A – PENTECOST 10 Matthew 13: 44 “How to Find the Real Treasure.”
Dear family in Christ, wouldn’t you like to find a hidden treasure? Something of great value, something that you would truly rejoice over?
While serving a church in Hailey, Idaho, we heard stories of hidden treasures between Shoshone and Bellevue – gold coins buried among the lava beds and sagebrush, hidden by stage coach robbers back in the old days. You see, even though the bandits wore scarf over their face to hide their identity, carrying a bag full of gold into town would have been a dead giveaway for their guilt. So they hid the loot in a little cave, probably, covered it with some sagebrush and went to town looking innocent. But, according to folklore, not innocent enough to one sheriff. Justice had caught up to them, they met their fate, and their treasures remain buried there somewhere till this day. Now, every once in a while, you can see people with metal detectors scouring the countryside along the 40-mile stretch.
What if you were to find it? What would your first reaction be? Would you be jumping up and down with joy? Then maybe you would try to count the coins and estimate the treasure’s value at roughly $ 400 per ounce. But sooner or later you would want to figure out how to keep it. You could just drive off with it, but that would not be legal. You would want to be the rightful owner of it because then you could enjoy it to the fullest.
Well, Jesus told a parable about someone who found a buried treasure. He said, The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
It was not unusual to find a buried treasure in the Holy Land. Not because of stage coach robbers but because that’s how people protected their valuables – putting them in ceramic pots and hiding them in the back yard or a field. But sometimes the owner died unexpectedly without revealing where the treasure was, the property may have changed hands a few times, and now someone turns a rock over and bingo! Now, notice something here: he doesn’t just take the treasure. He does what is proper. He buys the property so that he would become the treasure’s legal owner. It takes everything he owns to buy that field, but he does it with joy because he recognizes the treasure’s value.
Let’s talk about this for a while. Parables of Jesus are simple earthly stories with heavenly meaning and there is much we can learn from them.
The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure. Something very precious, of much more value than all that we have. So, what exactly is the Kingdom of heaven?
Let’s begin by saying that the greatest discovery we can make in life is that there is a spiritual side of it, and that eventually the spiritual side becomes the only side of life. Once we learn this important truth, we are ready for a treasure hunt.
Some of us here have learned this spiritual truth the hard way, like the five-minute near death experience in my case. But once we are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that life does not end when our heart stops beating, that there is something about this life after death stuff, then we are more receptive to consider our place in eternity and what God has to say about it.
So let’s open the treasure chest. This is the treasure of the Kingdom: - that God prepares us for eternity by the gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible shares a bit of a bad news. It says that All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And since God is a God of justice, He had a dilemma: how to allow sinners into heaven? He can’t simply forgive us, the penalty for our sins had to be paid. In blood, no less? Whose blood? The sinner’s blood? If that were so, then we would all bleed and there would be no salvation. But God came up with a plan. He sent His Son Jesus into the world to bleed instead of us. He suffered and died a horrible death on the cross as our substitute, to serve out our sentence, to set us free, so that we would stand clean and blameless before God’s judgement throne. And He rose from the dead to open the way to heaven for us when we believe in Him. Let’s read together the great promise from the Kingdom’s treasure, the promise of Jesus as recorded in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
When we believe in Jesus as our Savior, we transfer all our sins onto Him, and by His sacrifice they are removed from God’s sight as far as east is from the west – deleted forever. We are forgiven. Take it at face value, it is so precious! Sometimes in moments of weakness when the devil is troubling our minds, we may think that God can never forgive us for some of the things we have done. Hurting other people, making their lives miserable, shameful things, horrible thing we may have done in the war. Some people may feel they are beyond God’s forgiveness. They believe God forgives, they just don’t think He could forgive them. Yes, He can and He does – for Jesus’ sake. How many of you have seen the movie “Passion of the Christ”? It was a very moving depiction of Christ’s suffering. The scenes will forever be imbedded in our minds. I remember tensing each time the whip landed. Some people could not watch it, it was so intense. But if there is anyone here this morning who feels that God cannot forgive them, think about how much Jesus suffered. He did it for you, even for the sin that you don’t think can be forgiven. It can and it is. Christ can set you free from this bondage today. Just leave that sin at the foot of the cross. Be cleansed in the blood of Jesus. That’s what is in the treasure. Your salvation and God’s assurance of it for you.
