Parsing out the intricacies in two rather succinct parables about the kingdom of God.

<p>Parsing out the intricacies in two rather succinct parables about the kingdom of God.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hope Channel

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

Sikhu Daco

Justin Kim

Israel Ramos

Joe Reeves

01 Rooted in Faith

02 Lost but Found

03 Discovering the Treasure

04 Caught in the Crossfire

05 Persistent in Prayer

06 Loving our Neighbor

07 The Wedding Garment

08 Bearing Fruit

09 Giving to God

10 Called to Serve

11 Living for Eternity

12 Filled with the Spirit

13 Building on the Rock

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

What is it in your life that you just go all out for?

That's what we're talking about in this episode.

I wanna say hello to each 1 of you out there watching on social media or TV or podcast or radio or whatever platform you are listening to us on, watching us on.

I want to say hello to Shiku and Israel and Joe.

And we also want to say hi to Jonathan out there and Callie and Sebastian, wherever you may be in the world.

God bless you guys and we miss you very much.

We're gonna go to Matthew chapter 13, Matthew 13.

We've been looking at the parables of Jesus.

And if you want to look at episodes 1 and 2, you can go to hopetv.org slash inverse, and you can you can just binge watch all the quarters that we've gone been having in the last what 6, 08:12, 10, a long time we've been doing this and the Lord has blessed and we're very thankful to God for allowing this opportunity but for this quarter we are on the the arc called Stories That Transform.

Let's go to Matthew chapter 13 verse 44 to 46.

Joe can you lead us out in prayer before we read scripture?

We want to come into contact with your heart, your character, as we look into your word right now and ask for your divine aid.

We're gonna read verse 44, which is 1 parable, and then 45 and 46, which is another parable, and then we'll stop reading.

It says, again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who when he had found 1 pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it." A lot of Jesus's parables, as well, they start off with Jesus saying the kingdom of heaven.

When you hear that, what comes to your mind?

We talked about he reveals heavenly things, but is that a motif thing that Jesus does?

You know, we often, well, especially in this context, you had the Israelites who were really waiting for the Messiah to come, who would establish a kingdom on earth.

And so, oftentimes, we, like them, have our own understanding of what the kingdom of God should be like.

You know, we often pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And in the process of life, I believe that through these parables and through the teachings of Christ, He's actually trying to transform the way we view the world.

And the kingdom of heaven is very different from a kingdom on earth.

And so we have these ideas in our minds of what a kingdom looks like.

And these ideas will usually have concepts of power, concepts of rule, concepts of domination, force, all of these different things.

And Jesus is establishing a kingdom that is completely different from this kind of kingdom.

So much so that if you were to look at his kingdom you would not be able to tell that it is they are actually 1 in the same right it is a kingdom and so god is jesus is trying to say look the kingdom of heaven it's very different from your concept of a kingdom so let me let me reshift let me shift the way you're thinking about a kingdom.

My kingdom is not, like we looked at the parable of the seeds a few weeks ago, my kingdom is not a kingdom that takes place through force or through violence.

Instead, it is like a seed that is planted.

And it uses power, a different form of power, power that is in some ways greater, right?

It is fragile, yet it produces this huge tree, or it is fragile, yet it produces so much life.

And so Oftentimes the parables or Christ's teachings were designed to teach us how to think more like him in our walks of life here.

Yeah, and while you were talking, I was thinking of, man, that's really profound thought that human beings all have an expectation of what the kingdom should look like here on Earth.

All throughout the 1700s and 1800s you have European powers trying to create and expand Christianity all throughout whether it could for good or bad I mean that's for history to decide and for what not.

You had here in North America you know this American still kind of this American nationalism and the heydays in its 50s, but also Christian nationalism combining with different political parties.

And you have the current social milieu now with social justice and with minority powers rising up and trying to create an egalitarian society.

I think each of these visions, and there's bazillions of more, right?

But each of them have core good elements in it, and then some core bad parts in it, and then history judges it and whatnot.

And it's very interesting that Jesus is kind of reacting to, even though he's reacting to the Jewish understanding at that time, he's also reacting to also future human understandings.

At the end of the day, the core is human nature.

And so this is just a totally new kingdom altogether.

I get personally annoyed, and this is kind of something that I have to pray through, that I don't impose my political expectations on the kingdom of God, too.

I mean, that's a human temptation for every, not age, but also at every individual.

Because you look at, if you, sorry, if you look at the, just the trajectory of history, even every time a persecuted power comes into power, what do they do?

Because this is the natural tendency of the human heart.

And so God is trying to teach us, you have to be a completely different person if you wanna be part of my kingdom.

Because you have to act differently, but in order to act differently, you have to be different, you have to think differently, and so that's what I see in the dream of God.

Years ago, a preacher used an illustration I never forgot, imagining going way down deep into the ocean, if you're like 5, 000 feet down in the ocean.

There's no sunlight, there's no air, and you find 1 of these fish, there's living fish down there, and try to describe to that fish what it's like to be out of the ocean.

And that fish has a hard time imagining air, it's never seen the air, imagining sunlight and land and all these things.

And that's about the kind of gap we're dealing with when Jesus came to describe the kingdom of heaven.

He's trying to find all these contact points through these stories, the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like, if he can somehow grab our imagination to show us how different it is from our kingdoms.

And that range of intelligence is far wider between Jesus and us than us and the fish.

Well, let's go to verse 44 and let's kind of look through that first 1.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.

Man finds and hides it back up again, And for joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Why did this person go and find and hide it and then sell it, or sell all that he has and buy it again?

And what makes this guy go all out for something?

Yeah, there's what's awesome about this parable, it has so many different things in it.

Like there's an element of ethics, right?

He doesn't steal the treasure, he buys the treasure.

First of all, I love it how it's so short, but it just gets even more, yeah, yeah, okay, sorry.

So, the first thing is the nature of the kingdom is that in order to fall upon the kingdom or in order to be a part of this kingdom, it is something that you have to, I don't wanna say work for, but you have to work for it.

And oftentimes- You don't have to work for it in terms of salvationally earn it, but there is some energy expended to engage into it.

You know, I think that's how I understand it.

Series

InVerse 3rd Quarter 2024: Stories that Transform

03 Discovering the Treasure

Transcript

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Parent Series

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Recorded

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