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John's Final Sermon as Senior Pastor: The Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price
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Good morning to Frontline Church. I have to be honest—I'm a bit emotional this morning. This is my last sermon as senior pastor. If you've ever changed jobs or roles, you know what I mean: weeks and months of "lasts." Last week was my last Easter Sunday celebration as senior pastor. Last week we had our last staff meeting. Today is my last preach as senior pastor.
When you change jobs, nothing changes in one sense—but it does feel like a big deal. And I'll let you into a secret: it felt like a big pressure on me. What am I going to do for my last preach?
We are towards the end of a transition process. My last Sunday as senior pastor is next Sunday. I'm handing over to the wonderful, amazing Jenny and Jack Mariner, who are going to be amazing leaders. Please be praying for them and supporting them. Join us on Sunday the 21st for our celebration, where we'll be commissioning Jack and Jenny as senior leaders.
I've been reflecting on this journey, and I have to say I'm blown away by how well you've all responded to this transition. Change is not easy, but you've responded so beautifully. As a senior pastor, my goal has never been to create loyalty and affection towards me personally—it's to create loyalty and affection towards Jesus and his bride, the church. That's exactly what I've been seeing, and I'm so grateful for that.
I also want to say a huge thank you to our trustees, particularly Ben Ravens and Helena Watson, who have done an incredible job supporting us all through this transition.
Like I said, I felt a bit of pressure on me about this final sermon. There's a real pressure on pastors and preachers to always preach the "best ever" sermon—to preach something that's "all singing, all dancing." Particularly in the Western world, where the church is so influenced by celebrity and entertainment, preachers feel this pressure to deliver something unforgettable.
But then I remembered something my Auntie Nancy told me when I started at Bible college at eighteen years old. Nancy was my spiritual mentor, and she had these wonderful sayings comparing preaching with meals—two of my favorite things.
She'd say: "A sermon is like a good meal. You don't have to eat and enjoy everything on the plate to have enjoyed the meal." That's good advice.
But the thing I really remembered her saying was this: "A sermon is like a meal because you don't remember every meal you've ever eaten. There are one or two meals that are standout meals that you remember. There are one or two standout sermons that you will remember in your life. But sermons are like a meal because every meal I've ever eaten has done me good—it's nourished me. Every sermon that has ever been preached on Christ is one that has nourished me and done me good."
That liberated me. It reminded me of what I've tried to do in every sermon over the past nine years: First, preach from what I know and what God has been speaking to me about personally. Second, preach the gospel to you—not just for people who don't know Jesus, but to all of us. The gospel is something we have to preach to each other all the time.
I want to preach to you first and foremost about Jesus—about who he is and what he has done for us. Then, in the light of that, about who we are and how we get to live in the light of who he is and what he's done for us.
If you would turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 13, we're going to read two powerful parables—the parable of the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great price. They're only three verses, but they're incredibly powerful and incredibly challenging.
Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it." (Matthew 13:44-46)
Jesus here is evoking some quite surprising emotions in the crowds. He's appealing to very basic human desires. He's saying to the people: Imagine being a poor peasant worker in someone else's field. Many of those listening would have been exactly that. Imagine going about your day-to-day business and all of a sudden unearthing a treasure—a hoard of treasure, a cache of gold.
Imagine the excitement of that moment. Imagine the joy. Your heart would be pounding, racing. Imagine the almost panic of that moment: Is this really happening? The unbelief as you realized a life-changing event had occurred.
Jesus talked a lot about money, wealth, possessions, and treasures. One in ten verses in the gospels are about these things. But Jesus wasn't against wealth or riches. He was against the love of money. It's about priorities—having the right priorities. That's why we call people to give; it helps us keep our priorities in order. Money and treasure have this way of pulling our focus away from our one true priority: the Lord Jesus.
Jesus was drawing on very familiar imagery in the ancient Near East. Rabbis wrote stories about poor, pious peasant workers who would go fishing, catch a fish for their supper, open it up, and find a pearl inside—transforming their lives. There were stories throughout the ancient world of poor peasant boys who would go free diving off the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea, pulling up oysters and discovering pearls so valuable they had to be sold to a king or queen. Everyone would have known stories like that.
Then there's the hidden treasure—buried treasure was a massive idea across the ancient world. Wealthy people would bury their gold, coins, treasure, and jewelry in the ground to keep it safe. Every so often, someone would unearth buried treasure and their life would be transformed in a moment.
This reminds me of Terry Herbert, an amateur metal detector enthusiast. In 2009, Terry Herbert was out with his metal detector in a freshly plowed field in Staffordshire when he started to unearth something. He discovered the Staffordshire Hoard—the largest Anglo-Saxon hoard in UK history: 4,600 items, 5 kilograms of gold, 2 kilograms of silver, hidden in a field for something like 1,400 years.
