In terms of their discovering the great treasure, which is the gospel, the man who discovered the treasure and the merchant who found the pearl in these parables are identical. There is a point of contrast that should not be overlooked, however. The man who found the hidden treasure was apparently not looking for it—his discovery was an accident—but in the case of the merchant, the finding of the pearl was the result of a long and faithful quest.
There is a caricature of Calvinism that takes issue with the doctrines of election and “irresistible” grace. It imagines a case in which a certain individual—we’ll call him George—does not want to be saved. George loves sin, and never looks beyond it. Although he has heard the gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, he has no interest in it personally. But God has elected this person. So, although George does not want to be saved, he is nevertheless dragged by the scruff of his neck into heaven “kicking and screaming,” a most reluctant convert.
As Christians, we must be on guard against Satan's tactics. We are warned not only against his infusion of his own people into the Christian community, but also against the visible church's bureaucratic growth (which confuses size and structure with spiritual fruit) and against the infusion of evil into the lives even of believing people (which confuses a loving and forgiving spirit with treason to Christ's cause). In other words, we are to beware of the secular church and evangelical secularism as well.
Today let's look at the reasons why I classify these parables with the parable that tells of the devil's work. First, the growth of a mustard seed into a tree is abnormal. That is, a mustard seed does not grow into a tree; it grows into a shrub. Anyone to whom Christ spoke would know that. So when he spoke of the great and unusual growth of this seed, his hearers would immediately have been alerted to the fact that something was wrong. If Jesus had wanted to stress the "victorious church" view, he should have referred to an acorn growing up to be an oak or a cedar seed growing up to be one of the mighty trees of Lebanon.
The next two of Christ's parables (vv. 31-33) belong together. Each should help us to understand the other, but of all the parables Christ told, none has produced such diametrically opposed interpretations as these two. What are those diverse interpretations? On the one hand, some teachers see these as parables of the kingdom's expansion and growth, so that in time it actually comes to fill the whole world. An example is William M. Taylor, who has left us an excellent book on the parables. He writes of the story of the mustard seed: A great result from a small beginning, a large growth from a little germ - that is the one thought of the parable, and of that the Lord declares that the kingdom of heaven upon the earth is an instance.
