing Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That is not reluctant conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance starts recognizing your sin is against God, and God primarily.
SPEAKER_00: This is David when he murders Uriah, adultery with Bathsheba, Nathan confronts him.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much surprising in that story, but perhaps the most surprising thing is what David says when he repents.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I've sinned against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Who said anything about the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: David knew.
SPEAKER_00: Job in Job 42, after the whole book of arguing and wrangling at Job 42, Job repents for his sin against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah 3, verse 5, the Nineveh, when they repent, say, We've sinned against the God of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Worldly sorrow cries for sin but doesn't confess.
SPEAKER_00: Godly repentance confesses and turns to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 55, verse 7, let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous person forsake his thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: Let them return to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Without repentance, there is no salvation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm belaboring this point because there are those that dispute it, but without repentance there is no salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 13, verse 3 and verse 5, twice, unless you repent, you will likewise perish, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 17, verse 30.
SPEAKER_00: God speaking to Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Mars Hill.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 17, 30.
SPEAKER_00: God in previous times has overlooked times of ignorance and sin, but God is now declaring that all men everywhere should repent.
SPEAKER_00: There's a massive, universal call to repentance, to turn from your wicked ways.
SPEAKER_00: But you don't just turn from your wicked ways to spin on your heels, you turn towards the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is trusting yourself to the Lord, believing the gospel, and trusting yourself to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is not mere mental ascent.
SPEAKER_00: There's really three components to faith.
SPEAKER_00: There is the mental ascent.
SPEAKER_00: You have to mentally, intellectually recognize the gospel is true.
SPEAKER_00: That's the mental ascent.
SPEAKER_00: There's the affectionate part that your heart has to be won over to it.
SPEAKER_00: You have to believe it and love it.
SPEAKER_00: And there's the trust part that you have to commit yourself to it.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of examples of the Bible of people that have one or two of those, but not all three, and that's not saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: Judas knew the truth about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Judas was following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He just didn't love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Demas knew the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Demas followed, didn't love.
SPEAKER_00: Demons know the truth.
SPEAKER_00: They don't follow our love.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many superficial faith.
SPEAKER_00: Real faith is the intellectual knowledge, the love of the heart, and the commitment of your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you have in these three dudes, or these two guys in the parable here.
SPEAKER_00: They see the treasure, they see the pearl, they see the treasure, they know it's treasure, they know it has infinite worth, they love it, and they lean their whole life on it.
SPEAKER_00: They surrender everything, they sell all that they have.
SPEAKER_00: That's not putting the foot in the water of the church and seeing what happens next month, you know?
SPEAKER_00: This is Cortez burning his boat.
SPEAKER_00: This is Cortez looking at Mexico.
SPEAKER_00: And some people say if you say repentance is part of conversion, that means you never know if you're saved until the end of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Nonsense.
SPEAKER_00: Rubbish.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what that means.
SPEAKER_00: Any more than Cortez saying, I'm gonna wait to burn my boats until after I defeat Mexico.
SPEAKER_00: That defeats the point.
SPEAKER_00: It's Corte looking at Mexico and saying, we're gonna win.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, to help motivate you and to demonstrate this, I'm burning the boats.
SPEAKER_00: So your choices now are victory or death.
SPEAKER_00: That's saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: Selling all you have for Christ, that's saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: Burning the boats of your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's these guys selling all they have to surrender to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They're all in.
SPEAKER_00: They're committed.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 6, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is to never die again.
SPEAKER_00: We know we died, we believe we will live.
SPEAKER_00: That's counting the cost.
SPEAKER_00: Counting the cost is not something you do at the end of your life, halfway through your life, any more than you count the cost.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have enough supplies to build the fence around your yard?
SPEAKER_00: That's a question the wise person asks before he starts building the fence.
SPEAKER_00: Not after.
SPEAKER_00: Before.
SPEAKER_00: Not halfway through, before.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith is looking at your life in front of you and saying, I'm counting the cost.
SPEAKER_00: I see what I've got in front of me, I see the years in front of me, I see the possessions I have, I see the course I'm going on, and I'm turning from that.
SPEAKER_00: The cost of following Christ is giving up the things I loved and valued to receive Christ.
SPEAKER_00: To love Christ more than this world, more than family.
SPEAKER_00: Let the dead bury their dead, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever loves mother and father more than me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever refuses to pick up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
SPEAKER_00: Let the one who follows me count the cost, deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: That's this parable.
SPEAKER_00: Sell what you have, give to the poor and follow me, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: This is these people saying, I'm I'm walking away everything.
SPEAKER_00: And you have, again, with all due respect, you have to be kind of obstinate to think the point of that is literally sell all you have and give to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: That's obstinacy.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is saying, I'm counting the cost of my whole life here, and I'm all in for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why would somebody do that?
SPEAKER_00: One reason and one reason only joy.
SPEAKER_00: The joy that comes from seeing the matchless beauty of Christ and what he offers you.
SPEAKER_00: That changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: That's David in Psalm 43, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: I will go to the altar of God, my exceeding joy.
SPEAKER_00: Back in my youth pastor days, so long ago, I had painted on my office wall this quote from Augustine.
SPEAKER_00: How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I once feared to lose.
SPEAKER_00: Augustine, if you remember his testimony, was living in sin.
SPEAKER_00: He'd heard preaching in Milan.
SPEAKER_00: He'd heard Ambrose was his pastor, he heard incredible preaching, his mother was praying for him, but he wouldn't give up his sin.
SPEAKER_00: He loved it so much.
SPEAKER_00: And then one day he took up the Bible and read it, and his heart was opened, his eyes were opened, and he had this experience all at once.
SPEAKER_00: How sweet it was to immediately be rid of those joys.
SPEAKER_00: He was so afraid of losing them, and now he was glad to reject them.
SPEAKER_00: That's his language.
SPEAKER_00: Then he tells God, You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy, you drove them from me and you took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful that you are the true and sovereign joy.
SPEAKER_00: We know our lives are filled with ups and downs, doubts and guesses.
SPEAKER_00: We know if anyone thinks he is perfect, he deceives himself.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful for the beauty of Christ that forgives us even in our weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: You know the Bible doesn't call perfection, call for perfection, but it calls for abandonment.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we confess that we love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful for the faith that you've given us.
SPEAKER_00: Saving faith that you've put in our hearts, and Lord, we immediately also pray to help our unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: They're both true.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, our hearts are filled with the beauty of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We love Him and want to serve Him.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful He forgives us when we fail to do that well.
SPEAKER_00: The words of that song Echo in our Hearts, there's so much that we once held dear.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful you drove us to where we can count at loss, and you who are the sweet and sovereign joy took their place.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful for that.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.