Secondly, having come to faith in Christ Jesus, we have the gift of new life in Him. The Bible calls it being born again. We are new creations, according to 2 Corinthians 5:17. We have peace with God, as recorded in Romans 5:1. We walk in the newness of life. Let’s read together the passage from Romans 12:2 Do not live any longer the way this world lives. Let your way of thinking be completely transformed. In other words, as new creations in Christ, we no longer belong to the world to be guided by worldly thinking, we are now led and helped by the Spirit of God to live as God’s beloved children. And there is no love like God’s love.
The end of the 8th chapter of Romans is one of the most powerful passages in the Bible. A great promise to lean on in times of grief, in times of struggle. The Apostle Paul writes, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen?
Thirdly, the treasure of the Kingdom has this blessing in store for us: Having come to faith in Jesus Christ, having become new creations in Him, adopted by God as His beloved children, we receive new meaning and purpose in our lives, to follow Him and serve Him. This is the best part of being a Christian. God invites us to join His heavenly enterprise. We are called to take an active part in the growth of the Kingdom.
Imagine for a moment that you would have the good fortune of being invited to join a company that discovered the cure for cancer? A research lab working on the cure for heart disease? A university team that found an herbal remedy for Alzheimer’s? Don’t you think your life would be extremely rewarding? Sure it would! You would wake up in the morning eager to go to the office because you know lives are being saved, the quality of life is being improved, true joy is being brought to those who suffered. Well, that’s what being a disciple of Jesus is all about. That’s what sharing the good news does. You see, the treasure is so huge, you could not possibly keep it just to yourself. And by sharing it, you will discover, that it gets better and better.
Well, there it is – the treasure of the Kingdom. And the best thing about it is that it isn’t hidden at all! It is in plain sight for anyone to claim it. It is a gift from God that He wants everyone to have.
The sad thing is, that not everyone recognizes its value. People ignore it, turn away from it while going hog wild over something that is worthless.
There is a great old black and white movie called The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Two men joined an old prospector who leads them on a hike high into the mountains to look for gold. Suddenly, the two younger men who fell a bit behind discover something shiny and yellow in color – whole veins of it! They start splashing water on it and excited call out: “Howard! Come back, we found something!” The old prospector invites them to look at each other’s face when he tells them all they found is fool’s gold, pyrite, while at the same time they have been walking on ground rich in real gold. Howard was leading them to the source of it.
In the foolishness of human nature, people can spend their entire lives chasing something that has no real value at all while ignoring the treasure God freely offers.
Let’s not be like that. Let us recognize the enormous value of the Kingdom’s treasure, sell all we have and buy that field! Well, let’s be careful how we understand this. We can’t buy our way to heaven. We can’t pay God to adopt us. We can’t bribe Him to hire us as His helpers. So what is it that God asks of us to become the treasure’s rightful owners? Only faith. But all of it. Our entire trust. Not holding anything back. That’s what selling all we have really means. Giving up all our self-righteousness, all our notion that somehow we deserve it, or that we deserve it more than others.
There are folks who say they believe in Jesus but they also place their trust in their good works, just to “cover their bases” so to speak. That’s not full trust. Full trust is saying, Lord, I claim nothing of my own. I leave everything at the foot of the cross. Forgive me, cleanse me, cover me with the robe of Jesus’ righteousness. My life is yours, my eternity is in your hands. In other words, if you permit me to use the phraseology of the casino, you gotta bet all your chips on Jesus! Then the treasure will be yours. Enjoy it to the fullest! Amen.
