Jesus said in Matthew 13: 45-46 “ … 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.
The largest pearl in the world is called the pearl of Allah. It is more than 9 inches long and weighs over 6 kg. It is valued at more than £30 million.
The largest cut diamond in the world is called the Golden Jubilee. It weighs 545 carats and is valued at somewhere between £3-9 million. The second largest diamond used to be the Star of Africa which weighs 530 carats and is set in the Royal Sceptre in the Crown Jewels on display in the Tower of London. Its value is estimated at over £300 million – not that Her Majesty is planning on selling it. However a 1,111 carat diamond has been found in Botswana this month and that will be shaped into the second largest cut diamond.
People talk about “a champagne lifestyle”. The most expensive champagne you could buy is Cristal Brut 1990 and “Methuselah” (6 litre bottle) costs $17,625. 200 bottles of Heidsieck Champagne were bottled in 1907 but lost in a shipwreck in 1916 and only recovered in 1997. Those 110 year old bottles of vintage champagne are now sold in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow for $275,000 a bottle!
In terms of the price per litre of readily available liquids, champagne is only the third most expensive. Arguments rage whether the most expensive readily available liquid is Chanel No 5 perfume, or that substance commonly referred to as liquid gold, ink for inkjet printers. Which can cost as much as £10,000 per litre!
All sorts of thing are said to be “worth their weight in gold.” At close of trading on Friday gold was worth £710 stirling per troy ounce, £22,830 per kilogram. So an average person carrying all they could might be able to take somewhere between half a million and a million pounds worth of gold.
Of course there are some very valuable things you could buy but which you couldn’t carry around with you. The most expensive house in England is a six-storey Grade 1 listed Regency mansion in Carlton House Terrace just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace. That house is valued at £250m.

All these expensive items – we could call them priceless if we didn’t have a price for them. But surely some things in life are even more precious than objects. What’s the point of life? Surely life is about more than possessions. Surely life is about more than money.
Jesus said, Matthew 13 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like 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.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
Some things in life are more valuable than all the money and all the possessions you could ever have. More precious than buried treasure. More precious than any pearl of great value.
Jesus said in John 10:10. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” To “have life and have it more abundantly.” That is the gift God wants to give us all through Jesus. Life in all its fullness. “A rich and satisfying life” (New Living Translation) “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. (The Message) And this life in all its fullness embraces many wonderful blessings.
Love – knowing that God loves us and His love will never let us go.
Joy – not the passing happiness which so many people find in the false gods like money and entertainment but true joy which no-one and nothing can take away.
Peace – the calm of knowing that everything is safe in the hands of Almighty God.
Eternal life – is a quality of life which not even death can take away.
Freedom – the glorious liberty of the children of God – if the son shall set you free you will be free indeed.
Jesus explains to his disciples and to us what salvation and eternal life and life in all its fullness are really about in John 17:3
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
That is what eternal life really is all about – knowing God and knowing Christ. That is the real point of life! Knowing God. Salvation is all about having a personal relationship with God.
Three hundred years ago the churches were drawing up a statement of what Christians believe and they asked this question. “What is the chief end of man?” In today’s language – what are human beings created for. What is their purpose? What is their destiny? What is the point of life? And the answer they came ups with was this. “The chief end of man, (the purpose human beings are designed and created for) is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” To glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.
Back in the fifth century Augustine said this.
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
This is the truth about the point of life. We are made to have a relationship with God. Without God our lives will never be complete. We will always have a “god shaped gap” which nothing else can fill.
In the seventeenth century the philosopher Blaise Pascal explained it like this.
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
What is the point of life? To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. To receive that eternal life which is a personal relationship with the Living God.
All the wonderful blessings of knowing our wonderful God which are worth so much more than pearls or diamonds or gold or great big houses or a champagne lifestyle. Many people in Britain today are materially overfed but spiritually starving. Jesus came to offer us “life in all its fullness”. What is the point of life? To get to know God!