45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Introduction
Dr. Bill Hinson, the chaplain at Baylor University, told of a salesman friend of his who was driving through the back roads of Missouri some time ago when he came upon a little country gas station/grocery store. It had a gravel driveway and just one gas pump in the front. While the attendant filled his car, he turned and walked into the little grocery store. The store had a screen door with one of those metal braces that advertises bread placed at a 45-degree angle on it. When the door slammed it hit a ball that rang a bell to alert the clerk that a customer had entered.
Sitting behind the counter was a little old man wearing a green sun visor working on his books. He hardly looked up when the salesman walked in. Behind him on a shelf was an old handgun. The salesman said to the proprietor, “Mister, I’m a collector of guns. May I see that gun?” The old man hardly looked up. He just put his thumb over his shoulder pointing to the gun, as if to say, “Help yourself.” The man looked the gun over and couldn’t find a trademark on it, but decided he wanted it anyhow. He had only $150 in his pocket, so he offered the proprietor $50 for the gun. The man said no. The salesman raised his offer to $75, and once again the proprietor said no. The third time he offered the man $100, and his answer was the same: “No.”
Finally the salesman said, “Mister, I’m a collector of guns. I know their value and this gun is not worth what I’m offering you for it. But I want it for my collection. So what would you take for it?”
The old man took his pencil, pushed his sun visor up as if to push his head up, and said, “Mister, my father made that gun and I wouldn’t take nothing for it.”
The salesman walked out the door. As the door slammed, it hit the ball and rang the bell and he was gone.
As he drove away he said to himself, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll come back after that old man dies and buy the gun from the boy. He won’t value it as much as his father, and I can probably get it for $25.” But the nearer he got to Kansas City, the more he thought, “You know, I need something in my life I wouldn’t take nothing for.”
My question to you today is this: “What have you got that you wouldn’t take nothing for?” In fact I wish you’d take a pencil and a piece of paper and write that question across the top. Then list those things that are most valuable to you—the things you wouldn’t take nothing for.
Now you English teachers, don’t get bent out of shape. I know that’s not good English. The sentence contains a double negative and you are not supposed to use them. But if the purpose of language is to communicate, you do get the message. Besides, that’s the way the man said it.
It’s important for us to recognize values in life. Jesus pointed that out in the parable of the pearl merchant. One day this merchant came upon the most beautiful and the most perfect pearl he had ever seen in his life. Recognizing its worth, he sold all that he had and bought it (Matthew 13:45-46). Jesus was saying, “There is at least one thing that is worth everything.” And we all know that there are some things that are of inestimable value.
That’s what I want us to think about in our time together. “What have you got that you wouldn’t take nothing for?” On my list I have included six things:
1. Salvation
First on my list is salvation. My relationship to God is one thing I wouldn’t take nothing for. When I think about my life, I feel like the man who said, “I’m not what I oughta be, I’m not what I’m gonna be, but thank God, I’m not what I used to be.” With the apostle Paul I say, “I am what I am by the grace of God” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
When I speak of my salvation, I’m speaking of it in its entirety—not just the forgiveness of sin and getting to go to heaven when I die. I think about the meaning, purpose, direction, values, discipline, motivation, and power that come as a result of faith in God. This salvation determined my destiny and changed my life. The greatest single thing that ever happened to me was when I became a Christian and with that received God’s salvation.
I once talked with a young man who had fought a serious alcohol problem in his life for years. He had at one point almost ruined his own life and the lives of the members of his family. As we talked the thought struck me, “If you removed just one thing from that boy’s life—alcohol—his life would have been entirely different.” When I shared that with him he quickly agreed. Think of that, “Just one thing and everything would be different.”
That’s the way it has been with my life. Subtract God from my life and it would be altogether different in a worse way.
The best thing of all is that my salvation is something that can never be taken away from me. The scriptures declare that nothing can separate us from Christ. No tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword can separate us. Paul puts it this way: “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
These things may separate us from health and wealth, from family and friends, and from comfort and ease, but they can never separate us from God.
This salvation can be yours. The scriptures declare, “Jesus came into his own, and his own received him not. But as many received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12).
By personal faith and trust you can receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and know his life-changing power.
My salvation—my relationship to God, is something I wouldn’t take nothing for.
2. Family
Second, my family is something I wouldn’t take nothing for. Bob Lilly, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle for the Dallas Cowboys, in a testimony to our church several years ago said, “On the first day of training camp, Tom Landry said to the squad, ‘My priorities are God, family, and the Dallas Cowboys, and they are in that order.’”
Like it is for most of you, my family is near the top of my priorities. I want the best for them in every way. Don’t you?
While you love your family and long to provide the best for them, don’t forget their basic needs. It is not enough to give them housing, shelter, clothes, automobiles, and an education. There are other things that they need from you beyond the material things. Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4: 4). Bread is, of course, basic. It is truly the proverbial stuff of life. But this biblical assertion reminds us that we human beings have other hungers too—hungers that do not originate in our physical appetites. The poet James Oppenheim was one who cried out from such hunger pains. He wrote in 1911:
Hearts starve as well as bodies:
Give us bread, but give us roses!
What both the Bible and the poet are saying is that God has built into each of us powerful hungers that simply will not be satisfied by bread alone. We have a deep and abiding hunger for love and affection. Without them we shrivel and die. This is not a poetic exaggeration, it is the truth. We have a hunger to be needed, to know that we are filling a vital role in some life other than our own, that we are performing a task that enriches the community, and that we are making some contribution, however humble, to the sum total of things.
