Is It Valuable? (Matthew 13)

My father-in-law collected oodles of Henry Major's paintings, drawings, and statues.  He is convinced they're valuable.  I don't think they probably are.  But I'll find out when we put them for sale on ebay.

Pastor mentioned Antique Roadshow in the sermon this week.  He pointed out that the value of an item is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it.  You may have something that you think should be tremendously valuable (such as the Russian 3-stringed guitar my father-in-law owned), but if nobody else cares and nobody else wants it, you're not going to find anybody who will pay five bucks for it. 

In the "kingdom parables" at the end of Matthew 13, Jesus sells all that He has to buy the treasure of the world.  What a wreck of a "treasure"!  But He loved.  He sold His life and His blood.  He placed value on a world of sinners who hated Him.  The Lord set an immeasurable value on the world when He gave His Son as the purchase-price.  (Really??--the world is worth GOD's suffering and death?) 

So when we think, "How could God love me?  Look at what a miserable excuse of a Christian I am," we look at what He says.  We look at what He was willing to give to buy us.  And as it is on Antique Roadshow, that is what determines value.