Treasure Hunt

Treasure Hunt

Matthew 13:45-46

Does it seem to you that everyone is following after something?  Take a moment and watch those around you.  Everywhere you look people are racing, going, striving for some end or desired outcome.  All of us can be pretty passionate about what we perceive to be really living.  Some might consider family to be the all important element for success.  While others look to the work they do to bring satisfaction.  One might find purpose to live in recreation.  Still another can find it in simply doing nothing.  On and on goes the list of critical life giving goals that cram their way into our hearts and minds to consume our passion, time and energy.  Undoubtedly and for certain we must admit that we all were made with this longing in us.  A God-given hole in the very center of our being that causes us to search for the real, the meaningful, the lasting. 

It is like the story that I once heard Joel Gregory give in a sermon about a man and his wife who were on a fast track socially in a large urban center.  The social season was about to begin.  They wanted to make an impression that would help them both.  So they went to a matriarch of the city who had a strand of perfect, natural pearls and asked to borrow them.  She was a friend of the family, so, reluctantly she loaned them the pearls for the season. 

The first night they had them, the pearls were stolen, and all their dreams and aspirations for making a dazzling impression vanished.  They saw their life gone.

So they concocted a scheme to fly to a distant city, and there speaking with a pearl merchant, they described as meticulously as they could that strand of lost pearls.  He crafted one that was a passable substitute for what they’d lost.  They mortgaged everything they had, borrowed all they could borrow, and faced a life time trying to cover up for the disaster.  

Years later, as the old matriarch lay on her bed dying, the guilt-ridden young woman now in the midst of life, went to confess they had never returned the real pearls, only a replica.  The old lady raised up from her death bed and shrieked out, “You fools!  No one ever loans the real things.  Those were paste pearls.  Cosmetic jewelry.  You’ve wasted your life.” 

Don’t waste your life on paste pearls. 

The text that we are looking at is full of surprises.  The first surprise is coming to realize that we our God’s treasure.  Paul expresses to us the love that God has for us, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”^[1]  Did you realize that Our Heavenly Father loves you that much?  He considers you a great treasure and the kingdom of God is about the love and sacrifice that He has given for us.   He values you so much that He has given all for you.

Another surprise is that of finding this great treasure.  It is as if we are going about our business and suddenly finding what we’ve only been dreaming of.  The Bible calls us seekers.  Everyone of us is born with a seeking heart.  What we finally fill our hearts with determines our final destination.  Again, I must ask, “What are you seeking after?”  “What do you think will bring fulfillment and completion to your life?”  The Bible tells us that the greatest treasure in all the earth is the “Kingdom of God”!  In the midst of our routine and daily work we run into this truth and promise.  What will we do with this great treasure.  Will you sell everything you own to have it? Is there a price too great to know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? 

He is the answer for all that is wrong in our lives.  He is the greatest treasure that this life has to offer.  He is all that we need.  With Him in our lives all of life is a joy.  Without Him nothing about life is worth living.  We may find treasures and good in life but the greatest and only one worth giving ourselves for is the Kingdom of God.   People spend a life-time learning an occupation or finding meaning in life.  The only one that will last is a life spent for Him.