I share that to get you into the excitement, emotion, and joy of these life-changing, life-transforming moments that Jesus is describing.
Jesus taught in parables. A parable is a story, usually containing familiar imagery, that holds a small hidden truth. The purpose of the parables was to split and divide the audience into two groups.
When Jesus told parables, the first group would think: Great story, Jesus. Thanks for that. Then back to day-to-day life. The second group would think: Hang on. What did he just say? What did that really mean? Why is he saying that? The power of the parable was that it would provoke them to press into Jesus, to draw close to him, and to inquire of him.
The same invitation comes to each one of us today. What sort of hearer will we be? Will we think, Great preach, John, thanks for that, and then back to life as normal? Or will we think, Hang on, what does this really mean for me? What is Jesus really saying to me? Will we press in? Will we draw close? Will we allow God's word to make a difference in our lives?
These are not just parables; they are parables of the Kingdom. Jesus is helping us understand what his kingdom is like, what the Kingdom of God is like. But more importantly, he's helping us understand what he is like, because he is the king of the kingdom. You cannot separate the king from the kingdom.
When Paul says in Romans 16 that the kingdom is righteousness, peace, and joy, that's because:
There's no one who ever lived more joyfully than King Jesus. As the king is, so is the kingdom. You cannot separate them.
These parables, like all scripture, point us first to Jesus—to who he is, who the king is—and then secondly, how we get to live in the light of that, what it means for us to be in his kingdom.
It makes sense that Jesus would teach this way. If he went around directly saying, I'm the king, the Romans would have killed him for that. So he taught discreetly and indirectly in these parables until the time came for him to reveal his true identity.
Let me unpack these two parables. In both, you have a main character, a person. In the first parable, you have a poor peasant worker laboring in someone else's field. In the second parable, contrastingly, you have a wealthy merchant who has the leisure and luxury of time to search for items of interest and value.
In both parables, you have an item of immense value. In the first, a hidden treasure in a field. In the second, a pearl of great price.
In both parables, there is an emotional response. There is a response to the treasure. There is a cost. There is a price to be paid.
Now, Jesus really quite helps us decode these parables and get to their true meaning. He gives us crucial information: he tells us what the Kingdom of Heaven represents and which element represents the king and his kingdom.
These parables are mirror images of each other. They are opposites.
In the first parable: Jesus tells us that the king is the hidden treasure. That is who the king is. And therefore, we can deduce that we are the workers in the field. That's who we are. We get to live in the Kingdom as workers in the field who find Jesus, the hidden treasure.
But here's what's so important: In the second parable, the imagery is flipped. In the second parable, Jesus says clearly that he is the wealthy merchant. That means, church, that you are the pearl of great price.
Let that sink in. Let that just sit with you for a moment.
I'll be honest: when we came to Liverpool, I think it was Dave who said to me, "John, everyone who's a Christian gets their theology and doctrine and Bible understanding from their nan." That's quite true of most Christians. We get our theology from our nan. My nan was a good, godly woman. She was a prayer warrior. She knew the scriptures. My nan told me that Jesus was the pearl of great price. She even used to sing a song about it.
Now, I'm not saying my nan was wrong—you'd get lynched for that—but I am saying: look at what the text says. Look at what the text actually says. It says that the Kingdom of Heaven, the king of the kingdom, is a wealthy merchant on a quest for fine pearls. When he finds one, he gives everything in order to purchase that for himself.
Can you see where I'm going with it, church? Brothers and sisters, in Jesus's eyes, you are the most precious thing he's ever seen. You are the most valuable thing that King Jesus has ever laid eyes on. You are that pearl of great price.
As a little aside: we being good evangelicals love to correct people on their theology. When a new Christian says to us, I found Jesus, we like to say, Well, actually, you didn't find Jesus. He found you.
But here in these two parables, we see that both are true. Both are paradoxically true. He is the wealthy merchant that found you as his pearl of great price. We are the workers in the field that found Jesus as the greatest treasure.
These parables together really open up the gospel to us. They tell us the gospel from two different angles, from two different perspectives, from two different experiences.
The king of the universe is like a wealthy merchant seeking actively for something of great value to him. When he finds that thing, that pearl of great price—you and I—he gladly and joyfully gives everything that he has in his joy to buy it for himself.
That's exactly what the Lord Jesus did for you. He came to this earth to seek and save the lost. He came to this earth to rescue you, to save you, to buy you, to purchase you for himself. That's what the word redeemed means—redemption means to buy you for himself.
But there was a cost to it. It cost him everything. It cost him the shedding of his blood. It cost him the laying down of his life on the cross.
For us, our salvation was free—it cost you nothing. But it wasn't without cost. It cost him everything. That is how precious you are to Jesus.
Don't you remember what scripture says? "Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross." What was the joy set before him? Look at the person next to you. You. You and I. Pearls of great price. He gladly and willingly gave it all for you.
