There is mystery in a hidden treasure. That is why there are so many stories of hidden riches that you can only find by following a treasure map. Most hidden treasure stories you hear involve characters who have to sacrifice to find it. They have to go on adventures that test their character and their determination. To find it they have to leave their comfortable lives and usually end up joining forces with a group of people they would not normally choose to be with. In most good stories about finding treasure, they have to decide if they are willing to risk their lives to obtain the treasure. Even as they are choosing to give their lives for this treasure, they usually don’t know the value of it or if it even actually exists. Most people probably tell them that the treasure they're searching for is really just a myth or legend and not even worth looking for. Yet still there is this insatiable hunger for the treasure - no matter what anyone says.
And sometimes, you stumble upon a treasure by accident, and it changes the course of your life forever. You still won't fully know the value of what you've found until you take it to get appraised. I remember one time my brother Cole and I were digging behind our barn, and we found buckets and buckets of shiny black rock. We had no idea what they were or if they were even valuable, but to us it was like finding buried treasure. We still have buckets of these black rocks at home because we thought we had found something incredible.
This guy was probably just your average man – he had a family, friends, and a job. It seems kind of strange that he would find such a valuable treasure and then just leave it there in the field. I mean, what if someone else had found it after he left and had taken this treasure? But instead of grabbing the treasure and running away with it, he went and sold all he had to buy the whole field that held it.
For a really long time, I have wondered why in the world this guy didn't just take the treasure when he found it. It didn't make any sense to me. And this week as I was praying about this parable and meditating on it, Jesus started to explain it to me.
This guy had to get rid of his bag of junk. He was about to have the greatest secret in the world. He was about to become more rich than you could imagine. He didn't need his old, worn out stuff anymore. He had just found the most precious treasure. He needed to clean out his house of all his old things so that there would be room for the things he had just found. In a non-metaphorical way, his junk was his sin, his old nature, and he had to remove it from his life before he could really take hold of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom is holy and perfect; there is no room for extra stuff. To get the treasure of the Kingdom, we have to get rid of our junk.
This means literally selling all our possessions if they are a distraction or an idol. This means repenting of our sins and turning our hearts to God. This means getting rid of emotional baggage like grudges, hurt feelings, orphan mentalities, bad relationships, and guilt. We have to get rid of anything, any junk, which keeps us from really knowing God intimately. We have to learn who we truly are in God’s eyes – we are sons and daughters, kings and queens, priests, royalty, holy, covered by the blood of Jesus. We have to give up ourselves, deny ourselves of what we feel we deserve – whether that is the acknowledgement of man for our good deeds or even condemnation for our mistakes – because once we enter into the Kingdom and are filled with the Holy Spirit, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. Like Paul says in Gal. 2:20 - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” And in Colossians 2 he says “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” And then he goes on in Colossians 3:5-10, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
The man in this parable had to get rid of his possessions because they were signs, relics, of his old self. What he had found was going to change his life and make him a totally different man. I think Jesus was saying that we can’t fully take hold of the Kingdom until we have given everything else up for it. But it is so hard to give up the things we know, the old creation mentalities we have, even the comforts of the lies of the enemy, for the truth of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is all about our hearts. If our hearts are cluttered still with the things of the old nature, if there is still even a hint of the enemy’s darkness within us, how can we be filled with the Spirit and with the light of His presence? "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Jesus didn't die so that we would continue to live in sin and guilt and shame. If we are holding onto those things, we are not experiencing the freedom Jesus came to give us. Surely, Jesus taught that the Kingdom of heaven is manifest through signs and wonders, healings and miracles. But those are just the outward signs of what the Kingdom has done in our inner lives. I can't be holding onto my bag of garbage with one hand and the Treasure with my other. If our minds are still full of sinful thoughts, our actions will reflect that. But if our hearts and minds are full of the thoughts of Jesus and if we have set our hearts on truly knowing Him, then our actions will reflect those good things. Only then will we be like the first church in Acts 2 and 4 who gave their possessions freely to all who had need, who were filled with the Spirit, who operated and lived from the overflow of their intimacy with God. Thousands and thousands of people came to Christ, became kings and queens in the Kingdom, because these first Christians understood that the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom Jesus came to proclaim, was backwards and upside down.
Like a treasure of great value can satisfy our physical needs – it can pay our bills, buy our food and clothes, etc., the Kingdom of heaven satisfies those things and more. Jesus says, "Seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well." It satisfies our deepest desires. We were created for more than just what we can see and taste and touch and feel here. From the first day of Creation, God put a hunger in our deepest spirit for a relationship with Him. He created us to reign with Him, to walk and talk with Him, to experience life in relationship with Him. He made us in His image with His characteristics and His imagination and His feelings. He created us to rule and reign over all of creation together with Him. But when Adam and Eve sinned and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we lost our ability to freely be with Jesus. At that moment of decision, they plunged mankind into a lifelong hunt for the satisfaction of the desire they felt inside. Every moment in history, every religion that has come into the world since then has been man’s attempt to fill their emptiness. These things have tried to answer man's cry: "Where is the place I truly belong? Where is my kingdom?"
I imagine that this man who finds the treasure is just like all of us. He had a need that nothing was satisfying until he finds this treasure, he finds the Kingdom, and his whole life is changed. He suddenly realized that his materialism really wasn’t the answer, that his immorality and idolatry were not getting him anywhere. He had to remove it completely from his life so he could have this treasure. He was so full of joy because he had found his heart’s desire that giving everything else up for it was hardly even a sacrifice. In the words of Paul: “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Phil. 3:7-11
Sometimes the things we give up for the Kingdom aren’t even bad things in themselves. Maybe we don’t have a huge sin like a drug addiction or we aren’t caught in immorality. Maybe we don’t have much stuff and materialism isn’t a big struggle for us. But sometimes it’s who we are that must be given up. Paul was your perfect Jew – he followed the law, he was a pure Hebrew, and he was zealous for his people. But he gave up all of his credentials and his reputation; he died to his pride and self-worth, so that Jesus could be glorified in and through him.
But once you have found the Kingdom, what do you do? Once you’ve sold all of your possessions and given up your old self, what do you do then? You set your eyes on Jesus and run after Him with all you’ve got. You join with other believers and go on your crazy adventure with them, even if they aren’t people you would normally know. You put other people first and share the riches that you’ve found. And people have gold in them too. Sometimes you can't see it and they don't even know it's there. But when I take them to the Appraiser and ask Him what He sees in them, I can call out the gold, the pieces of the Kingdom of heaven, that have been placed in them. Freely you have received; now freely give. Paul prayed for Philemon that he would “be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” The Kingdom is every good thing. The more we talk about it, the more we live in the Spirit and in intimacy with Jesus, the more deeply we will come to true understanding of what Jesus died to give us access to. As Paul prayed for the Ephesian church: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” The Kingdom of heaven is here and now. As we live our daily lives, we must heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do the same. And all of this we do with joy because we have found the treasure of the Kingdom.
I guess the question is: am I willing to let go of all of my old ways of thinking to have Jesus? Am I willing to give up my stuff, to get rid of my junk which I have allowed to define me for such a long time, so that I can step up and take hold of all that Jesus has for me in the Kingdom? Am I willing to let God come in and give me my identity? And am I willing to do away with the fear of man and share the riches I've been given?
There is so much freedom, so much joy, so much peace to be had, and all it takes to have it is to fully say "yes" to our Papa God.
