Matthew 13:44

Matthew 13:44

The Treasure Twice Hidden.

I. How tender, how intelligent, how considerate, is Jesus Christ! How mercifully He recognizes what some, speaking in His name, make so light of the difficulty of believing! He says the treasure of treasures is a hid treasure. It has been for ages buried in that common-looking field which is the world whatever the world be for each of us; the world of circumstance, and the world of business, and the world of chance and change, and the world of thought and feeling and passion and longing. Under all that crust and surface of ordinary living there lies, deeply buried, utterly hidden, its very existence unguessed and unsuspected, this treasure of treasures a Gospel of life and immortality. Christ says it is hidden; and the history of eighteen centuries, honestly written, honestly read, says so too.

II. The treasure is hid, and the man who finds it hides it again. Suppose that by one of His unsearchable influences God has brought a man to what Scripture calls "the obedience of faith." This is the critical moment at which man may say, "Publish," but at which Christ says, "Hide." (1) The man in the parable hides till he has purchased. And you can you be quite sure that the treasure is yours? Hide at least till you have sold all and bought the field. This must take time. (2) Do not, by word or sign, imply anything more than that you, as you trust, have got a truer and more real conviction than you once had of the meaning of your Christian standing and profession. Do not for a moment assume that your brother who has not said the same thing is not equally and alike a Christian. (3) Say nothing publicly about your new experience. Be only ashamed that you had it not earlier. Hide the treasure, first of all, in your heart. This hiding will be another word for the best possible kind of showing. The light that shines through is the true light. Let the law of charity, and the law of purity, and the law of reverence reign in you everywhere.

C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons,p. 268.

I. The blessings of the Gospel are compared to a treasure. Lifting the "poor from the dust, and the needy from the dunghill to set him with princes," they introduce him to the presence of the Divine Majesty and the palace of the Great King; to the society of angels and the communion of saints; to the general assembly of those high-born and first-born, compared with whom, in point of worth or dignity or lofty and enduring glory, your kings are but worms of the dust.

II. The blessings of the Gospel are compared to a hid treasure. Within the two boards of the poor man's Bible is a greater wealth of happiness, of honour, of pleasure, of true peace, than Australia hides in the gold of all her mines. That could not buy the pardon of any of the thousand criminals whom a country, weary of their crimes, once cast upon her distant shores; but here is what satisfies a justice stricter than man's, and procures the forgiveness of sins which the stoutest heart may tremble to think of.

III. The treasure was found without being sought. Even so, while some after a long search for happiness and their soul's good, in fulfilment of the promise, "Seek, and ye shall find," get in Jesus Christ the treasure of this parable and the pearl of the next, others find a Saviour without seeking Him. They burst at once into a state of grace; they stumble on salvation, if I may say so, as this man on the treasure hid in the field. They are converted, and it is a great surprise to them, what neither they nor any one else expected.

IV. Note the conduct of the finder. (1) He hid the treasure. In hiding the treasure till he had made himself owner of the field, he took the surest way of making it his own, and expressed, better than any words could do, its value in his eyes. By this parable the Saviour calls men to leave no stone unturned, no pains untaken, no anxiety unfelt, no prayer unsaid, to make His treasures theirs. (2) He parts with all for this treasure. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." "Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity."

T. Guthrie, The Parables read in the Light of the Present Day,p. 198.

The Treasure Hid in a Field.

This parable is one which sets forth not so much the manner of the growth of the kingdom of heaven, as the extreme value to mankind of the knowledge of that kingdom. Two things our Saviour asserts concerning His Gospel: (1) that it is a treasure; (2) that it is a treasure in some sense hidden.

I. Note the effect stated in the parable to be produced upon the mind of the man who has discovered the Gospel treasure. He goes and sells all that he has and buys the field conduct which shows that he has no doubt of being repaid for all that he spends in buying the field; he sells all that he has, not that he may become a beggar, but because he feels sure that he will get back his property tenfold conduct which shows faith too, because the treasure for which he barters all that he has is still hidden; he has not seen it all, but he is sure from what he has seen that infinite treasure is there; and moreover it shows energy, because as soon as the man becomes aware of the existence of the treasure he appears to leave no effort untried, even to the selling of all his substance, to make himself master of the treasure.

II. But does the Lord intend to describe merely what oughtto take place with reference to His Gospel, or to describe what usually doestake place? I think that if we look into the history of what the Gospel has done, either in ancient or in modern times, we shall perceive that though in many cases it has fallen upon deaf ears, and so has remained for ever a hidden treasure, yet there is quite enough to support the description of its character which Christ gives in the text; there is enough to show that Christ was describing, not merely an imaginary picture which would never be realized on account of the blindness and obstinacy of men, but a picture of which very many admirable copies may be found in all ages of the Church. Examples may be found (1) in the case of St. Paul; (2) in the history of the early converts to Christianity; (3) even in the extravagances to which the profession of the Christian faith soon gave rise. Let us remember that a too enthusiastic view in a matter of this kind is a safer, wiser, healthier view than one which is too indifferent and cold. The kingdom of heaven is treasure, treasure which may be found if we seek for it, and which, if it be worth seeking for at all, is worth all the labour and sacrifice and cost which any of us can spend in the search.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,3rd series p. 227.

The Hid Treasure.

The kingdom of God is not merely a general, it is also an individual and personal thing. It is not merely a tree overshadowing the earth, or leaven leavening the world, but each man must have it for himself, and make it his own by a distinct act of his own will. He cannot be a Christian without knowing it. There will be a personal appropriation of the benefit; and we have the history of this in the two parables which follow.

I. The circumstance which supplies the groundwork of this first parable namely, the finding of a concealed treasure is of much more frequent occurrence in an insecure state of society, such as in almost all ages has prevailed in the East, than happily it is with us. Often a man, abandoning the regular pursuits of industry, will devote himself to treasure-seeking, in the hope of growing, through some happy chance, rich of a sudden. The contrast, however, between this parable and the following will not allow us to assume the finder here to have been in search of the treasure; he rather stumbles upon it, strikes it with plough or spade, unawares, and thinking of no such thing, probably while engaged as a hireling in cultivating the field of another.

II. The field represents the outer visible Church, as distinguished from the inward spiritual, with which the treasure will then agree.

III. The treasure which a man hath found he hideth. This cannot mean that he who has discovered the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Jesus Christ will desire to keep his knowledge to himself, since rather he will feel himself, as he never did before, a debtor to all men, to make all partakers of the benefit. If he hide the treasure, this hiding will be, not lest another should find, but lest he himself should lose it. In the first moments that the truth is revealed to a soul, there may well be a tremulous fear lest the blessing found should, by some means or other, escape again. The anxiety that it may not do so, the jealous precautions for this end taken, would seem to be the truth signified by this re-concealment of the found treasure.

R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 122.

I. There is a treasure placed within our reach in this world.

II. The treasure is hidden. It is near and yet out of sight.

III. The hidden treasure is at last found.

IV. The finder parts with all in order that he may acquire the treasure.

V. Joy is an essential element in the case.

W. Arnot, The Parables of the Lord,p. 128.

References: Matthew 13:44. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,074; R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 139; A. B. Bruce, Parabolic Teaching of Christ,p. 68; J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,Part II., p. 396.