Pearls at this time were the most valuable jewels in the world, with some worth over $1,000,000 in todays money.

The kingdom of God costs you everything, but what you get in return is worth far more than anything you could possibly imagine.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Jim Elliot

"Throw the bad exō " - literally means throw the bad outside.

There is an ultimate reality at the end of the age. There is an ultimate judgement.

"In Matthew the 'righteous' are those who persevere in right living according to God’s will" - Grant R Osborne (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary)

God is both pure love and fully just. It is neither loving nor just for evil to be ignored.

Jesus has already said that he has given them “knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom” (13:11),
that they will be given even more (13:12a),
and that they have an “abundance” of the kingdom truths (13:12b).

The result will be divine blessings in what they see and hear (13:16), an abundance that even the prophets themselves longed for (13:17).

As a result they will hear the Word and “understand” it (13:23a), producing an ever-increasing crop of fruitfulness (13:23b).

With this in mind, this is probably not a passage detailing the hubris of the disciples in thinking they understand when they do not.

This does not mean they understood fully; in fact, in 15:16 they are reproved for being so dull. But they are beginning to perceive the reality of what Jesus has been teaching them.

“All these things” refers back to v. 34, with Jesus speaking “all these things” in parables, followed in v. 36 with the disciples asking Jesus to explain the parable of the weeds to them.

So the thrust here is that the disciples basically caught what Jesus was saying and began to assimilate the reality of the kingdom.

- Grant R Osborne (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary)

The Kingdom of God is not the Kingdom of God without a King.

Matthew ends this chapter by telling the story of people who saw Jesus as just another person.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ...

Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.

- C.S. Lewis

Small Group Questions:

1) If you were to reflect on how you spend your time, how you spend your money and what you worry about, what would that tell you your priorities were?

2) Talk about someone you would say sought first the Kingdom of God. What was it that you saw in them that led you to say that?

3)Have someone read the Jim Elliot quote. What things have you had to give up in order to seek first the Kingdom of God?

4) What are some of the old things (old truths) that are precious to you? What are some of the new truths that God has shown you?

5) Have someone read the quote from C.S. Lewis. The people of Jesus' home town saw Jesus as 'ordinary'. Are there times when you find yourself overly comfortable with Jesus?