You might say, Well, John, I don't feel like it. I don't feel like a pearl of great price. I don't feel particularly valuable or particularly precious.
For my last sermon as senior pastor, I brought a prop. If you've ever been at a Frontline wedding where I've preached, you've probably met Maxi Bear. Maxi belongs to Sain, and when Sain and Maxi were little, they were inseparable. Everywhere Sain went, Maxi went with him. So much so that when we went on holiday to North Wales one weekend and on the way home realized we didn't have this bear, we turned around, drove back to the place, tore the place apart, and found Maxi in the bottom of a duvet cover.
This bear was loved. And this bear was precious. It's a $3.50 bear from Asda—there must be thousands of Maxi Bears. But here's what I need you to get hold of, church: Some things in life are valuable because they are loved. Some things are loved because they are valuable. But some things are valuable because they are loved.
You are the objects of his affection. You are the objects of his desire. He loves you with all of his love, all of the time. You are his pearl of great price.
That's the gospel from God's perspective.
The gospel from our perspective goes like this: We were just going about our day-to-day business. We were laboring, working in the field. That's a picture of being under law, being under religion. We were working and laboring when all of a sudden we unearthed the greatest treasure. Our eyes were opened to see Jesus for who he really is. In that moment, we knew we'd found something so precious, so costly, so valuable that we had to have him for ourselves. We knew our lives would never be the same again.
He is the hidden treasure.
But notice that in both parables, the response is the same. The cost is the same. For us, salvation is free—it's a gift, by grace, received through faith. You cannot earn it. You don't deserve it. It cost Jesus everything, which is why it's free. He paid the price fully for us.
But our response to this gift is to surrender. Our response to this treasure is to lay down our lives. This is the cost of true discipleship. This is how we live in the Kingdom. We embrace the reign and rule of King Jesus through surrender. We take hold of the fullness and the treasure of the Kingdom through surrender.
That's why I always say: The effort of grace is surrender.
All these parables are reminders to us that we've been asked to do one thing: imitate our King, who gladly laid it all down for us. We are called to surrender.
There's no doubt that the first parable—the parable of the workers and the hidden treasure in the field—is a call to surrender, a call to sacrifice, a call to lay down our lives, a call to give everything to follow Jesus. The cost of true discipleship is not easy. Sacrifice is not easy. Yielding our will to his will is not easy. Giving of our all is not easy.
But I don't want to call you today first and foremost to surrender and sacrifice. The call from this text is not first and foremost to surrender and sacrifice and yield.
The call today, first and foremost, is this: Consider the treasure. Consider Jesus. Consider just how precious he is. Consider just how valuable he is. Consider just how majestic, inspiring, breathtaking, and magnificent he is. He is the greatest treasure a person could find. There is nothing, there is no one, that compares to him.
See him afresh. Behold him afresh. And let me tell you what will happen—something quite surprising: you will, with joy, reflex with surrender. You will reflex with surrender.
This is what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12:
"I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship." (Romans 12:1)
That's what's on my heart today: to urge you brothers and sisters to see God's mercy, to view his mercy, to get a glimpse and a revelation of his mercy. In view of his mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual, acceptable act of worship.
I want to invite you to stand with me. We're going to worship in the way that this verse describes—through our surrender.
Let's just pray together for a moment. I want to say to you: Consider Jesus. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Imagine Jesus there. There is no one like him. There is no treasure on this earth that compares to Jesus. He's a sort of treasure that, when you really get that revelation, you would gladly give everything in order to take hold of him.
I'm going to ask our Prayer Ministry team to come over to the right of the stage. We always try to create a space for Prayer Ministry because we want to not just hear the word but respond to the word. We would love to pray for you today.
If perhaps you don't know Jesus—if you've never really given your life to Jesus—if you'd say, "You know what, I've never really thought about it like that. I've sort of understood something of who Jesus is, but I've never really responded by giving my life to him"—please know that he gave his life for you. Our response is to give our life to him.
If you've never given your life to Jesus, I'd love you to go to this prayer team on the right. Just tell them, "I want to give my life to Jesus. I want to surrender my life to Jesus." They'll pray for you and help you step into that.
The second invitation for Prayer Ministry: I wanted to talk about how precious you are. Many of us really struggle to understand how precious we are to Jesus. That he would make us the object of his affection—I can't explain it to you, church. It's a mystery, but it's true.
If you're really struggling to say, "I am the object of his affection. He loves me with all of his love, all of the time," then I'd really encourage you to be prayed for today. Just go and be prayed for as we start to worship.
For all of us, we want to be hearers of the word who respond to the word. We're going to worship. We're going to use this time to surrender our lives afresh to this King who is so good, so pure, so righteous, so joyful—so that we want to really take hold of his kingdom afresh in this place today through that surrender.
Anyone with me on that, church? Anyone with me on that today?
