Kingdom Of Heaven

Matthew 13:44-52

I'm getting slower and slower with these blogs and so I apologize. Last night I was at the library till very late and didn't come home till about 3 and fell asleep. So I'm actually writing this blog in the morning the next day. I promise I'll put an entry in before 12 today for today's entry.

It was a tough day with a lot of work. I feel so behind these days. I need to be able to manage my time a little better. I have a lot of assignments due and a lot of work to do in the weeks to come. It's going to be exciting.

The Parable Of The Hidden Treasure And The Pearl
Reading: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2013:44-46;&version=31;

This parable is very beautiful. The first part is about how a man finds a treasure in the field and he hides and and sells all his possessions to buy the entire field for that treasure. This is telling us how valuable the kingdom is. The treasure represents the kingdom. It's so valuable that the man will be willing to sell all his possessions for this treasure. The second is similar in that a man finds a valuable pearl and sells all of his possessions to buy the pearl.

The kingdom is something that we will be willing to give up everything for. I think that this parable, while simple, shows us how valuable it actually is. Nothing comes before God. No great possession, no great person. The kingdom is something that we will all long for.

The Parable Of The Net
Reading: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2013:47-52;&version=31;

The other parable read today is about how the kingdom is like a net that is let down to catch fish. It will catch both good and bad fish. In the end it will let go of the bad ones and only take the good ones. This is representative of what will happen at the end of time. The good ones are the ones that will enter the kingdom of God and the bad ones are the ones that will be forgotten and be sent to the fiery furnace, aka hell.

Then Jesus asks if the crowd has understood the parables and said that whoever heard the parables about the kingdom of heaven will be willing to let go of his treasures, both old and new.

What's important about these parables is the last part. We need to understand that once we understand what the kingdom of heaven is like, we should be able to let go of all our treasures.