We have a genuine hunger for dignity, for self-respect, and for the refreshing sights of goodness, courage, and kindness; which enable us to renew our faith in ourselves and in one another.
We hunger most powerfully to believe that life—both yours and mine—is not just “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing” (Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5), but that it does have some vast enduring and imperishable meaning.
But while you give your family many things, make sure you don’t neglect the main thing; don’t neglect the only bread that can satisfy. My family is one thing that I wouldn’t take nothing for.
3. Integrity
Third, my integrity is something I wouldn’t take nothing for. Integrity is a mixture of honesty, faithfulness, and loyalty that makes a man or woman consistent and dependable. Without integrity, we are nothing—we have no character.
When asked for the three most important ingredients in Christian work, Charles Colson said, “That’s easy. Integrity, integrity, integrity.” In recent years televangelists and some isolated preachers have caused the integrity of all of us to be brought into question. It is essential for us to be what we claim to be. Without integrity, we have no ministry.
The writer of Proverbs said, “Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is of perverse [distorted or false] lips, and is a fool” (Proverbs 19:1). My integrity is something I wouldn’t take nothing for.
4. Church
Fourth, my church is something I wouldn’t take nothing for. For 35 years the church has been my life. You would expect me to say that. But I suspect it would be so even if I were not a minister. It was in the church that I was saved, grew, heard the call to preach, was loved and encouraged, and was married. It was the church that built and maintained Baylor University as well as Southwestern Theological Seminary where I went to school. It was in the church that I was ordained. In fact almost every good thing that has happened to me has been in some way related to the church.
I’m not the only one who shares that conviction about the church. George Bernard Shaw said, “If you destroyed all the churches tomorrow, people would on the very day afterwards begin to build them back again.” That is the truth, because the church stands for something vital and essential.
Roger Babson, who was for many years America’s foremost statistical expert and adviser on financial affairs, saw parallels between his church and the exchange on Wall Street. He said, "In Trinity Church I can exchange my fears for courage, my worries for faith, my nervousness for patience, and my selfishness for justice, kindness, and the things that really count. Trinity Church is an exchange for the eternal things of life such as wisdom, serenity, kindness, justice, and beauty, while the stock exchange deals only with the fleeting and temporal things such as stocks, bonds, money, and materials.”
The church stands like a beacon ever and always calling us to life’s highest and best. It should be among the most important things in every Christian’s life. No man can break away from the church and its worship of God without feeling the effects of it in his own soul. If you see a man begin to serve the god of money or pleasure or fame, you will observe that very soon there will be a moral and spiritual decline in his life. Church attendance is optional as far as choice is concerned, but it is obligatory as far as moral and spiritual welfare are concerned.
The church is one of those things I wouldn’t take nothing for.
5. The Bible
Fifth, the Bible is one thing I wouldn’t take nothing for. In 1986 Desmond Tutu, an anti-apartheid and social rights activist and Anglican bishop, recounted the story of the whites coming to South Africa. “When they came,” the bishop said, “the blacks had the land and the whites had the Bible.” Then, he said, the whites wanted to teach the blacks to pray. “So we bowed our heads and closed our eyes. When we opened our eyes,” Bishop Tutu continued, “the whites had the land and the blacks had the Bible.’“
The Bishop then raised his Bible, tenderly kissed it, and said, “We will see who got the better deal.”
There is no doubt in my mind that he who has the Bible has one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.
When Robert Burns on his deathbed spoke to his beloved nephew, he patted his well-worn Bible and said, “Read the Book and be a good man and when you come to the place where I am now, you will know that that’s all that’s important.”
The Bible is the Magna Carta of human rights. It is the sailor’s compass. It is the shepherd’s staff. It is the foundation of all that we hold near and dear. It is one of those things we shouldn’t take nothing for.
6. America
Sixth, America is one of those things I wouldn’t take nothing for.
Karl F. Schmiedeke, during a visit to Pineville, North Carolina, stopped at the post office for stamps. “May I please have some pretty ones?” he asked. The clerk reached into the drawer, took out 10 stamps imprinted with the American flag, and slid them across the counter. “You can’t get any prettier than that,” he replied. If the astronaut was right when he said, “Earth is an oasis in space,” then I’m right when I say, “America is an oasis on the earth.”
A friend and I stood on the banks of the Rio Grande some time ago peering over into Mexico. He said, “It doesn’t look any different over there than it does here.” I responded, “Yes, but there’s a world of difference between this side of the river and that side.” I’ve traveled to 30 or 40 countries around the world and I tell you there are none like America. It is one of those things I wouldn’t take nothing for.
I hope you noticed as I have gone through my list that I did not include anything material. I didn’t mention houses, clothes, cars, stocks, or bonds. That’s because these are not the real values in life. Recently two families in our church had fires in their homes. One lost everything of value—I mean everything. The only thing left was the foundation. Furniture, gone! Clothes, gone! Family pictures, gone! Antiques, gone! Papers and records, gone! Everything, gone! When I visited with Tom Musslewhite he said, “It reminds us that we had best not put our faith in things. They can be gone in a flash.”
In time, all the things that you count important now, you will lose. Your house, your clothes, your cars, your stocks, your bonds—even your family. You will die or they will die. In the final analysis the only thing you will have that cannot be touched is your relationship with God. It alone is eternal. It is the one thing I wouldn’t take nothing for.