Dear Church Family,

As we get into Summer, I hope you will be praying about being part of the many activities such as VBS, mission trips, and camps. We are always in need of leaders in all of these areas. Pray this week for our team going to Chiapas, Mexico. This is a Compassion International trip, which is a great organization. I found a beautiful insight I thought I’d share with you this week:

The commonly held interpretation of the parable of the pearl of great price and the hidden treasure does not fit the context.

Look at Matthew 13, which contains a series of parables. In each one, notice who the primary actor is.

• The sower went out to sow.
• A man sowed good seed in his field.
• A man sowed a mustard seed.
• A woman hid leaven in flour.

In each of these, the subject of the action is symbolic of who? God. These parables describe how God operates within his kingdom—how he initiates, acts, and brings about his purposes in the world.

However, when interpreters arrive at the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, there is suddenly a shift. The man who discovers the treasure, or who finds the pearl and sells all to acquire it, is supposed to represent us, the believers.

We are supposedly the ones who give up everything in pursuit of Christ.

Yet this interpretation is inconsistent with the structure and theological flow of the surrounding parables.

Rather, it is more contextually correct to interpret the man in these parables as God himself. It is God who seeks. It is God who gives up everything. It is God who purchases the field or acquires the pearl.

And the object of his pursuit—the treasure, the pearl of great price—is us, his people.

As Scripture affirms, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). God was willing to surrender all, even to the point of sacrificing his Son, in order to redeem and possess what he treasures most: us.

Thus, these parables ultimately reveal the depth of God’s sacrificial love. We are the recipients of that love—saved, redeemed, and made his own at great cost to him.